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(My mom’s cousin was an art teacher, and he did a pointillist painting once. “Once” being the operative word. It was a beautiful painting, but, in his words, “it took forever.” Who knows how many paintings Seurat would have turned out if he had pioneered expressionism instead of pointillism?)
I don’t know, maybe? All I know is I loaded the page, but no other comments. Figured if it was 1st post or not, least I could get some staring in. That’s what she wants, right?
I think it’s just that Carla’s created an amalgam of different girls on the floor, combining traits like “purple hair” and “gets into lots of scrapes” into one.
Which, side note, would be a pretty accurate description of me in middle school.
It does make sense that Carla mentions the Rachel with purple hair. She and dark haired Rachel walked in while Carla was helping Amber (this was all a bit after Becky’s dad showed up with a gun). Carla just recalled their positions in her memory incorrectly.
Ace detective means a very good detective. But ace also means asexual. So one might assume AnvilPro had meant that Carla is an ace ace detective, but decided on succinctness.
In Shortpacked!, Carla identified as a homoromantic asexual trans-chassis woman. Willis has stated that sexualities will remain consistent between DoA and Shortpacked!, with some changes to fit the different universe, so Carla is now a homoromantic asexual transwoman.
Other Rachel’s hair is a weird brownish-purplish-grayish-blueish color that’s very hard to pin down. It’s not that anyone has to get their eyes checked, it’s that they have to get their brains checked!
Why do you assume the soap dispenser has antibacterial stuff? When the place is so cheap they have only one working soap dispenser? I’d say it must be the cheapest Tesco Value shit (insert the culturally appropriate equivalent)
I used to think this, but I don’t think it does any more. Hand sanitizers in particular rely on high alcohol concentrations to kill bacteria, a completely different approach to antibiotics. In theory bacteria can develop resistance to the additives used in liquid soaps but bear in mind that we’re yet to see even partial resistance to the additives used in hospital based soaps and that, unlike antibiotics, these antiseptic agents don’t have to be safe to consume, so you can use stronger/more poisonous chemicals and concentrations without making them unsafe.
Having said that, you still shouldn’t routinely use antimicrobial soaps if you have soap and water available because it will probably cause problems with your symbiotic bacteria and *may* change your immune system’s functioning.
scrrrrrrrrrrrrape scrrrrrrrrrrrrape yeah thats the best way to say that word. its almost like a growl partway in the word. and if you can roll your r then even better.
it *somehow* doesn’t surprise me that carla confuses amber for other rachel (like carla cares about most the dorm anyway). It woud be ironic, and surprising, if other rachel was also in the same stabby, sinking boat as amber, and carla isn’t misremembering at all. Other rachel is so inconspicuous, she could get away with anything. :p
The weird thing about life is realizing that despite childhood, nobody cares about you.
Not in an hostile way.
Just most people are apathetic.
To the point where they’d barely register a blip if you died.
Your family and friends will care, but the world will barely even pause.
I don’t know, I think you’d be surprised how big the ripple effect of people who do, in fact, care can be. Now, care about the smaller stuff you may obsess over? Care or judge you to the extent that you imagine? Probably not.
And I suppose it also comes up in surprising ways, who among those ripples ends up really caring.
I’ve heard it said that:
When you’re young, you worry about what others are thinking about you.
When you’re older, you stop worrying what they’re thinking about you.
When you’re even older, you realize nobody was ever thinking about you in the first place.
Amber and her issues are very important — to herself. She’s having a hard time realizing how peripheral she is in other people’s lives. Most of us don’t spend a heck of a lot of time thinking about the peripheral people in our lives. We have a few friends and loved ones we think about more often, but even so, turn on a movie or start reading webcomics, and we’re not really thinking about them either. We’re too busy processing our own life experiences, moment by moment.
Yep. Depression Brain is really good at going “yeah, sure, 99 people said glowing things about you, but this 1 chicken strangler said you were weak, so now it’s time to despair about how everyone hates you for a month.”
It’s like a bigot. Only information that fits with what it wants to believe are considered worthwhile.
It’s not only bigots who do that. Everyone does that. (Halfway through The Influential Mind by Tali Sharot, and finding it depressing. Very worth reading, but depressing.)
Reading books about how the brain works is always disconcerting.
When I read that most of what we see is extrapolated by the mind from a rather low-res grany image (and there is a spot where we physically have no image of directly in front) it was like “really? The hell”.
