And the fact that she isn’t sure which of her identities was upset with Danny is pretty good evidence that she doesn’t actually have seperate personalities.
But she could be starting to form them. And then one of her personalities just leaked into the other at the wrong moment, which seems to happen to her a lot. Which actually could indicate that she’s losing control over her personalities, and gets confused because she can’t decide when one or the other is going to show up anymore.
One being that she (Amber) doesn’t actually remember breaking up with him. That the disassociation has gone far enough that they’re not fully sharing memories.
Another, as Cerberus suggested elsewhere, that the Amazi-Girl “golden alter”, who is supposed to be the good one is pushing the blame for her own bad actions onto Amber, who’s well conditioned by Blaine to accept it.
Neither of these are good. Both show her condition worsening.
It may or may not be relevant to the context of this comic, since Willis is free to make the rules whatever he wants in his fictional world, but it is worth noting that there is a fair degree of doubt within the psychiatric community that “multiple personalities” or “disassociative identity disorder” is even a real condition. It has no consistent set of symptoms, no reliable treatment criteria, and may often be something completely different, if not always, such as malingering (faking a disorder for some secondary objective) or factitious disorder (faking a disorder for attention in itself). A lot of the most widely known cases of it in popular cultural awareness have been cast into severe doubt by further investigation (clinicians fell victim to suggestive techniques, or were outright fraudulent themselves).
In any case, I suspect that Amber doesn’t have even a Hollywood-edition of DID. She adopted the Amazi-Girl persona consciously, in an attempt to deal with her trauma (both the lifelong abuse of her father, and the actual criminal incident involving Sal). The barriers she places between Amber and “Amazi-Girl” are deliberate ones, not involuntary – she’s trying to create a “safe” outlet for her anger and violent urges that keeps them separate from her “real” self. She’s simply encountering the challenges that come with attempting to lead a double life: a scenario that spies, bigamists, and superheroes often must confront.
I bet he ends with, ” You need professional help and if you don’t get some I’ll tell the school!” … then Amazi-Girl takes over and kills him. The rest of the comic deals with the wacky hijinks of a crazy wackjob in a costume trying to get away with it but instead slowly increasing the body count as her alter-ego cowers from the facts.
I recommend Palpatine’s Day, where you murder every Jedi in existence, including the kids, and then form an abusive father-figure relationship with an abusive father who turned abusive out of love.
The screen of mine broke after it fell down and it’s now being repaired, so 2-3 weeks without Pokémon Go for me as well.
It’s such a straaaaaaange feeling, passing the train station or the other landmarks without checking which team holds the gyms at the moment o_o’
I strongly disagree. Once you’ve broken up, you don’t get to weigh in and scream at someone about their life choices. She broke up with him. Whatever she does after that is really none of his business.
In addition, he is basing his anger off a small interaction he witnessed, instead of actually having the full story.
You mean just like she did when she broke up to him? I agree that he gets no say in what she does now, but I think his anger seeing her being cordial with someone she dumped him for interacting with is justified.
He’s angry and he can’t really be expected not to be, but he’s still pretty calm and not even actually yelling. Much, much less than she was when she broke up with him.
She attempted to emotionally blackmail him into breaking off his friendship with Sal. That doesn’t actually stop having happened just because he didn’t give in and she followed through on the threat. The fact that the part of the picture he can see has changed from “She hates Sal” to “She hates seeing me with Sal, who she doesn’t see anything wrong with as a person” doesn’t look good on her, particularly if he (wrongly, but reasonably) assumes the latter was true all along.
yay!! Danny’s not being a doormat for Amber/Amazi-Girl to stomp on!! Amazi-Girl is starting to merge with Amber!! HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!! This is the best comic ever, it’s so satisfying. <3
Well, there’s a distinct possibility that Danny will now become cartoonishly enraged, so that part is going to be kinda painful and sad, but it will *end* well. Communication, no matter how angry and violent and hurtful at the time, is usually good.
Um, I wouldn’t say it is usually good regardless of how ‘angry, violent and hurtful’ it is, I can accept it sometimes being hurtful (being told you’ve done something wrong can be hurtful regardless of how nice someone says it to you), but being ‘angry’ and ‘violent’ about it usually kills the communication by turning the other person defensive and if they turn defensive and shut you out, it isn’t good or effective.
Communication only works for as long as the other person is willing to listen.
Makes for satisfying movie scenes though. Like in Hidden Figures, when she finally yells at her boss that it takes her 40 minutes to go to the colored restrooms every day. Yelling in public like that is pretty violent, and she was really angry. But her boss heard her and let her use the whites only restrooms anyway after she exploded. Not sure how well that works out in real life, but it works if you are the main character in a movie.
In real life, she simply used the white-only restrooms from the start. She didn’t need her boss’s permission or anything. So in real life, he never got to do the white-male-hero thing of knocking down the “Colored” sign.
I don’t think that’s a White Male Hero thing. White Male Hero is when the colored people are suffering from a problem that only the White Male Protag can solve simply because he is better/smarter/more advanced/more white, and is a big problem trope in older fiction ex. Robinson Crusoe.
In this case it’s more of a White Male Villain realizing that oh shit, I fucked up, and now it’s my responsibility to fix it. Taking responsibility doesn’t make you a hero. It doesn’t mean you’re naturally smarter or more advanced or innately better than other people. It means you recognize that others are suffering and take steps to do your part to help.
Calling every white guy who helps non-white people in a movie a “White-male-hero” is ignoring the core of the message; that we all have to do what it takes to end racism, and that participating in racist systems is tacitly supporting what they represent, regardless of what you actually personally believe about race.
I think this is something that left-wing people often forget in their zeal to support non-white non-male heroes. We have those, and they’re great, but there’s also this really racist and (dare I say it) problematic attitude that as white people, we don’t really have to do anything besides get really happy when minorities or women do something great.
I wouldn’t call it a White Male Hero thing, but the mechanic that Chris mentioned is definitely there in media (can’t speak for the movie, haven’t seen it). It doesn’t have to be a “villain,” either—any white character who becomes “aware” of injustice qualifies (by “aware,” I mean that it registers to the character that “[X] is wrong and I have to do something about it”). Then, when the white character does some tiny action that puts them at the level of “basic human decency,” they get all the Karma points and cheap applause—I wouldn’t call it heroism so much as benefiting from an *extremely* low bar. Lower expectations enough, and eventually anyone who doesn’t go out of their way to kick puppies can look good.
I say “white,” but the trope is pretty flexible as far as that’s concerned. If both characters are white, it’s probably a man becoming not-an-asshole to a woman, etc.
Either way, you get maximum audience satisfaction for minimal effort, on the part of both the author and the character.
BigGuy, I think you’re referring to the “Mighty Whitey” trope (on my phone and don’t know how to link) that can be found on TVTropes.org
Well, it’s halfway between. In the movie’s version, she is indeed suffering from a problem – no “Colored” restrooms in her building. And only a white male can solve it – by knocking down the sign and changing the policy. Which, given the context, is kind of a heroic act. He’s standing up to enforce a change on every other white person: now you have to have dark-skinned people in your restroom!
In real life, she changed the policy all by herself. She didn’t need anyone to rescue her from her predicament, or to help her tell the white people: Starting now, you’re going to have Colored people using your toilets and sinks and sharing your space, and if you don’t like it you can fire me. Doing that was really gutsy and heroic, and the move didn’t show it at all. In the movie, she just took what the white people were willing to give her.
Chris, when I watched that scene I thought to myself more “oh hey, that’s nice, now he knows that it sucks when people don’t like you for being black” not. “yay! some white guy saved her, white men are so great!” and I don’t think it was meant to be. In this case you are criticizing his character for being white and male, and I do think that is a little unfair.
He isn’t praised for saving her, he’s praised for noticing that her life sucks. And that’s a good thing. Noticing that people are suffering is a god thing as long as it’s not “white man’s burden” -ish.
I agree with BigGuy. And I also agree with kkiten that it’s satisfied, but I disagree that yelling is inherently violent. It’s important to differentiate between speaking out and breaking someone down; context matters.
Merging….is not really the way this sort of thing works. “Integration” in this context means they’re communicating, sharing memories, and more or less working together towards a common goal (albeit, with different understandings, interpretations, and feelings about that goal, due to being different alters). At least, if I’m understanding DID correctly. Anybody want to correct me if I’m wrong?
I’m not at all sure this scene means that Amazi-Girl is starting to merge with Amber. I read it more as Amber actually being unsure, which suggests the split is becoming worse – they’re not fully sharing memories anymore.
I think she still remembers, but I don’t think she can as easily tell the line between her and Amazi-Girl. I can never tell if she’s full on creating an alternate personality, because Amber describes Amaz-Girl as her outlet for feelings she isn’t comfortable with, and they both share memories. Even Amber is talking her and describing Amazi-Girl being friends with Sal as anxiety inducing, and she did explain to Danny what Amazi-Girl did to save Becky. That indicates to me that she still has memory functions while Amazi-Girl.
It’s definitely clear that they have shared memory. OTOH, it’s also seems clear that the disassociation is growing. The gap between the two seemed very thin at the start of the semester and much more distinct now.
Which has me wondering if they’re getting to the point of hiding things from each other. Though, as you say, Amber does know AG’s been friendly with Sal, so it’s clear she’s still getting some memory at least.
Amber has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to fly into a rage and lash out. That’s why Amazi-Girl was created in the first place. It was Amber who stabbed Sal, Amber who flipped the table on Ethan, Amber who punched out her dad and later hospitalised him and Amber who snapped and insulted Danny for kissing her in the wrong identity.
You’re breaking Superhero 101. Bruce Wayne does -not- stand on the frot steps of Wayne Manor in half a Batman outfit talking to some ex-lover. Protect the alter-ego!
Bruce Wayne hasn’t stood anywhere since that tragic knight. The Batman stands for him until senseless crime is completely gone from his world. For then, and only then, can Bruce stand up and walk out of the shadows.
Amber has never been as well-adjusted and able to direct her actions as Bruce Wayne. Just consider what this means: Amazi-Girl makes Batman look sane and stable.
Gods. I never realized that. That is both hilarious and horrible. The idea that someone who isn’t a costumed murderer escaped from an asylum can actually have it less together that Bruce “Tied for Biggest Dumpster Fire in the DC Multiverse” Wayne is terrifying (He’s tied with John Constantine, and man who, with full knowledge of what he was doing, once snorted the ashes of Santa Claus like cocaine).
Like BBCC says, the speech bubbles don’t tell them apart. But in a comic where both are tagged, you can look at the cheeks. Amber blushes and Amazi-girl does not.
I think Danny being upset about this is quite reasonable, since it was Amazi-Girl who dumped him for befriending Sal, and now AG is friends with her too.
For once, I have to agree with Danny; it is hard to figure out. It seems like Amber is learning her personalities aren’t that separated after all, but she responds by trying to make her boundaries wider, and that’s just opening even more problems. Also, cartoonishly enraged Danny makes me think of smoke coming out of his ears while speaking angrish – he just doesn’t have it in him 😛
I feel like this conversation is going to end with Danny getting enough of a grasp on what’s happening with Amber to suggest she get some counseling and her agreeing. Or maybe that’s just what I really hope will happen.
I don’t now if it’s been decided or not that dissociative identity disorder is exactly what she has but regardless she needs help.
It’s inclusion in the DSM is quite controversial, however. As my grandmother, a teacher of child psychiatry once told me, “If you don’t like your diagnosis, don’t worry, they’ll change the criteria.”
Tell me off if Im overstepping boundaries, but how do you interpret it? Do you think of yourself as one Me with two personalities or identities, or two Mes? I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I need some more information to clarify why my professors were so snarky about the existence of DID. It’s a European university, and they told us 80-90% of DID cases are diagnosed in the US, and there was a general “I’ll believe it when I see someone with it” mentality. So I’m here, asking what it is like in person
Well, first of all, this should come with a giant grain of salt that I can only speak to my personal experiences and that this is not going to be the experience for all DID folks, especially as I’ve been relatively integrated since a very young age, so didn’t have to deal with as much of the pain of having fragmented memories or the like.
But, for me, my alters are distinct individuals, in that each one has emotional reactions to things, personal history and internal life, is capable of keeping secrets from the others, and has a unique way of interacting with things. Each one is also capable of growing and of being hurt. And each one has their own unique properties.
Who I am often feels like a gestalt of them, especially as I’ve been integrated for a long time, so they tend to work together to make up who I am, but there are definitely ways I interact with the world where one particular alter is clearly the most prominent alter in response and this directly affects my interactions with others as there are times when I’m much more likely to throw myself into dangerous resistance and fighting back, times when I’m much more likely to collapse into self-loathing despair and self-doubt, times when I’m more likely to be silly to the point of potentially being insensitive, and times when I’m colder and more prone to falling into analytics.
And it has been consistently noticeable to the people in my life that this is the case and that sometimes in a crisis I can try and force another alter to take the wheel which leads to a very rapid mood change.
In a lot of ways, it feels very similar to Inside Out (and damn I’m glad that young DID kids today have that movie to give words to their experiences) with most of the time it being most of them on the control panel, but other times, one or two being the main ones running the show.
And when I was younger, I had at least one time where an alter took over to the point of shutting others out, necessitating a mad scramble to stop her before her suicide attempt could be completed.
And when I was younger I fell into the “golden alter” trap of viewing that particular alter as all that was good and pure in me and another alter as an evil being I needed to protect the world from. And that nearly killed me, because it gave that golden alter too much power, made it harder to keep everything integrated, and meant denying a large part of myself and who I was.
And growing up, I needed to learn myself how to initiate real honest dialogues between my alters instead of letting them fight or trying to force them into specific boxes of personality and how to get them operating on the same page. I don’t know if my initial split was triggered by trauma, but my second and third splits were (and while my main four are heavily integrated, there seems to be up to 3 others who seem still in the shadows and only very rarely seem to come out).
But I do know much like with my gender identity and sexuality, that this thing is a thing, that it has measurable effects in my interactions with others, and that it has directly informed my past and my way of interacting with the world and that attempting to pretend it away did not lessen the real-world impact of my condition.
But, that all said, it also doesn’t mean I am non-functional. I’ve had a long time to get used to having this condition (I’ve had it since I was at least 5, and I’ve had my main four since middle school) and I’ve even had it be crucial at points in my life for helping me survive. When everything in my life was super shitty, my DID allowed me to compartmentalize to the point where I was still able to get to work and perform happy there.
But yeah, hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Thank you for your answer. It is fascinating. I’d be very much interested in them keeping secrets from each other, because memory is one of the most interesting subjects in psychology. Without going into specifics, what kind of secrets can they keep? Thoughts, feelings, moods, events?
Well, for me, it’s mostly thoughts, feelings, and moods, but others have experienced events being kept secret between the alters and that’s usually when you have heavy disassociation that ends up needing the most intervention because alters will have gaps in their memory owing to certain alters squirreling away different stuff.
But yeah, for me, it was mostly thoughts, feelings, and moods. Also gender identity stuff. One of my alters figured out the gender stuff way before the rest of me and was trying to politely hint at it for years.
Hell, one of my alters hid that they were putting up with one of the other alter’s abuse because she was in love with her and thus buying a lot of her toxic framing about being “broken” and “dangerous” and the golden alter being perfect and more important than the rest.
to be frank, the experts can be full of shit sometimes. psychology is HEAVILY cultural bound, and therefore, can’t be totally scientifically objective. I have friends with DID. whatever you want to call it, it’s very real to them.
European here, with a not very useful story.
I knew in her adulthood a woman who went through her teenager years having breakdowns, giving herself another name when it happened and apologizing when it ended by accusing the “other her” of doing it.
Her friends developed a theory that she was possessed by the “other her” for lack of a more scientific way of understanding what happened.
Word of Shrinks was “nah it’s not another personality, she just psychotic, let’s lock her up and see what happens”
So, yeah, I guess the idea of dissociated personnalities is so refused that people have to think about it in “magic” concepts because no “scientific” concept fits what they deal with?
‘Friends’, plural? I thought DID was incredibly rare. It’s surprising you are friends with more than one person with the condition. (I’m NOT calling you or any of your friends a liar, just saying that unless you’re in a psychology-related field, you should play the lottery, because it seems like the odds of randomly meeting more than one person with DID and befriending them would be astronomical.)
I’m still trying to figure out if “Amazi-Girl” is a) genuinely another personality, or b) just a persona that Amber really /wants/ (to a dysfunctional degree) to be another personality. It feels borderline between the two.
I think this is good for Danny right now. Anger is a useful emotion. It is unhealthy when it’s uncontrolled, but it lets us know that something doesn’t sit right with us. It’s up to us to get down to the bottom of it from that point. Amber is going through stuff, but she’s also giving him a lot of crap, as another commenter pointed out.
It’s definitely easy to say, but I think this is integral to learning self worth is also knowing what you will and will not tolerate from people and learning to call people out when they deserve it. It’s being able to say “I can’t accommodate people’s feelings/my perception of how people see me all the time at the cost of my sanity and well being.” If that can’t be done and the issues can’t be dealt with as they come up, the anger gets worse because it is consciously or unconsciously bottled up and comes out in really destructive ways, like it has for Amber/Amazi-Girl.
I’m happy for Danny because he is on his way to standing up for himself and being less timid and passive aggressive. I think when that happens he’ll attract people in general who won’t step all over him.
I really don’t think he understands the extent though, there’s a lot of stuff happening that he has no way of knowing without her telling him (like the beef with Sal), so it’s really not totally his fault. Expecting someone to know what’s going on in a person’s head is kind of a lot of expectation, no one can really truly know the deep stuff without communication.
This may be the moment where she actually tells him the story of what’s actually going on in her head, in real detail rather than vague comments. I have to admit it’s difficult to conceptualize – maybe if Amber started from the beginning and was completely honest about it (not that she hasn’t been, but she’s left out a lot of stuff). Someone like Danny may have no concept whatsoever of the stuff she’s been through.
He knows she has alters, but he doesn’t *know*, you know? If he has no concept and context he can’t take it as seriously as we the audience might since we know Amber better than he does.
He knows she’s hurting, and has been very confused and worried on her behalf (even after she dumped him). Her suffering, however, doesn’t make him feel less hurt and confused for himself.
Danny has never encountered anything this fraught or complex. I think it’s really to his credit that he knows he’s in way over his head and is trying to get more info.
Credit to Danny for at least trying to keep his (very justifiable) anger in check and actually figure out what’s going on and talk about this instead of just blowing up immediately.
I feel bad for Amber being stuck in the middle of all this.
