I remember a while back, when Carla was helping Amber either bleeding head after the car chase, suggesting that Carla introduce her to roller derby as a well of helping her vent her anger. I will heartily make that suggestion again.
Yeah. Hell, that’s the problem really. She knows her dad is awful and has given her some awful ways of dealing with the world and a wealth of emotional damage, but she still deep down believes he’s right.
That she’s broken and worthless. That threats and anger are a way to get your way in an argument. That if someone doesn’t agree with you it’s because they are attacking you personally. That people don’t change and there are “attackers” and “victims”.
I think Bagge talked yesterday about how Amber needs to defeat her internal Blaine as much as she defeated her external one. I think Bagge might have been right about that.
Especially considering how the lighting and posing here looks a hell of a lot like it did with Blaine leading up to The Punch and damn, it says a lot that there’s no red backdrop in that fourth panel but you can clearly feel its presence there.
I wonder if it’s a sign of how her alters are becoming more and more distinct and separated from each other. Like, red panels are what Amber does. So Amazi-girl gets angry, Amazi-girl evokes that which would normally elicit a red panel, but doesn’t have a reason to run and be scared of that feeling and so just treats it as normal.
Interesting possibility, yeah. Especially since this sequence is also showing her eschewing borders and panels entirely as she’s getting more and more disconnected from the situation as it is and going farther and farther into anger. Like, I’m pretty sure Willis uses it plenty of times just for panel variance and stuff, but here it DEFINITELY seems intentional.
From personal experience, that’s how it works with parents (or people you looked to for guidance as a child). Even if you learn, as an adult that they were bad people, you can’t shake their ideas without a LOT of struggle – especially their opinions of you.
“That threats and anger are a way to get your way in an argument. That if someone doesn’t agree with you it’s because they are attacking you personally. That people don’t change and there are ‘attackers’ and ‘victims’.”
This is an interesting indictment of pretty much every political and social debate of the past five years. I am surprised to see such an argument posed here.
Honestly? Ever since she ‘defeated’ Blaine she’s done nothing but escalate. Kicking the crap out of him didn’t fix any part of her trauma. It’s possible it just made it worse.
What she needs is help, and of the very professional kind, before she gets herself or someone else killed – or /kills/ someone else.
well, being hungry can either be a recurring problem or a larger-scale problem, depending on how you think about it… most people solve the problem of being hungry for lunch by ordering lunch or brownbagging it, whereas solving the problem of children going hungry in America could include not funding the fucking military for like twelve hours
so it can be a temporary or permanent “problem” of wanting a threeway is what I’m saying
People that refuse to hear something do sometimes start hearing it when enough people have said the same thing enough times. Doesn’t apply to everyone, what is enough may vary, but it applies to enough people that it is worth trying. I speak from experience on both sides of that, and I am very grateful that people kept trying even though I was refusing to hear what they were saying for so, so long.
I’m not sure how it’s going to end. It looks like Amber is now officially off the deep end with these baseless accusations, and comments like the ‘second worse thing Sal did to her was to save her life”.
As to Danny. Second time I’ve been proud of him (he tried to help when she was going after her all to damn deserving father by getting her away from him). This time I think although he knows that he is way in over his head, he is trying to get through to Amber A.G.
I think saying he like Amber better is the best thing he could say. But, doesn’t look like it is being heard.
Sorry for both of them.
I really don’t think that’s nearly so much “Sal saving my life was a bad thing” as “Sal saving my life was a bad thing.”
She doesn’t want to be dead, but Sal saving her is shattering her world view. Which is good, because her world view is horribly screwed up, but is still traumatic.
Which makes me really worried. She just turned on her boyfriend and viewed him as an enemy really quickly and has a very thin justification for it. If she decides to make this consistent as she is wont to do and becomes more prone to seeing enemies in everything and everything as an attack…
How much damage could she do as Amazi-girl? Especially seeing it is Amazi-girl who is going down this path of delusions fueled by her PTSD.
I don’t know… her first instinct towards Dorothy was pretty adversarial. Not entirely confrontational, but a little bit. I think that in Amber’s eyes, everyone new is a danger. In Amazi-Girl’s eyes, everyone is either an Amber or an enemy.
(Which gets a bit confusing when you realize that Amber is an ‘enemy’, not an ‘Amber’. Forget Sal, she may actually end up being her own arch-nemesis.)
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but with the help of friends sometimes the apple can learn how to not be unstable and have a fulfilling life away from it’s ass of a tree.
Yeah… I mean, I still like Amber as a character, but right now her relationship with Danny is turning into something dangerously toxic. Definitely for Danny, possibly for Amber as well.
Walky and Dorothy are maybe a little more serious about eachother than they think they are(and Walky could currently do to be a little more truthful) but overall they’re remarkably healthy for a teenage couple.
To extend the metaphor… sometimes animals come along and eat the apple, then leave droppings containing the seeds of a new tree, far far away from the parent.
Although Amber isn’t an apple she’s a jumping cholla cactus. That uses its spines to attach to an animal’s fur and go for a ride.
Yes and no. Amber’s behavior right now is abusive either way, but it’s relevant whether she means to do it. If (as I think is the case) she doesn’t mean to do it, then she’ll want to change once she realizes what she’s doing.
I think what’s happening here is that seeing Sal puts Amber into fight-or-flight mode. The Sal etched into Amber’s memory is a raw force of evil, still holding a knife to Ethan’s throat.
If she’s in a rational state of mind and accepting that she’s making mistakes, that’s true. But lots of very well meaning people don’t intend to be abusive, but realizing they have made a mistake that hurt someone they care about causes them to double down, insist they didn’t do anything wrong (or it wasn’t that serious), get defensive, and in general not be apologetic and learn from it… at least until they calm down. And I think that’s what we’re gonna see here, but the calm down might take.. a while.
I think you’re right; that’s how things like this often play out. If Amber were to realize how horrible she was being to Danny (or to others who cross her at tense moments), it would be long after the fact. And it would take a lot for her to mend her ways, because changing one’s own knee-jerk reactions to surprise triggers is no easy thing, to say the least.
Almost certainly not, but that doesn’t make it any less traumatic or unhealthy for Danny. You can find a person toxic to your life while still having sympathy for the causes of that toxicity.
…Is that really the point to Amber? That seeking partners that don’t scare her, being terrified of ending up in the same kind of relationship as her mother which happens to abused children all the time, was definitely a sign all along that Amber was just looking for victims?
I mean, she didn’t fall for Danny because she thought he was an easy mark, and that was absolutely Mike’s point because Mike says horrible shit to hurt people all the time. I just really can’t believe that’s the intent behind the sequence.
Well if it’s healthy violence, I can’t quite see how it would kill anyone.
…
I mean.
Technically cutting someone open and cutting off part of their insides seems pretty violent.
Yee~! I’ve felt bad for him ever since we saw his parents, but things just seem to get worse for him (and for everybody else of course!). Just…agh. I think I have a soft spot for well-meaning nice people that accidentally get into trouble and remain very kind but aren’t around the kindest people around. (Still hoping he and Joe get resolved)
Danny’s always been my cinnamon roll. The poor guy tries. But I’ve mostly only read DOA and a teeny bit of SP so all the hate was entertaining but confusing to me.
I’m in the same spot as you just about, and from what I did read of Shortpacked!, I don’t think Danny was in there? So yeah, same as you, the hate has been really confusing to me xD
I guess there’s nothing ‘wrong’ so much as the last time I remember those two really talking, it was Danny trying to talk about how he felt he might like guys, and Joe’s reaction wasn’t very good. Joe’s got issues when it comes to talking about feelings, and he’s not been the most emotionally supportive friend to Danny, I think. I’m just hoping we’ll get to see the two of them have some sort of reconciliation. I checked the archives and they’ve had a few conversations since then but nothing that touches on their feelings.
That was a bit sad but interesting little arc. Joe revealing that it’s a conscious decision on his part to avoid deep conversations about feelings and self worth really changed my impression of him.
I don’t agree with the approach (in the convo or Joe’s life), but it was him setting his own boundaries in his friendship with Danny and cluing Dan in to his own limitations of what he could provide in it. Joe read mostly as a gag character up till that point and that reveal showed how he ticks in a more complex light.
TL;DR I hope he and Joe stay friendsies too but Joe’s consciously decided to be a dry well for deeper support and….at least he said so upfront?
That’s referencing how Amber has treated being Amazi-girl as…something of a game. Like a video game where you play the hero. But ‘if you die in the game, you die for real’ means even though she feels like it is a game, ultimately if she dies while being Amazi-girl she indeed DIES. …Also I think it’s a reference to ‘Stay Alive’, a horror movie where the gimmick was…you guessed it, people play a video game and if you die in the game, you died for real.
It could also be a reference to that! I just thought of ‘Stay Alive’ first, because of the game part. I would recommend it, if you’re interested! It’s not the GREATEST horror movie ever, but I always found it nice and scary. Plus, it has a young Frankie Muniz in it, looking so much younger than everybody else it’s almost funny.
First season only, then it’s characters attempting to ignore the trauma of such a thing or embracing it and losing all sense of reality. There Are No Therapists indeed.
“What, you mean that one with the cards and the weird spinner instead of dice and aside from whether to go to college you get zero decisions to make?”
“Uh…. yeah.”
“Dude, you can’t die in that game. You just grow old and retire and rank the quality of your life by how much money you have left and how many kids you had and somehow the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“You’re just not playing with the right cards.”
“I’m playing with cards that won’t kill me. That sounds like the right cards.”
OH! I just figured it out! It’s a reference to Transformers, obviously. It’s a reference to one of the stupidest ways Optimus Prime died in the comics.
To be specific, IIRC, he died in a video game duel against Megatron, which killed him in real life. And he knew it would kill him, yet he sacrificed himself anyway. And I think think he (accidentally?) cheated, which in his mind meant he deserved death. Something like that. Willis talks about this story a lot.
Honestly if I don’t get a reference in a Willis comic, I just assume it’s something to do with Transformers. (Somehow I completely missed the franchise as a kid.)
I wanna say it’s a game grumps reference because they often make fun of the movie “Stay alive” which is a very…syfy type movie but it might just be a reference to the movie itself.
I’m personally hoping for Noodle Incident. We don’t get to see any part of the break-in, but we do get to hear “Wow! I can’t believe that thing with the potato salad actually worked!”
Hopefully all the Danny haters (bullies?) can now see what everyone else could see and that’s a kid trying to make the best decisions they can with the limited information they have
I suspect it’s lingering stuff from the last universe. Kind of like how Malaya often gets shit from her Shortpacked! counterpoint. Cause Danny in Roomies, especially, kinda was a bit of a shit, frequently judgmental of non-het sexualities, a bit of a slut shamer and a holy roller, and just oozing a bit of Nice Guy TM behavior.
That’s not this Danny so much, though he started the comic being a bit of a Nice Guy TM at first, so I imagine that didn’t help.
That all said, Danny’s development has shown a really interesting tryhard character with a lot of humility and heart. And it’s been a long time since he’s Dannyed in the classic Roomies sense.
The big problem with Danny in Roomies is not that he was everything you described, but that he was an uninformed version of that. He was presented as the good guy, with all of those being his good qualities.
After seeing what Cerb wrote about Roomies!Danny a lot more of the carryover dislike makes sense. Reminds me of the "shut UP, MEG" beat in Family Guy now.
Danny, since when is when your girlfriend visibly pissed about something a good time to bring up that maybe her only coping mechanism might be dangerously self-destructive. Hell yes that’s going to make her defensive. Sure, your words aren’t any less true, but you have to work around the PTSD, not make it worse. :/
Fair enough on the PTSD point, she makes an effort to rein herself in around Danny, and he’s kinda oblivious as to how deep the split runs, even given the hints.
She’s still obviously pissed, and literally dropped a line “day is still young”, which makes this somewhat of a non sequitur, to me. I’d want to try and make it a good day instead of bringing up a conflict. That doesn’t work for story pacing, though, of course.
Problem is that honesty is a key to the relationship and she’s demanding to know stuff. I don’t think evasion or stalling will help Danny out of this bind either.
She did tell Danny that AG is an “outlet” for all the rage and negative emotions that she feels. Most people would understand that as a coping method. She also told him about Blaine’s abuse and Ethan told him about the robbery. He has all the pieces.
Though, I’m not docking him points cause bringing it up is the right damn thing to do.
I think he’s bringing it up now because this is the most self-destructive he’s ever seen her act, to the point that she was complaining that Sal saved her life. Not good timing, but understandable timing.
I think he’s bringing it up because he’s genuinely scared right now. For her, of her, etc… Those eyes glancing away in those early panels, unable to look her in the eyes. That’s a person digging deep to try and muster all the courage he can.
Her only coping mechanism he just found out nearly got her KILLED. He’d be a shitty bf if he didn’t try and convince her to stop. All he sees is her spiraling out of control right now.
Not ideal, but lately, whenever he sees her, she’s either angry or tterrified. Considering that he’s genuinely worried about her physical (and mental?) health and safety, and that HE is the current target of her wrath, he’s doing a pretty brave thing. Not to mention, he’s being about as gentle with his concerns as you could ask of anyone, let alone a college freshman.
He’s well within his rights though to share his concerns regarding the fact that she almost died while partaking in said coping mechanism. As someone who also had a self-destructive way of coping with things, I think he’s doing the right thing. She needs a wake up call.
Danny is not a licensed professional. You cannot blame Danny for not knowing how to best deal with this type of situation. People go to school for years to learn how.
Having been in a similar (but different) situation it, he’s likely to involved to really see things clearly. There may be nothing he can do that is the “right” answer. If nothing else he’s in a very difficult situation because there is never going to be a good time to talk to Amber about this.
As a friend of mine who is a therapist once told me, it isn’t your fault and these things are hard.
Oh Yeah Amber is Anakin Skywalker, Sal is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Danny is Padme…. so I guess Ambers dad is Palpatine? I don’t get where the Wreck-It Ralph feels are coming from though.
Ohhhh boy. This is bad. Really bad. Like Superman vs. Batman levels of bad. (I’m very sorry but I thought a bad joke might lighten the mood just a small bit.)
Dorothy: “Walky, why the hell are there ten jars of pee in your backpack?”
Walky: “It was only one this morning. They must be learning from the math books.”
Danny honestly I hated you, you were too weak willed to be in a healthy relationship but you just showed far more backbone then I thought you capable of.
Still not really enough backbone… I mean, it’s more than he usually shows, but this is going to require more. Don’t get me wrong, I am and always have been a Danny supporter since I started reading,* but I’m not at all sure he has what it takes to handle this at all.
* (I got in late and binged the first four years of this, I didn’t have time to hate the poor kid.)
same yesterday and 2 days ago “She”, Danny said “Oh! Hey, Amber”, the response was “Wrong” and was tagged with both Amber and Amazi-girl. The first panel of “She” is Amber, then the change occurs.
This is the third day it’s been like that. Amber was there in the first panel on Tuesday’s comic (4/26) but then, once she sees Sal and realizes Danny was talking to her, you can see where Amber vanishes and Amazi-Girl takes over.
The AG voice is something Amber deliberately uses. The clearer indicators that this is Amazi-Girl right now are the lack of the cheek blushes and the character tags.
A similar thing happened when she crawled through Ethan’s window to warn him that Sal was at the college. Amazi-Girl spoke without the blue text bubbles, but lacked the cheek blush and was tagged as Amazi-Girl.
nvm, I think I got it: A-G voice corresponds to A-G (sort of) in control of herself. This, though, is A-G out of mask/voice/control, bleeding over all borders.
I’m not so sure I think this may be Amber as amazi-girl is the one who seems more stable I think falling for Danny may have switched or even outright separated their personalities removing Ambers ability to push her anger aside into amazi-girl this is only my opinion though
Amber is a hider, and tends to run from danger, but reacts like a wild animal when trapped, striking out with lethal violence. Amazi-Girl is a fighter, with more control over her emotions, but seems to have a suspicious streak that can turn to outright paranoia, as we’re seeing now. Neither one is truly healthy.
Yep. Willis may not be killing anyone off in DoA, but some of the case may wish they were dead with all the crap he’s putting them through.
#DamnYouWillis
Amber’s struggle hits a bit close to home for me, too. Someone I cared for a lot went down the same path. I tried to help her, but she didn’t want to be helped. It was a tragic mess.
As much as I love Amber and want all this to end for the best. Call me The Devil’s Advocate if you want but there’s only one Form therapy left and it’s in the form two fist.
Yeah, that would explain why I heard the Decepticon in Starscream’s voice, but now I’m hearing Optimus Prime say “Danny, sweetie? Run.” and I was more comfortable when I heard both as Starscream.
Panels 1, 2, and 4: Oh man, I have so many feels for Danny here. He recognizes he’s in a fraught situation, but he’s got a lot more inner strength than we ever really give him credit for and he’s willing to push forward even with Amber being well, at a place to say the least.