It was driving me crazy so I went through the archives and it was the Rachel whose tag is “other rachel” who has the purple hair who came into the bathroom when Carla was helping Amber at the time.
I realize this was specified but it might help people who wish to look at the strip again with the tags.
i dont recall the name but didn’t carla like some sort of cartoon car character so maybe something closer to someone who drives a batmobile or super car?
Unless she’s completely lying, she didn’t even remember Amber was the one with the headwound. No reason to think she’s figured it out. “Get in a lot of scrapes” is just referring to the headwound and the stabby. The only two times she’s interacted with Amber.
The height difference between Amber and Carla is super evident in this one! Amber is a stabby halfling… so wait…Amber is Belkar from Order of the Stick! Stupid comparison…
she is currently my fave character. Although the fact i find red heads physically attractive and she seems fun as someone i would want to befriend but kinda be afraid to try makes it understandable.
Panels 1-2: I’m loving the running theme of the hall being unwilling to play the part of the sneering fearful populace for Amber’s insecurities and fears.
Because it’s a continuous undermining of Amber’s self-destructive worries, that they don’t view her as a monster or broken or like having mental health conditions is the beginning and end of the world.
And that’s why I think this hall will end up being a healing place for her, because she’s grown up most of her life in an abusive pressure pit that saw being “crazy” as one more thing deserving abuse.
Her finding a space to be “crazy”, to be erratic, to be flawed and broken when she needs to be, where that isn’t responded to with negativity but sympathy and love? I think that’ll be powerful when she lets it in and she’ll be more able to open up about her struggles and ask for help where she needs it.
Panel 3: And I love the sign of hope in her apologizing for assuming Carla’s disapproval, because it shows she understands that this paranoia she is feeling is overwriting who they really are and shows a disrespect to the validity of the feelings of the people reaching out.
Probably a key part of her knows she’s in a bad spiral. But I think with the hall continuing to undermine her narrative, it’ll help knock her out of it.
Panels 4-5: I don’t for a second buy that Carla really did believe Other Rachel was AG. She’s too smart, too aware of her surroundings, and too empathetic and emotionally vulnerable in the moment she offered to take care of Amber’s head wound.
Plus, she’s in the exact same position as that initial interaction.
And it’s part of why Carla is awesome. This was a conversation guaranteed to end up awkward, likely in awkward silence that would have made Amber even more hypervigilant and self-conscious about her own actions.
Instead, Carla tries to derail with several jokes, jumping all over the place to try and see what will help reach her.
And it’s likely me reaching here, but I can imagine there’s some empathy and remembering of being in trapped, stared at, hated situations and feeling everyone’s eyes on you and judging.
And that Carla is trying in her own way to say that there’s an exit on the other side of all of it.
Not to derail your point, but in case I missed something – Carla cleaned Amber’s head without knowing any relation to Amazi-girl, at least as far as she let on. Have any people other than Dorothy, Ethan, Dina and Danny associated the stabbing with the superhero, do you suppose?
Oh for fucks sakes Amber, I’m sorry to disappoint you but people aren’t lining up to mock you for putting someone in the hospital when they deserve to be in prison. Plus I think Carla despite the “I’m a asshole” act would ridicule anyone for feeling like a Alienated social outcast given some of the shit she’s probably put up with.
You really think Carla would ridicule anyone for suffering severe depression issues (not to mention the other mental health issues Amber is having)? Because last time I checked, she called the emergency on a suicidal Ruth.
Yeah no, ridiculing people for their mental health issues is on you. So don’t project that kind of behaviour on Carla.
Why is Amber under the impression that people wouldn’t like her for stabbing a rapist? Our society hates rape only slightly less than it hates murder, and men who rape women are only above men who rape children in the prison totem pole. Is she going to run into anyone who thinks Ryan *didn’t* deserve to get stabbed for brandishing a knife at at least several women?
Because the assumption that she is a monster who should be feared, hated and avoided underpins her entire self-image and is the cause of her DID in many ways. She’s subconsciously avoided ever having to test that assumption by remaining socially isolated and treated as crazy those who won’t abide by it (like her mother, Danny and Joyce).
The more she is failing to find people who are abiding by her assumption of how people are viewing her, the harder it is for her to continue to sustain her illusion of the bad person she honestly believes herself to be.