Geez. Amber’s really kinda awful y’know. I mean it’s one thing to be high maintenance. It’s one thing to have an alter-ego. It’s even something to have multiple personalities, but she seems to be an amalgam of these and not only is she unapologetic but she’ll constantly blame any shortcomings on an alter-ego even to the extent that it all gets mixed up and none of it matters.
Danny should cut her out of his life. As she is now she’s poison. He deserves a better partner and he deserves a better friend, honestly.
You’re acting like she is the way she is because she wants to be. She’s mentally ill, severely traumatized, and recovering from years of emotional abuse. All pretty good reasons for not being the nicest to be around at times and needing a bit of compassion. Danny has a right to be reevaluating whether he wants her in his life because unlike us he doesn’t have the luxury of knowing all the very good reasons she is the way she is. Considering that we do know you don’t see how you’re being incredibly harsh?
You’re acting like not wanting to be an awful person justifies being an awful person. It doesn’t. She’s controlling, hypocritical and doesn’t seem to be seeking any help outside of her own self imposed coping mechanism. She doesn’t seem to actually want to be active in being a more well adjusted person (outside of her own personal frustration when she goes too far) and she’s willing to blame all of her misdeeds on her own mental health as if that absolves her of wrong doing.
She never says “You’re right. I(or Amazi-girl) over reacted when it came to you and Sal and I’m sorry”.
Just being mentally ill isn’t your “Get out of being emotionally harmful and terrible to others” free card. Because “she doesn’t want to”. That doesn’t undo her actions. It can make you more sympathetic and maybe understanding of why she behaves this way, but it’s not a catch all excuse. She put Danny through the ringer and is now contradicting herself. I’m sorry that she’s not all together but that doesn’t mean that she’s not being pretty harmful to those around her.
Except the part where the things they’re discussing are things that Amazi-Girl, not Amber, did. If he wants an explanation, he’ll have to take it up with AG because Amber cannot explain her thought processes for her.
I can see how that might be tough for him though – they exist in the same body, just with a different outfit. And even here we see Amber is unsure, so how is Danny supposed to know?
I know that too, but it can’t be fun to be on the other end of it..I think it’s true for both of them. Amber shouldn’t have to go through what she’s going through, but Danny also does not have to tolerate bullshit.
My point though, is that if Amber has trouble explaining and she’s actually experiencing it, how are we to expect Danny to just completely understand without her telling him anything? Remember that she didn’t tell him anything at all about Sal, she just blew up at him and broke up with him – what is he supposed to do with that besides be angry? I don’t blame him at all for being mad, because he was wronged there.
Yeah, I don’t blame Danny for being mad right now at all. If he ends up getting frustrated and walking away I’ll be disappointed but understand.
Right now I think he’s doing the right thing. He’s asserting himself, demanding for an explanation he is definitely owed, but he’s also keeping his anger on a leash, giving Amber the chance to give that explanation, and this time, not because he’s too meek to complain, but simply because he’s a compassionate, forgiving person, and he doesn’t want to give up on Amber yet.
And since conversation has only just started, I just don’t get the call for Danny to walk away, any more than I get the idea that she’s toxic for him. I don’t think they should start dating again anytime soon, and they should probably ease very carefully into being friends again if they choose to do so, but I don’t see any reason why someone would say they should completely cut off all contact right now.
He just walked in on her in the middle of a panic attack. No one is her best in that situation.
That said, yes, Amber/AG should go and get outside help – but it’s a really realistic scenario they think no one can help.
In contrast to non-DID people who do an ” it wasn’t me” on you, talking to the wrong alter about something really is talking to someone who wasn’t actively involved and might not even have a clear memory of the situation.
In this case, I’m rather with Cerberus’ interpretation below: AG is wriggling out of her responsibility and leaves Amber to deal with the mess.
Danny has good reason to be angry. His willingness to understand what happened on Amber/AGs side of the situation is much more than anyone can ask of him.
It’s called empathy, and you totally seem to lack it. You know that Amber has issues, but, rather than show any compassion about those issues, you judged her as an awful person. You wrote her off as “toxic” and say that she should be cut out of people’s lives.
Yes, trying to be good makes you less awful. That’s literally all anyone can do. We can’t actually be good all the time. But we can try. And some people have it harder than others.
YOU ARE ATTACKING REAL PEOPLE WHEN YOU DO THIS. I have a mental disorder. It sometimes makes me disagreeable, and I do things I don’t want to. If people did what you said, I’d be stuck homeless on the street with no way to fix myself.
This comic goes out of its way to present Amber’s struggles in the most empathetic light. But, despite having it spoonfed to you, you just want to dismiss her as awful and write her off.
Would you like it if I did that to you? Would you like it if your friends did that to you?
OK, bedrock starting point: People ALWAYS have the right to walk away from other people who are toxic to them. It does not matter whether the other person is mentally ill. That’s not harsh. That’s protecting people from abuse.
If someone is capable of knowing a difficult person (whether mentally ill or not) without being damaged, and if they care about that person for personal or professional reasons, then they might stay and try to help. But if they are being damaged by a relationship, their first responsibility is to themselves.
I’m not sure I agree with Yotomoe that Amber/AG is toxic for Danny at this point. I think Danny may be stronger than that. She is certainly causing him pain and confusion, but that’s not always the same as toxic.
On the other hand, if Yotomoe is right that AG/Amber is toxic for Danny, then he is also right that Danny should walk away. Whether Amber has a mental illness or not is not relevant to that question. Whether Amber/AG’s actions are a result of a mental illness is not relevant to that question.
I HATE that sentiment with the passion of 1000 suns. Even if we limit that to relationships, you’ve literally just described how Donald Trump or any other selfish shit operates. If your first responsibility is to yourself, then you can hurt absolutely anyone as long as it’s good for you.
A relationship is a two-way street. You care about yourself and the other person. It’s true that, sometimes, you can’t actually continue for your own health. But that has nothing to do with putting yourself first. It’s knowing your own limitations, and realizing that you aren’t helping.
As you indicate, Danny is nowhere near that point. He’s interacting with her perfectly fine. Sure, he felt bad when he was dumped, but he’s functioning perfectly fine.
Yes, there is a real danger of helping people too much and not having any value in yourself. But lately it seems we’ve swung the other way, acting like we have to value ourselves.
It’s a balance. There is no first obligation to ourselves or to others. We are equally obligated to both.
Mental illness is not an excuse to be hurtful to people. It’s an explanation but at the end of the day you are still responsible for your actions and the harm you inflict on others as a result of them and you still have to own up to it and try to make amends and do better in the future and if you don’t then you’re kind of a total shit trauma or not. Amber is constantly foisting off responsibility for her actions onto her mental illness or using them as an excuse to wallow in self pity about how terrible she is forcing the very people she’s hurting to soothe her and it’s toxic.
Bullshit. Amber has done nothing of the sort. She doesn’t even know she has a mental illness.
And she has many, many times owned up to hurting people with her actions, trying not to hurt them, with Ethan and Danny and now Sal. She just hasn’t talked to Danny about this particular situation yet, because she’s scared of confrontation and hasn’t even really sorted it out for herself yet.
You get mad at people who make up shit to hate on Sal, Carla, Becky, etc. Don’t do the same thing to Amber.
What people seem to be forgetting here is that what Danny did wrong was not to be friends with Sal, rather it was to allow a few words from Sal to make him turn on a dime and go from being proud of Amber because of what she did as Amazigirl to wanting her to give up being Amazigirl.when obviously being Amazigirl is a major investment of time and eergy that is extremely important to her. Danny’s defining characteristic has always been his loyalty, and yet, just like that, he was willing to throw Amazigirl under the bus.
“Under a bus” (or rather a truck) is where Amazi-Girl almost ended up in that car chase with Toedad.
“If ah hadn’t been there, she woulda died” are some very good words for him to have been convinced by. He was very rightly concerned she might get herself killed if she kept going the way she had been.
A) Amber was blowing up at him before he brought that up, merely for talking to her. Hell, she started getting mad just for EXISTING near her before she knew they were talking.
B) Those few words were ‘If ah hadn’t been there, she woulda died’. As FC said, that’s a very fair and legitimate concern, especially since she started being more rigid in the separation between Amber and AG and more neurotic and angry since then.
It is true that mental illness does not absolve us of behavior that is hurtful for others. It is simultaneously true that sometimes mental illness renders us incapable of treating others well. If we’re lucky, that state is temporary and we try to get help. And once we’re well again, it’s time to make reparations for the actions we took when we were out of our own control.
I’m speaking as someone with bipolar who lost most of the friends I had in college because I hadn’t learned that second step yet. I’m more balanced and have better relationship skills now. I’m better both at reigning myself in even when I’m out of my head and, when that fails, genuinely making amends afterwards. Because of that, I have many loving and supportive relationships that are more than a decade old.
Was I a bad friend in college? Absolutely. Was I a bad person? No. I just definitely needed help, and was fortunate enough to get it.
When we hurt people because we’re ill, it wasn’t because we wickedly wanted to hurt them… but the people are still hurt, we must still clean up after ourselves.
We must also try and be as well as possible, even though wellness is really, really hard work a whole lot of the time. This doesn’t come up that often because, duh, being ill totally sucks and we’d much rather be healthy, but still, we don’t get to give up.
Amber is not giving up.
When she was more integrated, she once told Dorothy that she believes that Amazi-Girl is how she can have happiness and normalcy. She’s incorrect, but she doesn’t know that — she still has her bet on AG, and AG is reinforcing this idea.
Amber’s been this ill for a couple months, tops, and has no idea what’s going on, much less whether/how to change it. This is what a good therapist is for, to help her figure out what’s happening, what wellness looks like for her, and how she can get there.
Danny can, optionally, cheer for her and support her, if he wants and if she lets him. (Supporting her can include calling her on her shit and requiring her to treat him well, too.) If Danny doesn’t want, then it is 100% fine for him to peace out — he is responsible to keep himself okay, and he doesn’t own her mental health. He probably wants to help, if only he knew how.
Yes, how dare she – an abused 18-year-old girl with PTSD – not be able to both fully understand and explain the mental illness which she’s probably only experienced like this for the last couple months or so.
And how silly it is for Danny to try to understand and not just immediately storm away when that’s not possible after only a few sentences.
My very bipolar uncle said it best: it’s not always my fault, but it is always my responsibility.
As in, the mental illness could mess up his behaviour, and it didn’t mean he was an evil person who consciously chose to be mean to his loved ones. But, it was still totally his job to stay on top of his behaviours as best he could, and to fix things afterwards.
Someday Amber will get there. Right now she doesn’t even understand what’s happening or what health might look like or how she can feel okay.
Agreed. Responsibility = taking ownership of the good stuff AND the bad stuff. You can’t grow if you can’t even acknowledge your mistakes, let alone learn from them. Likewise, it also helps to learn to like yourself or even love yourself – nobody can make you do that, you have to do it.
This topic has always been polarizing and evokes such strong emotions I think because a lot of us have been in places where we’ve hurt others and are deeply ashamed of it and/or have illness that make us not ourselves (I know experience mental illness), while a lot of us have been in positions where we have been terribly hurt and traumatized by people who happened to have mental illness, especially I think if that person was a parent.
I come from the latter category, and topics like this stir up emotions in me because the people implying that it makes Danny a shitty and horrible person to not totally accommodate Amber at all times, makes me feel like I’m hearing from the people in my life who’ve pressured/guilted me into dealing with those people in my life who’ve hurt me (possibly beyond repair – I know I’m in for years of therapy/I’ve developed disorders directly because of that treatment) and told me to sacrifice my sanity basically because on the surface it looks “wrong” to “abandon” someone who’s clearly ill, and they don’t really mean it, etc. But context is everything.
I’d like to throw out there that in addition to the arguments stated, perhaps there is a lot of pressure on Danny to be Amber’s savior because her treatment of him is “not as bad” as we normally think of, according to the social “rules” of when people break up – i.e., since it’s not an extreme scenario. If so, why is that? If Danny were my real life friend, I’d advise him that they both need space. And I also think simply not wanting to be with someone is a legit reason to not be with them, why stay if you don’t feel the same way?
Yeah, I agree she’s responsible for her actions, but when someone is young and hasn’t even gotten diagnosed, I can’t help but feel it’s shitty not to be willing to forgive.
Like, Amber absolutely does owe Danny an apology, but jumping right to “she’s a horrible person and Danny shut cut her out of his life” just feels callous as hell.
I understand having issues, I do. And I understand lashing out and hurting people. I understand wanting to help those people. But an important factor is that both parties need to confront the issue at hand.
Amber has chosen to always deflect. She will let her issues drive her life and she will blame everyone else for them and then feel really shitty that she can’t control herself. When she says she can’t stand being around Sal and that Danny CAN NOT talk to this person, this is not something she wants to work through or talk through. This is simply something that cannot exist for her.
And yet once she has found herself getting closer to Sal, she’s still trying to stick to her guns. She’s not trying to admit she needs help to get past her illogical hatred. Or that she was at all wrong for breaking up with Danny because of that. She just blames it on Amber, even though Amazi-girl is the one who broke up with him for it.
I want you to understand the restraint I had to use to not simply type “fuck you” over and over in response to that. You keep phrasing things in such a way that makes it clear that on some level you feel like she’s just not trying hard enough to not have PTSD. If she were really making an effort, she would have diagnosed this shit already and sought therapy on her own! Like, I know you’re not a complete asshole, but this attitude really pisses me off.
What she is trying to tell Danny is something she has not told anyone before. She probably hasn’t even tried to put it into words until now. They are only just starting what is going to be a very difficult, painful conversation, started right as she was having an anxiety attack, so I find it very understandable that “I’m so sorry I snapped at you” isn’t among the first things out of her mouth.
And you should consider the reasons why she hasn’t already gotten professional help with her anger and PTSD is because her scumbag father prevented it, and because her self-hatred reinforces the idea that she deserves help.
Plus, this is literally the first conversation they’ve had not just since Amazi-Girl buried the hatchet with Sal, but also since since they broke up. It’s not like she’s had missed opportunities to talk about any of this with him, or any indication that he ever wanted to see her again.
First off, fine “Fuck me” I’ll accept that. I’m kind of shitty :D.
Secondly I’m not blaming her for having PTSD. I’m not expecting her to be over it immediately. I’m not expecting her to EVER be over it. I want her to accept the responsibilities of her actions. Either that or Danny needs to stop engaging her because he’s not helping her and she’s gonna keep hurting him. Right now at this point she’s just sort of really toxic and if Danny continues persueing a relationship (be it romantic or friendly) it’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of hoops for a person he just met who seems more than willing to redirect blame.
That said the line “self-hatred reinforces the idea that she deserves help” rings pretty true to me personally.
I suppose I should clarify that while I still mentioned how I wanted to say “fuck you” over and over really was not intended as an actual “fuck you” directed at you. I mean, it kinda was (at the time I posted it, though not now that I’ve cooled off a bit), but I was also trying to acknowledge that I might end up getting a bit nastier than was called for due to my initial anger. And I honestly am sorry about that jab, restrained as it might have been.
In any case, now that they’re no longer dating, I don’t see her being in a position to hurt him. Even if they don’t end up staying friends, I just don’t see a reason Danny shouldn’t at least stick out this conversation. It’s obviously going to take another strip or two to get to the meat of it, so it just feels much too early to be saying Danny should give up on it.
And I while I accept that Amber’s actions have been awful at times, I just really don’t like the idea that she’s awful, or toxic. She’s not in a great head space for a romantic relationship right now, and she definitely could use help addressing that, but that doesn’t make her intrinsically horrible.
She is a good person who deserves love. She just needs some help learning to manage her PTSD and her anger better. And the first step towards that is telling someone about what she’s going through, as she’s trying to do right now.
Of course Danny has every right to tend to his own emotional needs and walk away if he ends up feeling that’s for the best. I’m just really hoping he’ll stick this out, because if he can’t understand or won’t listen, I doubt Amber will try to tell someone else anytime soon.
Stage 1:
Yotomoe believes that AG/Amber is toxic for Danny, and therefore Danny should walk away.
fillerusername and others believe that Danny and/or Yotomoe should have compassion for Amber/AG.
These positions are not actually inconsistent. You can have compassion for someone and still walk away because they are toxic for you.
Stage 2: Yotomoe hears that Danny should stay with AG out of compassion. Yotomoe disagrees with that – as do I! People should NEVER stay in a toxic environment that they’re able to leave, for compassion or any other reason.
Stage 3: Everyone doubles down, Yotomoe explaining why AG is toxic in increasingly judgmental terms, others defending Amber/AG and/or mentally ill people in general, taking increasingly indignant and/or pained positions.
Stage 4: (I hope!) Everyone takes a deep breath, takes a step back, and realizes they all agree:
A) Everyone deserves compassion, especially people with mental illness.
B) Everyone has the right to protect themselves by finding a necessary distance from people who are toxic for them, regardless of whether said people are mentally ill.
Step 5: Everyone stops doubling down, expresses appreciation for each other’s original point of view, and feels better. (Please?)
I think that people really do listen to each other on here, and we all learn from each other — these are all commenters who tend to basically respect that we’re all okay. It’s gonna be fine. 🙂
Ok, yes Danny your right you have every reason to be upset and confused but let her just explain it…If she explains that is, I hope she explains because if not it would just be dragging this out for no real reason.
DID-knowledgeable people please help me out: is Amber unsure that AG dumped Danny because: she is realizing that she’s more integrated than she thought, her AG memories are hazy/untrustworthy, or because it was a bad thing to do so clearly bad Amber must’ve done it instead? Or something else?
Danny is under the impression that Ambers anger stems from her Vigilante persona but it turns out the one with less control of their anger is Amber so when she snapped at him earlier it was Amber not AG… at least that’s what I think this shit can be confusing even to me.
My best guess is AG can’t own her shit and so dumped all of her fuckups on Amber because AG is the golden alter and Amber is “everything wrong” in the mythology.
I am edging towards agreeing with you that it is most likely option 3.
Because AG sees Sal as good now, she could retroactively be inserting the fact Danny was good for understanding Sal is good, and if Danny was good and not a traitor, and AG is supposed to protect Amber, surely she wouldn’t end a beneficial relationship for Amber, and therefore, Amber must have ended it instead and caused her own suffering.
Therefore, Amber gets confused because before her memory said with certainty ‘AG broke up with Danny’ and now it might be starting to say the opposite because AG
It’s weirdly paradoxical because the way she articulates it, AG is the dumping ground for unacceptable aggression and anger. But I agree that she seems to be increasingly identified as the powerful, righteous one.