But this is still really scary for him and you see that really clear in his averted eyes.
Panels 3 and 5: Amber… I really don’t want to overstep like last time, but Amber here is… evoking a lot of stuff for me and it makes me really concerned, especially for Danny. She has a lot of stuff going on, but she’s been making all the wrong decisions on how to handle it and here we see some of the price of that.
There’s very little way to read this other than dipping some full limbs into paranoid delusion and interpreting not following her exact prescribed path as a personal attack. I worried when she so quickly spun having her life saved as a wrongdoing that it was a major choice she was making to start bending her interpretation of reality to fit her prejudices rather than risk having to change her mind about Sal…
And well, here she is turning against her boyfriend (and seeing as how she’s firmly in the Amazi-girl alter here, it is very much her boyfriend) because he’s not instantly rejecting Sal, because he refuses to agree with her suicidal ideation that her life is without value, because he doesn’t want to see his loved one die. Because he dares push back against her unfounded accusation.
That emphasis in those panels. That Sal somehow “got” to him. That he is turned “against her”. That is building a mythology with rotten pieces and refusing to listen to her partner in service to building this alternative reality and that is such a bad direction for her to go and such a scary direction when paired with her current state of PTSD-fueled anger… I really worry that Amber will violate her own ethical code here if she hasn’t already and this might end up being more than the two of them can survive as a couple.
Those last two panels, Danny’s eyes pleading. Trying desperately to point out the reality where Amber is not being hunted, where he’s not an enemy, where Sal is just a girl who made some mistakes in her past. Trying to reach out across the abyss to extend a hand and sadly, I just don’t see her taking it in her current state. She has too much invested in feeling angry and persecuted. And she needs to externalize that feeling and is just choosing the worst way to do it.
And yeah, this whole thing is stirring up a lot of emotions for me. My ex had a lot of stuff. And she would also get angry and controlling and downplay harm and accuse me of attacking her or doing the crimes her mother was doing because she needed someone to attack and she could bully me into seeing her way. And that all sounds bad, but I loved her and when things disintegrated, I still wanted to be with her.
And so I feel so strongly and identify so strongly with Danny. He loves her so much. But he’s seeing the depths of how much she doesn’t love herself and what that means in Amber’s current emotional state.
I feel so bad for these two because YEP Amber is going so much into the bad place here. And damn is she ever going to feel like shit when she realizes it, and won’t THAT potentially start its own fun spiral of terribleness. And when Danny gets out, it’s gonna send her waaaaay down the drain.
But at the same time? DANNY NEEDS TO GET WAY THE FUCK OUT OF THERE, RIGHT FUCKING NOW because if he doesn’t things are only going to get worse and I do NOT want to see any of the cast more traumatized than has already become inevitable.
It’s that last panel that gets me. Danny looks so close to tears, the emotions saying “I want to help. And I don’t know how. I can see you’re hurting, and it’s killing me inside.” It’s a face I’ve had before many times with my father. Also, for you Cerberus, I’m trying to send you all of my sympathy through this comment.
Ohhh, dear. I mean I think we all knew this relationship was getting increasingly untenable but I don’t think we’d realized HOW BAD and HOW FAST it was getting. But yep, Sal trigger would deeeeeefinitely do it.
GodDAMN I hate Blaine and his refusal to actually pay for actual therapy. It wouldn’t have guaranteed things would helped but it might at least have given a CHANCE at it!
You know I’m starting to think Walkyverse!Amber’s “I wished he’d get hit with a TRUCK” thing was an extremely tame fantasy compared to what he deserves.
I know objectively it’s terrible to wish incredible pain and suffering on a fictional character (and is rarely as satisfying as it should be, see also: The Punch and its aftermath) but at the same time, man I wish he would suffer horrible agony.
It’s like, do we REALLY have to open up the “worst parent” competition again?
ToeDad: “I kidnapped my daughter to put her in a living hell disguised at therapy.”
Blaine, smugly: “I MADE my daughters life a living hell and denied her therapy”
ToeDad: “I rejected everything she is.”
Blaine: “I made her loath everything she is.”
ToeDad: “GUN!!!”
Blaine: “You win…. for now”
I know, right. And then there’s the Browns and Walkertons and Wilcoxen quietly chugging along in the background quietly and low-key screwing up their kids for life… and the Billingsworths just not caring… and THEN there’s whatever the hell’s going on with Ruth’s grandfather.
I have not forgotten Ruth’s grandfather, but I hope we don’t find out about that specific brand of shittiness for quiiiite some time. If ever.
Naomi, yeah, but I feel bad for Saul. Someone pointed out during that arc that he struck them as gay or asexual himself, and seemed like he’d just forced himself into the heteronormative paradigm that everyone seemed to want from him.
Not paying for therapy is about the least bad thing Blaine did. He’s the primary reason she needed therapy in first place. Demeaning her and goading her to violence.
I’m glad Danny finally said this to her. But now I’m worried that she’s going to further unload on him which he just does not deserve. Hopefully it will be bad enough that even he’ll realize that he needs to get out of this relationship.
If only it were so easy to “take a break” from being Amazi-Girl.
This isn’t a problem of one person being wronger than another. This is a problem of all sides of the issue only knowing their view of their matter. Danny doesn’t know about how Amazi-Girl is basically an entirely separate personality brought on by PTSD. Sal doesn’t know about the link between her robbery, the abuse Amber endured from her dad, and the Amazi-Girl personality. Amber and Amazi-Girl don’t know anything about who Sal is now and who she was back then.
Basically, no one knows anything and everything is terrible. Communicate, damn you!
Also, all of this is Blaine’s fault. A lot of Amber’s issues come from her trying to distance herself from her anger instead of dealing with it in healthy ways, specifically due to not wanting to turn out like her father.
If Blaine had been a better dad, Amber wouldn’t have felt the need to forcibly separate herself from her anger, wouldn’t have created the Amazi-Girl persona, and probably would have gotten therapy for the trauma from the grocery store robbery. She and Danny would have had a far better relationship, and seeing Sal might not have given her such bad panic attacks. She might have even been able to approach Sal, discuss the matter, and reach some sort of understanding about everything.
Absolutely wouldn’t have stabbed Sal. That was in direct response to Blaine’s goading. Quite likely wouldn’t have been the already frozen and withdrawn kid she was before the attack.
Oh dear lord yes, yes all of this, yes to the first communicate part and also SO MUCH YES to the fuck Blaine, the cactus seems too nice, fuck him with a chainsaw too because dude has EARNED it.
(And it doesn’t help that Amazi-Girl and Amber are probably both utterly TERRIFIED of actually talking about this shit. We saw in the flashback, before she started Amazi-Girling her coping mechanism was freeze mode and she still can’t bear to talk about it now for understandable reasons. As someone whose anxiety responses are “flight but mostly freeze” I relate. But that is the ABSOLUTE ONLY THING that’s gonna even BEGIN to start fixing this clusterfuck of trouble and auuugh, someone get this woman some help FAST.)
In fact, if Blaine hadn’t been the father he was, it’s entirely possible Amber and Ethan would have been on that bus for the field trip like they were supposed to be and would never have even been involved with Sal’s second robbery!
This entire comic reminds me repeatedly of the Philip Larkin poem ‘This Be The Verse’. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to but they do” except sometimes they mean to so fuck you Blaine.
Hell, if I’m right and she’s DID, she literally can’t “take a break from Amazi-girl” because Amazi-girl is her and if she tries to shut it off, it’ll rebel and stop even sharing memories with her Amber alter.
Also, 100% agree with you on the dad and the cactus
I want to say something about this, but there’s nothing I can add that hasn’t already been stated or that won’t be phrased more eloquently/cleverly by someone else later on.
All I can do is sigh sadly as I watch the oncoming trainwreck. =(
Danny speaks the truth here. I’m very sorry you went through that. These few pages trigger a lot of memories for me too, so I understand where you’re coming from. It’s really a conversation for Amber for which there’s only one “right” answer to. For me those were the most mindbending ones.
Yeah, I hated the “one ‘right’ answer” conversations a lot. Especially because my own mental health stuff and how it affects emotional processing makes it really important to me that my memory of physical events is at least accurate, so having to accept a “one ‘right’ answer” of something that wasn’t true and didn’t happen was really hard for me and messed me up a lot when I did buckle because then it became really hard to trust my own experiences.
There is even the possibility of coming back from self-destruction.
Remember, when you’ve hit absolute bottom there is nowhere to go but up. It’s just going to be a longer process.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me I’m conflicted. On one hand I want see them fight because we’ll be freaking cool and probably the only way where to get closure.
But then again there’s just as much of a chance it will just make things worse and I want the best for Amber I mean hell I wouldn’t really encourage this if I was stuck in the middle of this situation like Danny is its just…..ah
Ive come to realize how much of my sexual fantasies involve actual assault. Like Walkyverse Joyce having her way with me is sexy, but also totally assault.
The panel design is great here, pushing closer and closer to their angry faces (compare three days ago when everything was zoomed out.)
Danny’s partner is angry with him, Danny’s partner is yelling at him, Danny’s partner tells him without any doubt that he is doing horribly wrong. Amber is oh so close to snap altogether – and still he persists. This is likely the bravest thing Danny’s ever done.
Yeah, this comic should silence the “Danny isn’t brave” argument once and for all. Danny is incredibly brave. Sadly, when this blows up, he may learn the wrong lesson and assume it’s his bravery that has fucked him.
Honestly, Danny has shown an immense amount of growth in what has for him been only a few weeks or maybe a couple months. I look at him and almost don’t believe he’s the same person from the beginning of the comic.
Actually *Amazigirl* is right. Sal did wise Danny up to how mentally unhealthy *Amazigirl* is, even though that’s hardly as dramatic as saying someone turned them against you.
Danny is so far out of his depth. There’s nothing he can possibly do here to help: she doesn’t want to be helped. The reaction to the last panel will be bad and unfortunate.
And I don’t see where this goes from here after this conversation.
I think I’m officially in the camp of people who identify with at least one character/situation in the comic.
My ex did the same thing, where she would sorta … Act like everyone knew all the history and details of her life, even though she would never tell anyone anything. Hell, as far as I can remember, the only times she ever told me anything about her life or her past where after we’d had a huge fight.
And by “fight”, by the way, I mean I would say some random thing as part of a conversation, and then she would assume I meant something attacking/insulting her and/or related to past stuff (usually both), and then she would yell at me for a while, and then not talk to me for at least half a day, and then come back and tell me what actually happened, and refuse to believe I could have meant anything other than that thing (even though I couldn’t possibly have had the relevant context before it was explained).
It honestly felt like walking on a broken glass covered minefield, and even though I’m still seriously worried about her after all this time and hope the best for her, I’m glad I got out when I did.
“she got to you” ho boy she going full delusional (not that there wasn’t delusion or denial before, but this is a whole different level)
before, the “bad” things that Sal did tied in with what Amazigirl thought a delinquent might do: underage drinking, reckless driving etc
but delinquent!Sal was never a manipulator or even someone that was interested in people, so now Amazigirl is making up things that even her made up narrative of Sal don’t support
On the plus side, Danny is now free to bang Sal, and/or (more likely) Ethan! And Amber is free to… try drugs? Seriously she should try drugs, it’s college!
Really, it’s honest, but it’s DUMB. There’s smarter ways to do it and this? This is just DUMB. Really, there should be some warning sign in the comic’s title or something that it’s about dumb people doing dumb things.
What I’m hoping is:
-Amber says/does something hurtful to Danny.
-Amber drives away another boy, as he goes to Ethan’s arms about it
-Danny and Ethan become happy in an equal relationship and both learn to love themselves and learn as individuals.
-Amber, having no connection to the mortal realm, reaches the avatar state and flies off to the west and faces the firelord.
This is a really major moment for Danny. His parents have made him so incapable of standing up for himself and now he is. I hope this doesn’t completely blow up for him because this is a major breakthrough for him not to mention incredibly brave.
Oh she’s gonna dump him so fast. Though that might be what he needed. Dating dangerously unstable people who are doing dangerous things on a constant basis isn’t really a great idea.
Danny my precious boy you are doing a GOOD right now and I want you to keep at it even if Amber blows up at you for it, because this is good for both of you.
I hope they break up.
Sadly, in real life, they wouldn’t. They’d just keep going on, increasingly miserable and convinced that the relationship is the only thing protecting them from misery.
Oh crud, Amber is going all Azula on us. Right now seems like a good time to bring up a quote from The Dark Night “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain” and that seems to be true for Amber right now. On a side note, good job Danny for growing a backbone and actually being wise, sadly you might get beaten to a pulp or maimed for it.
It’s the big problem with trying to segregate alters to only be in charge of certain emotions. They’re all swimming in the same general pool of neurotransmitters and hormones so it doesn’t work even if each alter may have very different emotional responses to the events.
I’m in school to be a clinical psychologist, and we just learned (a little bit) about DID. Unfortunately it’s pretty rare and the research on it isn’t awesome because of that. But apparently the way it most normally presents in clinical work is that personalities are only semi-separated rather than completely distinct. I feel like Amber and Amazi-Girl are bleeding together, but she’s angry and that’s something only Amazi-Girl is “allowed” to feel.
I am so friggin proud of Danny it’s crazy. He was waffling on going through with what Sal suggested and confronting Amber/Amazi-girl but, in the face of her increasingly unsettling reactions, he actually told her instead of taking the easy way out.
It’s just I’m not sure it’s enough. I’m afraid Danny will actually have to sell Amber out to stop her from self-destructing – tell Ethan and call her mom, or even report her to the authorities? Not only would that be horrible in of itself, it’s also way more than I think is fair to expect Danny to have to intervene, especially if it put him at risk in the process. But Amber seems to have no intention of stopping, please let something get through to her before she ends up dead or incarcerated ;^;
Danny… The thing is that I don’t think that she’s ready to hear that. Hell, I’m not even sure that she can hear you right now. I’ve got an ugly feeling that she’s arguing with a version of you that only exists in her head. That’s a pity, in a way, because what you just said was exactly what she’s been needing to hear for a long time.
He must fall in line with the script she’s written in her head, all other input is invalid and only demonstrates to her that she’s right.
Logic has fallen to furious anger. Bottling up her emotions has led to an internal feedback loop, keeping the narrative that Sal is the root of all evil alive in her head.
Both of these. Danny is completely ancillary to the conversation she’s having with his strawman. And it’s because her need to hate Sal and view her actions as nefarious and her presence as toxic strongly outweighs her desire to be a good partner or her empathy and care for what Danny actually is and believes…
And makes me realize, how much has AG, specifically the AG alter, actually valued and sought out understanding and care of Danny’s needs and actual life? Like, Amber and him have a long-standing friendship and he’s shared stuff with her, but the AG alter seems to have been as happy as him to relegate him to a role as absent emotional investment as the typical superhero girlfriend role.
Bluntly, Danny was Amazi-Girl’s Lois Lane. Amber puts in the work of actually building an emotional connection, getting to know him, bonding over their love of computer science and nerd junk, and genuinely falling for him, but Amazi-Girl reaps the reward because that’s what Amazi-Girl is there for. She’s the beautiful, mysterious, badass superhero who doesn’t take shit and gets the benefits of a relationship without really putting in the work. She fights crime and then they hang out and play Mario Kart. Danny gets a hands off romance where he builds a big comic book narrative of finding out her identity in a dramatic moment (guess that backfired on you, Danno), while pretending it actually is as deep and meaningful as the one he had with Dorothy, or one he could share with Amber, and he’s scared of those because oh shit, they’re real people and relationships with people have consequence.
When they make love for the first time, despite Amber’s posturing that she’s definitely Amazi-Girl and that she’s not the one doing all the weird personal sex stuff, it really is Amber. Amber “pops out” and actually talks with him about her feelings, about how she’s scared of her first time going wrong and of losing control, so she puts on the mask and let’s Amazi-Girl take the reigns. Immediately when she thinks something’s gone wrong she’s back to being Amber, asking if he’s okay and if she had hurt him. To me, she was putting in the work as Amber, but letting Amazi-Girl take the credit.
Or to sum it up in a way that took me way too long to realize. Danny is a romantic fantasist who was dating an actual fantasy.
I think that’s pretty much right for Amber.
Danny on the other hand has been pushing for a relationship with both of them since the secret id revelation. It might be a romantic fantasy for him to be dating a superhero, but he’s been trying to treat both sides the same for a long time now.
Wow. I’m impressed, Danny.
But I rather fear his last words are spoken when Amazi-girl has already turned and is out of earshot.
The chance she is able to hear what he says and actually process it are minimal, unfortunately. They would have been small in the best of circumstances, and Amazi-Girl raging about him colluding with the Enemy juste because they are on talking terms is more like the worst of circumstances.