Plus, being a survivor of physical abuse and being DID, there’s also a lot of messaging about what you’ll become if you “give in to violence”, so having been violent (in order to save her own life and others) and enjoying that violence has raised all her fears that the messaging she’s received all her life is right.
That’s only because they just see that she stopped the rapist, not how she lost control and how she enjoyed it and how she kept going when there was no more need. If they really knew… [/Amber’s brain weasel]
I always thought that the run of the mill rapist (the one who rapes his wife, lover, …) is down on the prison totem pole because he got into prison for it and usually has not criminal connections, not because he raped.
And there will be people who will argue that she should have found a way to stop him without hurting him. (If they already managed to do so in a similar situation, it might be interesting to learn how they did it, but anyone who hasn’t is not worth listening to).
But Amber expected people to react badly to her anyway, just now life has handed her a reason which serves to illustrate this view.
Amber is one of those who will argue that she should have stopped him without hurting him – or at least without going all stabby.
And to some extent she’s right: You can see it in her expression in those scenes – she was in the same state she was in stabbing Sal or beating Blaine into a pulp and that’s not healthy for her.
This isn’t normal person in a desperate situation. This is a person with serious rage issues who’s also a ridiculously skilled fighter giving in to that rage when she didn’t need to.
Which isn’t something anyone else in the dorm knows – maybe Danny has a clue, from pulling her off Blaine. Or even Dorothy, from watching her then and from knowing her as AG.
Demonizing her for it certainly wouldn’t help, but neither does treating her like a hero for it. There is a problem and praising her for it isn’t good for her. It doesn’t help her deal with it.
It would be good if Amber, Dorothy and Becky would talk about the situation. Becky could provide the adoration, Amber the desperation about having lost control (which Becky wouldn’t care about) and Dorothy to hear it, confront her own fear and helplessness around the situation and start to relax around Amber again because when Amber herself knows she lost control, what she did becomes less scary to the friend who saw it. And then hopefully Dorothy could provide resources to get Amber some help.
Not gonna happen, though.
It won’t happen because Amber never actually explains that she and Amazi-Girl are two separate personalities. She keeps acting like they’re merely different identities she uses and then gets mad when people don’t understand and treat her the same.
Because to her, it doesn’t matter that she stabbed a rapist. What matters to her is that she stabbed someone. The fact that she made an effort to try to kill someone makes her believe she’s turning into a monster like her dad. Her fear of turning into Blaine completely overshadows any pride she might have for stopping Ryan.
AMBER: “Yes, I do. I’m secretly a costumed vigilante.” <- What Amber is not going to say.
That said, Carla isn’t an idiot and, frankly, it’s only Amber’s antisocial isolation that has stopped more people working out who is Amazi-Girl. Carla has at least some of the pieces to hand if she wants to solve this particular puzzle.
I’ve been all ’round this great big world
And I’ve stared at crazy girls
but I couldn’t wait to get back into scrapes
Back to the stabbiest girl in the world.
In somewhat off-topicness, I was browsing earlier strips, and I came across this one (in which Amber remarks that she has a 120th-level Paladin), and someone there made a comment asking, “what, is this thirty years in the future?” since apparently the WoW level cap at the time was in the 85-90 range.
Curious, I did some looking-up on what it is now, and apparently the current level cap in World of Warcraft stands at 110. Guess the sliding timescale is paying off with regards to that.
Yeah level cap got kicked to 110 in Legion expansion. Depending on how Blizzard tinkers with it the level cap will hit 120 within one or two next expansions.
Carla is friends with Sal. Did Amber really think she is bothered with purposefully violent girls?
It all kind of reminds me that comic where Deadpool stopped a girl from committing suicide by messing with her, making her evening fun and then sneak-delivering her to a hospital on a stolen motorcycle.
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Carla is wonderful.
Curse you for saying the same thing at the same time as me!!
Gravatars lend drastically different tones to these statements.
+1
I love her too, but… uh… is she going to put soap on her gloved hands?
This is why we all love Carla!
I like my girls like I like my knives
STABBY
fer scrapes, Japes, my iPad sucks since the lates update
Ack, fer criminy sake, Ana, Yer four minutes late. It’s past time t’ dock yer pay.
I can’t believe 2 people beat you to the punch Ana, you truly are slacking! Also gonna try some Gravroulette though i still love my Joyce face
Wow went from excited to Sarah lol.
Man, I hate Minimalism Mirrors. It so hard to tell if my hair’s straight, or just occupying the right amount of volume.