Making anger, hate, etc righteous and justified – “it’s okay to feel that way about [acceptable target], they deserve it” – is how a lot of people, not just Amber, deal with those feelings. Many of us have such emotions, and if we don’t express them, they will inevitably turn against us – self-loathing, self-hatred, etc – so we look for socially acceptable outlets and narratives, that let us feel and even act on them while still being able to tell ourselves we’re “good people”.
Right now Danny I think will simply back off to being the confidant Amber needs. That is contingent, of course, on A/AG informing him about who Sal is. He seems to have the empathy she needs, and is someone who is forgiving and loyal to a fault. I just see him reprioritizing things when he knows the whole situation.
There was always something there, and it might happen afterwards. Or not.
Fingers crossed that one of them sees she isn’t flaky and actually has a mental health issue. Neither may know what DID is, but at least one of them must see something is wrong that she needs professional help cooping with.
With burnt crust? Valhalla no, perish the thought. That would be Deadpool, terribly sorry for the confusion. You see, I am merely a fan thereof… of Deadpool, that is, not that pizza, it lacks meat.
Y’know, if Danny wasn’t such an insecure mess, he could have just waited a day or two and had a much less confrontational conversation with Amber. When she initiated a conversation with him.
And then not been able to actually talk to her about the very thing he wanted to talk to her about. The whole point of what he wants to discuss is why she’s okay with Sal now.
Literally 4 hours ago I ran into someone I didn’t know played until I asked what was up, and they told me what they were trying to catch. I gather there are now some second generation types out there. They also showed me a Pokemon Go Plus they were carrying.
Yeah, the initial fad was an initial fad, but the death of this game is greatly exaggerated.
They’re the type to carry around a 3DS for random games of Mario Kart (and probably Smash, though I don’t think they’ve been shown playing it since it came out, I just figure it’s the type of game they’d both get). And they’re on a college campus, where Pokestops are extra plentiful. So I can believe they’d still be playing.
It’s interesting that Amber actually confirms that AG feels friendly towards Sal (as opposed to, say, just tolerating her while they track a genuine bad guy).
“Look, Danny, you know comic books, right? Well, we started to fight, and then I spotted a rapist, and she helped me with getting him. It was a classic team-up scenario!”
Y’know, if Danny wasn’t such an insecure mess, he could have just waited a day or two and had a much less confrontational conversation with Amber. When she initiated a conversation with him.
I disagree. If he were an insecure mess, he never would have brought it up and just passive aggressively dropped hints/treat Amber badly, or just not talked to her ever again without explaining.
When someone gets smacked in the face by hypocrisy like this, they’re not being insecure by calling it out. She dumped him out of the blue for talking to her, and now Sal is her sidekick. Danny isn’t obligated to wait for her to talk to him about it, especially when I’d put 10:1 odds of Amber never bringing it up on her own.
Danny doesn’t own Amber. She can talk to or hang out with whomever she wants. They hung out a bit, had some fun, broke up and. it. Is. Over. They were together for about five minutes.
Danny doesn’t get to continue the argument days later, just cause he caught a case of l’esprit de l’escalier.
No. Not at all.
Because none of that is what is happening here.
Their relationship was fairly short, but still serious – partly due to the compressed nature of this comic’s format. It’s also only a couple days later.
Sure, he doesn’t own. She can do what she wants, but she did break up with him partly just for talking to Sal. Definitely screamed at him for doing so. Made wild accusations about Sal. Now she’s just casually hanging out with her. I’d ask questions too. And probably be confused and upset. This isn’t him finally thinking of the clever thing to say or wanting to rehash it, this is a stumbling across a big new piece of information that makes no sense.
Sure, he doesn’t own her. She doesn’t have to answer or explain herself, but he can still ask. He can even be upset with her or yell at her. Not like she hasn’t done it to him.
As Fart Captor said – Boundaries change, but not so drastically that talking to or questioning each other is not acceptable. They haven’t renegotiated boundaries or done anything to make it clear where they are.
More importantly, however the boundaries have changed, Danny isn’t doing what you claimed he is. He hasn’t thought of the perfect comeback to their fight and come out to use it. He’s stumbled on his ex chatting amiably with the monster she’d accused of turning him against her and broke up with him over. It’s damn weird and few would just ignore it.
Unless he’d already written her off as crazy and better out of his life. Which we know he hasn’t.
That really wasn’t an argument. That was one-sided yelling and accusations on Amber’s part, which is very different from mutually engaging in a back and forth.
Sal has saved Amazi-Girl’s life, fought beside herl to take down a rapist and his goons and have shown up together to support the victim of the crimes. Given Amazi-Girl’s social life, Sal easily sails over the very low bar for friendship. After the break up with Danny, I’d be surprised if anyone is a bigger positive presence in Amazi-Girl’s life.
Yes, but the break-up with Danny was because she saw him talking *to* Sal. If she’s willing to be humble and apologize, maybe she could grow her support network instead of just trading one person for another.
While it is possible there is a third one, we don’t have any reason to think what you are describing isn’t just Amber having difficulties controlling her anger when punished to a mental limit.
Panel 1: I’m so glad that Danny is speaking up on this, because yeah, this is a legitimate grievance. He got dumped all of a sudden and in a really shitty way based on a weird rule he’d have had no way of knowing about.
From his perspective this is hypocrisy and he has no way of knowing about the larger situation with AG because AG refuses to speak with him and has made no effort to give him any sense of real closure.
Panel 2: And she still is denying him that. This is Amber, Amber who is recovering from a massive panic attack caused by her triggers surrounding AG’s new friendship. And once again, AG just leaves Amber stranded to handle and clean up her mess and deal with the upset ex with the legitimate grievance.
And I feel this shows a strong parallel between Amber and Danny. Both have been mistreated by AG (Amber far far more, but still) and treated as tokens to be discarded in her internal mythology as the larger than life super being who never makes mistakes and always does the right thing.
Danny suffered for AG’s inability to acknowledge that her judgment was being affected by emotions and triggers and built an entire alternate interpretation of events to justify those emotions. And Amber seems to be being saddled with the blame for AG’s mistakes as well as the label of the “broken one” who must be kept out of action and in the background.
And it’s all the more heartbreaking because A) Amber has feelings for Danny too and B) It’s not 100% clear that Amber has even been getting the full set of memories of what went down.
So Amber might be being stranded on this and might not even fully have the memories of what this even is.
Panel 3: Ugly arguments are never fun or enjoyable and often are best avoided. But I’m still proud of Danny here, because one of his central struggles is with regards to his dignity and viewing himself as having worth independent of a relationship.
And here? He’s standing up for that worth, pointing out a real grievance and stating that without hesitation or apology but not in the petulant style he did when he got dumped by Dorothy. This is a major growth moment for him and I’m incredibly proud.
I don’t see how AmaziGirl could be purposefully leaving Amber to deal with Danny in this instance, when she disappeared before either of them actually noticed Danny’s presence.
My impression of the alter switch is that AmaziGirl stuck around in order to finish her conversation (and probably to protect Sal from Amber’s hate and wrath); but as soon as Sal left, she allowed Amber to return and vent her frustration with the whole situation. It was just bad timing that led to Amber being the one to deal with the confrontation with Danny.
We have already seen a multitude of times, that when Amber is distressed, usually AG comes out very rapidly, in fact, the shock of seeing Danny near Sal which led to their break up had AG take control rather instantaneously.
Amber is distressed right now, therefore, AG could most certainly take control at any moment if she wanted. Which means she is choosing not to.
Also, since Cerberus has actual life experience with DID, I am inclined to believe her when she says AG could be in control right now and just isn’t.
I’m not sure, but I think the only times we’ve seen AG grab control were when Amber ran into Sal. Originally, she ran away to change, but that last time with Danny, she just took over.
Amber’s distressed, but she’s not triggered. She’s not panicking. It might not be that easy for Amazi-Girl to grab control again.
I wasn’t trying to say her experiences with DID didn’t give her better understanding of the character; I just figured she missed/forgot about the timing of the alter switch in the previous comic, since it sounded like she was saying that AmaziGirl left when Danny showed up.
But like thejeff says, I don’t imagine it’s easy for an alter to take over. AG can do it during confrontations with Sal, and I imagine this is as much to do with Amber’s personality wanting to shut down when Sal arrives as it is to do with AG’s desire to avoid Amber’s panic response. In this case, Amber’s upset but she doesn’t feel like she needs AG to take over.
And also, AG has no need to protect Danny from Amber. It would be helpful for her to show up, yes, but it’s not the kind of situation where AG would feel she needs to force her way in, nor one where Amber would feel she can’t handle being there.
Just a moment out of the seriousness of today’s strip to notice the delightful phrasing: “…! …! It is all actually very anxiety-inducing!” Tough to explain why I like this so much — it’s got a punchy tempo, and it’s nerdy, and precisely-quintessentially how I’d imagined that Amber speaks.
Panel 4: Okay, so it looks like she’s not being completely shut out of the memories. That’s good. But still, 🙁 Poor Amber. Like, AG has justified all sorts of bullshit against Amber in the name of “protecting” her. Oh, I’ll just cut Danny out of our lives, I’ll spend huge amounts of time in charge of the body to stalk Sal. I’ll treat you like a broken porcelain doll of poison.
And that’s been especially strong with regards to Sal and AG has used the mythology of Sal for years to build herself up as the avatar of everything good in Amber/AG. And yet, there’s no sign of talking to Amber about any of this or even valuing that all this time with Sal is massively anxiety-inducing for her owing to her PTSD triggers.
She’s been left to deal with it all on her own as the alter who took power and freedom away from her in the name of protection has just buggered off.
And now she’s in a position where she has to defend this choice of AG’s when she doesn’t fully agree with it.
Panel 5: Oh, Danny, you sweet cinnamon roll, you. Ok, I love that Danny interrupts his frustration to check in on this and make sure he’s yelling at the right alter. Like, he’s struggled a lot to understand Amber/AG’s mental condition and really has barely the first clue as to everything, but he’s trying here and he seems to finally be putting together the pieces as to Amber/AG’s DID (which I feel we can confirm as canon at this point) and even recognizing when different people are in charge.
And yeah, AG was the one who yelled at him. And she’s the one ducking out on him anytime he’s out and about leaving Amber to clean up her mess. Fucking cowardly little shit of an alter*.
*Having dealt with all that nonsense when one of my alters was trying to play this “golden alter” game, I have little respect for AG’s willingness to own her shit and acknowledge she isn’t perfect and Amber might have some valuable traits of her own. Especially as this framing is fucking up the Amber alter’s recovery and putting her in really stressful situations without support.
Panel 6, Reaction 1: My initial interpretation is that AG is dumping her mistakes on Amber. I mean, we’ve been seeing some hints of that in some of Amber and AG’s framing of the whole kerfuffle and AG’s internal mythology and it would be very in character for the whole “golden alter” to try and shift their fuckups and flaws on the alter designated the “toxic pit” or the “fuckup”.
And Amber is of a personality type where she’d be very likely to accept that framing because she has been dumped with so many other toxic frames of her own instability and that’s before taking into account that she’s saddled with a lot of the memories of abuse which definitely included Blaine blaming her for everything bad that happens to her or that he did.
And if so, this is extra heartbreaking because she acknowledges that AG fucked up and then looks away and gets nervous fingers and eyebrow, because the whole central mythology that has her being viewed as worthless is based on this toxic fictional notion that AG can’t fuck up things like that. Those fuckups are only capable of coming from Amber, so it’s time to rewrite those events in order to make herself the villain and I empathize a lot with that, because I’ve definitely done that of internalizing that I was the villain for something I didn’t actually do.
Panel 6, Reaction 2: But I might be wrong. Like I suspect it’s the former, but this could be a sign that she’s not as disassociated as it seemed she’s been trying to force herself and AG is responding to that by doubling down on the disassociation even though that is unhealthy for her.
Amazi-Girl didn’t peace out because she didn’t want to deal with Danny. Amber forced herself back into control because of the accumulated stress of being around Sal for so long. She may yet come back and try to defend her actions to Danny but I hope that Amber gets to explain stuff first.
Yeah, but AG has wrestled control back a lot, but when it comes to interacting with Danny, she’s nowhere to be found and she’s found an excuse to never see him again and gain some closure while leaving Amber to deal with the awkward fallout.
I read the tags and everything like everyone else, but sometimes I wonder if there is a 3rd alter who shares her* memories with Amber in such a way to make Amber think she must have lost control and did terrible thing x instead of having control taken away from her by the violent alter. Or maybe both AG and Amber have the memories from the 3rd personality, but AG in preserving her golden status goes “Nope. Not me. Must have been you.” and Amber has such low self esteem that she swallows it hook, line, and sinker. Either way, AG tries to come out every time the violent one starts trying to take control because it’s golden girl’s job to fight bad guys both inside and out. AG reminds Amber she’s bad. Violent alter reinforces this belief. Rinse and repeat until AG does no wrong and Amber is trash.
Now we have this moment when Amber is so confused because AG can’t do something wrong. She might be second guessing herself and wondering if there is another alter. AG was in charge during the brake up sure, but what if she wasn’t the only one there at that moment? AG is messed up sure and far from perfect, but the violent one might have been in the back seat egging her on. Even if the breakup was all AG, it might get her to start thinking there might be a third and AG might pin it all on the violent one to keep the moral high ground (which sounds typical of her).
* I’m assuming all of her alters would identify as female and not another gender identity
[Story that adds little to the comic discussion]
It reminds me a bit of a neighbor I had as a kid. She told me she had what is now called DID after she found out one of her alters had been out when I was by to play with her daughter and she was worried she had been mean to me (she hadn’t been). I wish I knew then what I know now. I might have been able to help. As is I can only share old memories filtered through the mind of a child and a few as a teen.
I remember she was badly fragmented and memories weren’t shared. They even had different handwriting which was how she figured it out when she found things she didn’t write in a different handwriting from times she couldn’t remember. It made a lot of things difficult like paperwork, spending time with her husband and kids, balancing a budget, and so on. A job was out of the question for her. You could tell it took a toll on her. She had a hard time sleeping too.
Doctors put her on various medications but they only doped her up and made her seem out of it. I remember when they moved in my parents thought she was on drugs. Her husband told my parents something about a medical condition and seizures (which she also had). I wish he had told them about her condition because my dad gave her strict instructions about if she came over and interacted with my pet deer (a rescue I found in an ant pile) to not sit down below eye level because she would rare up, and one of her alters came by and did just that. She wasn’t hurt, but we had to get rid of my deer.
There was one alter they warned me of. It only came out if anyone used the b word in her direction (even if they weren’t using it on her). Her family described it as feral like a wild animal. It would attack anything and everything nearby. Her husband made the mistake a few times (usually a slip of the tongue) and got covered in scratches and bruises for it. He only made it once or twice while they lived next door to us. Her kids got taken away from her for a while after one such incident. That’s why thinking of a violent alter made me think of her. Sometimes I wonder how she is. Dad said he seen her husband once a few years ago who said she got on illegal drugs (I think it was dope?), so there’s no telling how bad she is now or even if she’s still alive. I guess that’s why I want Amber to get help from a qualified professional so much; I don’t want her to end up like my neighbor.
That “I think” really worries me, yeah. Because Amazi-Girl’s been pushing her mistakes – and the Sal Issue in particular – on Amber, and Amber’s fighting back here but still isn’t sure of herself anymore and however things are working out, it is not a healthy longterm situation for Amber or anyone.
Suddenly I am horrified as I remember AG giving Sal the ability to track her (which Sal deleted), which was clearly without Amber’s permission. AG’s trust of Sal suddenly is horrifying because Sal is Amber’s biggest trigger for PTSD flashbacks, and AG gave her the ability to track her, without even seeming to consider how badly that could have screwed up Amber, considering we now know Amber’s feelings towards her are not reconciled the way AG’s are.
Suddenly I wish I could go back in time, read that strip for the first time, and react accordingly with ‘ARE YOU OFF YOUR HEAD AG.’
Re: Panel 6 – I’m worried that Amber’s ‘I think?’ is her saying ‘I don’t remember that, I believe you when you say it happened that way and I know we’re broken up, but I don’t remember that exact thing’. Which strikes me as the very thing you’ve been worried about, Cerberus, regarding Amazi-Girl not sharing memories with Amber anymore.
Danny has every right to get mad at “I think…” because, let’s face it, it would be nice to know exactly why his girlfriend dumped him. The thing is (and I don’t think Danny knows this), the reason he was dumped wasn’t because of Sal but a cartoon parody of Sal that was the mask on Amber’s own demons.
Amazi-Girl has realised this (no matter how reluctantly) but Amber is having a hard time getting her head around it. Maybe having to explain it to Danny (and failing to do so because it doesn’t even make sense to her) may help her get a handle on this.
The two things are linked; Amazi-Girl and Amber both interpreted Danny’s request as a sign of Sal’s malign influence and accused him of ‘choosing her over them’.
Right before he asked her not to, when she was yelling at him about Sal?
I do think that was, unintentionally, really harsh of Danny. Telling the alter he’s dating that she needs to go away for awhile and that he likes the other alter better anyway was never going to produce a good result. Even if he was really just talking about risky vigilante activities and not caring about the glamor of dating a super-hero, AG certainly heard it as a threat and a dismissal of her.
No wonder it was twisted into “My nemesis must have turned you against me!”
You are right. Although, to be fair, a lot of people reach the “My Nemesis must have turned you against me” conclusion without suffering with DID.
Sal was the one counselling against superheroics, originally. An ironic slap in the face for Danny, considering what she and AmaziGirl had been doing. Not to mention Sal’s physics defying motorcycle chase and catch earlier.
I find it very disturbing that so many people here talk about Amber’s “alters” as though they were both real and distinct people.
Multiple Personality Disorder is not real, and while it was in the DSM, it was used to HORRIFICALLY ABUSE WOMEN. Imagine being involuntarily committed for years in which you are strapped to a bed, injected with hallucinagens, and then based on your tortured screaming, the psychologist tells the police he thinks you’ve been abusing your children.
The abuse of patients under this diagnosis was so severe that patients won millions of dollars in malpractice suits and MPD was removed from the DSM.
Please don’t promote the abuse of women. It is really disturbing.
And the reason it is frustrating is because I have at least three aspects to myself that have heavily affected who I am, how I relate to the world, and how I’ve been treated by others that people feel comfortable not only dismissing, but viewing as entirely fictional even while I’m standing there existing in front of them.
CONTENT WARNING: Ableism, transphobia, acephobia
“Oh, asexuality isn’t a real thing, you’re just trying to be special.” “Trans people are just deluded and mentally ill.” “DID is a made up disorder.”