Probably the most heartbreaking thing here is that Amber does in fact have a personality disorder stemming from both accounts of trauma, and she’s had to deal with it for so long that it’s in control of her, rather than the other way around.
And Danny cares enough to get past his “I don’t want to hurt your feelings” wall to admit his fears for her own mental health. Something that she herself will likely refuse to take notion of.
Once upon a time, I dated a girl who was just like Amber. I was a pushover with an open heart, just like Danny. I cared for that girl more than I cared for myself, to the point it broke my heart to see her in anguish.
We ended up parting ways, not by agreement, but because I had to cut her off for my own sanity. She was in her own world, and it took her years to get out. She’s still climbing out, too stubborn to accept anything past what she thinks is true about her psyche.
I’m crossing my fingers here that Danny will do the right thing. He will push Amber to get help, and get assertive as a partner, to quell this life-risking personality once and for all with the help of a therapist. If not that, he will help her as a friend, and Amber will have to come to terms that she needs help.
Hopefully Willis won’t give us our first death scene. Hopefully.
I like how the streak of this self-damaging mindset that is destroying Amber’s life is kinda reminiscent of Blaine. Look how aggressive and possessive she’s being right now.
…. I don’t quite understand the timing of this latest slipshine to be honest. This current subplot doesn’t exactly put me in the mood to see the two of them goin’ at it. :S
gerb’s talking about the timing that Willis decided to put the nsfw comic between amber and danny up while this whole fiasco in the main comic is going on. i myself am genuinely curious as to why Willis decided to do it while the mood is all sour for his readers.
Really, the only “appropriate” time(so far and probably for the foreseeable future) for a Slipshine between Danny and AG story-wise would have been around the time Danny was having that conversation with Dorothy.
shit. this makes me want to hug danny so bad and give him some hot cocoa. or maybe some beer… okay, maybe beer’s a bad idea if he’s anything like the walkyverse danny.
The scary thing? It’s very clear Amber is trying to control Danny and is threatening violence if he doesn’t subscribe to her views. While you might blame Blaine for this and should….isn’t this an indication Blaine was once very much like Amber? Imagine if his father or mother did the same to him as he ended up doing to Amber? Because it’s clear she doesn’t want to end up like her father but HAS. It’d be terrifying to discover that poor Blaine was once very much like Ruth’s brother before his own inner demons destroyed him.
There is a reason it’s often referred to as the CYCLE of abuse. Abusive behavior is learned, usually, and that means there’s probably a chain going back generations of abusers teaching their kids how to be just like them.
The good news is that, in the modern era, we have ways of breaking the CYCLE, even if it’s really hard. The bad news is that it requires Amber to first acknowledge that she has these tendencies that she will have to wrestle with for the rest of her life.
You know, I really don’t think she’s gonna smack him one, not for this. I do think she’s breaking up with him right now though “you are against me” and all that.
I could see her going after sal (later in costume) again, but she won’t assault Danny for this.
It’s worth noting that we haven’t actually seen Amber playing video games at her desk for ages. Her DS maybe, but other than that the last time I can think of her hammering away at her laptop for hours was… maybe just when she got interrupted by Dorothy?
Man….I had the best theory about this whole Amber/Amazigirl/Sal thing.
What if Sal isn’t the girl Amber has been mad at her whole life? What if Sal just has a passing similarity to this woman that defined Amber’s life?
Has Sal ever made mention to the robbery? Or being stabbed? Has Ethan me any kind of connection to her and the roberry?
Amber comes from an abusive household, and we know that she has abusive tendencies herself. One thing about abusers is projection. They blame everything wrong on the person that they abuse. I feel like Amber is projecting all the negatives of her life on Sal, but only because Sal happens to be there and happens to look close to the girl that Amber has built the rage up over all the years.
I’m just going to call it now; Sal is not the girl Amber stabbed, she’s just a placeholder for Amber’s anger and depression.
Ethan has seen Sal and thinks he must have seen her somewhere before, but isn’t sure where.
Sal has certainly robbed a convenience store. It’s the reason she spent the past five years in a boarding school instead of whatever school Walky and Billie went to. This has come up quite a bit with Sal’s interactions with Walky.
Theres no possible chance that the person Amber stabbed could’ve anyone but Sal. What purpose would having a doppelgänger other than directly contradicting what has already been told in the story?
This. I think she’s the person that robbed that convenience store. But, it’s also massively Projection on Amber’s part, because Sal the real girl who robbed a convenience store has only a passing familiarity to Sal, the monster who is responsible for all my mental illnesses, that Amber has built her up to be.
And I think Amber has also displaced a lot of her hatred of her dad onto her as well which makes her extra inflexible about her, because being forgiving and understanding of Sal’s experiences is all well and good, but if she did that with her dad, she’d just be creating a space of unearned good faith he could exploit to hurt her (especially since he’s really good at manipulation and play-acting like he’s just a poor beleaguered good guy done wrong by ungrateful women).
Showing empathy and forgiveness and forgetting his past crimes is a fault with her dad, so it must be a fault with Sal as well. And Danny has fallen for her dad’s manipulation before, and so, in saying things she doesn’t want to hear, must be falling for Sal’s manipulation here.
Oh, I can just see it now, Amber ripping off Sal’s glove and Sal being all ‘??? what the hell’ and there’s no scar.
In real life I would consider that the most likely option, but I don’t think so in comic. There’s an amount of attention given to Sal’s gloves, amongst other things, and at this point I think I would consider it less of a red herring and more shaky storytelling (unless it worked very very well to details like that)
So, a thing I keep thinking about is ‘the right time’. And again, another person who is deep in their personal feels here, but.. Sometimes if you wait for ‘the right time’, especially if ‘the right time’ takes someone else’s emotions into account… You never get to the right time.
Imagine, she’s upset now because of Sal. Danny distracts and de-escalates, but she’s still really upset and needs to go into costume to work it out. Danny is hurt and even more concerned, puts his own feelings on hold (still, again). How long does that take? How long before there’s another emergency or crisis? How long does he hold the words in his mouth before he says, no, she’s finally happy now, we’re having a good time, I don’t want to ruin this now after realizing how much of the relationship focuses around her bad times? How long before he realizes he can’t somehow pick a time that’ll hurt her less because what he’s saying in inherently hurtful?
You find yourself doing complicated internal mathematics, trying to find the right time in between emergencies, ignoring your own feelings because those aren’t important and you’re putting theirs first again, always, and.. ..And there’s never a perfect time to stand up for your emotions, to self-care, and put boundaries in a relationship. Because he is doing this because he loves her, but this is something he needs to do for himself. This isn’t just about her, but his needs as a moon in orbit of her emotional gravity.
I mean, yeah, she’s in full breakdown mode, she’s not going to listen. But with her so aggressive, he’s saying what he needs to say to protect himself and make his needs clear. And his needs are being with someone who cares about her own life and is willing to care about what he wants. Someone who will share the emotional labor. Even if she freaks out, he’s saying what he needs to to self care. That’s not unfair.
Speaking from personal experience, when it’s something the person doesn’t want to hear, there’s never a “right” time. And putting off a necessary conversation just ends up making it something the other person never wants to address again and will actually end up attacking you for trying to bring up again because “why are you bringing up this old shit, are you trying to attack me” and “you can never let things go”.
Like, obviously there’s better times and tact and stuff feed into stuff, but when a person is deep in a cycle like this, I’m not sure when if ever you’re supposed to talk out important stuff like this and personal feelings. Certainly I never figured out the right time.
I know a lot of superheroes have taken on an alter-ego to act as a symbol and to protect themselves, and many have struggles balancing civilian and superhero lives, and some even like their superhero form more than their civilian form, but I can’t think of any superheroes who actually HATE their civilian selves. Perhaps someone else can think of an example (Admittedly, I spent nearly half my life not liking anyone from DC or Marvel, considering that to be an act of betrayal against the Ninja Turtles), but I suspect that hating your civilian side never led to anything good in other superhero stories.
The Hulk is the major example, in most incarnations. ‘Hulk hate puny Banner!’ and all that.
And he’s a good comparison to Amberzigirl, being an alter ego brought up by intense negative emotions (fear, anger), whose nature is (partially) explained by an abusive parent.
The Hulk is heroic. No. Not in the “goes out of his way to save the day” sense, usually, but he does save his friends, as many innocent bystanders as he can, and occasionally a world or two.
It’s still hilarious to me that the self-proclaimed smartest men in the world got together and said “Hey, we have an unstoppable rage monster. Let’s jettison him into space. There is literally no way this plan could ever backfire horribly, despite the glaringly obvious fact that literally every single person here has been to space numerous times and come back.”
Well, there’s Batman, who only maintains a civilian façade in order to maintain his resources. To him Bruce died at eight and Batman is the real one now.
There’s also two Spider-Man storylines, called “Spider-Man No More” and “Peter Parker No More” (or so I assume, based on their Portuguese names) that deal with… well, you can imagine from the titles. At the end of both, it turns out that one doesn’t exist without the other – or, at least, doesn’t exist as itself.
I’ve found them to be fantastically good reads (and two more examples of why Spidey truly is the greatest of super-heroes).
oh man, Amber is sounding so much like an abusive, controlling partner. i’m wondering if she knows how much she sounds like her dad. “she got to you and she turned you against me.”
Yes she did, now start dating her instead of this destructive mental wreck. This girl needs a good psychotherapy before she should engage in any serious romantic relationships. She’s just hurting the people around her. I’m not saying this to shit on her, it’s just what’s presented. It’s not good for anyone to ve around people like Amber before she can finally move past her “demons”.
You mean start dating him? Cause this opens Danny up to Ethan smoochies. Though a Sal/Danny/Ethan threesome would be the best (for Amber to walk in on and completely lose her shit)
Hahhaha holy shit I never even thought about how fucked up that is. Amber would have a proper mental breakdown if she saw 2 of her exes having sexytime together. And Sal did in fact express her fondness of Ethan’s looks, sooo…
Where is that threesome. Ethan wouldn’t be into it though, I’m afraid. 🙁 Or maybe he would, I dunno.
It’s interesting to note that the violent, crazy, incapable of any goodness Amber is the one who reacts to her outbursts by exploding in guilt and self abuse, whereas Amazi-Girl is the one who feels completely vindicated in relentlessly yelling at her boyfriend.
I guessed that’s what happens when you decide that you’re incapable of doing anything wrong. Amber didn’t say exactly that about Amazigirl, but from how she keeps insisting that Amazigirl is the “good” one that’s clearly how she feels about it.
Yeah, to Amber, it’s a memory that the rot of her father has been carefully taught to her in his modeling of what a relationship looks like.
To Amazi-girl? Well, to AG, she’s a paragon of virtue and all the negative emotions and the bad reactions to them have been safely quarantined in the Amber box, so her actions must be right, because she’s making those actions. And if she’s firm or inflexible, so what? Justice is firm and inflexible. And since she’s the paragon of virtue, she must have a very good reason to be being so stern and unforgiving. Maybe he did something unforgivable.
After all, a perfect avatar of justice couldn’t be making mistakes and definitely can’t be inconsistent with her application of justice, as justice is blind and true no matter what.
And it’s what allows the AG alter to have such a different (and worse) response to channeling Blaine.
And I’m really scared of what this will mean for how she starts interacting with the campus from now on.
1) I read yesterday’s comic late, so I didn’t comment on that. Instead, I’m doing it here on a very small scale: inside information on Amazi-girl’s meaning, straight from the mouth of Willis. In one of his tumblrs, this interaction happened:
Q:”In saying that Sal saving her life was the second worst thing she’s ever done to her, is Amber implying she wanted to die as Amazi-girl?”
Willis: “That is not 100% what Amazi-Girl is implying, but the truth is in that vicinity.”
2) SPOILER:One of the comic previews is called “getting back in the saddle” and shows Dina opening the room door to Ethan and Mike. At first, I thought that was a segue to a Dina/Becky break-up, but now everything seems to indicate that Danny/Amber are going to be done soon.
3) Danny’s awesome. QED.
Okay, four things: Thank you thank you THANK YOU to Mr. Willis for making me aware of the Beasts of the Mesozoic ks. Those things are GORGEOUS, and I hope I can scrounge up the 380$ for the top package. SO GORGEOUS! Dina should purchase the final reward some 5 times, for full raptor packs.
I actually wish both of them fight for real. I want AG to feel the regret of putting someone in the hospital, just because she did something stupid years ago. I want AG to look herself in the mirror and realises she is no hero.
Sucha full swing in the view of Danny, huh? I, for one, would like some closure in a storyline. A full jump, rather than a step. Though this is their lives, and that rarely happens.
I’m not a (medical) doctor, but I think it’s safe to say at this point (or, heck, much MUCH earlier) that Amber is probably SEVERELY mentally ill. This comic demonstrates paranoia to add to the many she’s already demonstrated.
According to my extended research (Wikipedia), she seems to suffer from “Dissociative Identity Disorder,” “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” “Paranoia” (possibly to the point of a mild case of “Paranoid Schizophrenia,” though “Paranoid Personality Disorder” would seem more likely), and “Rage” (possibly a “Intermittent Explosive Disorder Type IV” diagnosis). On top of that, she seems to be prone to agoraphobic based panic attacks and bouts of self-loathing.
DID isn’t entirely supported by psychologists today, seeing how it only exists in case studies and a clear definition of diagnosis can’t be agreed upon. Many psychologists even believe that DID isn’t real at all, but that its existence in popular culture and in older psychologists’ list of possible disorders caused people with other disorders to adapt the traits from DID into their own behavior. No one is entirely certain.
PTSD seems to be the most likely diagnosis you could tag on her, with many of the other things you described being symptoms or caused behaviors due to said PTSD.
It takes a lot of denial to say DID does not exist – once you’ve been around people who are like that for any extended period of time.
Well, the nile is river in Egypt…
I was in a therapy group for abuse survivors and I saw 3 people go into their alters. It was terrifying to see how the primary adult personality shut down and how an alter would take over in an instant. The saddest was when a small, pre-verbal child was present and the therapist could do nothing to help the patient get back to a verbal state. It is a real thing.
people behaving as if they have DID is not proof that DID exists. Psychologists’ doubt is about what causes people to act like that–they don’t know whether DID is a separate illness, or if the symptoms manifest because, for example, someone has a different mental disorder, but sees someone portrayed with DID and begins acting like that because of this other disorder. I doubt any psychologist is saying that the symptoms associated with DID don’t exist, but whether those symptoms necessarily are because of DID is where doubt comes in.
That does not explain why I saw people doing that 20 years ago, when there was hardly even a word for it and descriptions were few and far between.
The “there’s no MPD/ DID because people read about it and somehow identify and act like it” starts to sound suspiciously like the “there is no sexual abuse of children, they just all read about it” line of reasoning.
No… no it doesn’t. The existence and diagnosis of disorders is a very different thing from sexual abuse. One has a concrete definition, the other is constantly changing. DID really only exists in case studies because the occurrence was so rare and unusual to psychologists of the day. If you saw these cases in those days then you’re in a very small minority, and it’s a shame no one documented them.
That being said, its discovery then led to multiple psychologists making false diagnoses, and patients adopting these behaviors since their psychologists prodded and pushed to “manifest” these dormant behaviors. This is why the disorder is so readily debated, and why its criterion changed so drastically from the DSM-IV to V, and why its name changed from multiple personality disorder.
We have to ask these questions and run studies and use the knowledge we have to determine if these disorders are real, societally influenced, or connected to other disorders. This isn’t denial, it’s further research into a disorder that was very recently uncovered, with the flagship case patient admitting that she faked symptoms. There is room to discuss how valid the disorder is.
If you are talking science here:
1) There are people who have developed several distinct personas who may or may not share memories as a way to cope with trauma. This is real, it happens.
I don’t really care how this is named as a psychological diagnosis.
2) There’s stuff around that is hard to scientifically work with because incident rates are low and you can never get a test sample that is large enough to be statistical relevant.
3) If psychologist got overexcited about the thing described as MPD, well, they are human and make mistakes.
To mind mind, MPD is an extrem development of a general human coping mechanism which is what may have lead to overdiagnosis.
Actually, the way Amber/Amazi-Girl lost the ability to switch voluntarily marks the difference in quality between MPD and not-MPD but having several personas.
4) There has been incredible progress in Trauma therapies over the last 25 years. This is good. Reexamining stuff that is somehow inconsistent is also good and is in large part what makes science work. So Piltdown men can be found out to be fakes and not hinder progress.
When it comes to people having several personas who switch involuntarily and sometimes do not share memories: they do exist. If the scientific community is not of one opinion of how to call this and what the correct classification is, this is of no matter to everyday life of people who are like this or the people close to them.
This whole sequence reminds me of the scene between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi on Mustafar at the end of Revenge of the Sith. Right after Anakin chokes Padme and then blames it on Obi-Wan.