Can the university afford some good Cubism or Impressionism mirrors?
Too expensive. It can only afford Dadaist mirrors.
Someone tried to sell me one of those once, but I say it was just a piece of cardboard with “This is not your reflection” written on it.
Pointillist mirrors are the worst.
(My mom’s cousin was an art teacher, and he did a pointillist painting once. “Once” being the operative word. It was a beautiful painting, but, in his words, “it took forever.” Who knows how many paintings Seurat would have turned out if he had pioneered expressionism instead of pointillism?)
Ah yes, Pointillism takes forever. It took me two weeks to make one for an assignment in one of my college classes.
pixel mirrors?
That’s called a selfie camera.
Could it be? Have I gotten a comment in before anyone else?
No idea, so lets all stare at Stabby McStabstab…
Isn’t this basically a “first” comment
I don’t know, maybe? All I know is I loaded the page, but no other comments. Figured if it was 1st post or not, least I could get some staring in. That’s what she wants, right?
carla, dont stare.
But I’m not Carla…
what about observe?
I genuinely don’t recall Amber having purple hair. I remember the “cleaning the head wound” bit, but not the color change.
That’s because purple hair girl is anouther character who also lives on this floor.
I think it’s just that Carla’s created an amalgam of different girls on the floor, combining traits like “purple hair” and “gets into lots of scrapes” into one.
Which, side note, would be a pretty accurate description of me in middle school.
*STARES*
…Hi
You were an amalgam of different girls on Carla’s floor?
She’s thinking of Other Rachel. A few of the girls in the dorm thought she might be Amazi-Girl.
It does make sense that Carla mentions the Rachel with purple hair. She and dark haired Rachel walked in while Carla was helping Amber (this was all a bit after Becky’s dad showed up with a gun). Carla just recalled their positions in her memory incorrectly.
Other Rachel came in while Carla was cleaning Amber’s head wound.
Dagnabbit http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/necks/
Pretty sure it’s less “Other Rachel walked in at the same time” and more “my memory does not destinguish between kinda-short, kinda-chubby girls.”
Yep, also, “and bespectacled”.
Can someone as tall as Carla tell the difference between her hallmates who are, say, 5’2″ and 5’6″. (I am crap at that particular skill.)
I’m just staring at the first two panels. Carla doesn’t seem to move, the camera doesn’t seem to move, but yet her reflection moves.
Carla is possessed by a mischief demon. Thus, her reflection moves without her, animated by the awesome spirit of pranks within.
I assumed it was something like that.
Makes sense, that’s also why her reflection decided to keep the text on her top readable from left to right instead of mirrored.
Maybe that’s her superpower. Besides being awesome of course.
Carla is an ace detective
aaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
did you just
Yes they did. And it was awesome.
That pun was trans-cendent.
I am very tired. I posted that about an hour ago after work. What pun did I make?
Oh my god, that was an accidental pun? That makes it even better.
ok maybe i am blind. what pun?
Carla’s ace, this is known. And she is a detective per Anvil’s comment, which makes her…an ace detective.
Lol, that is a good pun. I wish it was intentional
Ace detective means a very good detective. But ace also means asexual. So one might assume AnvilPro had meant that Carla is an ace ace detective, but decided on succinctness.
I actually wasn’t aware she was asexual, or that ace was short term for that. I knew she was transgender, but that’s about it. Today I Learned.
In Shortpacked!, Carla identified as a homoromantic asexual trans-chassis woman. Willis has stated that sexualities will remain consistent between DoA and Shortpacked!, with some changes to fit the different universe, so Carla is now a homoromantic asexual transwoman.
Relevant comic: http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=1994
who in the floor has purple hair?
Other Rachel.
Rachel has blue hair, either that or somebody here needs their eyes check for color blindness and it’s sure not me !
Other Rachel’s hair is a weird brownish-purplish-grayish-blueish color that’s very hard to pin down. It’s not that anyone has to get their eyes checked, it’s that they have to get their brains checked!
It’s just phone hair.
You’re thinking of Mandy. She’s the one with blueish/cyan hair. Other Rachel’s hair is very much purple
Turns out it is you! Surprise!
Everyone, once Carla’s latest prank takes effect.
*plays Melissa Etheridge’s “I’m The Only One” on the hacked Muzak*
Carla once again showcasing her stellar social skills lol
Also never use soap dispensers. Anti bacterial soap is bad for you.