And it’s frustrating, because it puts me in a position where I feel like I have to be in teaching mode all the time about this stuff, explaining it and being reasonable and never being snarky. Having to defend my existence against people who literally believe I don’t exist or am making it up because discrimination is so fucking awesome.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I like teaching, I like helping people understand, I recognize it’s importance. But the way that it is viewed as necessary also creates a bad headspace where I can end up feeling like I need to make apologies and explanation for my existence and that I’m inherently flawed because of those aspects of myself. And that has lead to me accepting abuse and toxic situations because it’s harder to value myself as I am and view myself as equally worthy of dignity and respect owing to this constant cultural questioning of my very existence.
And the fact is that these aspects of myself are real. They’ve heavily affected who I am and what I’ve been through and they’ve been the origins of a lot of discrimination and abuse I’ve suffered.
Being disowned, threatened with reparative therapy, loss of jobs, loss of partner and general harassment from being trans and heavy bullying when I was younger because they could smell something queer about me even before I could.
Being confused and lost as to what everyone else in puberty was experiencing, being made to feel broken, being abused because I didn’t lust like a “man”, being targeted for sexual harassment because I needed to be “fixed”.
And being mistreated by a partner and told I wasn’t allowed to show strong emotions based on a cultural idea that because I was DID I must be out of control, accepting abuse because I internalized those messages as well and so felt that was only right, nearly losing myself to suicide because of mishandling of my condition.
I’ve been DID since I was at least 5 (it’s the earliest I can consciously remember and I remember having multiple alters then). I’ve had a long time to adapt to the reality of what I am and how I operate. And I’ve introspected a lot more than most about what was going on in me.
And that is what’s going on. And someone who read some outdated psychology textbooks from a field that has yet to do much in the way of studying life for DID folks post-integration not believing in it doesn’t change how it has impacted my life and how I’ve had to adapt to it.
As someone who is currently in grad school for clinical psychology and literally JUST LEARNED ABOUT THIS.. I’m super frustrated when people don’t do their research. It is in the DSM. My professor had the caveat that is is extremely rare, and doesn’t usually show up the way it’s depicted in popular culture (i.e. more often than not alters share memories to a greater or lesser degree.) I wanted to say that you do such an amazing job of educating people about things, and I really appreciate how willing you are to do that. I’ve learned a lot since I started reading the comic, much of it through your awesome comments. I really look forward to your thoughts on things, and I hope you know that as someone who used to be a Joyce (and is now much more of a Leslie) people like you were so important in helping me open my mind and be less shitty. You’re fighting the good fight and I think that’s amazing. Just be sure you have enough time to take care of yourself in these rough times >hugs if wanted, other gesture of support if preferred<
Cerberus, nobody should have to deal with that shit, let alone someone as awesome as yourself. I’m sure you get this a lot, but you also don’t get this enough: You’re awesome and thank you. Thank you for being you — for being all of the things that make you you, without exception — and I’m sorry so many people put you through the gauntlet trying to make you not be you.
Because the world is a better place as long as you’re in it, and you need to hear that. You need to hear that over and over again, so much that it drowns out the hate. You are loved, and you deserve to be loved, not despite all of the things you are but because of them, and because of the fact that, despite the world trying to push you down, you take the time to lift others up.
And you aren’t under any obligation to do so, despite what society may tell you — you have every right to curl up into a ball and hide away from the world forever. But you don’t. You find the people who are struggling, even if it’s only a tenth of a tenth of the struggle you’ve lived through, and you lift them up. And you do it all even while other people want to deny your existence from three, four, even five different directions.
You are an inspiration, Cerberus. So thank you, and I’m sorry.
— A bearded college freshman one paragraph away from weeping openly in a crowded campus gyro place
MPD was removed from the DSM, yes, but DID is a very valid thing that some people have. Multiple Personality Disorder is separate from Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Whether or not DID is actually real doesn’t really matter as far as Amber is concerned. What matters is whether that’s what Willis is intended to portray her as having in the narrative. If he thinks it’s a real thing and is basing her character on his understanding of it, then trying to understand Amber’s behavior as if it isn’t real won’t make any sense at all.
You know, even if Cerberus wasn’t right here in the comments telling us about her experience (and I don’t think she’s the only one, either), and even if I didn’t know other people with DID, your logic would still be irrevocably flawed.
“…while [MPD] was in the DSM, it was used to HORRIFICALLY ABUSE WOMEN. Imagine being involuntarily committed for years…”
I mean. Do you understand how many psychological diagnoses this is true of? Involuntary commitment and abuse of people with psychological disorders is just… it’s par for the course. It’s what a lot of mental health “treatment” was, and to be frank still is for entirely too many people.
If “this was used to abuse patients, involuntarily commit them, and take them away from their children” made a personality disorder, developmental disorder, or mental illness not real, then we would literally have no field of psychology.
Autism wouldn’t exist. Schizophrenia wouldn’t exist. Avoidant Personality Disorder wouldn’t exist. Antisocial Personality Disorder wouldn’t exist. Hell, Clinical Depression wouldn’t exist. Your criteria here for saying MPD (DID) isn’t real is just… it isn’t workable.
Sure, certain diagnoses have been used to abuse people without them, too, but those people aren’t worth more than the people who did have those conditions and were also horrifically abused.
So, let’s not contribute further to the abuse and suffering of people who have been harmed by the psychological community by invalidating folks with DID, especially not by telling them that somehow acknowledging the existence of their disorder is “promoting the abuse of women”.
Don’t forget that the word “hysteria” basically meant “vagina-induced madness” originally. Simply having a vagina was once considered a sufficient explanation for and/or evidence of mental illness.
As was being a lesbian. But the only people who argue that lesbians don’t “really” exist are the bigots trying to legislate and discriminate queer folks out of existence.
Women being horrifically abused in asylums doesn’t mean women don’t suffer from mental illnesses, it means the doctors at those asylums were extremely uninformed and prejudiced when it came to treatment.
Sakes alive, please DON’T say women are incapable of having mental illness, there’s already rampant sexism in the field of psychology: women do not get diagnosed correctly or even diagnosed at all in many cases
It’s very frustrating. It’s even difficult for women to find doctors for their own physical issues. We are constantly dismissed as “crazy” or “hormonal” and I believe that a lot of us go for years (usually until it gets very bad or we’re reaching our early 30s) before we even become remotely taken seriously.
Something that has always stood out to me as morally wrong and scientifically false is how women are treated as being completely irrational during menstruation because they’re “hormonal”. Thing is, biologically that is when a woman is most hormonally masculine. So men claim that women are overly emotional and irrational during a period of time that women’s biochemistry is the closest to men’s. That’s some illogical sexist hypocrisy right there.
It really is! It makes me so mad sometimes. It’s almost hilarious if it weren’t so tragic, because we women are “hormonal”, but attacking or killing someone because they rebuffed your advances or blowing up at the tiniest things a girlfriend does, etc. is pretty fucking emotionally unstable. And yet we’re the emotional ones. But it’s all, of course, simply projection.
PMS is a culturally bound disorder. It literally has no biological significance. Women get cramps, and we as a society have given them the excuse to release their negative feelings then (and not at other times) so they seem “hormonal.”
So, if anyone treats someone like that, they need to have their license pulled.
That’s bullshit. I know because I experience it. I might not experience it to a degree that I lose all sense of rationality because that is not how it works but I definitely feel more irritable and depressed when it’s that time of the month even when I’ve taken care of my cramps with drugs.
Well I mean… yeah. When I’m bleeding from my vagina, regardless of my pain levels, I get pretty fucking irritated at having to deal with it at all. That said, yes, there are some biological components related to hormones – it just so happens that there is ALSO a cultural part to it. Honestly, why people insist on it being one or the other is mind boggling.
This. I have bipolar, and I was given antidepressants as a teenage girl, which made me rapid cycle (think elated to suicidal, several times a day). I tried to kill myself, and they concluded I was MAKING MY MOOD SWINGS UP and tripled my dose. That nearly killed me, literally. But you know what saved my life? Finally encountering mental health professionals who respected my humanity.
The mental health field seems to have more than its supply of people all too ready to dismiss the thoughts and feelings of other humans, or insist that the person least able to tell you what’s going on inside a head, is the person to home that head belongs.
I don’t say that to scare people away from getting the help they need, but sheesh, it’s ironic in a terrible way.
Yeah, no, I spent 20 years being completely untreated for the shit going on in my head, and was constantly told that I was making everything up while also being told that if I would be treated terribly by everyone in the medical and psychological field if I *did* have an official diagnosis.
Funny thing is that I have been treated pretty fucking terribly by most people in the medical and psychological fields, but I’m still happier now that I’m being actually treated. I just have to put my foot down and tell people that they’re fucking stupid for dismissing me A LOT.
It is called a multiple personality DISORDER for a reason, if they could keep their personalities organized, it wouldn’t be a DISORDER, it would be ordered.
Well no, it’s a disorder because it’s detrimental to the sufferer’s well being not because of any connection to order/disorder. OCD can be super ordered in its manifestation and it’s still a disorder.
Whether it’s a disorder (or really a psychological malaise of any kind) depends basically on one criterion: Does it, or does it not, adversely affect the patient’s ability to function in society, to a statistically significant degree?
And hate to burst your bubble, but it hasn’t been called multiple personality DISORDER for a couple DSMs. It’s called Dissociative Identity Disorder.
It can also adversely affect others who interact with the person. You have to remember that, or else people who seem successful would be told they have no disorder.
How I see Amazi Girl and Amber right now. As always YMMV
AmaziGirl just had one of her best nights, ever. She bonded with people, did some good and stood on a rooftop with her cape blowing in the wind. Amber became comfortable in that role and had to fight to change into her secret identity, something she is loath to do at the best of times. She finds herself having to reconcile her vision of Sal as the one that made her a victim, and by extension a shame filled failure.
Getting anxious at having to admit to herself the desire to bond with Sal, she is confronted by her ex, one of the few people she has let straddle both aspects of her. He is angry and only wishing to focus the subject of her compartmentalising as it relates to him and their break up.
I just keep repeating it but Amber really needs some therapy. Like right now, before she gets herself or others killed with her Amazi-girl second persona.
DID… does not make people prone to violence or murder. I’m sorry that Hollywood has lied to you so badly, but all people with mental illnesses are overwhelmingly more likely to be the victims of violence than to be the perpetrators.
This is fair, but Amazi-girl has already shown a very pointed lack of care for her own well-being and Amber has said that Sal saving her life is the second worst thing that ever happened to her (hinting that perhaps she has suicide ideation)
Sal has rightly pointed out that Amazi-girl could seriously hurt herself and/or others in her relentless, no-holds-barred pursuit of justice
“She needs therapy right now” before she “gets herself or others killed” didn’t sound to me like it was about either suicide or the recklessness of being a superhero (which is what Sal was talking about). I could of course be wrong and if I am then I apologize, but there have been too many comments to the effect that Amber’s mental illness makes her inherently dangerous and I felt the need to say something 🙁
Stigma against mental illness is a real thing and needs to be challenged. That said, in this context, Amazigirl has already almost gotten herself (and Amber) flattened by a truck.
She is running around punching people and getting into violent incidents. Sooner or later IT WILL lead to a tragedy. She was THIS close to dying and getting other people killed during the Becky’s Dad Incident.
Yes and no. That was an exceptional situation, for a number of reasons.
She’s more likely to badly hurt someone working out her frustrations stopping petty crime.
Depending of course on how much Willis is playing fairly by superhero tropes and how much by more psychological realism. Which does seem to vary from story arc to story arc.
AG split with Danny because of *Sal* stuff.
AG (and possible Amber) now knows she/s was wrong about Sal.
Amber isn’t sure who actually split up with Danny because of Sal.
Either way, the ‘split’ was based on a false assumption that has now been exposed as such.
So…
Danny and “Amber” slipshine next?
(I think they’d make a better couple than Danny and AG…)
(And besides the last thing Danny needs is to get a complex about women being hypocritical when they split from him.)
(Yes, I do think Dorothy is being a tad hypocritical at the moment.)
I love panel 1 Danny: “If I’ve accurately perceived this situation I’m so angry right now! Let us investigate if I’ve accurately perceived this situation.”
And also in that it’s not called that anymore, for… fuck I knew this once. I took psych in HS, and we totally talked about why they changed the name from MPD to DID, but I can’t for the life of me remember what.
Time to ask Professor Google!
… Apparently the name was changed because MPD suggests a proliferation of identities, whereas the actual condition is more akin to fragmentation.
The Phantom Danny. Attack of the Danny. Revenge of the Danny. A New Danny. The Danny Strikes Back. Return of the Danny. The Danny Awakens. The Last Danny.
I think what might be really hurting Danny is… how full of hypocrisy his girlfriends were.
Dotty went all “I’m dumping you because studying and achievement are more important and it’s better for you to find yourself a more normal life.”
Not a week later she is with FRIGGIN WALKY.
Amber/Amazi-Girl were all “How dare you talk with Sal and try to stop me doing super hero thing”
And not long after Danny sees Amazi Girl being all buddy-buddy with Sal.
Let’s be fair, he has all the right to feel like he was stabbed in the back.
Dorothy didn’t break up with Walky because she needed to study. That’s the reason he came up with afterwards to make himself feel better.
Dorothy broke up with him because he was clingy and he kept dismissing her dreams by going ‘Eh, maybe you’ll change your mind, maybe you’ll change your mind’.
Dorothy did not break up with him because she needed to study and because Danny should have a more normal life.
She broke up with him because of one simple reason:
HE DID NOT BELIEVE IN HER.
This was the breaking point for Dorothy – in his ideal imagining, there was a possibility for Dorothy to give up Yale for him, and for someone as ambitious as Dorothy, that complete lack of belief that she would follow through, was the dealbreaker that made her finally breakup with him after trying and failing to get him to consider getting himself some personal goals or at least something he could shoot for rather than just following her along for the ride the entire time.
Dorothy broke up with Danny for a few reasons, and one of them is it was healthier for DANNY.
He didn’t have a plan or a clue, his method of going about in life was to follow Dorothy around, is that healthy? He desperately needed some independence and the ability to assert himself
He couldn’t do that puppy-dog following her around
What has Danny done to deserve that kind of treatment? Best thing he can do for himself is find someone that appreciates him for himself and isn’t nuttier then a fruitcake…Ethan maybe
I’m thinking that while it’s reasonable to suggest Danny deserves a healthier relationship than he and Amber and/or Amazigirl are capable of happening, it would probably also be fair to respect Amber’s mental health issues, and not ca influenced by childhood trauma at the hands of an abusive father, and not dismissively call her “nuttier than a fruit cake”.
Its because Danny and (to a lesser degree) Ethan have been enabling Amber that we have this situation so while its not her fault she suffered the trauma its about time her friends (the ones that know) told her she needs professional help
She has split personality, dresses up as a superhero, beats people up and puts her life in danger on regular basis. To any sensible person this kind of behaviour screams “SHE NEEDS HELP!”
Thing is, she dresses up like and acts like a superhero and pulls it off. This is one of those cases where the shifting tone of DoA kind of hurts itself. On the one hand, Amber’s a crazy girl who dresses up like a superhero and is going to get herself and/or others hurt, and we’re actually dealing with some of the psychological realism involved with that.
On the other hand, she actually is a superhero. The narrative lets her get away with superhero tropes that would never actually work in the real world: The secret id thing, the ridiculous levels of parkour, not just getting stomped into the ground on a regular basis, blatantly ignoring basic physics in the car chase – even if it wasn’t quite enough. She needed to be saved by Sal then – who was apparently running on different laws of physics herself at the time.
It’s one thing to find out some girl dresses like a superhero. It’s another to have them drop out of the night and drive off a gang of bullies – which is literally how Danny & AG met.
Danny’s really only just starting to figure out the whole DID thing. It’s not clear to me how much Ethan knows, he hasn’t seen nearly as much of Amber or AG lately and she wasn’t nearly as disassociated at the start of the year. Danny did try to talk to her about giving up the dangerous superhero stuff and that blew up in his face. I’m not sure what more he should do. She’s given no signs of listening to him now. I suppose he could go to the police and try to have her involuntarily committed – or just arrested, but that’s a really big step.
Stuff like this is why I like to describe DoA as ‘realistic-ish’. There are plenty of things that are INCREDIBLY unlikely to the point that the likelihood is negligible (i.e. AG not being dead and Sal’s catch actually working) but have enough similar ‘wait, what, that shouldn’t have worked’ moments in real life (not to mention enough different factors) that people were debating whether or not it could work. The answer generally seemed to be ‘not without some ‘one in a million luck’ type shit if at all’, but the fact people were even bothering shows that it’s not QUITE as out of place in the comic as, say, Head Alien suddenly bursting out of a tv and being real would be.
DoA is more realistic than the Walkyverse is. That said, it’s not 100% realistic – hence why we get Joyce’s 100% white demon possessed face when she’s distressed or Sal and Walky’s hair curling on shock. It serves both comedic and narrative conventions at the same time it tries to be realistic. And when it comes to a choice of ‘being a stickler for 100% realism’ and ‘better story’, better story wins out. Which is why I’d rather say it’s ‘more realistic’ or ‘realistic ish’ or even ‘the characters react more like real people’ than pretend it’s 100% realistic, which it’s never been.
I think I recall Willis explicitly stating that he skirted realistic physics a bit during Becky and Toedad’s arc so that the universe would essentially conspire to save her from her dad — which she lampshaded when she took communion in La Porte — but I think most of the other “unrealistic” elements are for stylistic purposes, so it’s basically a little bit more realistic than a “realistic” sitcom tends to be. And it works perfectly for the story, since it has the flexibility of being exactly as realistic as it needs to be at any given time, depending on the emotional weight of the scene and what needs to happen to build up the narrative.
Also, cue Willis coming down from on high to correct me.
Well, sure, but if Willis didn’t want the chase scene to go down that way, he’d have picked a different way to end it without needing to break physics. The chase had high stakes emotional weight and a good way to show off some of AG, Joyce, Sal Becky, and Dina. And, y’know, cool action sequences I’m sure he’s missed writing since the Walkyverse ended.
There are real people here with real mental disorders. You may not be insulting Amber, but you are insulting the rest of us.
There is nothing good about being dismissed as “crazy,” “nutty,” “insane,” what have you because we have a mental disorder. We are not less than human.
People talk about being toxic. There is nothing more toxic than this casual dismissal of people with mental disorders by these ways of making fun of us for our disease.
Trolly’s absolutely right the way you’ve referred to Amber has been ableist and dismissive and rather than own up, you’re gonna pretend this is on them for being upset?