And, of course, Amber is too wrapped up in her pity party to actually hear and understand what you are saying. Just let her continue, she’ll either end up in the hospital and maybe be forced to face her issues, or she’ll end up dead.
wow, you people actually want things to go bad. you want amber to punch danny and for sal to come rescue im and probably for amber to die and then sal and danny and ethan will live happily and have hearts around their heads. i dont see why you hate amber so much, so maybe the only thing you dont try to be accepting of is mental illnesses, and when a character has flaws. and the ladt point is SO DAMN OBVIOUS every time someone does something wrong! these characters do things that everyone does and suddenly theyre evil incarnated. i dont understanf you people. yes, its mean to be shouting at danny like this. but cant you see that shes being very paranoid and irrational right now? shes not thinking, shes angry. just like when i shouted at mom for being ignorant about feminism. yes, this is not a good situation for danny or amber. so then instead of hoping that things go well, you hope that they dont. so that your ships can happen or something.
I dont think anyone wants Amber to die for ships to happen. Some people are unsympathetic towards where Amber is coming from, and that’s sad. But for the most part people want things to go “wrong” to initiate a breakup between Danny and Amber, since Amber clearly isn’t in the proper headspace to be in a committed relationship. She doesn’t need to stay with her boyfriend, she needs professional help. Danny would serve her much better as a friend she can rely on during her healing process rather than a commitment she has to work and struggle with.
Basically, as someone who as left a relationship due to not being mentally healthy enough to maintain it, I can say that that’s why I think it’d be best that she and Danny breakup.
i understand why this may look like emotional abuse. well, ive never been emotionally abused, but i can see that people who have might see it as that. but a thing that i have been and is, is paranoid. so obviously i will connect her questioning of the world as paranoia, not emotional abuse
I’m not sure today is emotional abuse on its own, but it certainly IS as a segue to yesterday’s “how dare you talk to her,” and, well, to plenty of their interactions.
I’m not sure if anyone WANTS her to punch Danny as much as EXPECTS that to happen. Either way, there is an… advantage, for lack of a better term, should that punch happen, and it’s that it would force a resolution. As long as all the abuse is emotional there’ll be people (not necessarily in the comments, thought I wouldn’t be surprised if Willis already had to ban a couple of folks) in the sort-of-real-world-simulation that is the strip that would say “oh, that’ll blow over” or “oh, Danny just needs to toughen up.” If she punches him, it’ll be much more obvious to everyone that Amber needs help (or/and that Danny needs to GTFO before her violence turns fatal), possibly even to her.
It’s emotional abuse. I’ve been through this myself too many times.
Yes. Amber has a mental illness. Yes, she needs therapy and she’s being irrational and paranoid right now. But that doesn’t mean we should excuse her behavior. Abusers can be irrational too. In fact, it’s one of many reasons why someone can be an abuser. Abusers might not even know they’re abusing their partners/friends/people they know.
responding to all of you cause you basically said the same thing. questoning him doesnt need to be emotional abuse. every time someone says something irrational because of their emotions, its emotional abuse? is danny abusing sal in the latest comic? is it only emotional abuse because amber and danny are a couple? heres the thing: only the victim can decide if its abuse. dont decide for him. the thing you should do in situations like this is to talk to the victim and see how they feel about it, which wr cant, and not just decide what theyre feeling for them. if emotional abuse is any time anyone can be angry about anything, then mothers are abused all the time by their children
Danny, while you’re making good decisions, get a haircut and go after someone who’s nothing even remotely like Dorothy. I recommend Ethan.
Amber, while you’re making bad decisions, go and drink. Unlike Ruth, you have friends who aren’t codependent drinkers. This will lead to an intervention, and they will help you over your drinking problem. Then, we can all pretend you’re fixed.
To be completely fair, Sal has not seen anything else that Amazigirl has done: small-time helps around the campus, being nice to Danny and Joyce. All Sal knows about Amazigirl so far is rumors (which I doubt Sal cares much about) and the fact that suicidal jumpsuit here almost crashed into a bus.
Perhaps Danny could say some of the above paragraph. Ehhh?
Ehhhhhh? EEEEEEHHHHHHH?
I’m gonna post up some green day lyrics if that’s alright seems like they fit a little too well
O therapy can you please fill the void am I retarded or am I just overjoyed nobody’s perfect and I stand accused for lack of a better word and that’s my best excuse
I don’t feel any shame I won’t apologize when there ain’t nowhere you can go running away from when you’ve been victimized tales of another broken home
This is why I am a pain to argue against, because I demand that certain things be clearly defined.
What does she mean by turned against her?
Is he working to kill her?
Is he working to get her kicked out of school?
Is he working to stop her from getting a job?
Is he working to halt her Amazi-girl activities?
Is he working to bring about more crime so her workload increases?
I see I’m not the only one who’s getting Revenge of the Sith vibes from this strip. Better be careful Amber, or this will end up with you de-limbed and on fire.
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“also your asshole dad, but you fucked him up good enough for a while”
“but maybe it’d be good for you to visit him so you can beat up someone besides yourself for a while?”
I remember a while back, when Carla was helping Amber either bleeding head after the car chase, suggesting that Carla introduce her to roller derby as a well of helping her vent her anger. I will heartily make that suggestion again.
Sounds good, until she finds out about Marcie. Things would probably be uglier than they are right now.
because marcie’s besties with sal?
Because Amber and Marcie will surely compete for Malaya.
OR, Marcie crushes hard on the mysterious, masked girl who just hip-checked Malaya into a wall…
This. *throws money at his screen.*
I like that idea. That sounds like a totally healthy way of blowing off steam that could not backfire at all ever.
But… but…
…. but she’s got these anger issues, right? I mean, with her there, the derby match might get a little violent…
You’ve…never watched roller derby before, have you….
/sarcasm
There needs to be a sarcasm font.
I suggest making it Comic Sans.
That’s vile, sick, and wrong. I’m all for it.
So say we all.
Papyrus is inclined to disagree!
I see the tale you’re telling, Ana. It’s beneath you 😉
You’re right! She should play hockey instead!
Yeah. Hell, that’s the problem really. She knows her dad is awful and has given her some awful ways of dealing with the world and a wealth of emotional damage, but she still deep down believes he’s right.
That she’s broken and worthless. That threats and anger are a way to get your way in an argument. That if someone doesn’t agree with you it’s because they are attacking you personally. That people don’t change and there are “attackers” and “victims”.
I think Bagge talked yesterday about how Amber needs to defeat her internal Blaine as much as she defeated her external one. I think Bagge might have been right about that.
Especially considering how the lighting and posing here looks a hell of a lot like it did with Blaine leading up to The Punch and damn, it says a lot that there’s no red backdrop in that fourth panel but you can clearly feel its presence there.
I wonder if it’s a sign of how her alters are becoming more and more distinct and separated from each other. Like, red panels are what Amber does. So Amazi-girl gets angry, Amazi-girl evokes that which would normally elicit a red panel, but doesn’t have a reason to run and be scared of that feeling and so just treats it as normal.
Interesting possibility, yeah. Especially since this sequence is also showing her eschewing borders and panels entirely as she’s getting more and more disconnected from the situation as it is and going farther and farther into anger. Like, I’m pretty sure Willis uses it plenty of times just for panel variance and stuff, but here it DEFINITELY seems intentional.
/Composition and cinematography mode
This interpretation actually works well with how Danny is detached in Panel 1 as well, and how unsure he looks.
Fudge you, Blaine.
From personal experience, that’s how it works with parents (or people you looked to for guidance as a child). Even if you learn, as an adult that they were bad people, you can’t shake their ideas without a LOT of struggle – especially their opinions of you.
“That threats and anger are a way to get your way in an argument. That if someone doesn’t agree with you it’s because they are attacking you personally. That people don’t change and there are ‘attackers’ and ‘victims’.”
This is an interesting indictment of pretty much every political and social debate of the past five years. I am surprised to see such an argument posed here.
Honestly? Ever since she ‘defeated’ Blaine she’s done nothing but escalate. Kicking the crap out of him didn’t fix any part of her trauma. It’s possible it just made it worse.
What she needs is help, and of the very professional kind, before she gets herself or someone else killed – or /kills/ someone else.
Oh, this will end well…
Dump Amber and have a three-way with Sal and Ethan. Problem solved.
Remember, you read it here first.
Sal shouldn’t spend too much time around Ethan. Wouldn’t want to jog his memory about the whole hostage-taking thing.
He’s over it.
Ethan vaguely remembers Sal, and she doesn’t recognize him at all.
I approve, but experience says three-ways don’t solve anything.
Remember kids: group sex should only be for fun, not therapy. 😉
Not true! Having a threeway quite nicely solves the problem of three people wanting to have a threeway with each other
Can’t argue with that, but that’s a problem you WANT to have. 😉
….. so you’re saying that afterwards, they no longer want to have threeways with each other?
Man, they’re DOING IT wrong.
The secret is to have plenty of Gatorade handy!
And lube.
And maybe someone who knows massage.
well, being hungry can either be a recurring problem or a larger-scale problem, depending on how you think about it… most people solve the problem of being hungry for lunch by ordering lunch or brownbagging it, whereas solving the problem of children going hungry in America could include not funding the fucking military for like twelve hours
so it can be a temporary or permanent “problem” of wanting a threeway is what I’m saying
It can be both!
For Danny? Yeah.
Regardless of how it ends, it IS undoubtedly something that Amber needs to hear.
Yeah, but if she refuses to here it, what’s the point?
People that refuse to hear something do sometimes start hearing it when enough people have said the same thing enough times. Doesn’t apply to everyone, what is enough may vary, but it applies to enough people that it is worth trying. I speak from experience on both sides of that, and I am very grateful that people kept trying even though I was refusing to hear what they were saying for so, so long.
I’m not sure how it’s going to end. It looks like Amber is now officially off the deep end with these baseless accusations, and comments like the ‘second worse thing Sal did to her was to save her life”.
As to Danny. Second time I’ve been proud of him (he tried to help when she was going after her all to damn deserving father by getting her away from him). This time I think although he knows that he is way in over his head, he is trying to get through to Amber A.G.
I think saying he like Amber better is the best thing he could say. But, doesn’t look like it is being heard.
Sorry for both of them.
I don’t think they’re baseless, since Amber kind of has a death wish.
Wait, how exactly does “Amber/Amazi-Girl has a death wish” give any kind of base to “Amber is accusing Danny of turning against her?”
I was referring to ‘second worse thing Sal did to her was to save her life” specifically.
I really don’t think that’s nearly so much “Sal saving my life was a bad thing” as “Sal saving my life was a bad thing.”
She doesn’t want to be dead, but Sal saving her is shattering her world view. Which is good, because her world view is horribly screwed up, but is still traumatic.
good on you, danny. good on you.
I was amazed by Danny’s response. Amazingly on spot!
(Now I fear for the retaliation and his life)
When you see everyone as your enemy it can be because you can’t understand why anyone would want to be anything but your enemy.
Insert puppydog eyes
She doesn’t though… she just sees evil dads, Sal, and Wonderbread (he doesn’t deserve this) as enemies.
Which makes me really worried. She just turned on her boyfriend and viewed him as an enemy really quickly and has a very thin justification for it. If she decides to make this consistent as she is wont to do and becomes more prone to seeing enemies in everything and everything as an attack…
How much damage could she do as Amazi-girl? Especially seeing it is Amazi-girl who is going down this path of delusions fueled by her PTSD.
I don’t know… her first instinct towards Dorothy was pretty adversarial. Not entirely confrontational, but a little bit. I think that in Amber’s eyes, everyone new is a danger. In Amazi-Girl’s eyes, everyone is either an Amber or an enemy.
(Which gets a bit confusing when you realize that Amber is an ‘enemy’, not an ‘Amber’. Forget Sal, she may actually end up being her own arch-nemesis.)
Either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain?
PREACH
Well this is gonna end freakin’ STELLAR.
In the sense that someone’s going to be seeing stars.
All this turned against me talk remindsw me of the climax to Revenge of the Sith.
“Only Amazi-Girl deals in absolutes.”
Question for Willis: how does Amber feel about sand?
“Amber doesn’t care about sand. But Amber — not Amazi-Girl, but Amber — will violently assault anyone who mentions the prequels.”
…. yeah, that’s probably not Willis’s answer.
But the prequels weren’t that bad. ”quickly checks behind”
Phew, Amber didn’t appear behind me.
Boochie is just the worst.
Amber O’Malley VS The World
Danny gained the power of self respect!
And there was much rejoicing.
“OW! Why does self-respect taste like a knuckle sandwich? I thought it tasted like ramen!”
“No, that’s integrity that tastes like ramen.”
“Oh, right.”
I thought integrity tasted like a side dish of truck.
Ow, that hurts, especially with that gravitar.
You know what else sucks?
Everything.
ITS THE APOCALYPSE PEOPLE! DANNY ACTUALLY SAID SOMETHING NOT STUPID AND ACTUALLY VERY TRUE😱
It’s okay, he said it to someone completely irrational so no good will come from it.
Eh.
What he said is not stupid.
Him saying it here, at this moment, in this context, to that woman, in that emotional state…. that was stupid.
And yet, he won’t be to blame about this…
…
Please tell me that feels just as weird reading it, as it was typing it.
Ooh, the Comments are going to be good today.
Oh, Amber, Amber, Amber…
She is speeding full steam ahead into that abusive behavior. “She turned you against me!” is CLASSIC emotional abuse.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but with the help of friends sometimes the apple can learn how to not be unstable and have a fulfilling life away from it’s ass of a tree.
Yeah… I mean, I still like Amber as a character, but right now her relationship with Danny is turning into something dangerously toxic. Definitely for Danny, possibly for Amber as well.
We can’t have too many healthy relationships in a David Willis comic.
I wasn’t aware we had ANY healthy relationships in this comic.
Becky and Dina are good to each other. I mean, they’ve only been together a few days, but still.
Lesbian Experimenter, meet not-over-her-yet Rebound. Not exactly the healthiest relationship.
But the most adorable!
Walky and Dorothy are maybe a little more serious about eachother than they think they are(and Walky could currently do to be a little more truthful) but overall they’re remarkably healthy for a teenage couple.
I’d argue that Roz and Joe have a happy relationship, just not in the usual sense of the word ‘relationship’.
To extend the metaphor… sometimes animals come along and eat the apple, then leave droppings containing the seeds of a new tree, far far away from the parent.
Although Amber isn’t an apple she’s a jumping cholla cactus. That uses its spines to attach to an animal’s fur and go for a ride.
Is it a conscious, calculating form of abuse, though?
Does that matter?
Or rather, how much does that really matter?
Whether or not she means to be abusive is entirely irrelevant. It’s abuse.
Yes and no. Amber’s behavior right now is abusive either way, but it’s relevant whether she means to do it. If (as I think is the case) she doesn’t mean to do it, then she’ll want to change once she realizes what she’s doing.
I think what’s happening here is that seeing Sal puts Amber into fight-or-flight mode. The Sal etched into Amber’s memory is a raw force of evil, still holding a knife to Ethan’s throat.
I think you nailed it here. This isn’t actually about Danny. At all.
If she’s in a rational state of mind and accepting that she’s making mistakes, that’s true. But lots of very well meaning people don’t intend to be abusive, but realizing they have made a mistake that hurt someone they care about causes them to double down, insist they didn’t do anything wrong (or it wasn’t that serious), get defensive, and in general not be apologetic and learn from it… at least until they calm down. And I think that’s what we’re gonna see here, but the calm down might take.. a while.
I think you’re right; that’s how things like this often play out. If Amber were to realize how horrible she was being to Danny (or to others who cross her at tense moments), it would be long after the fact. And it would take a lot for her to mend her ways, because changing one’s own knee-jerk reactions to surprise triggers is no easy thing, to say the least.
Almost certainly not, but that doesn’t make it any less traumatic or unhealthy for Danny. You can find a person toxic to your life while still having sympathy for the causes of that toxicity.
Sounds like something Blaine would say about her mom/teacher/therapist
And Mike called it before most of us did.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/ensnared/
…Is that really the point to Amber? That seeking partners that don’t scare her, being terrified of ending up in the same kind of relationship as her mother which happens to abused children all the time, was definitely a sign all along that Amber was just looking for victims?
I mean, she didn’t fall for Danny because she thought he was an easy mark, and that was absolutely Mike’s point because Mike says horrible shit to hurt people all the time. I just really can’t believe that’s the intent behind the sequence.
… This will end well and healthily.
Ehh, a healthy bit of violence never killed anyone…
Wait, that’s not right.
Well if it’s healthy violence, I can’t quite see how it would kill anyone.
…
I mean.
Technically cutting someone open and cutting off part of their insides seems pretty violent.
is it too late to declare Danny my cinnamon roll?