It’s bad for everyone. Don’t get me started on hand sanitizer…
Normal handsoap is fine, though.
Why do you assume the soap dispenser has antibacterial stuff? When the place is so cheap they have only one working soap dispenser? I’d say it must be the cheapest Tesco Value shit (insert the culturally appropriate equivalent)
Our university stopped using antibacterial soap because it contributes to resistant bacteria. It should only be used in a clinical setting.
I used to think this, but I don’t think it does any more. Hand sanitizers in particular rely on high alcohol concentrations to kill bacteria, a completely different approach to antibiotics. In theory bacteria can develop resistance to the additives used in liquid soaps but bear in mind that we’re yet to see even partial resistance to the additives used in hospital based soaps and that, unlike antibiotics, these antiseptic agents don’t have to be safe to consume, so you can use stronger/more poisonous chemicals and concentrations without making them unsafe.
Having said that, you still shouldn’t routinely use antimicrobial soaps if you have soap and water available because it will probably cause problems with your symbiotic bacteria and *may* change your immune system’s functioning.
scrrrrrrrrrrrrape scrrrrrrrrrrrrape yeah thats the best way to say that word. its almost like a growl partway in the word. and if you can roll your r then even better.
Say it long enough and then it starts sounding like “‘s grapes”
.
.
.
I may or may not be really hungry right now.
awww that poor penguin.
Amber’s been known to have many a bout of fisticuffs yes.
it *somehow* doesn’t surprise me that carla confuses amber for other rachel (like carla cares about most the dorm anyway). It woud be ironic, and surprising, if other rachel was also in the same stabby, sinking boat as amber, and carla isn’t misremembering at all. Other rachel is so inconspicuous, she could get away with anything. :p
Headcanon.
Not necessarily stabby, but at least that Carla cleaned her head wound too.
The weird thing about life is realizing that despite childhood, nobody cares about you.
Not in an hostile way.
Just most people are apathetic.
To the point where they’d barely register a blip if you died.
Your family and friends will care, but the world will barely even pause.
Amber.
This works in the positive direction too.
Nobody cares.
It’s weird.
But it’s oddly normal.
I don’t know, I think you’d be surprised how big the ripple effect of people who do, in fact, care can be. Now, care about the smaller stuff you may obsess over? Care or judge you to the extent that you imagine? Probably not.
And I suppose it also comes up in surprising ways, who among those ripples ends up really caring.
Just to ramble a bit.
I’ve heard it said that:
When you’re young, you worry about what others are thinking about you.
When you’re older, you stop worrying what they’re thinking about you.
When you’re even older, you realize nobody was ever thinking about you in the first place.
Amber and her issues are very important — to herself. She’s having a hard time realizing how peripheral she is in other people’s lives. Most of us don’t spend a heck of a lot of time thinking about the peripheral people in our lives. We have a few friends and loved ones we think about more often, but even so, turn on a movie or start reading webcomics, and we’re not really thinking about them either. We’re too busy processing our own life experiences, moment by moment.
Eat at Arby’s.
Or don’t. We don’t care, neither will anyone else.
If Carla is waiting to wash her hands, why is she wearing gloves?
She only needs to wash her fingers. She can keep the gloves on.
Because the blood is on the gloves and so both need to be washed and… listen, just don’t worry about it and give her a heads up if the cops show up.
Amber’s gonna find out that a lot of people in her hall either don’t care or actually approve of her stabbing Ryan in self-defence.
and will ignore that, because everyone should hate her like she hates herself, and they would if they knew the whole story.
(it’s never your self-assessment that’s wrong. that’s impossible. that would mean part of your brain is lying to you.)
Poor Amber. She’s just not gonna get the hate she thinks she deserves.
Yep. Depression Brain is really good at going “yeah, sure, 99 people said glowing things about you, but this 1 chicken strangler said you were weak, so now it’s time to despair about how everyone hates you for a month.”
It’s like a bigot. Only information that fits with what it wants to believe are considered worthwhile.
It’s not only bigots who do that. Everyone does that. (Halfway through The Influential Mind by Tali Sharot, and finding it depressing. Very worth reading, but depressing.)
Reading books about how the brain works is always disconcerting.
When I read that most of what we see is extrapolated by the mind from a rather low-res grany image (and there is a spot where we physically have no image of directly in front) it was like “really? The hell”.
Yeah well, I like saying the phrase, “Next question.”