I don’t want to be rude, but “I’m sorry you feel that way” and “I’m sorry if you were offended” always strike me as particularly shitty apologies, because it totally shifts the blame onto the person who is hurt by your words. Like, maybe what you said is actually hurtful…? Maybe it’s not their decision to be hurt by what you said, but your decision to say it in the first place that caused this?
i’m honestly really angry with amber right now, though i do like how she’s finally opening up a bit here
she didn’t even communicate what’s going on with danny, her boyfriend who was so willing to support her because of her own fears
like…amber, i get that you have problems and you have difficulty dealing with your trauma, i understand it can be really hard being neurodivergent, but he was someone who was willing to be by your side and understand what’s going on… at the very least if you couldn’t talk about it long enough due to your inability to deal with trauma, you could at least try to reserve a proper time to at the very least, talk about what’s going on.
like, i get that you hate being vulnerable and to talk to someone about this can make you feel weak, but speaking as a system who dissociates a lot and has a FUCK lot of anxiety i can tell you that support for people with dissociative disorders is really needed and danny really, really seems like the type of person who would understand and be (at least gradually) open minded about it. so yeah, i’m angry with amber because she puts her pride due to her trauma over people who are willing to try to understand and care about her, which also reminds me of my piece of shit dad who can’t control his own fucking temper due to his own trauma and wrecked his own family because of that
but at the same time i also empathise with her because i’ve been through that stage before, i’ve felt disgusted with myself for talking about my feelings with people, i hated being reminded that i’ve been attacked before, i hated being traumatised by incidents that didn’t even seem big and talking about it for fear people might not take me seriously, i hated feeling weak because i’m so fucking anxious of my dad all the time. she has a cesspool of issues for which some of them i can really relate to, and i’m glad i’m almost over that stage now
Panel One: I like Danny here. He wants to be (justifiably) pissed because AG mistreated and then dumped him over this and he sees her barely two days later with Sal. But he’s too good a man to lose it completely before he knows for sure what happened.
It’s also a nice bit of character growth – Danny’s gotten into trouble before when he does things without knowing what happened.
Panel Two: And yeah, this is definitely rough as hell for Amber. She remembers what happened (I hope) and it was not a pleasant thing. She doesn’t want to fight Danny on this.
And conveniently AG isn’t coming out to talk and explain herself. Amber’s on her own here. Yay, AG.
Panel Three: Okay, now Danny’s mad, and I really can’t blame him. AG dumped him hard and completely overreacted to him seeing her, to the point of nearing if not achieving verbal abuse. She treated him abysmally and now he gets to see her with Sal hanging out? Of course, he doesn’t know the context, but I’d not be surprised if there’s hard feelings towards both of them, especially since Sal told him AG was putting herself in danger (which she was still doing until the night they teamed up, Sal seems to be keeping her grounded so far). That sucks for what happened.
Panel Four: Ooooh, confirmation Amber is not cool with this. Of course, AG doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what Amber wants, but now she’s causing Amber actual psychological harm. Poor Amber. Being the ‘problem’ alter must bite something fierce.
And yeah, Amber is still justifiably pissed – she was hurt badly by Sal and she’s not gotten to discuss it yet. When she has the chance, she’s too triggered to do so, and this is disorienting and upsetting.
Also – confirmation AG does see Sal as a friend. Interesting. I’m not sure Sal reciprocates that – at least, not yet. She doesn’t seem to be particularly affectionate or to like AG more than any of her ‘non-friend’ acquaintances like Joyce and Billie. More like she’s not fighting her anymore and isn’t actively malicious. Which would be fair, as AG was horrid to her before their team up.
Panel Five: I appreciate Danny asking this. The poor guy really just wants to understand this. He wants to know what happened, and who he should be angry with, if anybody. And that’s tricky when DID is in play but he’s trying really hard.
Panel Six: Fucking AG. Not owning her shit here and leaving them to puzzle out her mess. She’s being awful right now. And poor Amber, having to deal with and sort this out. She’s not even sure she knows who was in the ‘driver’s seat’ that time because it was shitty and Amber is surely the source of all shittiness, not AG, so it can’t be her. Same reason she’s suddenly responsible for stalking Sal, even though that was *AG’s* decision.
And yeah, this is confusing as hell for Danny. Poor guy.
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“Are you questioning my logic?” [/Rocky]
“you already said–”
“ARE YOU QUESTIONING MY LOGIC”
“…yes?”
“oh ok”
Amazi-girl doesn’t need logic!
This iteration is not immune to criticism.
She does have a system for deflection, but that also functions as her kryptonite, so… yeah… umm…
…why did I think I could make that funny?
And yet, you somehow sorta did. Good job!
And the fact that she isn’t sure which of her identities was upset with Danny is pretty good evidence that she doesn’t actually have seperate personalities.
But she could be starting to form them. And then one of her personalities just leaked into the other at the wrong moment, which seems to happen to her a lot. Which actually could indicate that she’s losing control over her personalities, and gets confused because she can’t decide when one or the other is going to show up anymore.
Maybe.
There are other possibilities there.
One being that she (Amber) doesn’t actually remember breaking up with him. That the disassociation has gone far enough that they’re not fully sharing memories.
Another, as Cerberus suggested elsewhere, that the Amazi-Girl “golden alter”, who is supposed to be the good one is pushing the blame for her own bad actions onto Amber, who’s well conditioned by Blaine to accept it.
Neither of these are good. Both show her condition worsening.
If that is the case, then explain Cerberus’ reaction to the same comment.
It may or may not be relevant to the context of this comic, since Willis is free to make the rules whatever he wants in his fictional world, but it is worth noting that there is a fair degree of doubt within the psychiatric community that “multiple personalities” or “disassociative identity disorder” is even a real condition. It has no consistent set of symptoms, no reliable treatment criteria, and may often be something completely different, if not always, such as malingering (faking a disorder for some secondary objective) or factitious disorder (faking a disorder for attention in itself). A lot of the most widely known cases of it in popular cultural awareness have been cast into severe doubt by further investigation (clinicians fell victim to suggestive techniques, or were outright fraudulent themselves).
In any case, I suspect that Amber doesn’t have even a Hollywood-edition of DID. She adopted the Amazi-Girl persona consciously, in an attempt to deal with her trauma (both the lifelong abuse of her father, and the actual criminal incident involving Sal). The barriers she places between Amber and “Amazi-Girl” are deliberate ones, not involuntary – she’s trying to create a “safe” outlet for her anger and violent urges that keeps them separate from her “real” self. She’s simply encountering the challenges that come with attempting to lead a double life: a scenario that spies, bigamists, and superheroes often must confront.
Of course she does. She uses Amazi-Logic. It’s like Super-Mathematics.
Goddamnit Ana you know how to make a big dumb grin even bigger and dumber. Thank you lord of firstposting.
Completely forgot yesterday!
Thanks for posting that image, I binged the entire comic yesterday, was a lot of fun so yeah :3
I’m starting to think amber needs help (I think she needs help with a plethora of things already mind you) with this amazi-girl stuff
Danny finally snaps back
This has been a long time coming
But I think he’s got the message now.
Every time someone uses that phrase, CsN’s “Long Time Gone” snaps into the Muzak of my mind
I bet he ends with, ” You need professional help and if you don’t get some I’ll tell the school!” … then Amazi-Girl takes over and kills him. The rest of the comic deals with the wacky hijinks of a crazy wackjob in a costume trying to get away with it but instead slowly increasing the body count as her alter-ego cowers from the facts.
Happy Singles Awareness Day Indeed, sigh, it sucks to be like Danny
Aww, I recommend Palentines Day, where you hang out with some pals, it’s great.
I recommend Palpatine’s Day, where you murder every Jedi in existence, including the kids, and then form an abusive father-figure relationship with an abusive father who turned abusive out of love.
…. all while remembering the prequels exist.
Oh come on the prequels weren’t that bad.
They were even fun at times.
And from them spawned Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which was an amazing show.
Yeeeeesssssss
So Palpatine & Vader are basically Blaine & Toedad?
Suddenly it all makes sense!
I recommend Paradigm’s day, where you stick to the framework that other people have started in comments previously.
I just remembered that my phone died and I am now stuck with an older one that doesn’t have pokemon go… I will sob now.
It’s okay, your tiny monster friends will wait patiently for you to get back into the account.
It is a recoverable account, right?
It is linked to either a Google or a Pokemon Trainer Club so yes, it is, you just need a phone actually capable of you know, running the game.
Enjoy your eye contact with strangers!
Your horrific, horrifying eye contact with strangers!
…. no, seriously, strangers make me feel all awkward and awkwardly awkward. Bleh.
I avoid eye contact at all costs. I mean, it’s unhygienic, isn’t it?
“Avoid eye contact.
If no eyes, avoid all contact” — Firesign Theatre.
Oh gods, I feel that!
The screen of mine broke after it fell down and it’s now being repaired, so 2-3 weeks without Pokémon Go for me as well.
It’s such a straaaaaaange feeling, passing the train station or the other landmarks without checking which team holds the gyms at the moment o_o’
(No, I’m not addicted to that game at all… xD)
Danny is coming off very justified in this. Yes, Amber is very confused herself, but she’s putting him through the ringer.
Danny has every right to be upset, even if Amber is a bit mixed up right now.
I agree.
“A bit mixed up” is a very soft way to say “failing to deal with a serious mental illness.”
Yep. He’s doing his very best to understand, AND it’s very nice to see him stick up for himself — and at the same time, no less!
Don’t worry, once she hits him with “I’m only working with her to catch a rapist named Ryan” he’ll feel like shit again.
Agreed.
I am pretty sure that should be “wringer”.
+1 for successful grammar Nazism
It’s called the alt-write, now.
I love/hate you for that pun (and am stealing it)
I strongly disagree. Once you’ve broken up, you don’t get to weigh in and scream at someone about their life choices. She broke up with him. Whatever she does after that is really none of his business.
In addition, he is basing his anger off a small interaction he witnessed, instead of actually having the full story.
You mean just like she did when she broke up to him? I agree that he gets no say in what she does now, but I think his anger seeing her being cordial with someone she dumped him for interacting with is justified.
Yeah, real shame Danny isn’t a saint.
He’s angry and he can’t really be expected not to be, but he’s still pretty calm and not even actually yelling. Much, much less than she was when she broke up with him.
She attempted to emotionally blackmail him into breaking off his friendship with Sal. That doesn’t actually stop having happened just because he didn’t give in and she followed through on the threat. The fact that the part of the picture he can see has changed from “She hates Sal” to “She hates seeing me with Sal, who she doesn’t see anything wrong with as a person” doesn’t look good on her, particularly if he (wrongly, but reasonably) assumes the latter was true all along.
Oh dear, Amber’s not looking well….
She’s going to have a full breakdown, I think. Only time and Willis can tell if it will be violent or just sad.
Welcome to the party…where everyone’s dealing with some insane personal business.
See, this is the material I’ve been looking for. Fantastic.
I’m down for this
Hanging out with Ethan has been good for Danny it appears
What’s that… THING… running along Danny’s back? Kinda makes him look taller?
Is THAT a SPINE?!?
yay!! Danny’s not being a doormat for Amber/Amazi-Girl to stomp on!! Amazi-Girl is starting to merge with Amber!! HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!! This is the best comic ever, it’s so satisfying. <3
I reaaaaally hope this goes well……….
Well, there’s a distinct possibility that Danny will now become cartoonishly enraged, so that part is going to be kinda painful and sad, but it will *end* well. Communication, no matter how angry and violent and hurtful at the time, is usually good.
Um, I wouldn’t say it is usually good regardless of how ‘angry, violent and hurtful’ it is, I can accept it sometimes being hurtful (being told you’ve done something wrong can be hurtful regardless of how nice someone says it to you), but being ‘angry’ and ‘violent’ about it usually kills the communication by turning the other person defensive and if they turn defensive and shut you out, it isn’t good or effective.
Communication only works for as long as the other person is willing to listen.
Makes for satisfying movie scenes though. Like in Hidden Figures, when she finally yells at her boss that it takes her 40 minutes to go to the colored restrooms every day. Yelling in public like that is pretty violent, and she was really angry. But her boss heard her and let her use the whites only restrooms anyway after she exploded. Not sure how well that works out in real life, but it works if you are the main character in a movie.
In real life, she simply used the white-only restrooms from the start. She didn’t need her boss’s permission or anything. So in real life, he never got to do the white-male-hero thing of knocking down the “Colored” sign.
Still a very good movie.
I don’t think that’s a White Male Hero thing. White Male Hero is when the colored people are suffering from a problem that only the White Male Protag can solve simply because he is better/smarter/more advanced/more white, and is a big problem trope in older fiction ex. Robinson Crusoe.
In this case it’s more of a White Male Villain realizing that oh shit, I fucked up, and now it’s my responsibility to fix it. Taking responsibility doesn’t make you a hero. It doesn’t mean you’re naturally smarter or more advanced or innately better than other people. It means you recognize that others are suffering and take steps to do your part to help.
Calling every white guy who helps non-white people in a movie a “White-male-hero” is ignoring the core of the message; that we all have to do what it takes to end racism, and that participating in racist systems is tacitly supporting what they represent, regardless of what you actually personally believe about race.
I think this is something that left-wing people often forget in their zeal to support non-white non-male heroes. We have those, and they’re great, but there’s also this really racist and (dare I say it) problematic attitude that as white people, we don’t really have to do anything besides get really happy when minorities or women do something great.
I wouldn’t call it a White Male Hero thing, but the mechanic that Chris mentioned is definitely there in media (can’t speak for the movie, haven’t seen it). It doesn’t have to be a “villain,” either—any white character who becomes “aware” of injustice qualifies (by “aware,” I mean that it registers to the character that “[X] is wrong and I have to do something about it”). Then, when the white character does some tiny action that puts them at the level of “basic human decency,” they get all the Karma points and cheap applause—I wouldn’t call it heroism so much as benefiting from an *extremely* low bar. Lower expectations enough, and eventually anyone who doesn’t go out of their way to kick puppies can look good.
I say “white,” but the trope is pretty flexible as far as that’s concerned. If both characters are white, it’s probably a man becoming not-an-asshole to a woman, etc.
Either way, you get maximum audience satisfaction for minimal effort, on the part of both the author and the character.
BigGuy, I think you’re referring to the “Mighty Whitey” trope (on my phone and don’t know how to link) that can be found on TVTropes.org
Well, it’s halfway between. In the movie’s version, she is indeed suffering from a problem – no “Colored” restrooms in her building. And only a white male can solve it – by knocking down the sign and changing the policy. Which, given the context, is kind of a heroic act. He’s standing up to enforce a change on every other white person: now you have to have dark-skinned people in your restroom!
In real life, she changed the policy all by herself. She didn’t need anyone to rescue her from her predicament, or to help her tell the white people: Starting now, you’re going to have Colored people using your toilets and sinks and sharing your space, and if you don’t like it you can fire me. Doing that was really gutsy and heroic, and the move didn’t show it at all. In the movie, she just took what the white people were willing to give her.
Chris, when I watched that scene I thought to myself more “oh hey, that’s nice, now he knows that it sucks when people don’t like you for being black” not. “yay! some white guy saved her, white men are so great!” and I don’t think it was meant to be. In this case you are criticizing his character for being white and male, and I do think that is a little unfair.
He isn’t praised for saving her, he’s praised for noticing that her life sucks. And that’s a good thing. Noticing that people are suffering is a god thing as long as it’s not “white man’s burden” -ish.
I agree with BigGuy. And I also agree with kkiten that it’s satisfied, but I disagree that yelling is inherently violent. It’s important to differentiate between speaking out and breaking someone down; context matters.
Merging….is not really the way this sort of thing works. “Integration” in this context means they’re communicating, sharing memories, and more or less working together towards a common goal (albeit, with different understandings, interpretations, and feelings about that goal, due to being different alters). At least, if I’m understanding DID correctly. Anybody want to correct me if I’m wrong?
I’m not at all sure this scene means that Amazi-Girl is starting to merge with Amber. I read it more as Amber actually being unsure, which suggests the split is becoming worse – they’re not fully sharing memories anymore.
I think she still remembers, but I don’t think she can as easily tell the line between her and Amazi-Girl. I can never tell if she’s full on creating an alternate personality, because Amber describes Amaz-Girl as her outlet for feelings she isn’t comfortable with, and they both share memories. Even Amber is talking her and describing Amazi-Girl being friends with Sal as anxiety inducing, and she did explain to Danny what Amazi-Girl did to save Becky. That indicates to me that she still has memory functions while Amazi-Girl.
It’s definitely clear that they have shared memory. OTOH, it’s also seems clear that the disassociation is growing. The gap between the two seemed very thin at the start of the semester and much more distinct now.
Which has me wondering if they’re getting to the point of hiding things from each other. Though, as you say, Amber does know AG’s been friendly with Sal, so it’s clear she’s still getting some memory at least.
Or it could be that she’s unsure because they aren’t actually seperate.
I wonder if we aren’t about to find out there’s another personality around besides Amazi-girl and Amber.
The one who stabed Sal.
There has always been a third one.
That’s just Amber.
Is it though? or are Amber and Amazi-girl unaware of Stabby McStabface as a distinct personality?
They are oblivious to Stabby McStabface.
headcanon’d
Amber has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to fly into a rage and lash out. That’s why Amazi-Girl was created in the first place. It was Amber who stabbed Sal, Amber who flipped the table on Ethan, Amber who punched out her dad and later hospitalised him and Amber who snapped and insulted Danny for kissing her in the wrong identity.
You know, if Danny had pulled the shit Amber pulled with him? She’d be pissed. So yeah, Danny is justified in being pissed off about it.
Difference is, as far as I’m aware, Danny isn’t in danger of having his alters dissociate. Because he doesn’t have any.
So yeah.
I thought Sybil and such was shown to be crap.
the existence of fakers doesn’t mean DID or similar stuff doesn’t exist, wtf
The existence of fakers does not mean DID and other disassociative disorders do not exist. My mother has one, as does my adoptive aunt.
Well, I’m sure that’s news to Cerberus.
Panel 5 gives me hope that this might not be all bad.
Then I read panel 6. Oof.
You’re breaking Superhero 101. Bruce Wayne does -not- stand on the frot steps of Wayne Manor in half a Batman outfit talking to some ex-lover. Protect the alter-ego!
But he does stand in the kitchen in a bathrobe and cowl while he’s nuking some lobster thermidor.
Ew, I can’t stand microwaved seafood.
Did you mean to type cowl? Because hilariously, with Batman it works either way.
The other way being ‘scowl’, in case it wasn’t clear.
Bruce Wayne hasn’t stood anywhere since that tragic knight. The Batman stands for him until senseless crime is completely gone from his world. For then, and only then, can Bruce stand up and walk out of the shadows.