Never too late to declare a cinnamon roll.
Yee~! I’ve felt bad for him ever since we saw his parents, but things just seem to get worse for him (and for everybody else of course!). Just…agh. I think I have a soft spot for well-meaning nice people that accidentally get into trouble and remain very kind but aren’t around the kindest people around. (Still hoping he and Joe get resolved)
Danny’s always been my cinnamon roll. The poor guy tries. But I’ve mostly only read DOA and a teeny bit of SP so all the hate was entertaining but confusing to me.
I’m in the same spot as you just about, and from what I did read of Shortpacked!, I don’t think Danny was in there? So yeah, same as you, the hate has been really confusing to me xD
Cerberus mentioned further down how Roomies!Danny was kind of a poop and nowwwwww I get it
Whats wrong with him and joe?
I guess there’s nothing ‘wrong’ so much as the last time I remember those two really talking, it was Danny trying to talk about how he felt he might like guys, and Joe’s reaction wasn’t very good. Joe’s got issues when it comes to talking about feelings, and he’s not been the most emotionally supportive friend to Danny, I think. I’m just hoping we’ll get to see the two of them have some sort of reconciliation. I checked the archives and they’ve had a few conversations since then but nothing that touches on their feelings.
That was a bit sad but interesting little arc. Joe revealing that it’s a conscious decision on his part to avoid deep conversations about feelings and self worth really changed my impression of him.
I don’t agree with the approach (in the convo or Joe’s life), but it was him setting his own boundaries in his friendship with Danny and cluing Dan in to his own limitations of what he could provide in it. Joe read mostly as a gag character up till that point and that reveal showed how he ticks in a more complex light.
TL;DR I hope he and Joe stay friendsies too but Joe’s consciously decided to be a dry well for deeper support and….at least he said so upfront?
”If you die in the game, you die for real.”
…
WAT?
That’s referencing how Amber has treated being Amazi-girl as…something of a game. Like a video game where you play the hero. But ‘if you die in the game, you die for real’ means even though she feels like it is a game, ultimately if she dies while being Amazi-girl she indeed DIES. …Also I think it’s a reference to ‘Stay Alive’, a horror movie where the gimmick was…you guessed it, people play a video game and if you die in the game, you died for real.
Huh. I’m gonna have to check out that movie. I was thinking of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” where “if you die in your dream, you die for real.”
It could also be a reference to that! I just thought of ‘Stay Alive’ first, because of the game part. I would recommend it, if you’re interested! It’s not the GREATEST horror movie ever, but I always found it nice and scary. Plus, it has a young Frankie Muniz in it, looking so much younger than everybody else it’s almost funny.
Also The Matrix.
Also sword art online the most recent imagining of this I am aware of
First season only, then it’s characters attempting to ignore the trauma of such a thing or embracing it and losing all sense of reality. There Are No Therapists indeed.
.hack did it some time ago, though I think they chose coma over death at that point.
I do think TRON did it first, although Flynn didn’t die.
~End of Line
Also the Matrix. Also Canada
Drat, I try to be clever and two people beat me to the punch. Also, did you mean this?
Was that an Aqua Team Hunger Force Reference?
I was thinking The Matrix.
It’s also the major plot point of Sword Art Online.
Oh I know that. In my turn I was referencing this
Oh derp, sorry xD
“The game of Life, that is.”
“What, you mean that one with the cards and the weird spinner instead of dice and aside from whether to go to college you get zero decisions to make?”
“Uh…. yeah.”
“Dude, you can’t die in that game. You just grow old and retire and rank the quality of your life by how much money you have left and how many kids you had and somehow the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“You’re just not playing with the right cards.”
“I’m playing with cards that won’t kill me. That sounds like the right cards.”
OH! I just figured it out! It’s a reference to Transformers, obviously. It’s a reference to one of the stupidest ways Optimus Prime died in the comics.
To be specific, IIRC, he died in a video game duel against Megatron, which killed him in real life. And he knew it would kill him, yet he sacrificed himself anyway. And I think think he (accidentally?) cheated, which in his mind meant he deserved death. Something like that. Willis talks about this story a lot.
Best ‘video game battle’ ever (the good bit starts at about 1:20)
Honestly if I don’t get a reference in a Willis comic, I just assume it’s something to do with Transformers. (Somehow I completely missed the franchise as a kid.)
Hey!
Willis has more variety than that!
…. sometimes he references Batman.
I wanna say it’s a game grumps reference because they often make fun of the movie “Stay alive” which is a very…syfy type movie but it might just be a reference to the movie itself.
Aaaaah fuel that Fire
So Amber and Amazi-Girl take separate vacations this year?
Amazi-Girl will share her condoms, but never her flyer miles
Well said! Well said! [applause]
There’s a lot of Anakin Skywalker in Amber.
Quick put the preschools on high alert.
No, not the younglings!
No, not the Yuenglings!
Sweet Danny. Telling it like it is with all the love in the world. I think that’s a good Danny.
You just used the words ‘good’ and ‘Danny’ in the same sentence. Another sign of the end of times.
Well, anyone can say it, and even sentences thought sensible to the Roomies crowd could contain both… e.g. “Good Lord, Danny’s a moron”.
You know what I meant. Though the character growth is nice.
Amber’s a nut.
Everyone needs a hug 🙁
…I really miss Fundamentalist Fun Times with Becky and Co.
Things are getting all tragic and full of mental illness here. Poor Amber.
Hopefully tomorrow’s strip will feature Becky and Jocelyne lowering Joyce through a skylight on a rope.
Why would Becky’s family have a house that fun to break into?
I’m personally hoping for Noodle Incident. We don’t get to see any part of the break-in, but we do get to hear “Wow! I can’t believe that thing with the potato salad actually worked!”
Hopefully all the Danny haters (bullies?) can now see what everyone else could see and that’s a kid trying to make the best decisions they can with the limited information they have
He’s really trying as hard as he can. He’s a really good kid.
I always thought so, I could never understand the intense hate Danny gets
I suspect it’s lingering stuff from the last universe. Kind of like how Malaya often gets shit from her Shortpacked! counterpoint. Cause Danny in Roomies, especially, kinda was a bit of a shit, frequently judgmental of non-het sexualities, a bit of a slut shamer and a holy roller, and just oozing a bit of Nice Guy TM behavior.
That’s not this Danny so much, though he started the comic being a bit of a Nice Guy TM at first, so I imagine that didn’t help.
That all said, Danny’s development has shown a really interesting tryhard character with a lot of humility and heart. And it’s been a long time since he’s Dannyed in the classic Roomies sense.
The big problem with Danny in Roomies is not that he was everything you described, but that he was an uninformed version of that. He was presented as the good guy, with all of those being his good qualities.
Definitely.
I maintain that a lot of the hate for Danny is for commenters’ own young and clueless past selves.
That’s why I’m rooting for him tbh <3
After seeing what Cerb wrote about Roomies!Danny a lot more of the carryover dislike makes sense. Reminds me of the "shut UP, MEG" beat in Family Guy now.
I agree, I recognize quite a bit of Danny in myself at that age
he’s a good egg!
Danny: *expresses normal human concern for Amber’s well-being*
Amber: The fuck is this horseshit?
Danny: *shows nice parts of his character*
Amber: I will have none of this!
Danny: *Wishes to help someone he cares about*
AmaziGirl: Why are you cheating on me?
Danny: *Demonstrates basic competence*
Comments: lol Danny you punching bag
Danny: *Gives pretty good advice to troubled girlfriend*
Amber / AG: “Why hast thou forsaken me?”
[delurk]
I see a mental breakdown in Amber’s future. I hope I’m wrong.
[relurk]
I see a mental breakdown in Amber’s PAST and PRESENT.
And any other tense that exists and is not observable to the standard human condition.
All tenses!
And it’s making things more and more tense.
Thanks for that Cerberus.
Sometimes something needs to break so it can be fixed, that why when my air conditioning stops working I plow into a tree.
It’s also why I got my car into an accident with that guy who couldn’t speak English, so that his insurance would pay for fixing my windshield.
…. kidding, of course.
….
*shiftyeyes*
I hope to see a future in Amber’s future.
*slow clap*
There’s no reasonning with her right now.
Danny, since when is when your girlfriend visibly pissed about something a good time to bring up that maybe her only coping mechanism might be dangerously self-destructive. Hell yes that’s going to make her defensive. Sure, your words aren’t any less true, but you have to work around the PTSD, not make it worse. :/
He doesn’t know it’s a coping method or that she has PTSD. She didn’t really tell him much about herself.
Fair enough on the PTSD point, she makes an effort to rein herself in around Danny, and he’s kinda oblivious as to how deep the split runs, even given the hints.
She’s still obviously pissed, and literally dropped a line “day is still young”, which makes this somewhat of a non sequitur, to me. I’d want to try and make it a good day instead of bringing up a conflict. That doesn’t work for story pacing, though, of course.
Problem is that honesty is a key to the relationship and she’s demanding to know stuff. I don’t think evasion or stalling will help Danny out of this bind either.
She did tell Danny that AG is an “outlet” for all the rage and negative emotions that she feels. Most people would understand that as a coping method. She also told him about Blaine’s abuse and Ethan told him about the robbery. He has all the pieces.
Though, I’m not docking him points cause bringing it up is the right damn thing to do.
I think he’s bringing it up now because this is the most self-destructive he’s ever seen her act, to the point that she was complaining that Sal saved her life. Not good timing, but understandable timing.
I think he’s bringing it up because he’s genuinely scared right now. For her, of her, etc… Those eyes glancing away in those early panels, unable to look her in the eyes. That’s a person digging deep to try and muster all the courage he can.
When exactly wouldn’t Amber get defensove about Amazi-Girl?
Her only coping mechanism he just found out nearly got her KILLED. He’d be a shitty bf if he didn’t try and convince her to stop. All he sees is her spiraling out of control right now.
Agreed, there is no good time to talk about this. Sometimes you’ve gotta break some eggs, you know?
Not ideal, but lately, whenever he sees her, she’s either angry or tterrified. Considering that he’s genuinely worried about her physical (and mental?) health and safety, and that HE is the current target of her wrath, he’s doing a pretty brave thing. Not to mention, he’s being about as gentle with his concerns as you could ask of anyone, let alone a college freshman.
He’s well within his rights though to share his concerns regarding the fact that she almost died while partaking in said coping mechanism. As someone who also had a self-destructive way of coping with things, I think he’s doing the right thing. She needs a wake up call.
Danny is not a licensed professional. You cannot blame Danny for not knowing how to best deal with this type of situation. People go to school for years to learn how.
Having been in a similar (but different) situation it, he’s likely to involved to really see things clearly. There may be nothing he can do that is the “right” answer. If nothing else he’s in a very difficult situation because there is never going to be a good time to talk to Amber about this.
As a friend of mine who is a therapist once told me, it isn’t your fault and these things are hard.
I’m getting a weird mix of Wreck-It-Ralph and Revenge of the Sith vibes here…
Oh Yeah Amber is Anakin Skywalker, Sal is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Danny is Padme…. so I guess Ambers dad is Palpatine? I don’t get where the Wreck-It Ralph feels are coming from though.
If you die outside your game, you won’t respawn.
This comic is bit like the scene just before Ralph wrecks Vanellope’s car so she can’t race anymore.
She going Turbo, isn’t she?
She won’t be going Turbo unless we see her in another comic. Er, another artist’s comic.
…SHE *DID* GO TURBO D=
I am bad, and that’s good. I will never be good and that’s not bad. There’s no one I’d rather be than me.
~Anakin Skywalker
Thanks, Satan.
Uhm, it’s “Satine”
This is so not gonna end well is it?
It probably also won’t start well or middle well.
Ohhhh boy. This is bad. Really bad. Like Superman vs. Batman levels of bad. (I’m very sorry but I thought a bad joke might lighten the mood just a small bit.)
So is Mike gonna pee in a jar anytime soon or
SPOILERS
Dorothy: “Walky, why the hell are there ten jars of pee in your backpack?”
Walky: “It was only one this morning. They must be learning from the math books.”
He’s studying the fine art of Jarate.
Does that make Danny Lois Lane?
No wait he’s actually doing something that matters.
come on come on come on COME ON COME ON PLEASE
After Amber dumps Danny he can turn to Ethan for comfort…
Oh hey, look what we did!
Oh god that’d be good for Amber’s psyche.
Amber closed the door, and Ethan left his window open.
I’m sure if that happened she’d probably actually hurt someone.
Ain’t no probably about that one. She’d go full Bride on everyone within a ten mile radius.
Oooooooh, burn.
Danny honestly I hated you, you were too weak willed to be in a healthy relationship but you just showed far more backbone then I thought you capable of.
Still not really enough backbone… I mean, it’s more than he usually shows, but this is going to require more. Don’t get me wrong, I am and always have been a Danny supporter since I started reading,* but I’m not at all sure he has what it takes to handle this at all.
* (I got in late and binged the first four years of this, I didn’t have time to hate the poor kid.)
HE’S TRYING SUPER HARD
Interesting. Amazi-Girl is tagged on this comic, but Amber is not tagged.
same yesterday and 2 days ago “She”, Danny said “Oh! Hey, Amber”, the response was “Wrong” and was tagged with both Amber and Amazi-girl. The first panel of “She” is Amber, then the change occurs.
This is the third day it’s been like that. Amber was there in the first panel on Tuesday’s comic (4/26) but then, once she sees Sal and realizes Danny was talking to her, you can see where Amber vanishes and Amazi-Girl takes over.
But no A-G voice indicated. That’s … peculiar.
The AG voice is something Amber deliberately uses. The clearer indicators that this is Amazi-Girl right now are the lack of the cheek blushes and the character tags.
A similar thing happened when she crawled through Ethan’s window to warn him that Sal was at the college. Amazi-Girl spoke without the blue text bubbles, but lacked the cheek blush and was tagged as Amazi-Girl.
nvm, I think I got it: A-G voice corresponds to A-G (sort of) in control of herself. This, though, is A-G out of mask/voice/control, bleeding over all borders.
Amber hasn’t returned, yet.
Makes you wonder when, or even if, she will.
I’m not so sure I think this may be Amber as amazi-girl is the one who seems more stable I think falling for Danny may have switched or even outright separated their personalities removing Ambers ability to push her anger aside into amazi-girl this is only my opinion though
Amber is a hider, and tends to run from danger, but reacts like a wild animal when trapped, striking out with lethal violence. Amazi-Girl is a fighter, with more control over her emotions, but seems to have a suspicious streak that can turn to outright paranoia, as we’re seeing now. Neither one is truly healthy.
Gah I’m a succor for hurt/comfort fics.
I found that pun soothing.
Yes, well done.
A+ Paranoia. Congratulations, you passed the test. You are now legally mentally ill. Would you like a lollipop and 300 therapy sessions?
Man, I didn’t get a lollipop.
Me neither.
We’re supposed to get lollipops?
I didn’t get one either.
Also, my insurance only approved 12 sessions.
I only got 1 therapy session, but 300 lollipops.
#DamnDanny-el
*Takes out phone and plays bad obscure music*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvA_cSZYkUo
Requesting “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath for (hacked?) muzak. I am currently unaware of the ownership.
Yes, you may. My connectivity went splat for a few critical minutes a while ago.
Flagpole Sitta?
This keeps getting worse and worse and harder to watch every day.
Yep. Willis may not be killing anyone off in DoA, but some of the case may wish they were dead with all the crap he’s putting them through.
#DamnYouWillis
Luckily you just have to read it 😀
Amber’s struggle hits a bit close to home for me, too. Someone I cared for a lot went down the same path. I tried to help her, but she didn’t want to be helped. It was a tragic mess.
This won’t end until all comes full circle
Someone get Amber a therapist, right now.
As much as I love Amber and want all this to end for the best. Call me The Devil’s Advocate if you want but there’s only one Form therapy left and it’s in the form two fist.
Alas, new glasses don’t renew one’s perspective.
You’re carryin’ that grown-up ball, Danny. Keep it up. No fumbles, son.
Why is it that the Deception symbol comes with encouragement for bravery…
Danny, sweetie? Run.
…and the Autobot advises a retreat?
Weird, right?
Maybe the Decepticon is advising recklessness and the Autobot is advising survival?
Yeah, that would explain why I heard the Decepticon in Starscream’s voice, but now I’m hearing Optimus Prime say “Danny, sweetie? Run.” and I was more comfortable when I heard both as Starscream.
Wait a sec, where have I heard Amber’s line in 5 before? And come to think of it, Danny’s in panel 7?
…oh right
https://youtu.be/bC_Ls2JVNtM?t=1m45s
Comic Reaction:
Panels 1, 2, and 4: Oh man, I have so many feels for Danny here. He recognizes he’s in a fraught situation, but he’s got a lot more inner strength than we ever really give him credit for and he’s willing to push forward even with Amber being well, at a place to say the least.