It was driving me crazy so I went through the archives and it was the Rachel whose tag is “other rachel” who has the purple hair who came into the bathroom when Carla was helping Amber at the time.
I realize this was specified but it might help people who wish to look at the strip again with the tags.
It was still driving me nuts though.
and the space turns into a dash for the tag url… and the incident in question was http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/necks/
and the head wound was from rescuing becky.
…that hair still doesn’t look purple on my monitor. I’m not sure what colour to call it. greyish brown?
Perhaps mauve
Or dark mauve. I’ma go with that.
Purple would be this, not?
http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=1929
!!! The friend-ship I wanted! It’s happening!
Yes! Will we finally get the Marvelous team-up of Amazi-Girl and Spider-Carla? (Or Schtickshift perhaps?)
i dont recall the name but didn’t carla like some sort of cartoon car character so maybe something closer to someone who drives a batmobile or super car?
What, you mean like some sort of, oh what’s the term, some kind of … ultra …. car, like, thing?
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
But hang on, isn’t Amber U-[gets squished into paste by a gigantic bare foot with MODERATOR tatooed on it.]
To the tune of a Dr. Seuss march!
Wow, she just admitted being AmaziGirl to Carla withot a second thought.
By now, I’m pretty sure she’s past the point of secret identities.
Hm? No she didn’t? She was Amber when Carla cleaned her head wound.
How? Amber was the one Carla patched up and the one who stabbed Ryan.
I mean, she’s definitely figured it out – but Amber admitted nothing.
What makes you think she’s figured it out?
Just her demeanour when she says ‘You like getting into a lot of scrapes, do you? …Not that I care, of course.’
Unless she’s completely lying, she didn’t even remember Amber was the one with the headwound. No reason to think she’s figured it out. “Get in a lot of scrapes” is just referring to the headwound and the stabby. The only two times she’s interacted with Amber.
I just thought that, once Amber reminded her WHO had the head wound, she figured 1+1 = 2.
I identify with Carla. I too really enjoy the phrase “getting into scrapes”
….There’s a euphemism in here and I’m going to find out what it is.
The difficulty lies in pulling out.
“No, wait, it was the blonde nerd the the clipboard. Which one of them is you again?”
I take for granted that there are four doppelgangers in this comic with different hair colors and it’s the most hilarious thing.
Five!
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/reporter/
Oh I counted Rose among the four. Unless I’m missing another?
…in order to save face and cling to the illusion that I can count, I will pretend to have counted Amber and Amazi-girl as separate people.
Aha, that’s what I thought (with AmaziGirl).
The height difference between Amber and Carla is super evident in this one! Amber is a stabby halfling… so wait…Amber is Belkar from Order of the Stick! Stupid comparison…
Thanks to Photoshop’s ruler tool and some basic mathematics: If Amber is (as stated) 5’2″ tall, then Carla is approximately 6’1″.
And she’s not even on her skates. Talk about a Giant Woman!
She’s kind of sensitive about that.
I just love Carla so friggin much.
she is currently my fave character. Although the fact i find red heads physically attractive and she seems fun as someone i would want to befriend but kinda be afraid to try makes it understandable.
Comic Reactions:
Carla is joy.
Panels 1-2: I’m loving the running theme of the hall being unwilling to play the part of the sneering fearful populace for Amber’s insecurities and fears.
Because it’s a continuous undermining of Amber’s self-destructive worries, that they don’t view her as a monster or broken or like having mental health conditions is the beginning and end of the world.
And that’s why I think this hall will end up being a healing place for her, because she’s grown up most of her life in an abusive pressure pit that saw being “crazy” as one more thing deserving abuse.
Her finding a space to be “crazy”, to be erratic, to be flawed and broken when she needs to be, where that isn’t responded to with negativity but sympathy and love? I think that’ll be powerful when she lets it in and she’ll be more able to open up about her struggles and ask for help where she needs it.
Panel 3: And I love the sign of hope in her apologizing for assuming Carla’s disapproval, because it shows she understands that this paranoia she is feeling is overwriting who they really are and shows a disrespect to the validity of the feelings of the people reaching out.
Probably a key part of her knows she’s in a bad spiral. But I think with the hall continuing to undermine her narrative, it’ll help knock her out of it.
Panels 4-5: I don’t for a second buy that Carla really did believe Other Rachel was AG. She’s too smart, too aware of her surroundings, and too empathetic and emotionally vulnerable in the moment she offered to take care of Amber’s head wound.