Amber has never been as well-adjusted and able to direct her actions as Bruce Wayne. Just consider what this means: Amazi-Girl makes Batman look sane and stable.
Gods. I never realized that. That is both hilarious and horrible. The idea that someone who isn’t a costumed murderer escaped from an asylum can actually have it less together that Bruce “Tied for Biggest Dumpster Fire in the DC Multiverse” Wayne is terrifying (He’s tied with John Constantine, and man who, with full knowledge of what he was doing, once snorted the ashes of Santa Claus like cocaine).
I mean hey… least they’re talking?
“You think?” jeez guys, just read the character tags
So many problems in this comic could be clarified by reading character tags. Amber’s psychological issues, Joyce’s desire for a sister…
Two problems in this comic could be clarified by reading character tags.
(I’m not counting Ryan’s identity because that’s already been discovered to the extent that the tags help clarify it)
amber did say “wrong” when danny addressed her as amber, but character tags say amber, and it wasn’t blue speech bubbles.
Character tags also say AG. Blue speech bubble indicated the Batman impression voice, not AG’s presence.
Like BBCC says, the speech bubbles don’t tell them apart. But in a comic where both are tagged, you can look at the cheeks. Amber blushes and Amazi-girl does not.
Amber was only in that comic for one panel.
This feels like something Deadpool would say.
I agree.
I think Danny being upset about this is quite reasonable, since it was Amazi-Girl who dumped him for befriending Sal, and now AG is friends with her too.
It’s nice that Amazi-Girl and Sal are friends.
Jeez, Amber, either put the mask back on, or take the jumpsuit off.
Why not both?
I’m sure that she’ll think of that after she’s finished having a panic attack and existential crisis.
Worst Pokestop ever. I hope. I don’t actually play Pokemon Go.
For once, I have to agree with Danny; it is hard to figure out. It seems like Amber is learning her personalities aren’t that separated after all, but she responds by trying to make her boundaries wider, and that’s just opening even more problems. Also, cartoonishly enraged Danny makes me think of smoke coming out of his ears while speaking angrish – he just doesn’t have it in him 😛
I feel like this conversation is going to end with Danny getting enough of a grasp on what’s happening with Amber to suggest she get some counseling and her agreeing. Or maybe that’s just what I really hope will happen.
I don’t now if it’s been decided or not that dissociative identity disorder is exactly what she has but regardless she needs help.
It’s not clear to me that DID is something that experts generally agree exist, but she *so* needs help.
It’s currently recognized by the DSM, which seems clear enough.
It’s inclusion in the DSM is quite controversial, however. As my grandmother, a teacher of child psychiatry once told me, “If you don’t like your diagnosis, don’t worry, they’ll change the criteria.”
Um, politely, it’s a thing. Trust me. I’ve had it since at least when I was five.
For the record my question was if the diagnosis had been confirmed by Willis as what Amber has. I wasn’t questioning if it exists at all.
Cerberus wasn’t replying to you, fillerusername, but to Dana.
Yeah, sorry that was to Dana, not you.
Replies in this comic can be confusing sometimes. David Willis should switch t—
Oh, hey, Willis! What are you doing herOH MY GOD PUT IT DOWN PUT IT DOWN I WAS KIDDING
Tell me off if Im overstepping boundaries, but how do you interpret it? Do you think of yourself as one Me with two personalities or identities, or two Mes? I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I need some more information to clarify why my professors were so snarky about the existence of DID. It’s a European university, and they told us 80-90% of DID cases are diagnosed in the US, and there was a general “I’ll believe it when I see someone with it” mentality. So I’m here, asking what it is like in person
Well, first of all, this should come with a giant grain of salt that I can only speak to my personal experiences and that this is not going to be the experience for all DID folks, especially as I’ve been relatively integrated since a very young age, so didn’t have to deal with as much of the pain of having fragmented memories or the like.
But, for me, my alters are distinct individuals, in that each one has emotional reactions to things, personal history and internal life, is capable of keeping secrets from the others, and has a unique way of interacting with things. Each one is also capable of growing and of being hurt. And each one has their own unique properties.
Who I am often feels like a gestalt of them, especially as I’ve been integrated for a long time, so they tend to work together to make up who I am, but there are definitely ways I interact with the world where one particular alter is clearly the most prominent alter in response and this directly affects my interactions with others as there are times when I’m much more likely to throw myself into dangerous resistance and fighting back, times when I’m much more likely to collapse into self-loathing despair and self-doubt, times when I’m more likely to be silly to the point of potentially being insensitive, and times when I’m colder and more prone to falling into analytics.
And it has been consistently noticeable to the people in my life that this is the case and that sometimes in a crisis I can try and force another alter to take the wheel which leads to a very rapid mood change.
In a lot of ways, it feels very similar to Inside Out (and damn I’m glad that young DID kids today have that movie to give words to their experiences) with most of the time it being most of them on the control panel, but other times, one or two being the main ones running the show.
And when I was younger, I had at least one time where an alter took over to the point of shutting others out, necessitating a mad scramble to stop her before her suicide attempt could be completed.
And when I was younger I fell into the “golden alter” trap of viewing that particular alter as all that was good and pure in me and another alter as an evil being I needed to protect the world from. And that nearly killed me, because it gave that golden alter too much power, made it harder to keep everything integrated, and meant denying a large part of myself and who I was.
And growing up, I needed to learn myself how to initiate real honest dialogues between my alters instead of letting them fight or trying to force them into specific boxes of personality and how to get them operating on the same page. I don’t know if my initial split was triggered by trauma, but my second and third splits were (and while my main four are heavily integrated, there seems to be up to 3 others who seem still in the shadows and only very rarely seem to come out).
But I do know much like with my gender identity and sexuality, that this thing is a thing, that it has measurable effects in my interactions with others, and that it has directly informed my past and my way of interacting with the world and that attempting to pretend it away did not lessen the real-world impact of my condition.
But, that all said, it also doesn’t mean I am non-functional. I’ve had a long time to get used to having this condition (I’ve had it since I was at least 5, and I’ve had my main four since middle school) and I’ve even had it be crucial at points in my life for helping me survive. When everything in my life was super shitty, my DID allowed me to compartmentalize to the point where I was still able to get to work and perform happy there.
But yeah, hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Thank you for your answer. It is fascinating. I’d be very much interested in them keeping secrets from each other, because memory is one of the most interesting subjects in psychology. Without going into specifics, what kind of secrets can they keep? Thoughts, feelings, moods, events?
Well, for me, it’s mostly thoughts, feelings, and moods, but others have experienced events being kept secret between the alters and that’s usually when you have heavy disassociation that ends up needing the most intervention because alters will have gaps in their memory owing to certain alters squirreling away different stuff.
But yeah, for me, it was mostly thoughts, feelings, and moods. Also gender identity stuff. One of my alters figured out the gender stuff way before the rest of me and was trying to politely hint at it for years.
Hell, one of my alters hid that they were putting up with one of the other alter’s abuse because she was in love with her and thus buying a lot of her toxic framing about being “broken” and “dangerous” and the golden alter being perfect and more important than the rest.
Overall, I’ve been very fortunate.
to be frank, the experts can be full of shit sometimes. psychology is HEAVILY cultural bound, and therefore, can’t be totally scientifically objective. I have friends with DID. whatever you want to call it, it’s very real to them.
European here, with a not very useful story.
I knew in her adulthood a woman who went through her teenager years having breakdowns, giving herself another name when it happened and apologizing when it ended by accusing the “other her” of doing it.
Her friends developed a theory that she was possessed by the “other her” for lack of a more scientific way of understanding what happened.
Word of Shrinks was “nah it’s not another personality, she just psychotic, let’s lock her up and see what happens”
So, yeah, I guess the idea of dissociated personnalities is so refused that people have to think about it in “magic” concepts because no “scientific” concept fits what they deal with?
‘Friends’, plural? I thought DID was incredibly rare. It’s surprising you are friends with more than one person with the condition. (I’m NOT calling you or any of your friends a liar, just saying that unless you’re in a psychology-related field, you should play the lottery, because it seems like the odds of randomly meeting more than one person with DID and befriending them would be astronomical.)
I’m still trying to figure out if “Amazi-Girl” is a) genuinely another personality, or b) just a persona that Amber really /wants/ (to a dysfunctional degree) to be another personality. It feels borderline between the two.
I think this is good for Danny right now. Anger is a useful emotion. It is unhealthy when it’s uncontrolled, but it lets us know that something doesn’t sit right with us. It’s up to us to get down to the bottom of it from that point. Amber is going through stuff, but she’s also giving him a lot of crap, as another commenter pointed out.
It’s definitely easy to say, but I think this is integral to learning self worth is also knowing what you will and will not tolerate from people and learning to call people out when they deserve it. It’s being able to say “I can’t accommodate people’s feelings/my perception of how people see me all the time at the cost of my sanity and well being.” If that can’t be done and the issues can’t be dealt with as they come up, the anger gets worse because it is consciously or unconsciously bottled up and comes out in really destructive ways, like it has for Amber/Amazi-Girl.
I’m happy for Danny because he is on his way to standing up for himself and being less timid and passive aggressive. I think when that happens he’ll attract people in general who won’t step all over him.
Yeah, I give wrath a bad wrap sometimes, but only when I feel it’s unproductive. Here, this is wrath done right.
Yeah, based on what he currently understands, he should feel hurt and upset right now. Though, I’m glad he’s holding it back and trying to understand.
I’d hate for him to over-correct and turn into a “Nice Guy”, or any other breed of asshole
Danny. Amber has serious psychological issues. Acknowledge it.
I really don’t think he understands the extent though, there’s a lot of stuff happening that he has no way of knowing without her telling him (like the beef with Sal), so it’s really not totally his fault. Expecting someone to know what’s going on in a person’s head is kind of a lot of expectation, no one can really truly know the deep stuff without communication.
This may be the moment where she actually tells him the story of what’s actually going on in her head, in real detail rather than vague comments. I have to admit it’s difficult to conceptualize – maybe if Amber started from the beginning and was completely honest about it (not that she hasn’t been, but she’s left out a lot of stuff). Someone like Danny may have no concept whatsoever of the stuff she’s been through.
He knows she has alters, but he doesn’t *know*, you know? If he has no concept and context he can’t take it as seriously as we the audience might since we know Amber better than he does.
He knows she’s hurting, and has been very confused and worried on her behalf (even after she dumped him). Her suffering, however, doesn’t make him feel less hurt and confused for himself.
Danny has never encountered anything this fraught or complex. I think it’s really to his credit that he knows he’s in way over his head and is trying to get more info.
Credit to Danny for at least trying to keep his (very justifiable) anger in check and actually figure out what’s going on and talk about this instead of just blowing up immediately.
I feel bad for Amber being stuck in the middle of all this.
Amber singing “Stuck in the Middle with You” to Sal from between her two alters.
Best idea ever? Or I’m terrible for even thinking it?
I’m with Danny on this one.
Goddammit Willis for making me type that.
Oh!!! A break thru incoming????
Starting to like you, danny
Geez. Amber’s really kinda awful y’know. I mean it’s one thing to be high maintenance. It’s one thing to have an alter-ego. It’s even something to have multiple personalities, but she seems to be an amalgam of these and not only is she unapologetic but she’ll constantly blame any shortcomings on an alter-ego even to the extent that it all gets mixed up and none of it matters.
Danny should cut her out of his life. As she is now she’s poison. He deserves a better partner and he deserves a better friend, honestly.
You’re acting like she is the way she is because she wants to be. She’s mentally ill, severely traumatized, and recovering from years of emotional abuse. All pretty good reasons for not being the nicest to be around at times and needing a bit of compassion. Danny has a right to be reevaluating whether he wants her in his life because unlike us he doesn’t have the luxury of knowing all the very good reasons she is the way she is. Considering that we do know you don’t see how you’re being incredibly harsh?
You’re acting like not wanting to be an awful person justifies being an awful person. It doesn’t. She’s controlling, hypocritical and doesn’t seem to be seeking any help outside of her own self imposed coping mechanism. She doesn’t seem to actually want to be active in being a more well adjusted person (outside of her own personal frustration when she goes too far) and she’s willing to blame all of her misdeeds on her own mental health as if that absolves her of wrong doing.
She never says “You’re right. I(or Amazi-girl) over reacted when it came to you and Sal and I’m sorry”.
Just being mentally ill isn’t your “Get out of being emotionally harmful and terrible to others” free card. Because “she doesn’t want to”. That doesn’t undo her actions. It can make you more sympathetic and maybe understanding of why she behaves this way, but it’s not a catch all excuse. She put Danny through the ringer and is now contradicting herself. I’m sorry that she’s not all together but that doesn’t mean that she’s not being pretty harmful to those around her.
Except the part where the things they’re discussing are things that Amazi-Girl, not Amber, did. If he wants an explanation, he’ll have to take it up with AG because Amber cannot explain her thought processes for her.
I can see how that might be tough for him though – they exist in the same body, just with a different outfit. And even here we see Amber is unsure, so how is Danny supposed to know?
Well, yeah, of course it’s hard on Danny, and he’s having trouble understanding. I’m just happy he’s trying to.
But this isn’t exactly fun or easy for Amber, either.
I know that too, but it can’t be fun to be on the other end of it..I think it’s true for both of them. Amber shouldn’t have to go through what she’s going through, but Danny also does not have to tolerate bullshit.
My point though, is that if Amber has trouble explaining and she’s actually experiencing it, how are we to expect Danny to just completely understand without her telling him anything? Remember that she didn’t tell him anything at all about Sal, she just blew up at him and broke up with him – what is he supposed to do with that besides be angry? I don’t blame him at all for being mad, because he was wronged there.
Just to add that up this point she hasn’t really given him much to work with at all.
Yeah, I don’t blame Danny for being mad right now at all. If he ends up getting frustrated and walking away I’ll be disappointed but understand.
Right now I think he’s doing the right thing. He’s asserting himself, demanding for an explanation he is definitely owed, but he’s also keeping his anger on a leash, giving Amber the chance to give that explanation, and this time, not because he’s too meek to complain, but simply because he’s a compassionate, forgiving person, and he doesn’t want to give up on Amber yet.
And since conversation has only just started, I just don’t get the call for Danny to walk away, any more than I get the idea that she’s toxic for him. I don’t think they should start dating again anytime soon, and they should probably ease very carefully into being friends again if they choose to do so, but I don’t see any reason why someone would say they should completely cut off all contact right now.
He just walked in on her in the middle of a panic attack. No one is her best in that situation.
That said, yes, Amber/AG should go and get outside help – but it’s a really realistic scenario they think no one can help.
In contrast to non-DID people who do an ” it wasn’t me” on you, talking to the wrong alter about something really is talking to someone who wasn’t actively involved and might not even have a clear memory of the situation.
In this case, I’m rather with Cerberus’ interpretation below: AG is wriggling out of her responsibility and leaves Amber to deal with the mess.
Danny has good reason to be angry. His willingness to understand what happened on Amber/AGs side of the situation is much more than anyone can ask of him.
It’s called empathy, and you totally seem to lack it. You know that Amber has issues, but, rather than show any compassion about those issues, you judged her as an awful person. You wrote her off as “toxic” and say that she should be cut out of people’s lives.
Yes, trying to be good makes you less awful. That’s literally all anyone can do. We can’t actually be good all the time. But we can try. And some people have it harder than others.
YOU ARE ATTACKING REAL PEOPLE WHEN YOU DO THIS. I have a mental disorder. It sometimes makes me disagreeable, and I do things I don’t want to. If people did what you said, I’d be stuck homeless on the street with no way to fix myself.
This comic goes out of its way to present Amber’s struggles in the most empathetic light. But, despite having it spoonfed to you, you just want to dismiss her as awful and write her off.
Would you like it if I did that to you? Would you like it if your friends did that to you?
OK, bedrock starting point: People ALWAYS have the right to walk away from other people who are toxic to them. It does not matter whether the other person is mentally ill. That’s not harsh. That’s protecting people from abuse.
If someone is capable of knowing a difficult person (whether mentally ill or not) without being damaged, and if they care about that person for personal or professional reasons, then they might stay and try to help. But if they are being damaged by a relationship, their first responsibility is to themselves.
I’m not sure I agree with Yotomoe that Amber/AG is toxic for Danny at this point. I think Danny may be stronger than that. She is certainly causing him pain and confusion, but that’s not always the same as toxic.
On the other hand, if Yotomoe is right that AG/Amber is toxic for Danny, then he is also right that Danny should walk away. Whether Amber has a mental illness or not is not relevant to that question. Whether Amber/AG’s actions are a result of a mental illness is not relevant to that question.
“their first responsibility is to themselves.”
I HATE that sentiment with the passion of 1000 suns. Even if we limit that to relationships, you’ve literally just described how Donald Trump or any other selfish shit operates. If your first responsibility is to yourself, then you can hurt absolutely anyone as long as it’s good for you.
A relationship is a two-way street. You care about yourself and the other person. It’s true that, sometimes, you can’t actually continue for your own health. But that has nothing to do with putting yourself first. It’s knowing your own limitations, and realizing that you aren’t helping.
As you indicate, Danny is nowhere near that point. He’s interacting with her perfectly fine. Sure, he felt bad when he was dumped, but he’s functioning perfectly fine.
Yes, there is a real danger of helping people too much and not having any value in yourself. But lately it seems we’ve swung the other way, acting like we have to value ourselves.
It’s a balance. There is no first obligation to ourselves or to others. We are equally obligated to both.
Mental illness is not an excuse to be hurtful to people. It’s an explanation but at the end of the day you are still responsible for your actions and the harm you inflict on others as a result of them and you still have to own up to it and try to make amends and do better in the future and if you don’t then you’re kind of a total shit trauma or not. Amber is constantly foisting off responsibility for her actions onto her mental illness or using them as an excuse to wallow in self pity about how terrible she is forcing the very people she’s hurting to soothe her and it’s toxic.
Bullshit. Amber has done nothing of the sort. She doesn’t even know she has a mental illness.
And she has many, many times owned up to hurting people with her actions, trying not to hurt them, with Ethan and Danny and now Sal. She just hasn’t talked to Danny about this particular situation yet, because she’s scared of confrontation and hasn’t even really sorted it out for herself yet.
You get mad at people who make up shit to hate on Sal, Carla, Becky, etc. Don’t do the same thing to Amber.
As much as I rolled my eyes at AG’s milquetoast apology to Sal, yeah, Amber’s definitely reached out to others to apologize before.