But this is still really scary for him and you see that really clear in his averted eyes.
Panels 3 and 5: Amber… I really don’t want to overstep like last time, but Amber here is… evoking a lot of stuff for me and it makes me really concerned, especially for Danny. She has a lot of stuff going on, but she’s been making all the wrong decisions on how to handle it and here we see some of the price of that.
There’s very little way to read this other than dipping some full limbs into paranoid delusion and interpreting not following her exact prescribed path as a personal attack. I worried when she so quickly spun having her life saved as a wrongdoing that it was a major choice she was making to start bending her interpretation of reality to fit her prejudices rather than risk having to change her mind about Sal…
And well, here she is turning against her boyfriend (and seeing as how she’s firmly in the Amazi-girl alter here, it is very much her boyfriend) because he’s not instantly rejecting Sal, because he refuses to agree with her suicidal ideation that her life is without value, because he doesn’t want to see his loved one die. Because he dares push back against her unfounded accusation.
That emphasis in those panels. That Sal somehow “got” to him. That he is turned “against her”. That is building a mythology with rotten pieces and refusing to listen to her partner in service to building this alternative reality and that is such a bad direction for her to go and such a scary direction when paired with her current state of PTSD-fueled anger… I really worry that Amber will violate her own ethical code here if she hasn’t already and this might end up being more than the two of them can survive as a couple.
Those last two panels, Danny’s eyes pleading. Trying desperately to point out the reality where Amber is not being hunted, where he’s not an enemy, where Sal is just a girl who made some mistakes in her past. Trying to reach out across the abyss to extend a hand and sadly, I just don’t see her taking it in her current state. She has too much invested in feeling angry and persecuted. And she needs to externalize that feeling and is just choosing the worst way to do it.
And yeah, this whole thing is stirring up a lot of emotions for me. My ex had a lot of stuff. And she would also get angry and controlling and downplay harm and accuse me of attacking her or doing the crimes her mother was doing because she needed someone to attack and she could bully me into seeing her way. And that all sounds bad, but I loved her and when things disintegrated, I still wanted to be with her.
And so I feel so strongly and identify so strongly with Danny. He loves her so much. But he’s seeing the depths of how much she doesn’t love herself and what that means in Amber’s current emotional state.
I feel so bad for these two because YEP Amber is going so much into the bad place here. And damn is she ever going to feel like shit when she realizes it, and won’t THAT potentially start its own fun spiral of terribleness. And when Danny gets out, it’s gonna send her waaaaay down the drain.
But at the same time? DANNY NEEDS TO GET WAY THE FUCK OUT OF THERE, RIGHT FUCKING NOW because if he doesn’t things are only going to get worse and I do NOT want to see any of the cast more traumatized than has already become inevitable.
From past evidence, I don’t think Danny can outrun Amazigirl. Getting out isn’t much of an option.
It’s that last panel that gets me. Danny looks so close to tears, the emotions saying “I want to help. And I don’t know how. I can see you’re hurting, and it’s killing me inside.” It’s a face I’ve had before many times with my father. Also, for you Cerberus, I’m trying to send you all of my sympathy through this comment.
Thanks.
Ohhh, dear. I mean I think we all knew this relationship was getting increasingly untenable but I don’t think we’d realized HOW BAD and HOW FAST it was getting. But yep, Sal trigger would deeeeeefinitely do it.
GodDAMN I hate Blaine and his refusal to actually pay for actual therapy. It wouldn’t have guaranteed things would helped but it might at least have given a CHANCE at it!
Blaine is the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to Amber’s myriad of mental health issues.
You know I’m starting to think Walkyverse!Amber’s “I wished he’d get hit with a TRUCK” thing was an extremely tame fantasy compared to what he deserves.
I know objectively it’s terrible to wish incredible pain and suffering on a fictional character (and is rarely as satisfying as it should be, see also: The Punch and its aftermath) but at the same time, man I wish he would suffer horrible agony.
Walkyverse Amber had done some serious recovery and venting by that point, as well as having different coping mechanisms.
Well yes. That’s a given. It’s more the “Huh. Truck seems insufficient for his shittiness” in general.
It’s like, do we REALLY have to open up the “worst parent” competition again?
ToeDad: “I kidnapped my daughter to put her in a living hell disguised at therapy.”
Blaine, smugly: “I MADE my daughters life a living hell and denied her therapy”
ToeDad: “I rejected everything she is.”
Blaine: “I made her loath everything she is.”
ToeDad: “GUN!!!”
Blaine: “You win…. for now”
Entire comment section: “FUUUUUUUUUUDGE”
Carol & John: Hey, we aren’t actively violent, but can we take lessons from you guys?
I know, right. And then there’s the Browns and Walkertons and Wilcoxen quietly chugging along in the background quietly and low-key screwing up their kids for life… and the Billingsworths just not caring… and THEN there’s whatever the hell’s going on with Ruth’s grandfather.
I have not forgotten Ruth’s grandfather, but I hope we don’t find out about that specific brand of shittiness for quiiiite some time. If ever.
You forgot the Siegals. Especially Naomi. GodDURN that woman.
Naomi, yeah, but I feel bad for Saul. Someone pointed out during that arc that he struck them as gay or asexual himself, and seemed like he’d just forced himself into the heteronormative paradigm that everyone seemed to want from him.
Don’t forget Mike’s parents they seem to have screws their child up somehow too
I believe that’s because Mike being an asshole is a universal constant, not the fault of the clearly doting and loving parents.
Then again they could be extremely smothering when not on panel so…. Jury’s still out?
Not paying for therapy is about the least bad thing Blaine did. He’s the primary reason she needed therapy in first place. Demeaning her and goading her to violence.
Great, another reason for Amber to hate Sal. There’s gonna be confrontations.
I’m glad Danny finally said this to her. But now I’m worried that she’s going to further unload on him which he just does not deserve. Hopefully it will be bad enough that even he’ll realize that he needs to get out of this relationship.
If only it were so easy to “take a break” from being Amazi-Girl.
This isn’t a problem of one person being wronger than another. This is a problem of all sides of the issue only knowing their view of their matter. Danny doesn’t know about how Amazi-Girl is basically an entirely separate personality brought on by PTSD. Sal doesn’t know about the link between her robbery, the abuse Amber endured from her dad, and the Amazi-Girl personality. Amber and Amazi-Girl don’t know anything about who Sal is now and who she was back then.
Basically, no one knows anything and everything is terrible. Communicate, damn you!
Also, all of this is Blaine’s fault. A lot of Amber’s issues come from her trying to distance herself from her anger instead of dealing with it in healthy ways, specifically due to not wanting to turn out like her father.
If Blaine had been a better dad, Amber wouldn’t have felt the need to forcibly separate herself from her anger, wouldn’t have created the Amazi-Girl persona, and probably would have gotten therapy for the trauma from the grocery store robbery. She and Danny would have had a far better relationship, and seeing Sal might not have given her such bad panic attacks. She might have even been able to approach Sal, discuss the matter, and reach some sort of understanding about everything.
TL;DR Fuck Blaine O’Malley with a dead cactus.
Entirely possible that Amber wouldn’t of stabbed Sal as well.
Absolutely wouldn’t have stabbed Sal. That was in direct response to Blaine’s goading. Quite likely wouldn’t have been the already frozen and withdrawn kid she was before the attack.
To think, how much better would everyone’s life be if there weren’t assholes?
Oh dear lord yes, yes all of this, yes to the first communicate part and also SO MUCH YES to the fuck Blaine, the cactus seems too nice, fuck him with a chainsaw too because dude has EARNED it.
(And it doesn’t help that Amazi-Girl and Amber are probably both utterly TERRIFIED of actually talking about this shit. We saw in the flashback, before she started Amazi-Girling her coping mechanism was freeze mode and she still can’t bear to talk about it now for understandable reasons. As someone whose anxiety responses are “flight but mostly freeze” I relate. But that is the ABSOLUTE ONLY THING that’s gonna even BEGIN to start fixing this clusterfuck of trouble and auuugh, someone get this woman some help FAST.)
In fact, if Blaine hadn’t been the father he was, it’s entirely possible Amber and Ethan would have been on that bus for the field trip like they were supposed to be and would never have even been involved with Sal’s second robbery!
This entire comic reminds me repeatedly of the Philip Larkin poem ‘This Be The Verse’. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to but they do” except sometimes they mean to so fuck you Blaine.
Hell, if I’m right and she’s DID, she literally can’t “take a break from Amazi-girl” because Amazi-girl is her and if she tries to shut it off, it’ll rebel and stop even sharing memories with her Amber alter.
Also, 100% agree with you on the dad and the cactus
I want to say something about this, but there’s nothing I can add that hasn’t already been stated or that won’t be phrased more eloquently/cleverly by someone else later on.
All I can do is sigh sadly as I watch the oncoming trainwreck. =(
All I can do is sigh sadly as I watch the oncoming trainwreck. =(
————————
Hopefully, from a safe distance yourself.
Danny speaks the truth here. I’m very sorry you went through that. These few pages trigger a lot of memories for me too, so I understand where you’re coming from. It’s really a conversation for Amber for which there’s only one “right” answer to. For me those were the most mindbending ones.
Whoops, meant as a reply to Cerberus
Yeah, I hated the “one ‘right’ answer” conversations a lot. Especially because my own mental health stuff and how it affects emotional processing makes it really important to me that my memory of physical events is at least accurate, so having to accept a “one ‘right’ answer” of something that wasn’t true and didn’t happen was really hard for me and messed me up a lot when I did buckle because then it became really hard to trust my own experiences.
“Also you might look sexier with long hair”
“SHE DID GET TO YOU!!!!”
She’s not wrong…
“Also, have you ever thought about getting an Amazi-cycle?”
“HOW DARE Y-…well, actually yeah”
+1
This…there’s no turning back, is there?
There’s turning back from the brink of self-destruction.
There is even the possibility of coming back from self-destruction.
Remember, when you’ve hit absolute bottom there is nowhere to go but up. It’s just going to be a longer process.
Yeah, but black holes don’t HAVE absolute bottoms.
Yes they do. Their center. You can’t farther down a black hole than that.
Except you never actually get to the center, and the center doesn’t exist in this universe.
“when you’ve hit absolute bottom there is nowhere to go but up”
Oooor you can take that shovel and start digging.
Rock bottom’s a pretty solid foundation to build a new start on though.
Yeah, but knowing Willis, he probably put a layer of dynamite beneath rock bottom.
Gah, now I want to play Minecraft!
I don’t know what’s wrong with me I’m conflicted. On one hand I want see them fight because we’ll be freaking cool and probably the only way where to get closure.
But then again there’s just as much of a chance it will just make things worse and I want the best for Amber I mean hell I wouldn’t really encourage this if I was stuck in the middle of this situation like Danny is its just…..ah
Just tell yourself that Danny is strong and smart and capable enough to pull this off with confidence, finesse, and maturity.
…………for real?
this is going to hurt…
It already does
Please Amber, don’t punch Danny. Sal will get involved then, and the mess will be impressive.
Slow down george rr
It would be kinda awesome if she did try to whack him, but Sal blocked her arm.
And then they play Mario Cart High Stakes with Danny as the price.
Danny: “I’m OK with being objectified.”
Ive come to realize how much of my sexual fantasies involve actual assault. Like Walkyverse Joyce having her way with me is sexy, but also totally assault.
It’s okay, there’s a reason BDSM is popular.
One of the reasons roleplay is a thing 🙂
Someone is a fan of Sword Art Online.
The panel design is great here, pushing closer and closer to their angry faces (compare three days ago when everything was zoomed out.)
Danny’s partner is angry with him, Danny’s partner is yelling at him, Danny’s partner tells him without any doubt that he is doing horribly wrong. Amber is oh so close to snap altogether – and still he persists. This is likely the bravest thing Danny’s ever done.
Poor, poor Danny, and poor poor Amber.
Yeah, this comic should silence the “Danny isn’t brave” argument once and for all. Danny is incredibly brave. Sadly, when this blows up, he may learn the wrong lesson and assume it’s his bravery that has fucked him.
Honestly, Danny has shown an immense amount of growth in what has for him been only a few weeks or maybe a couple months. I look at him and almost don’t believe he’s the same person from the beginning of the comic.
Good on you Danny. This is the second time to be proud of yourself. When helped her when she attacked her good for nothing father.
I think he knows of over his head he is here, and he’s trying so hard. I think saying he likes her better than AG was only smartest move to make.
Outside of hog-tying her and getting her checked into the nearest phych center. Which he can’t I guess.
I’m sorry for both of them.
Man, a lot of people are going to be sad that they were wrong about Danny not being able to stand up to Amber in any way.
Meanwhile I’m over here doing a celebratory jig
Only if we’re not also wrong about Amber taking it badly. Which, unfortunately, looks like the best bet, now.
Yeah, they’re probably gonna break up within the next few strips. Maybe the next strip if it’s direct enough.
I”m pretty sure they just broke up this strip.
For once Amber is right.
Whoops sorry meant Danny. Amber is very very wrong here.
Actually *Amazigirl* is right. Sal did wise Danny up to how mentally unhealthy *Amazigirl* is, even though that’s hardly as dramatic as saying someone turned them against you.
She pointed out the faults in his star?
Danny is so far out of his depth. There’s nothing he can possibly do here to help: she doesn’t want to be helped. The reaction to the last panel will be bad and unfortunate.
And I don’t see where this goes from here after this conversation.
She’s going to punch him really hard. And/or attack Sal.
This went exactly where I’d hoped it would go.
Good on ya, Danny.
Slow down there, Anakin
cant wait for sal and amazi-girl to have a 45 minute lightsaber fight across campus after amazi-girl chokes danny into unconsciousness.
That escalated really quickly :/
Also, it’s so weird to watch their fight on the top of the site and a panel of their “fight” on the left side…
I think I’m officially in the camp of people who identify with at least one character/situation in the comic.
My ex did the same thing, where she would sorta … Act like everyone knew all the history and details of her life, even though she would never tell anyone anything. Hell, as far as I can remember, the only times she ever told me anything about her life or her past where after we’d had a huge fight.
And by “fight”, by the way, I mean I would say some random thing as part of a conversation, and then she would assume I meant something attacking/insulting her and/or related to past stuff (usually both), and then she would yell at me for a while, and then not talk to me for at least half a day, and then come back and tell me what actually happened, and refuse to believe I could have meant anything other than that thing (even though I couldn’t possibly have had the relevant context before it was explained).
It honestly felt like walking on a broken glass covered minefield, and even though I’m still seriously worried about her after all this time and hope the best for her, I’m glad I got out when I did.
*Appropriate gesture of support*
“she got to you” ho boy she going full delusional (not that there wasn’t delusion or denial before, but this is a whole different level)
before, the “bad” things that Sal did tied in with what Amazigirl thought a delinquent might do: underage drinking, reckless driving etc
but delinquent!Sal was never a manipulator or even someone that was interested in people, so now Amazigirl is making up things that even her made up narrative of Sal don’t support
Everyone bad is eternally bad. And everyone bad is a version of her dad she can punch without going full red panel.
Well, her made up narrative of Sal probably never stopped threatening kids at knifepoint and robbing convenience stores.
It’s what a comic book criminal would do.
On the plus side, Danny is now free to bang Sal, and/or (more likely) Ethan! And Amber is free to… try drugs? Seriously she should try drugs, it’s college!
Maybe some anti-psychotics…
Step 1: Speak truth to power.
Step 2: Speak truth to power’s fists.
Really, it’s honest, but it’s DUMB. There’s smarter ways to do it and this? This is just DUMB. Really, there should be some warning sign in the comic’s title or something that it’s about dumb people doing dumb things.
It’s almost as if “Dumbing of Age” is indicative or something.
whoosh
So is she just going to walk up to Sal and we’re just going to have a “bongo where do you get off” repeat.
Damn bongo sensor
I love the bongo filter.
Best part of the comic
What I’m hoping is:
-Amber says/does something hurtful to Danny.
-Amber drives away another boy, as he goes to Ethan’s arms about it
-Danny and Ethan become happy in an equal relationship and both learn to love themselves and learn as individuals.
-Amber, having no connection to the mortal realm, reaches the avatar state and flies off to the west and faces the firelord.
Dang. Now I kinda want that too.
This is a really major moment for Danny. His parents have made him so incapable of standing up for himself and now he is. I hope this doesn’t completely blow up for him because this is a major breakthrough for him not to mention incredibly brave.
Oh she’s gonna dump him so fast. Though that might be what he needed. Dating dangerously unstable people who are doing dangerous things on a constant basis isn’t really a great idea.
Danny my precious boy you are doing a GOOD right now and I want you to keep at it even if Amber blows up at you for it, because this is good for both of you.
I hope they break up.