Plus, she’s in the exact same position as that initial interaction.
And it’s part of why Carla is awesome. This was a conversation guaranteed to end up awkward, likely in awkward silence that would have made Amber even more hypervigilant and self-conscious about her own actions.
Instead, Carla tries to derail with several jokes, jumping all over the place to try and see what will help reach her.
And it’s likely me reaching here, but I can imagine there’s some empathy and remembering of being in trapped, stared at, hated situations and feeling everyone’s eyes on you and judging.
And that Carla is trying in her own way to say that there’s an exit on the other side of all of it.
And that’s beautiful.
Not to derail your point, but in case I missed something – Carla cleaned Amber’s head without knowing any relation to Amazi-girl, at least as far as she let on. Have any people other than Dorothy, Ethan, Dina and Danny associated the stabbing with the superhero, do you suppose?
I’m not sure why they would. Amber was the victim, not the attacker. And Amazi-Girl doesn’t do a lot of stabbing.
I don’t see any obvious reason they’d link those.
Mike, but only if he had the same prior knowledge as Ethan.
Oh for fucks sakes Amber, I’m sorry to disappoint you but people aren’t lining up to mock you for putting someone in the hospital when they deserve to be in prison. Plus I think Carla despite the “I’m a asshole” act would ridicule anyone for feeling like a Alienated social outcast given some of the shit she’s probably put up with.
You really think Carla would ridicule anyone for suffering severe depression issues (not to mention the other mental health issues Amber is having)? Because last time I checked, she called the emergency on a suicidal Ruth.
Yeah no, ridiculing people for their mental health issues is on you. So don’t project that kind of behaviour on Carla.
I’m guessing there was a typo and they meant “wouldn’t ridicule.” It fits better with the rest of the post.
Fits better with the rest of the sentence, even.
Carla really doesn’t seem like the sort to begrudge other people feeling bad about something simply because she’s been through worse
“Wouldn’t”
I, too, enjoy saying cool-sounding phrases
Why is Amber under the impression that people wouldn’t like her for stabbing a rapist? Our society hates rape only slightly less than it hates murder, and men who rape women are only above men who rape children in the prison totem pole. Is she going to run into anyone who thinks Ryan *didn’t* deserve to get stabbed for brandishing a knife at at least several women?
Because the assumption that she is a monster who should be feared, hated and avoided underpins her entire self-image and is the cause of her DID in many ways. She’s subconsciously avoided ever having to test that assumption by remaining socially isolated and treated as crazy those who won’t abide by it (like her mother, Danny and Joyce).
The more she is failing to find people who are abiding by her assumption of how people are viewing her, the harder it is for her to continue to sustain her illusion of the bad person she honestly believes herself to be.
Plus, being a survivor of physical abuse and being DID, there’s also a lot of messaging about what you’ll become if you “give in to violence”, so having been violent (in order to save her own life and others) and enjoying that violence has raised all her fears that the messaging she’s received all her life is right.
That’s only because they just see that she stopped the rapist, not how she lost control and how she enjoyed it and how she kept going when there was no more need. If they really knew… [/Amber’s brain weasel]
I always thought that the run of the mill rapist (the one who rapes his wife, lover, …) is down on the prison totem pole because he got into prison for it and usually has not criminal connections, not because he raped.
And there will be people who will argue that she should have found a way to stop him without hurting him. (If they already managed to do so in a similar situation, it might be interesting to learn how they did it, but anyone who hasn’t is not worth listening to).
But Amber expected people to react badly to her anyway, just now life has handed her a reason which serves to illustrate this view.
Amber is one of those who will argue that she should have stopped him without hurting him – or at least without going all stabby.
And to some extent she’s right: You can see it in her expression in those scenes – she was in the same state she was in stabbing Sal or beating Blaine into a pulp and that’s not healthy for her.
This isn’t normal person in a desperate situation. This is a person with serious rage issues who’s also a ridiculously skilled fighter giving in to that rage when she didn’t need to.
Which isn’t something anyone else in the dorm knows – maybe Danny has a clue, from pulling her off Blaine. Or even Dorothy, from watching her then and from knowing her as AG.
Demonizing her for it certainly wouldn’t help, but neither does treating her like a hero for it. There is a problem and praising her for it isn’t good for her. It doesn’t help her deal with it.