What people seem to be forgetting here is that what Danny did wrong was not to be friends with Sal, rather it was to allow a few words from Sal to make him turn on a dime and go from being proud of Amber because of what she did as Amazigirl to wanting her to give up being Amazigirl.when obviously being Amazigirl is a major investment of time and eergy that is extremely important to her. Danny’s defining characteristic has always been his loyalty, and yet, just like that, he was willing to throw Amazigirl under the bus.
“Under a bus” (or rather a truck) is where Amazi-Girl almost ended up in that car chase with Toedad.
“If ah hadn’t been there, she woulda died” are some very good words for him to have been convinced by. He was very rightly concerned she might get herself killed if she kept going the way she had been.
A) Amber was blowing up at him before he brought that up, merely for talking to her. Hell, she started getting mad just for EXISTING near her before she knew they were talking.
B) Those few words were ‘If ah hadn’t been there, she woulda died’. As FC said, that’s a very fair and legitimate concern, especially since she started being more rigid in the separation between Amber and AG and more neurotic and angry since then.
C) Loyalty is one thing, enabling is another.
It is true that mental illness does not absolve us of behavior that is hurtful for others. It is simultaneously true that sometimes mental illness renders us incapable of treating others well. If we’re lucky, that state is temporary and we try to get help. And once we’re well again, it’s time to make reparations for the actions we took when we were out of our own control.
I’m speaking as someone with bipolar who lost most of the friends I had in college because I hadn’t learned that second step yet. I’m more balanced and have better relationship skills now. I’m better both at reigning myself in even when I’m out of my head and, when that fails, genuinely making amends afterwards. Because of that, I have many loving and supportive relationships that are more than a decade old.
Was I a bad friend in college? Absolutely. Was I a bad person? No. I just definitely needed help, and was fortunate enough to get it.
+1, what Gwen said.
When we hurt people because we’re ill, it wasn’t because we wickedly wanted to hurt them… but the people are still hurt, we must still clean up after ourselves.
We must also try and be as well as possible, even though wellness is really, really hard work a whole lot of the time. This doesn’t come up that often because, duh, being ill totally sucks and we’d much rather be healthy, but still, we don’t get to give up.
Amber is not giving up.
When she was more integrated, she once told Dorothy that she believes that Amazi-Girl is how she can have happiness and normalcy. She’s incorrect, but she doesn’t know that — she still has her bet on AG, and AG is reinforcing this idea.
Amber’s been this ill for a couple months, tops, and has no idea what’s going on, much less whether/how to change it. This is what a good therapist is for, to help her figure out what’s happening, what wellness looks like for her, and how she can get there.
Danny can, optionally, cheer for her and support her, if he wants and if she lets him. (Supporting her can include calling her on her shit and requiring her to treat him well, too.) If Danny doesn’t want, then it is 100% fine for him to peace out — he is responsible to keep himself okay, and he doesn’t own her mental health. He probably wants to help, if only he knew how.
Yes, how dare she – an abused 18-year-old girl with PTSD – not be able to both fully understand and explain the mental illness which she’s probably only experienced like this for the last couple months or so.
And how silly it is for Danny to try to understand and not just immediately storm away when that’s not possible after only a few sentences.
My very bipolar uncle said it best: it’s not always my fault, but it is always my responsibility.
As in, the mental illness could mess up his behaviour, and it didn’t mean he was an evil person who consciously chose to be mean to his loved ones. But, it was still totally his job to stay on top of his behaviours as best he could, and to fix things afterwards.
Someday Amber will get there. Right now she doesn’t even understand what’s happening or what health might look like or how she can feel okay.
Agreed. Responsibility = taking ownership of the good stuff AND the bad stuff. You can’t grow if you can’t even acknowledge your mistakes, let alone learn from them. Likewise, it also helps to learn to like yourself or even love yourself – nobody can make you do that, you have to do it.
This topic has always been polarizing and evokes such strong emotions I think because a lot of us have been in places where we’ve hurt others and are deeply ashamed of it and/or have illness that make us not ourselves (I know experience mental illness), while a lot of us have been in positions where we have been terribly hurt and traumatized by people who happened to have mental illness, especially I think if that person was a parent.
I come from the latter category, and topics like this stir up emotions in me because the people implying that it makes Danny a shitty and horrible person to not totally accommodate Amber at all times, makes me feel like I’m hearing from the people in my life who’ve pressured/guilted me into dealing with those people in my life who’ve hurt me (possibly beyond repair – I know I’m in for years of therapy/I’ve developed disorders directly because of that treatment) and told me to sacrifice my sanity basically because on the surface it looks “wrong” to “abandon” someone who’s clearly ill, and they don’t really mean it, etc. But context is everything.
I’d like to throw out there that in addition to the arguments stated, perhaps there is a lot of pressure on Danny to be Amber’s savior because her treatment of him is “not as bad” as we normally think of, according to the social “rules” of when people break up – i.e., since it’s not an extreme scenario. If so, why is that? If Danny were my real life friend, I’d advise him that they both need space. And I also think simply not wanting to be with someone is a legit reason to not be with them, why stay if you don’t feel the same way?
Yeah, I agree she’s responsible for her actions, but when someone is young and hasn’t even gotten diagnosed, I can’t help but feel it’s shitty not to be willing to forgive.
Like, Amber absolutely does owe Danny an apology, but jumping right to “she’s a horrible person and Danny shut cut her out of his life” just feels callous as hell.
I understand having issues, I do. And I understand lashing out and hurting people. I understand wanting to help those people. But an important factor is that both parties need to confront the issue at hand.
Amber has chosen to always deflect. She will let her issues drive her life and she will blame everyone else for them and then feel really shitty that she can’t control herself. When she says she can’t stand being around Sal and that Danny CAN NOT talk to this person, this is not something she wants to work through or talk through. This is simply something that cannot exist for her.
And yet once she has found herself getting closer to Sal, she’s still trying to stick to her guns. She’s not trying to admit she needs help to get past her illogical hatred. Or that she was at all wrong for breaking up with Danny because of that. She just blames it on Amber, even though Amazi-girl is the one who broke up with him for it.
“She will let her issues dive her life”
I want you to understand the restraint I had to use to not simply type “fuck you” over and over in response to that. You keep phrasing things in such a way that makes it clear that on some level you feel like she’s just not trying hard enough to not have PTSD. If she were really making an effort, she would have diagnosed this shit already and sought therapy on her own! Like, I know you’re not a complete asshole, but this attitude really pisses me off.
What she is trying to tell Danny is something she has not told anyone before. She probably hasn’t even tried to put it into words until now. They are only just starting what is going to be a very difficult, painful conversation, started right as she was having an anxiety attack, so I find it very understandable that “I’m so sorry I snapped at you” isn’t among the first things out of her mouth.
And you should consider the reasons why she hasn’t already gotten professional help with her anger and PTSD is because her scumbag father prevented it, and because her self-hatred reinforces the idea that she deserves help.
Plus, this is literally the first conversation they’ve had not just since Amazi-Girl buried the hatchet with Sal, but also since since they broke up. It’s not like she’s had missed opportunities to talk about any of this with him, or any indication that he ever wanted to see her again.
First off, fine “Fuck me” I’ll accept that. I’m kind of shitty :D.
Secondly I’m not blaming her for having PTSD. I’m not expecting her to be over it immediately. I’m not expecting her to EVER be over it. I want her to accept the responsibilities of her actions. Either that or Danny needs to stop engaging her because he’s not helping her and she’s gonna keep hurting him. Right now at this point she’s just sort of really toxic and if Danny continues persueing a relationship (be it romantic or friendly) it’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of hoops for a person he just met who seems more than willing to redirect blame.
That said the line “self-hatred reinforces the idea that she deserves help” rings pretty true to me personally.
I suppose I should clarify that while I still mentioned how I wanted to say “fuck you” over and over really was not intended as an actual “fuck you” directed at you. I mean, it kinda was (at the time I posted it, though not now that I’ve cooled off a bit), but I was also trying to acknowledge that I might end up getting a bit nastier than was called for due to my initial anger. And I honestly am sorry about that jab, restrained as it might have been.
In any case, now that they’re no longer dating, I don’t see her being in a position to hurt him. Even if they don’t end up staying friends, I just don’t see a reason Danny shouldn’t at least stick out this conversation. It’s obviously going to take another strip or two to get to the meat of it, so it just feels much too early to be saying Danny should give up on it.
And I while I accept that Amber’s actions have been awful at times, I just really don’t like the idea that she’s awful, or toxic. She’s not in a great head space for a romantic relationship right now, and she definitely could use help addressing that, but that doesn’t make her intrinsically horrible.
She is a good person who deserves love. She just needs some help learning to manage her PTSD and her anger better. And the first step towards that is telling someone about what she’s going through, as she’s trying to do right now.
Of course Danny has every right to tend to his own emotional needs and walk away if he ends up feeling that’s for the best. I’m just really hoping he’ll stick this out, because if he can’t understand or won’t listen, I doubt Amber will try to tell someone else anytime soon.
Stage 1:
Yotomoe believes that AG/Amber is toxic for Danny, and therefore Danny should walk away.
fillerusername and others believe that Danny and/or Yotomoe should have compassion for Amber/AG.
These positions are not actually inconsistent. You can have compassion for someone and still walk away because they are toxic for you.
Stage 2: Yotomoe hears that Danny should stay with AG out of compassion. Yotomoe disagrees with that – as do I! People should NEVER stay in a toxic environment that they’re able to leave, for compassion or any other reason.
Stage 3: Everyone doubles down, Yotomoe explaining why AG is toxic in increasingly judgmental terms, others defending Amber/AG and/or mentally ill people in general, taking increasingly indignant and/or pained positions.
Stage 4: (I hope!) Everyone takes a deep breath, takes a step back, and realizes they all agree:
A) Everyone deserves compassion, especially people with mental illness.
B) Everyone has the right to protect themselves by finding a necessary distance from people who are toxic for them, regardless of whether said people are mentally ill.
Step 5: Everyone stops doubling down, expresses appreciation for each other’s original point of view, and feels better. (Please?)
Haha, indeed!
I think that people really do listen to each other on here, and we all learn from each other — these are all commenters who tend to basically respect that we’re all okay. It’s gonna be fine. 🙂
Ok, yes Danny your right you have every reason to be upset and confused but let her just explain it…If she explains that is, I hope she explains because if not it would just be dragging this out for no real reason.
Trying to understand while enraged. Bad combination. You end saying really shitty things that way.
I dunno, it’s better than not trying to understand things while enraged.
Touché.
Well…This doesn’t *have* to end terribly…
DID-knowledgeable people please help me out: is Amber unsure that AG dumped Danny because: she is realizing that she’s more integrated than she thought, her AG memories are hazy/untrustworthy, or because it was a bad thing to do so clearly bad Amber must’ve done it instead? Or something else?
Danny is under the impression that Ambers anger stems from her Vigilante persona but it turns out the one with less control of their anger is Amber so when she snapped at him earlier it was Amber not AG… at least that’s what I think this shit can be confusing even to me.
Anyway I think that’s the case because the one with a Grudge against Sal is Amber:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/sharing/
Pretty much one of those is my impression.
My best guess is AG can’t own her shit and so dumped all of her fuckups on Amber because AG is the golden alter and Amber is “everything wrong” in the mythology.
I am edging towards agreeing with you that it is most likely option 3.
Because AG sees Sal as good now, she could retroactively be inserting the fact Danny was good for understanding Sal is good, and if Danny was good and not a traitor, and AG is supposed to protect Amber, surely she wouldn’t end a beneficial relationship for Amber, and therefore, Amber must have ended it instead and caused her own suffering.
Therefore, Amber gets confused because before her memory said with certainty ‘AG broke up with Danny’ and now it might be starting to say the opposite because AG
It’s weirdly paradoxical because the way she articulates it, AG is the dumping ground for unacceptable aggression and anger. But I agree that she seems to be increasingly identified as the powerful, righteous one.
Making anger, hate, etc righteous and justified – “it’s okay to feel that way about [acceptable target], they deserve it” – is how a lot of people, not just Amber, deal with those feelings. Many of us have such emotions, and if we don’t express them, they will inevitably turn against us – self-loathing, self-hatred, etc – so we look for socially acceptable outlets and narratives, that let us feel and even act on them while still being able to tell ourselves we’re “good people”.
Is it wrong that I still ship these two?
Not to me. But not right now.
Right now Danny I think will simply back off to being the confidant Amber needs. That is contingent, of course, on A/AG informing him about who Sal is. He seems to have the empathy she needs, and is someone who is forgiving and loyal to a fault. I just see him reprioritizing things when he knows the whole situation.
There was always something there, and it might happen afterwards. Or not.
This is gonna end in Danny and Ethan making out, isn’t it.
Fingers crossed that one of them sees she isn’t flaky and actually has a mental health issue. Neither may know what DID is, but at least one of them must see something is wrong that she needs professional help cooping with.
Noir Dumbing of Age
Narrator: The groups pizza arrives, you guys figure out what it is.
Joyce: So we’ve been finding these R’s with the victims.
Reginald: Ah, yes, you see in my homeland that means death.
Joyce: R means death in Thingleyism?
Reginald: Yes, I suppose it dirives from the word reaper.
Joyce: Do you think there’s a connection?
Reginald: Hard to tell, as far as I know me and Xaviar are the only people here who would know that.
Joyce: where are your citizens anyway.
Reginald: they are under me and my fathers careful protection
Joyce: Surely, someone would have revealed your country online?
Reginald: We have a private server.
Narrator: Joyce kicks Kyle from under the table.
Kyle: (texting) Danny, Thingley has private server.
Danny: (texting) Got it…I need the password.
Narrator: Joyce glances over at Kyle’s texts.
Joyce: So…how does this private server of yours work?
Reginald: Oh, my IT guys I suppose you could say maintain it, I’m the only one with the password.
Joyce: What about your father.
Reginald: Him too I suppose, but he never remembers it.
Joyce: How old is your father?
Reginald: Pushing seventy.
Joyce: Who decided on the password?
Reginald: My father
Kyle: (Texting) try 1947.
Danny: (Texting) there’s no way…oh wait it worked.
Joyce: (thinking) heh
I’ll decide it’s Hawaiian pizza. Love me some pineapple.
I like pineapple and taco meat with cheddar cheese… and not just because everybody tends to leave before eating my pizza.
For other people though, yeah, Hawaiian is a good pick.
I thought your favorite was supposed to be pineapple and olive?
With burnt crust? Valhalla no, perish the thought. That would be Deadpool, terribly sorry for the confusion. You see, I am merely a fan thereof… of Deadpool, that is, not that pizza, it lacks meat.
I don’t know. What with all the fourth wall breaking hijinks he pulls you very well could be him just trying to mess with all of us.
Of course it worked.
A strip with two characters…one of which is Danny.
…and Danny isn’t the one dannying up the situation.
The realism of this whole scenario is really strained by these people still being interested in Pokemon Go.
Curse you buffer!
Y’know, if Danny wasn’t such an insecure mess, he could have just waited a day or two and had a much less confrontational conversation with Amber. When she initiated a conversation with him.
And then not been able to actually talk to her about the very thing he wanted to talk to her about. The whole point of what he wants to discuss is why she’s okay with Sal now.
Eh, i know people who still play. It’s not a fad anymore, but it’s still a functional game.
I know some people who still play Pokemon Go.
Literally 4 hours ago I ran into someone I didn’t know played until I asked what was up, and they told me what they were trying to catch. I gather there are now some second generation types out there. They also showed me a Pokemon Go Plus they were carrying.
Yeah, the initial fad was an initial fad, but the death of this game is greatly exaggerated.
They’re the type to carry around a 3DS for random games of Mario Kart (and probably Smash, though I don’t think they’ve been shown playing it since it came out, I just figure it’s the type of game they’d both get). And they’re on a college campus, where Pokestops are extra plentiful. So I can believe they’d still be playing.
I still play Pokemon Go. All the little events make it more fun than ever!
It’s interesting that Amber actually confirms that AG feels friendly towards Sal (as opposed to, say, just tolerating her while they track a genuine bad guy).
“Look, Danny, you know comic books, right? Well, we started to fight, and then I spotted a rapist, and she helped me with getting him. It was a classic team-up scenario!”
Oops. Should have written: “She stated to fight with Amazi-Girl, and then Amazi-Girl spotted a rapist”, etc.
I think.
I’m thinking that Amazi-Girl is trying to salvage her perception of the world by reclassifying Sal as a ‘Catwoman’ rather than a ‘Poison Ivy’.
I’m glad this confuses Danny too. It’s always been one of my stumbling blocks when trying to analyze Amber’s character.
Y’know, if Danny wasn’t such an insecure mess, he could have just waited a day or two and had a much less confrontational conversation with Amber. When she initiated a conversation with him.
I disagree. If he were an insecure mess, he never would have brought it up and just passive aggressively dropped hints/treat Amber badly, or just not talked to her ever again without explaining.
When someone gets smacked in the face by hypocrisy like this, they’re not being insecure by calling it out. She dumped him out of the blue for talking to her, and now Sal is her sidekick. Danny isn’t obligated to wait for her to talk to him about it, especially when I’d put 10:1 odds of Amber never bringing it up on her own.
Sure, Danny is the go to guy for relationships. SMH
Danny doesn’t own Amber. She can talk to or hang out with whomever she wants. They hung out a bit, had some fun, broke up and. it. Is. Over. They were together for about five minutes.
Danny doesn’t get to continue the argument days later, just cause he caught a case of l’esprit de l’escalier.
No. Not at all.
Because none of that is what is happening here.
Their relationship was fairly short, but still serious – partly due to the compressed nature of this comic’s format. It’s also only a couple days later.
Sure, he doesn’t own. She can do what she wants, but she did break up with him partly just for talking to Sal. Definitely screamed at him for doing so. Made wild accusations about Sal. Now she’s just casually hanging out with her. I’d ask questions too. And probably be confused and upset. This isn’t him finally thinking of the clever thing to say or wanting to rehash it, this is a stumbling across a big new piece of information that makes no sense.
Sure, he doesn’t own her. She doesn’t have to answer or explain herself, but he can still ask. He can even be upset with her or yell at her. Not like she hasn’t done it to him.
While they were in a relationship. They had an argument. Boundaries change after that. Dramatically.
Yes, if Amber wanted to she could just walk away.
But if she wants to remain friends with him, she owes him an explanation.
As Fart Captor said – Boundaries change, but not so drastically that talking to or questioning each other is not acceptable. They haven’t renegotiated boundaries or done anything to make it clear where they are.
More importantly, however the boundaries have changed, Danny isn’t doing what you claimed he is. He hasn’t thought of the perfect comeback to their fight and come out to use it. He’s stumbled on his ex chatting amiably with the monster she’d accused of turning him against her and broke up with him over. It’s damn weird and few would just ignore it.