Sadly, in real life, they wouldn’t. They’d just keep going on, increasingly miserable and convinced that the relationship is the only thing protecting them from misery.
Oh crud, Amber is going all Azula on us. Right now seems like a good time to bring up a quote from The Dark Night “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain” and that seems to be true for Amber right now. On a side note, good job Danny for growing a backbone and actually being wise, sadly you might get beaten to a pulp or maimed for it.
Anakin lived long enough to become a villain, then circle around back and die a hero.
Amber, you were right awhile back.
There’s only one box.
It’s the big problem with trying to segregate alters to only be in charge of certain emotions. They’re all swimming in the same general pool of neurotransmitters and hormones so it doesn’t work even if each alter may have very different emotional responses to the events.
I’m in school to be a clinical psychologist, and we just learned (a little bit) about DID. Unfortunately it’s pretty rare and the research on it isn’t awesome because of that. But apparently the way it most normally presents in clinical work is that personalities are only semi-separated rather than completely distinct. I feel like Amber and Amazi-Girl are bleeding together, but she’s angry and that’s something only Amazi-Girl is “allowed” to feel.
speak the truth Danny. Even if your voice shakes
I am so friggin proud of Danny it’s crazy. He was waffling on going through with what Sal suggested and confronting Amber/Amazi-girl but, in the face of her increasingly unsettling reactions, he actually told her instead of taking the easy way out.
It’s just I’m not sure it’s enough. I’m afraid Danny will actually have to sell Amber out to stop her from self-destructing – tell Ethan and call her mom, or even report her to the authorities? Not only would that be horrible in of itself, it’s also way more than I think is fair to expect Danny to have to intervene, especially if it put him at risk in the process. But Amber seems to have no intention of stopping, please let something get through to her before she ends up dead or incarcerated ;^;
Danny… The thing is that I don’t think that she’s ready to hear that. Hell, I’m not even sure that she can hear you right now. I’ve got an ugly feeling that she’s arguing with a version of you that only exists in her head. That’s a pity, in a way, because what you just said was exactly what she’s been needing to hear for a long time.
He must fall in line with the script she’s written in her head, all other input is invalid and only demonstrates to her that she’s right.
Logic has fallen to furious anger. Bottling up her emotions has led to an internal feedback loop, keeping the narrative that Sal is the root of all evil alive in her head.
Both of these. Danny is completely ancillary to the conversation she’s having with his strawman. And it’s because her need to hate Sal and view her actions as nefarious and her presence as toxic strongly outweighs her desire to be a good partner or her empathy and care for what Danny actually is and believes…
And makes me realize, how much has AG, specifically the AG alter, actually valued and sought out understanding and care of Danny’s needs and actual life? Like, Amber and him have a long-standing friendship and he’s shared stuff with her, but the AG alter seems to have been as happy as him to relegate him to a role as absent emotional investment as the typical superhero girlfriend role.
Bluntly, Danny was Amazi-Girl’s Lois Lane. Amber puts in the work of actually building an emotional connection, getting to know him, bonding over their love of computer science and nerd junk, and genuinely falling for him, but Amazi-Girl reaps the reward because that’s what Amazi-Girl is there for. She’s the beautiful, mysterious, badass superhero who doesn’t take shit and gets the benefits of a relationship without really putting in the work. She fights crime and then they hang out and play Mario Kart. Danny gets a hands off romance where he builds a big comic book narrative of finding out her identity in a dramatic moment (guess that backfired on you, Danno), while pretending it actually is as deep and meaningful as the one he had with Dorothy, or one he could share with Amber, and he’s scared of those because oh shit, they’re real people and relationships with people have consequence.
When they make love for the first time, despite Amber’s posturing that she’s definitely Amazi-Girl and that she’s not the one doing all the weird personal sex stuff, it really is Amber. Amber “pops out” and actually talks with him about her feelings, about how she’s scared of her first time going wrong and of losing control, so she puts on the mask and let’s Amazi-Girl take the reigns. Immediately when she thinks something’s gone wrong she’s back to being Amber, asking if he’s okay and if she had hurt him. To me, she was putting in the work as Amber, but letting Amazi-Girl take the credit.
Or to sum it up in a way that took me way too long to realize. Danny is a romantic fantasist who was dating an actual fantasy.
I think that’s pretty much right for Amber.
Danny on the other hand has been pushing for a relationship with both of them since the secret id revelation. It might be a romantic fantasy for him to be dating a superhero, but he’s been trying to treat both sides the same for a long time now.
So, Danny is Amber’s boyfriend… and Amazi-Girl’s fucktoy? Interesting…
Boy Amber sure is taking after her ole dad
The way she sees it Joker has convinced Robin to tell Batman to hang up the cape…
Getting looney(er).
Wow. I’m impressed, Danny.
But I rather fear his last words are spoken when Amazi-girl has already turned and is out of earshot.
The chance she is able to hear what he says and actually process it are minimal, unfortunately. They would have been small in the best of circumstances, and Amazi-Girl raging about him colluding with the Enemy juste because they are on talking terms is more like the worst of circumstances.
Holy cow Danny, no doubt that took some guts.
Probably the most heartbreaking thing here is that Amber does in fact have a personality disorder stemming from both accounts of trauma, and she’s had to deal with it for so long that it’s in control of her, rather than the other way around.
And Danny cares enough to get past his “I don’t want to hurt your feelings” wall to admit his fears for her own mental health. Something that she herself will likely refuse to take notion of.
Once upon a time, I dated a girl who was just like Amber. I was a pushover with an open heart, just like Danny. I cared for that girl more than I cared for myself, to the point it broke my heart to see her in anguish.
We ended up parting ways, not by agreement, but because I had to cut her off for my own sanity. She was in her own world, and it took her years to get out. She’s still climbing out, too stubborn to accept anything past what she thinks is true about her psyche.
I’m crossing my fingers here that Danny will do the right thing. He will push Amber to get help, and get assertive as a partner, to quell this life-risking personality once and for all with the help of a therapist. If not that, he will help her as a friend, and Amber will have to come to terms that she needs help.
Hopefully Willis won’t give us our first death scene. Hopefully.
Sympathy via light physical contact
*Appropriate gesture of support* I feel this. A lot.
Next comic:
Amber: “You turned him against me!”
Sal: “You have done that yourself!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOhZ5wD6u7A
Sal: “It’s over Amber, I have the high ground!”
Amber: “Hey, only I can do that!”
Danny is right and it is great that he stood up for himself and for Amber, to Amazi-Amber, in this situation. Hopefully he stands his ground.
He’s brave, but I don’t think he’s prepared for the backlash.
Which may be why Sal is still around.
I like how the streak of this self-damaging mindset that is destroying Amber’s life is kinda reminiscent of Blaine. Look how aggressive and possessive she’s being right now.
…. I don’t quite understand the timing of this latest slipshine to be honest. This current subplot doesn’t exactly put me in the mood to see the two of them goin’ at it. :S
It is pretty curious.
Yeah, but we’re gonna wanna see it even less if they break up…
This comic takes place on a Saturday. Danny first mentioned to Dorothy about the events of the Slipshine last Saturday. So it was over a week ago.
gerb’s talking about the timing that Willis decided to put the nsfw comic between amber and danny up while this whole fiasco in the main comic is going on. i myself am genuinely curious as to why Willis decided to do it while the mood is all sour for his readers.
Probably a combo of being repeatedly asked about it and a last hurrah before what is looking like a break up.
That was my thought.
Really, the only “appropriate” time(so far and probably for the foreseeable future) for a Slipshine between Danny and AG story-wise would have been around the time Danny was having that conversation with Dorothy.
shit. this makes me want to hug danny so bad and give him some hot cocoa. or maybe some beer… okay, maybe beer’s a bad idea if he’s anything like the walkyverse danny.
Someone hugging Amber would also be a good thing, but who is fearlesse enough and can get away with it right now?
..and currently cluelesse about most of what’s going on in this comic because they have their own drama/trauma tag-team to deal with?
Batman.
amber hugs are good too. …probably Mike, but he’s too much of an asshole to do it…or is he?
Mike’s mom, of course. If Sarah with a baseball bat doesn’t slow her down, Amber won’t phase her one bit.
OMG poor Danny’s so scared in the first two panels that his eyes have transcended the era of his character design. 🙁
The scary thing? It’s very clear Amber is trying to control Danny and is threatening violence if he doesn’t subscribe to her views. While you might blame Blaine for this and should….isn’t this an indication Blaine was once very much like Amber? Imagine if his father or mother did the same to him as he ended up doing to Amber? Because it’s clear she doesn’t want to end up like her father but HAS. It’d be terrifying to discover that poor Blaine was once very much like Ruth’s brother before his own inner demons destroyed him.
She truly is her father’s daughter now.
That’s not so much scary, as depressingly likely.
There is a reason it’s often referred to as the CYCLE of abuse. Abusive behavior is learned, usually, and that means there’s probably a chain going back generations of abusers teaching their kids how to be just like them.
The good news is that, in the modern era, we have ways of breaking the CYCLE, even if it’s really hard. The bad news is that it requires Amber to first acknowledge that she has these tendencies that she will have to wrestle with for the rest of her life.
You know, I really don’t think she’s gonna smack him one, not for this. I do think she’s breaking up with him right now though “you are against me” and all that.
I could see her going after sal (later in costume) again, but she won’t assault Danny for this.
Holy shit. Amber has gone full Comic Books Are Real.
I wonder what will happen if Danny figures out Amazi-Girl ISN’T the violent paranoid sociopath.
Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in memory of one Amber Blaine.
I found these marbles lying about, did anybody lose theirs?
Cheers. I was wondering where they’d gotten to.
Nooooo, don’t break up, you’re so sweet together! 🙁
He’s giving the puppy-dog eyes…
“You turned her against me”
“You have done that yourself”
Amber-kin O’Skywalker am I right.
So is amber gonna decapitate some kids now?
Amber is no longer hearing words the way they are being word-ed.
We all turn in into a version of our parents eventually. Usually it’s a little more gradual.
It’s worth noting that we haven’t actually seen Amber playing video games at her desk for ages. Her DS maybe, but other than that the last time I can think of her hammering away at her laptop for hours was… maybe just when she got interrupted by Dorothy?
Man….I had the best theory about this whole Amber/Amazigirl/Sal thing.
What if Sal isn’t the girl Amber has been mad at her whole life? What if Sal just has a passing similarity to this woman that defined Amber’s life?
Has Sal ever made mention to the robbery? Or being stabbed? Has Ethan me any kind of connection to her and the roberry?
Amber comes from an abusive household, and we know that she has abusive tendencies herself. One thing about abusers is projection. They blame everything wrong on the person that they abuse. I feel like Amber is projecting all the negatives of her life on Sal, but only because Sal happens to be there and happens to look close to the girl that Amber has built the rage up over all the years.
I’m just going to call it now; Sal is not the girl Amber stabbed, she’s just a placeholder for Amber’s anger and depression.
Sal wears gloves to cover the stab scar.
Ethan has seen Sal and thinks he must have seen her somewhere before, but isn’t sure where.
Sal has certainly robbed a convenience store. It’s the reason she spent the past five years in a boarding school instead of whatever school Walky and Billie went to. This has come up quite a bit with Sal’s interactions with Walky.
Theres no possible chance that the person Amber stabbed could’ve anyone but Sal. What purpose would having a doppelgänger other than directly contradicting what has already been told in the story?
This. I think she’s the person that robbed that convenience store. But, it’s also massively Projection on Amber’s part, because Sal the real girl who robbed a convenience store has only a passing familiarity to Sal, the monster who is responsible for all my mental illnesses, that Amber has built her up to be.
And I think Amber has also displaced a lot of her hatred of her dad onto her as well which makes her extra inflexible about her, because being forgiving and understanding of Sal’s experiences is all well and good, but if she did that with her dad, she’d just be creating a space of unearned good faith he could exploit to hurt her (especially since he’s really good at manipulation and play-acting like he’s just a poor beleaguered good guy done wrong by ungrateful women).
Showing empathy and forgiveness and forgetting his past crimes is a fault with her dad, so it must be a fault with Sal as well. And Danny has fallen for her dad’s manipulation before, and so, in saying things she doesn’t want to hear, must be falling for Sal’s manipulation here.
Yeah, very much all of this.
Learned behavior. Adaptive defense mechanisms applied to situations where they don’t apply. PTSD.
Oh, I can just see it now, Amber ripping off Sal’s glove and Sal being all ‘??? what the hell’ and there’s no scar.
In real life I would consider that the most likely option, but I don’t think so in comic. There’s an amount of attention given to Sal’s gloves, amongst other things, and at this point I think I would consider it less of a red herring and more shaky storytelling (unless it worked very very well to details like that)
So, a thing I keep thinking about is ‘the right time’. And again, another person who is deep in their personal feels here, but.. Sometimes if you wait for ‘the right time’, especially if ‘the right time’ takes someone else’s emotions into account… You never get to the right time.
Imagine, she’s upset now because of Sal. Danny distracts and de-escalates, but she’s still really upset and needs to go into costume to work it out. Danny is hurt and even more concerned, puts his own feelings on hold (still, again). How long does that take? How long before there’s another emergency or crisis? How long does he hold the words in his mouth before he says, no, she’s finally happy now, we’re having a good time, I don’t want to ruin this now after realizing how much of the relationship focuses around her bad times? How long before he realizes he can’t somehow pick a time that’ll hurt her less because what he’s saying in inherently hurtful?
You find yourself doing complicated internal mathematics, trying to find the right time in between emergencies, ignoring your own feelings because those aren’t important and you’re putting theirs first again, always, and.. ..And there’s never a perfect time to stand up for your emotions, to self-care, and put boundaries in a relationship. Because he is doing this because he loves her, but this is something he needs to do for himself. This isn’t just about her, but his needs as a moon in orbit of her emotional gravity.
I mean, yeah, she’s in full breakdown mode, she’s not going to listen. But with her so aggressive, he’s saying what he needs to say to protect himself and make his needs clear. And his needs are being with someone who cares about her own life and is willing to care about what he wants. Someone who will share the emotional labor. Even if she freaks out, he’s saying what he needs to to self care. That’s not unfair.
Speaking from personal experience, when it’s something the person doesn’t want to hear, there’s never a “right” time. And putting off a necessary conversation just ends up making it something the other person never wants to address again and will actually end up attacking you for trying to bring up again because “why are you bringing up this old shit, are you trying to attack me” and “you can never let things go”.
Like, obviously there’s better times and tact and stuff feed into stuff, but when a person is deep in a cycle like this, I’m not sure when if ever you’re supposed to talk out important stuff like this and personal feelings. Certainly I never figured out the right time.
I’m glad I’m not the only one here who has had that problem. I hope your days are better now, Cerberus.
Unrelatedly, I’m thrilled you commented because as I often read and not comment, and you say what I am thinking a lot and I find you great.
Aw thanks. And yeah, that problem is a really tricky one.
I know a lot of superheroes have taken on an alter-ego to act as a symbol and to protect themselves, and many have struggles balancing civilian and superhero lives, and some even like their superhero form more than their civilian form, but I can’t think of any superheroes who actually HATE their civilian selves. Perhaps someone else can think of an example (Admittedly, I spent nearly half my life not liking anyone from DC or Marvel, considering that to be an act of betrayal against the Ninja Turtles), but I suspect that hating your civilian side never led to anything good in other superhero stories.
The Hulk is the major example, in most incarnations. ‘Hulk hate puny Banner!’ and all that.
And he’s a good comparison to Amberzigirl, being an alter ego brought up by intense negative emotions (fear, anger), whose nature is (partially) explained by an abusive parent.
Hulk’s not really a hero.
The Hulk is heroic. No. Not in the “goes out of his way to save the day” sense, usually, but he does save his friends, as many innocent bystanders as he can, and occasionally a world or two.
And then other times you get World War Hulk.
It’s still hilarious to me that the self-proclaimed smartest men in the world got together and said “Hey, we have an unstoppable rage monster. Let’s jettison him into space. There is literally no way this plan could ever backfire horribly, despite the glaringly obvious fact that literally every single person here has been to space numerous times and come back.”
Well, there’s Batman, who only maintains a civilian façade in order to maintain his resources. To him Bruce died at eight and Batman is the real one now.
That’s still different from HATING your civilian side, though. Batman doesn’t hate Bruce Wayne; he just considers him an alter-ego.
There’s also two Spider-Man storylines, called “Spider-Man No More” and “Peter Parker No More” (or so I assume, based on their Portuguese names) that deal with… well, you can imagine from the titles. At the end of both, it turns out that one doesn’t exist without the other – or, at least, doesn’t exist as itself.
I’ve found them to be fantastically good reads (and two more examples of why Spidey truly is the greatest of super-heroes).