It would be good if Amber, Dorothy and Becky would talk about the situation. Becky could provide the adoration, Amber the desperation about having lost control (which Becky wouldn’t care about) and Dorothy to hear it, confront her own fear and helplessness around the situation and start to relax around Amber again because when Amber herself knows she lost control, what she did becomes less scary to the friend who saw it. And then hopefully Dorothy could provide resources to get Amber some help.
Not gonna happen, though.
It won’t happen because Amber never actually explains that she and Amazi-Girl are two separate personalities. She keeps acting like they’re merely different identities she uses and then gets mad when people don’t understand and treat her the same.
well, not always mad but some flavor of upset
Because to her, it doesn’t matter that she stabbed a rapist. What matters to her is that she stabbed someone. The fact that she made an effort to try to kill someone makes her believe she’s turning into a monster like her dad. Her fear of turning into Blaine completely overshadows any pride she might have for stopping Ryan.
We’ve had people in this forum (not necessarily this page) that defended him and condemned Joyce and Sarah for using violence against him.
i choose to believe carla is getting her romantic (ace) flirt on.
“Girls are cute.” – Carla Rutten
She should know.
AMBER: “Yes, I do. I’m secretly a costumed vigilante.” <- What Amber is not going to say.
That said, Carla isn’t an idiot and, frankly, it’s only Amber’s antisocial isolation that has stopped more people working out who is Amazi-Girl. Carla has at least some of the pieces to hand if she wants to solve this particular puzzle.
hooray, it’s the return of Crazy Stabby Girl !!
Who lives without hope,
Can just barely cope,
She thinks you’re a dope,
Stabby !!
(apologies to My Fair Lady’s “Show me”)
Stabby Girl has a nice ring to it.
Stabby Girl, Stab…by Girl,
Why are creeps fighting you?
Stabby Girl, Stabby Girl,
It’s not your fault.
Hey there, Stabby Girl
Walking down the street so fancy-free
I’ve been all ’round this great big world
And I’ve stared at crazy girls
but I couldn’t wait to get back into scrapes
Back to the stabbiest girl in the world.
I wish they all could be crazy stabby girl…
Stabby Girl, please look at me
Stabby Girl, what do you see?
We’ll travel round the world,
Just you and me, Stabby Girl
In somewhat off-topicness, I was browsing earlier strips, and I came across this one (in which Amber remarks that she has a 120th-level Paladin), and someone there made a comment asking, “what, is this thirty years in the future?” since apparently the WoW level cap at the time was in the 85-90 range.
Curious, I did some looking-up on what it is now, and apparently the current level cap in World of Warcraft stands at 110. Guess the sliding timescale is paying off with regards to that.
Yeah level cap got kicked to 110 in Legion expansion. Depending on how Blizzard tinkers with it the level cap will hit 120 within one or two next expansions.
Carla is friends with Sal. Did Amber really think she is bothered with purposefully violent girls?
It all kind of reminds me that comic where Deadpool stopped a girl from committing suicide by messing with her, making her evening fun and then sneak-delivering her to a hospital on a stolen motorcycle.
…Purple-haired?…
Other Rachel changes her hair color at intervals
Ah, the total narcissism of anxiety.
Everyone’s looking at me! Staring at me, judging me!
pfft, no. they’re all mostly focused on themselves, same as you. all of us in our own little bubbles that occasionally touch…
She gets into scrapes
She likes wearing capes
Peels rapists like grapes
Stabby !!
Scrapes scrapes scrapes scrapes…
…and yet the title is “Soap”. o.ô
Smock smock smock smock smock!
Carla you are constantly delightful.
Even better than Georgy Girl for Stabby Girl music
Unrelated, but in this strip below, is that Rachel laughing at the idea that Carla likes Ruth? Seems out of character for her now. Or maybe we’re just seeing a bad week for her?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/sweet/
She also remembers that Carla is an asshole in this strip before that: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/suspects/
So maybe it’s just Rachel laughing at two people she doesn’t like getting together.
I never read that as hostility from Rachel. More like “Oh right, you’re supposed to be an asshole. We forget to play along. “
I concur, especially as (I think) they’re both sophs.
Also on the Carla scale is “acting more owned”, again, playing along.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/framework/
Carla, never change.
Trust me Amber, getting Carla’s admiration is like getting a cat’s attention: it’s a big freakin’ deal!
Wow carla is really tall.
Kind of…but Amber’s also fairly short.