Sounds like someone needs a valium and a visit to their therapist.
oh man, Amber is sounding so much like an abusive, controlling partner. i’m wondering if she knows how much she sounds like her dad. “she got to you and she turned you against me.”
I’m pretty sure she will spend a LOT of time with these words echoing through her brain, cringing every time.
No one knows better than Amber exactly how horrible the thing she is doing right now is. This will not help with her self loathing…
All of this.
Also, I like how as soon as she turns into Amazi-Girl her bangs separate and get messier.
Nice observation!
That indeed has happened in panels 1 and 2 of this strip!
Yes she did, now start dating her instead of this destructive mental wreck. This girl needs a good psychotherapy before she should engage in any serious romantic relationships. She’s just hurting the people around her. I’m not saying this to shit on her, it’s just what’s presented. It’s not good for anyone to ve around people like Amber before she can finally move past her “demons”.
You mean start dating him? Cause this opens Danny up to Ethan smoochies. Though a Sal/Danny/Ethan threesome would be the best (for Amber to walk in on and completely lose her shit)
Hahhaha holy shit I never even thought about how fucked up that is. Amber would have a proper mental breakdown if she saw 2 of her exes having sexytime together. And Sal did in fact express her fondness of Ethan’s looks, sooo…
Where is that threesome. Ethan wouldn’t be into it though, I’m afraid. 🙁 Or maybe he would, I dunno.
It’s interesting to note that the violent, crazy, incapable of any goodness Amber is the one who reacts to her outbursts by exploding in guilt and self abuse, whereas Amazi-Girl is the one who feels completely vindicated in relentlessly yelling at her boyfriend.
I guessed that’s what happens when you decide that you’re incapable of doing anything wrong. Amber didn’t say exactly that about Amazigirl, but from how she keeps insisting that Amazigirl is the “good” one that’s clearly how she feels about it.
Yeah, to Amber, it’s a memory that the rot of her father has been carefully taught to her in his modeling of what a relationship looks like.
To Amazi-girl? Well, to AG, she’s a paragon of virtue and all the negative emotions and the bad reactions to them have been safely quarantined in the Amber box, so her actions must be right, because she’s making those actions. And if she’s firm or inflexible, so what? Justice is firm and inflexible. And since she’s the paragon of virtue, she must have a very good reason to be being so stern and unforgiving. Maybe he did something unforgivable.
After all, a perfect avatar of justice couldn’t be making mistakes and definitely can’t be inconsistent with her application of justice, as justice is blind and true no matter what.
And it’s what allows the AG alter to have such a different (and worse) response to channeling Blaine.
And I’m really scared of what this will mean for how she starts interacting with the campus from now on.
I guess this is why there is a sexy times comic of these two right now.
This is some Star Wars esque shit here.
3 points:
1) I read yesterday’s comic late, so I didn’t comment on that. Instead, I’m doing it here on a very small scale: inside information on Amazi-girl’s meaning, straight from the mouth of Willis. In one of his tumblrs, this interaction happened:
Q:”In saying that Sal saving her life was the second worst thing she’s ever done to her, is Amber implying she wanted to die as Amazi-girl?”
Willis: “That is not 100% what Amazi-Girl is implying, but the truth is in that vicinity.”
2) SPOILER:One of the comic previews is called “getting back in the saddle” and shows Dina opening the room door to Ethan and Mike. At first, I thought that was a segue to a Dina/Becky break-up, but now everything seems to indicate that Danny/Amber are going to be done soon.
3) Danny’s awesome. QED.
Okay, four things: Thank you thank you THANK YOU to Mr. Willis for making me aware of the Beasts of the Mesozoic ks. Those things are GORGEOUS, and I hope I can scrounge up the 380$ for the top package. SO GORGEOUS! Dina should purchase the final reward some 5 times, for full raptor packs.
“Getting back in the saddle” refers to Willis himself. He hadn’t drawn comics for a week or few.
Damn you, context! Foiled again!
Anyone else notice how this is a carbon copy of that scene with Obi-wan and Anakin?
Turn around and run Danny. Go screw that nice Jewish boy, he’s far more stable and less dangerous.
So, when does Sal stroll over to ask “Why all the yelling at the nice boy?”
I actually wish both of them fight for real. I want AG to feel the regret of putting someone in the hospital, just because she did something stupid years ago. I want AG to look herself in the mirror and realises she is no hero.
Oh, when she starts making a swing at Danny, of course.
Oh fuck, Amber is gonna take a swing at Danny isn’t she?
Sucha full swing in the view of Danny, huh? I, for one, would like some closure in a storyline. A full jump, rather than a step. Though this is their lives, and that rarely happens.
close.
Amazi-Girl will take that swing, and Amber will have to bear that guilt, along with everything else.
I’m not a (medical) doctor, but I think it’s safe to say at this point (or, heck, much MUCH earlier) that Amber is probably SEVERELY mentally ill. This comic demonstrates paranoia to add to the many she’s already demonstrated.
According to my extended research (Wikipedia), she seems to suffer from “Dissociative Identity Disorder,” “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” “Paranoia” (possibly to the point of a mild case of “Paranoid Schizophrenia,” though “Paranoid Personality Disorder” would seem more likely), and “Rage” (possibly a “Intermittent Explosive Disorder Type IV” diagnosis). On top of that, she seems to be prone to agoraphobic based panic attacks and bouts of self-loathing.
I mean, good grief, it just sucks to be Amber.
DID isn’t entirely supported by psychologists today, seeing how it only exists in case studies and a clear definition of diagnosis can’t be agreed upon. Many psychologists even believe that DID isn’t real at all, but that its existence in popular culture and in older psychologists’ list of possible disorders caused people with other disorders to adapt the traits from DID into their own behavior. No one is entirely certain.
PTSD seems to be the most likely diagnosis you could tag on her, with many of the other things you described being symptoms or caused behaviors due to said PTSD.
It takes a lot of denial to say DID does not exist – once you’ve been around people who are like that for any extended period of time.
Well, the nile is river in Egypt…
I was in a therapy group for abuse survivors and I saw 3 people go into their alters. It was terrifying to see how the primary adult personality shut down and how an alter would take over in an instant. The saddest was when a small, pre-verbal child was present and the therapist could do nothing to help the patient get back to a verbal state. It is a real thing.
people behaving as if they have DID is not proof that DID exists. Psychologists’ doubt is about what causes people to act like that–they don’t know whether DID is a separate illness, or if the symptoms manifest because, for example, someone has a different mental disorder, but sees someone portrayed with DID and begins acting like that because of this other disorder. I doubt any psychologist is saying that the symptoms associated with DID don’t exist, but whether those symptoms necessarily are because of DID is where doubt comes in.
That does not explain why I saw people doing that 20 years ago, when there was hardly even a word for it and descriptions were few and far between.
The “there’s no MPD/ DID because people read about it and somehow identify and act like it” starts to sound suspiciously like the “there is no sexual abuse of children, they just all read about it” line of reasoning.
No… no it doesn’t. The existence and diagnosis of disorders is a very different thing from sexual abuse. One has a concrete definition, the other is constantly changing. DID really only exists in case studies because the occurrence was so rare and unusual to psychologists of the day. If you saw these cases in those days then you’re in a very small minority, and it’s a shame no one documented them.
That being said, its discovery then led to multiple psychologists making false diagnoses, and patients adopting these behaviors since their psychologists prodded and pushed to “manifest” these dormant behaviors. This is why the disorder is so readily debated, and why its criterion changed so drastically from the DSM-IV to V, and why its name changed from multiple personality disorder.
We have to ask these questions and run studies and use the knowledge we have to determine if these disorders are real, societally influenced, or connected to other disorders. This isn’t denial, it’s further research into a disorder that was very recently uncovered, with the flagship case patient admitting that she faked symptoms. There is room to discuss how valid the disorder is.
If you are talking science here:
1) There are people who have developed several distinct personas who may or may not share memories as a way to cope with trauma. This is real, it happens.
I don’t really care how this is named as a psychological diagnosis.
2) There’s stuff around that is hard to scientifically work with because incident rates are low and you can never get a test sample that is large enough to be statistical relevant.
3) If psychologist got overexcited about the thing described as MPD, well, they are human and make mistakes.
To mind mind, MPD is an extrem development of a general human coping mechanism which is what may have lead to overdiagnosis.
Actually, the way Amber/Amazi-Girl lost the ability to switch voluntarily marks the difference in quality between MPD and not-MPD but having several personas.
4) There has been incredible progress in Trauma therapies over the last 25 years. This is good. Reexamining stuff that is somehow inconsistent is also good and is in large part what makes science work. So Piltdown men can be found out to be fakes and not hinder progress.
When it comes to people having several personas who switch involuntarily and sometimes do not share memories: they do exist. If the scientific community is not of one opinion of how to call this and what the correct classification is, this is of no matter to everyday life of people who are like this or the people close to them.
I think I get it. Amazi-Girl is like Javert and she hates Jean Saljean for saving her life.
“Damned if I’ll live in the debt of a thief!”
I was going to correct you on the character being called Jean Valjean, and then I realised it. Well-played, sir, well-played.
“Damned if I’ll yield at the end of the chase”
“I’ll spit his pity right back in his face”
*slow clap
Stay strong, Danny. You’re the only person who can help her…if she lets you.
That’s a really good line from Dan. Not at all true (hell-O!! Have you met the girl’s father?) but very well-crafted nonetheless.
Hopefully it would be true with the modifier ‘on campus’
Good job, Danny, standing up for yourself.
Now we just need to work on the ‘crying puppy’ face.
This whole sequence reminds me of the scene between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi on Mustafar at the end of Revenge of the Sith. Right after Anakin chokes Padme and then blames it on Obi-Wan.
Oh my god, it’s not just me who was hearing Amber’s lines in Anakin’s voice.
And Danny too! I’m totally getting an Obi-wan vibe from him. He’s practically saying “You have done that yourself!!”
Wonderbread Boy telling it like it is.
Amber could use some serious therapy sessions.
Oh, Amber has decided that there is a vast conspiracy against her, orchestrated by this girl who has no idea who she is. That will end well.
Future strip: Amber is caught dressing Sal’s unconscious body in a super-villain outfit while her internet following eggs her on.
Here’s hoping that she doesn’t look at the comment section.
I miss Shortpacked! when Amazi-girl was just a way for Amber to feel more confident about herself. Can’t have nice things anymore.
I think that was pre-Drama Tag too.
And here we thought this timeline would be one that ended with no one dying…
But everyone dies to the soggies. May soggies rule.
Said nothing about *personalities* “dying”. It appears that the sane version of Amber may have died.
Damn Danny right in the feels! I’m glad he said something.
And, of course, Amber is too wrapped up in her pity party to actually hear and understand what you are saying. Just let her continue, she’ll either end up in the hospital and maybe be forced to face her issues, or she’ll end up dead.
wow
appearently humans dont react without thinking much in the real world. i guess im a comic book character
wow, you people actually want things to go bad. you want amber to punch danny and for sal to come rescue im and probably for amber to die and then sal and danny and ethan will live happily and have hearts around their heads. i dont see why you hate amber so much, so maybe the only thing you dont try to be accepting of is mental illnesses, and when a character has flaws. and the ladt point is SO DAMN OBVIOUS every time someone does something wrong! these characters do things that everyone does and suddenly theyre evil incarnated. i dont understanf you people. yes, its mean to be shouting at danny like this. but cant you see that shes being very paranoid and irrational right now? shes not thinking, shes angry. just like when i shouted at mom for being ignorant about feminism. yes, this is not a good situation for danny or amber. so then instead of hoping that things go well, you hope that they dont. so that your ships can happen or something.
I dont think anyone wants Amber to die for ships to happen. Some people are unsympathetic towards where Amber is coming from, and that’s sad. But for the most part people want things to go “wrong” to initiate a breakup between Danny and Amber, since Amber clearly isn’t in the proper headspace to be in a committed relationship. She doesn’t need to stay with her boyfriend, she needs professional help. Danny would serve her much better as a friend she can rely on during her healing process rather than a commitment she has to work and struggle with.
Basically, as someone who as left a relationship due to not being mentally healthy enough to maintain it, I can say that that’s why I think it’d be best that she and Danny breakup.
i understand why this may look like emotional abuse. well, ive never been emotionally abused, but i can see that people who have might see it as that. but a thing that i have been and is, is paranoid. so obviously i will connect her questioning of the world as paranoia, not emotional abuse
I’m not sure today is emotional abuse on its own, but it certainly IS as a segue to yesterday’s “how dare you talk to her,” and, well, to plenty of their interactions.
I’m not sure if anyone WANTS her to punch Danny as much as EXPECTS that to happen. Either way, there is an… advantage, for lack of a better term, should that punch happen, and it’s that it would force a resolution. As long as all the abuse is emotional there’ll be people (not necessarily in the comments, thought I wouldn’t be surprised if Willis already had to ban a couple of folks) in the sort-of-real-world-simulation that is the strip that would say “oh, that’ll blow over” or “oh, Danny just needs to toughen up.” If she punches him, it’ll be much more obvious to everyone that Amber needs help (or/and that Danny needs to GTFO before her violence turns fatal), possibly even to her.
The reason for her actions is Paranoia. This does not stop her paranoia from making her emotionally abusive.
It’s emotional abuse. I’ve been through this myself too many times.
Yes. Amber has a mental illness. Yes, she needs therapy and she’s being irrational and paranoid right now. But that doesn’t mean we should excuse her behavior. Abusers can be irrational too. In fact, it’s one of many reasons why someone can be an abuser. Abusers might not even know they’re abusing their partners/friends/people they know.
responding to all of you cause you basically said the same thing. questoning him doesnt need to be emotional abuse. every time someone says something irrational because of their emotions, its emotional abuse? is danny abusing sal in the latest comic? is it only emotional abuse because amber and danny are a couple? heres the thing: only the victim can decide if its abuse. dont decide for him. the thing you should do in situations like this is to talk to the victim and see how they feel about it, which wr cant, and not just decide what theyre feeling for them. if emotional abuse is any time anyone can be angry about anything, then mothers are abused all the time by their children
My god the defeated and pained look in Dannie’s face at the end.
Danny, while you’re making good decisions, get a haircut and go after someone who’s nothing even remotely like Dorothy. I recommend Ethan.
Amber, while you’re making bad decisions, go and drink. Unlike Ruth, you have friends who aren’t codependent drinkers. This will lead to an intervention, and they will help you over your drinking problem. Then, we can all pretend you’re fixed.
Alternately, Amber and Billie can hook up on the rebound and it’ll be awful and hilarious.
Is it time to start the DOA deadpool? I have $5 on Walky getting terrible food poisoning from a taco stand.
To be completely fair, Sal has not seen anything else that Amazigirl has done: small-time helps around the campus, being nice to Danny and Joyce. All Sal knows about Amazigirl so far is rumors (which I doubt Sal cares much about) and the fact that suicidal jumpsuit here almost crashed into a bus.
Perhaps Danny could say some of the above paragraph. Ehhh?
Ehhhhhh? EEEEEEHHHHHHH?
A man can dream.
There was also that time Amazigirl jumped Sal and co. (and Malaya!) in a parking lot, fwiw.
Wait, I thought it was dying OUTSIDE your game that made you stay dead.
I’m gonna post up some green day lyrics if that’s alright seems like they fit a little too well
O therapy can you please fill the void am I retarded or am I just overjoyed nobody’s perfect and I stand accused for lack of a better word and that’s my best excuse
I don’t feel any shame I won’t apologize when there ain’t nowhere you can go running away from when you’ve been victimized tales of another broken home
WHY DOES NOBODY IN THIS GODDAMN COMIC USE THEIR GODDAMN WORDS AUUUUUUGHHHGHHGHH
COM-MUN-I-CA-TION
Danny is using words. Amazi-Girl doesn’t want to hear any of them.
That was some migthy fine verbal judo!
Having Arlington Road flashbacks here…let’s hope Amber doesn’t have a bomb on her. .__.
Amber: You turned him against me!
Sal: You have done that yourself!
Lightsaber battle ensues
THIS IS TOO ACCURATE
This is why I am a pain to argue against, because I demand that certain things be clearly defined.
What does she mean by turned against her?
Is he working to kill her?
Is he working to get her kicked out of school?
Is he working to stop her from getting a job?
Is he working to halt her Amazi-girl activities?
Is he working to bring about more crime so her workload increases?
Define: Turned against.
“Turned against” to Amber means “Sal said a thing to him and he didn’t immediately kick her in the face, therefore betrayal.”
I don’t have a problem, you have a problem!
And then BAM, smash cut to Riley eating cereal.
I see I’m not the only one who’s getting Revenge of the Sith vibes from this strip. Better be careful Amber, or this will end up with you de-limbed and on fire.
Wow. I knew Amber had problems, of course, but I didn’t expect her to go quite that far down paranoia alley that fast.