Unless he’d already written her off as crazy and better out of his life. Which we know he hasn’t.
That really wasn’t an argument. That was one-sided yelling and accusations on Amber’s part, which is very different from mutually engaging in a back and forth.
I agree with Mav and also Cerberus’ reaction post below
I though Amazi Girl and Sal were more allies than friends.
United against a common enemy rather than in real affection.
Sal has saved Amazi-Girl’s life, fought beside herl to take down a rapist and his goons and have shown up together to support the victim of the crimes. Given Amazi-Girl’s social life, Sal easily sails over the very low bar for friendship. After the break up with Danny, I’d be surprised if anyone is a bigger positive presence in Amazi-Girl’s life.
Yes, but the break-up with Danny was because she saw him talking *to* Sal. If she’s willing to be humble and apologize, maybe she could grow her support network instead of just trading one person for another.
She doesn’t even really have to apologize, just explain.
Talk to him. Tell him about Sal. I know it’s hard.
who is danny talking to right now? amber or amazi girl?
Ambazi-girl!
Tags confirm Amber. AG is nowhere to be found this strip.
Can someone PLEASE give Carla some cookies and explaine what’s going on!?
On a seperate note, will Amber or AG finaly realize that there is a third persona, the angry one who stabed Sal, yelled at Danny…etc
Pretty sure that’s (just) Amber, pushed to her limit.
The rage isn’t something separate from her, as much as she might wish it was.
While it is possible there is a third one, we don’t have any reason to think what you are describing isn’t just Amber having difficulties controlling her anger when punished to a mental limit.
*pushed not punished
In strip answer: I think Amber takes every wrong thing she does on herself.
Real life answer: A super-villain third persona would be an interesting development.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: I’m so glad that Danny is speaking up on this, because yeah, this is a legitimate grievance. He got dumped all of a sudden and in a really shitty way based on a weird rule he’d have had no way of knowing about.
From his perspective this is hypocrisy and he has no way of knowing about the larger situation with AG because AG refuses to speak with him and has made no effort to give him any sense of real closure.
Panel 2: And she still is denying him that. This is Amber, Amber who is recovering from a massive panic attack caused by her triggers surrounding AG’s new friendship. And once again, AG just leaves Amber stranded to handle and clean up her mess and deal with the upset ex with the legitimate grievance.
And I feel this shows a strong parallel between Amber and Danny. Both have been mistreated by AG (Amber far far more, but still) and treated as tokens to be discarded in her internal mythology as the larger than life super being who never makes mistakes and always does the right thing.
Danny suffered for AG’s inability to acknowledge that her judgment was being affected by emotions and triggers and built an entire alternate interpretation of events to justify those emotions. And Amber seems to be being saddled with the blame for AG’s mistakes as well as the label of the “broken one” who must be kept out of action and in the background.
And it’s all the more heartbreaking because A) Amber has feelings for Danny too and B) It’s not 100% clear that Amber has even been getting the full set of memories of what went down.
So Amber might be being stranded on this and might not even fully have the memories of what this even is.
Panel 3: Ugly arguments are never fun or enjoyable and often are best avoided. But I’m still proud of Danny here, because one of his central struggles is with regards to his dignity and viewing himself as having worth independent of a relationship.
And here? He’s standing up for that worth, pointing out a real grievance and stating that without hesitation or apology but not in the petulant style he did when he got dumped by Dorothy. This is a major growth moment for him and I’m incredibly proud.
I don’t see how AmaziGirl could be purposefully leaving Amber to deal with Danny in this instance, when she disappeared before either of them actually noticed Danny’s presence.
My impression of the alter switch is that AmaziGirl stuck around in order to finish her conversation (and probably to protect Sal from Amber’s hate and wrath); but as soon as Sal left, she allowed Amber to return and vent her frustration with the whole situation. It was just bad timing that led to Amber being the one to deal with the confrontation with Danny.
AG has pushed into conversations like this before. If she wanted to, she could absolutely come out to talk to Danny. She doesn’t want to.
We have already seen a multitude of times, that when Amber is distressed, usually AG comes out very rapidly, in fact, the shock of seeing Danny near Sal which led to their break up had AG take control rather instantaneously.
Amber is distressed right now, therefore, AG could most certainly take control at any moment if she wanted. Which means she is choosing not to.
Also, since Cerberus has actual life experience with DID, I am inclined to believe her when she says AG could be in control right now and just isn’t.
I’m not sure, but I think the only times we’ve seen AG grab control were when Amber ran into Sal. Originally, she ran away to change, but that last time with Danny, she just took over.
Amber’s distressed, but she’s not triggered. She’s not panicking. It might not be that easy for Amazi-Girl to grab control again.
I wasn’t trying to say her experiences with DID didn’t give her better understanding of the character; I just figured she missed/forgot about the timing of the alter switch in the previous comic, since it sounded like she was saying that AmaziGirl left when Danny showed up.
But like thejeff says, I don’t imagine it’s easy for an alter to take over. AG can do it during confrontations with Sal, and I imagine this is as much to do with Amber’s personality wanting to shut down when Sal arrives as it is to do with AG’s desire to avoid Amber’s panic response. In this case, Amber’s upset but she doesn’t feel like she needs AG to take over.
And also, AG has no need to protect Danny from Amber. It would be helpful for her to show up, yes, but it’s not the kind of situation where AG would feel she needs to force her way in, nor one where Amber would feel she can’t handle being there.
OK, so far it’s not horrible. I’m very cautiously optimistic
hopefully they’ll have this in the bagge
Heh, that was actually pretty clever.
that fuckzone snippet is giving me feels, and they’re not even mostly sexy
Me too, and they are not even mostly sad.
Just a moment out of the seriousness of today’s strip to notice the delightful phrasing: “…! …! It is all actually very anxiety-inducing!” Tough to explain why I like this so much — it’s got a punchy tempo, and it’s nerdy, and precisely-quintessentially how I’d imagined that Amber speaks.
Panel 4: Okay, so it looks like she’s not being completely shut out of the memories. That’s good. But still, 🙁 Poor Amber. Like, AG has justified all sorts of bullshit against Amber in the name of “protecting” her. Oh, I’ll just cut Danny out of our lives, I’ll spend huge amounts of time in charge of the body to stalk Sal. I’ll treat you like a broken porcelain doll of poison.
And that’s been especially strong with regards to Sal and AG has used the mythology of Sal for years to build herself up as the avatar of everything good in Amber/AG. And yet, there’s no sign of talking to Amber about any of this or even valuing that all this time with Sal is massively anxiety-inducing for her owing to her PTSD triggers.
She’s been left to deal with it all on her own as the alter who took power and freedom away from her in the name of protection has just buggered off.
And now she’s in a position where she has to defend this choice of AG’s when she doesn’t fully agree with it.
Panel 5: Oh, Danny, you sweet cinnamon roll, you. Ok, I love that Danny interrupts his frustration to check in on this and make sure he’s yelling at the right alter. Like, he’s struggled a lot to understand Amber/AG’s mental condition and really has barely the first clue as to everything, but he’s trying here and he seems to finally be putting together the pieces as to Amber/AG’s DID (which I feel we can confirm as canon at this point) and even recognizing when different people are in charge.
And yeah, AG was the one who yelled at him. And she’s the one ducking out on him anytime he’s out and about leaving Amber to clean up her mess. Fucking cowardly little shit of an alter*.
*Having dealt with all that nonsense when one of my alters was trying to play this “golden alter” game, I have little respect for AG’s willingness to own her shit and acknowledge she isn’t perfect and Amber might have some valuable traits of her own. Especially as this framing is fucking up the Amber alter’s recovery and putting her in really stressful situations without support.
Panel 6, Reaction 1: My initial interpretation is that AG is dumping her mistakes on Amber. I mean, we’ve been seeing some hints of that in some of Amber and AG’s framing of the whole kerfuffle and AG’s internal mythology and it would be very in character for the whole “golden alter” to try and shift their fuckups and flaws on the alter designated the “toxic pit” or the “fuckup”.
And Amber is of a personality type where she’d be very likely to accept that framing because she has been dumped with so many other toxic frames of her own instability and that’s before taking into account that she’s saddled with a lot of the memories of abuse which definitely included Blaine blaming her for everything bad that happens to her or that he did.
And if so, this is extra heartbreaking because she acknowledges that AG fucked up and then looks away and gets nervous fingers and eyebrow, because the whole central mythology that has her being viewed as worthless is based on this toxic fictional notion that AG can’t fuck up things like that. Those fuckups are only capable of coming from Amber, so it’s time to rewrite those events in order to make herself the villain and I empathize a lot with that, because I’ve definitely done that of internalizing that I was the villain for something I didn’t actually do.
Panel 6, Reaction 2: But I might be wrong. Like I suspect it’s the former, but this could be a sign that she’s not as disassociated as it seemed she’s been trying to force herself and AG is responding to that by doubling down on the disassociation even though that is unhealthy for her.
But I strongly suspect it’s the former.
Amazi-Girl didn’t peace out because she didn’t want to deal with Danny. Amber forced herself back into control because of the accumulated stress of being around Sal for so long. She may yet come back and try to defend her actions to Danny but I hope that Amber gets to explain stuff first.
Yeah, but AG has wrestled control back a lot, but when it comes to interacting with Danny, she’s nowhere to be found and she’s found an excuse to never see him again and gain some closure while leaving Amber to deal with the awkward fallout.
I read the tags and everything like everyone else, but sometimes I wonder if there is a 3rd alter who shares her* memories with Amber in such a way to make Amber think she must have lost control and did terrible thing x instead of having control taken away from her by the violent alter. Or maybe both AG and Amber have the memories from the 3rd personality, but AG in preserving her golden status goes “Nope. Not me. Must have been you.” and Amber has such low self esteem that she swallows it hook, line, and sinker. Either way, AG tries to come out every time the violent one starts trying to take control because it’s golden girl’s job to fight bad guys both inside and out. AG reminds Amber she’s bad. Violent alter reinforces this belief. Rinse and repeat until AG does no wrong and Amber is trash.
Now we have this moment when Amber is so confused because AG can’t do something wrong. She might be second guessing herself and wondering if there is another alter. AG was in charge during the brake up sure, but what if she wasn’t the only one there at that moment? AG is messed up sure and far from perfect, but the violent one might have been in the back seat egging her on. Even if the breakup was all AG, it might get her to start thinking there might be a third and AG might pin it all on the violent one to keep the moral high ground (which sounds typical of her).
* I’m assuming all of her alters would identify as female and not another gender identity
[Story that adds little to the comic discussion]
It reminds me a bit of a neighbor I had as a kid. She told me she had what is now called DID after she found out one of her alters had been out when I was by to play with her daughter and she was worried she had been mean to me (she hadn’t been). I wish I knew then what I know now. I might have been able to help. As is I can only share old memories filtered through the mind of a child and a few as a teen.
I remember she was badly fragmented and memories weren’t shared. They even had different handwriting which was how she figured it out when she found things she didn’t write in a different handwriting from times she couldn’t remember. It made a lot of things difficult like paperwork, spending time with her husband and kids, balancing a budget, and so on. A job was out of the question for her. You could tell it took a toll on her. She had a hard time sleeping too.
Doctors put her on various medications but they only doped her up and made her seem out of it. I remember when they moved in my parents thought she was on drugs. Her husband told my parents something about a medical condition and seizures (which she also had). I wish he had told them about her condition because my dad gave her strict instructions about if she came over and interacted with my pet deer (a rescue I found in an ant pile) to not sit down below eye level because she would rare up, and one of her alters came by and did just that. She wasn’t hurt, but we had to get rid of my deer.
There was one alter they warned me of. It only came out if anyone used the b word in her direction (even if they weren’t using it on her). Her family described it as feral like a wild animal. It would attack anything and everything nearby. Her husband made the mistake a few times (usually a slip of the tongue) and got covered in scratches and bruises for it. He only made it once or twice while they lived next door to us. Her kids got taken away from her for a while after one such incident. That’s why thinking of a violent alter made me think of her. Sometimes I wonder how she is. Dad said he seen her husband once a few years ago who said she got on illegal drugs (I think it was dope?), so there’s no telling how bad she is now or even if she’s still alive. I guess that’s why I want Amber to get help from a qualified professional so much; I don’t want her to end up like my neighbor.
shit, man.
That “I think” really worries me, yeah. Because Amazi-Girl’s been pushing her mistakes – and the Sal Issue in particular – on Amber, and Amber’s fighting back here but still isn’t sure of herself anymore and however things are working out, it is not a healthy longterm situation for Amber or anyone.
Suddenly I am horrified as I remember AG giving Sal the ability to track her (which Sal deleted), which was clearly without Amber’s permission. AG’s trust of Sal suddenly is horrifying because Sal is Amber’s biggest trigger for PTSD flashbacks, and AG gave her the ability to track her, without even seeming to consider how badly that could have screwed up Amber, considering we now know Amber’s feelings towards her are not reconciled the way AG’s are.
Suddenly I wish I could go back in time, read that strip for the first time, and react accordingly with ‘ARE YOU OFF YOUR HEAD AG.’
Re: Panel 6 – I’m worried that Amber’s ‘I think?’ is her saying ‘I don’t remember that, I believe you when you say it happened that way and I know we’re broken up, but I don’t remember that exact thing’. Which strikes me as the very thing you’ve been worried about, Cerberus, regarding Amazi-Girl not sharing memories with Amber anymore.
Damn, Willis sure does love ironic holiday comic strips.
This V-Day strip is actually not nearly as awful as past ones!
Danny has every right to get mad at “I think…” because, let’s face it, it would be nice to know exactly why his girlfriend dumped him. The thing is (and I don’t think Danny knows this), the reason he was dumped wasn’t because of Sal but a cartoon parody of Sal that was the mask on Amber’s own demons.
Amazi-Girl has realised this (no matter how reluctantly) but Amber is having a hard time getting her head around it. Maybe having to explain it to Danny (and failing to do so because it doesn’t even make sense to her) may help her get a handle on this.
Agreed, and I hope so.
When did this become about Danny talking to Sal, and not about, you know, him asking her not to be Amazi-Girl anymore?
The two things are linked; Amazi-Girl and Amber both interpreted Danny’s request as a sign of Sal’s malign influence and accused him of ‘choosing her over them’.
Right before he asked her not to, when she was yelling at him about Sal?
I do think that was, unintentionally, really harsh of Danny. Telling the alter he’s dating that she needs to go away for awhile and that he likes the other alter better anyway was never going to produce a good result. Even if he was really just talking about risky vigilante activities and not caring about the glamor of dating a super-hero, AG certainly heard it as a threat and a dismissal of her.
No wonder it was twisted into “My nemesis must have turned you against me!”
You are right. Although, to be fair, a lot of people reach the “My Nemesis must have turned you against me” conclusion without suffering with DID.
Sal was the one counselling against superheroics, originally. An ironic slap in the face for Danny, considering what she and AmaziGirl had been doing. Not to mention Sal’s physics defying motorcycle chase and catch earlier.
Oh definitely. It’s just that because of the DID, his concern for her is twisted into an attack on the AG alter in favor of the Amber one.
I find it very disturbing that so many people here talk about Amber’s “alters” as though they were both real and distinct people.
Multiple Personality Disorder is not real, and while it was in the DSM, it was used to HORRIFICALLY ABUSE WOMEN. Imagine being involuntarily committed for years in which you are strapped to a bed, injected with hallucinagens, and then based on your tortured screaming, the psychologist tells the police he thinks you’ve been abusing your children.
The abuse of patients under this diagnosis was so severe that patients won millions of dollars in malpractice suits and MPD was removed from the DSM.
Please don’t promote the abuse of women. It is really disturbing.
Please, continue telling Cerb how her experience isn’t real.
Yeah, it’s honestly a little frustrating.
And the reason it is frustrating is because I have at least three aspects to myself that have heavily affected who I am, how I relate to the world, and how I’ve been treated by others that people feel comfortable not only dismissing, but viewing as entirely fictional even while I’m standing there existing in front of them.
CONTENT WARNING: Ableism, transphobia, acephobia
“Oh, asexuality isn’t a real thing, you’re just trying to be special.” “Trans people are just deluded and mentally ill.” “DID is a made up disorder.”
And it’s frustrating, because it puts me in a position where I feel like I have to be in teaching mode all the time about this stuff, explaining it and being reasonable and never being snarky. Having to defend my existence against people who literally believe I don’t exist or am making it up because discrimination is so fucking awesome.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I like teaching, I like helping people understand, I recognize it’s importance. But the way that it is viewed as necessary also creates a bad headspace where I can end up feeling like I need to make apologies and explanation for my existence and that I’m inherently flawed because of those aspects of myself. And that has lead to me accepting abuse and toxic situations because it’s harder to value myself as I am and view myself as equally worthy of dignity and respect owing to this constant cultural questioning of my very existence.
And the fact is that these aspects of myself are real. They’ve heavily affected who I am and what I’ve been through and they’ve been the origins of a lot of discrimination and abuse I’ve suffered.
Being disowned, threatened with reparative therapy, loss of jobs, loss of partner and general harassment from being trans and heavy bullying when I was younger because they could smell something queer about me even before I could.
Being confused and lost as to what everyone else in puberty was experiencing, being made to feel broken, being abused because I didn’t lust like a “man”, being targeted for sexual harassment because I needed to be “fixed”.
And being mistreated by a partner and told I wasn’t allowed to show strong emotions based on a cultural idea that because I was DID I must be out of control, accepting abuse because I internalized those messages as well and so felt that was only right, nearly losing myself to suicide because of mishandling of my condition.
I’ve been DID since I was at least 5 (it’s the earliest I can consciously remember and I remember having multiple alters then). I’ve had a long time to adapt to the reality of what I am and how I operate. And I’ve introspected a lot more than most about what was going on in me.
And that is what’s going on. And someone who read some outdated psychology textbooks from a field that has yet to do much in the way of studying life for DID folks post-integration not believing in it doesn’t change how it has impacted my life and how I’ve had to adapt to it.
8(
*gesture of support*
I know you know this, but… none of those things is made up or fake, and you shouldn’t ever have to apologize for existing.
As someone who is currently in grad school for clinical psychology and literally JUST LEARNED ABOUT THIS.. I’m super frustrated when people don’t do their research. It is in the DSM. My professor had the caveat that is is extremely rare, and doesn’t usually show up the way it’s depicted in popular culture (i.e. more often than not alters share memories to a greater or lesser degree.) I wanted to say that you do such an amazing job of educating people about things, and I really appreciate how willing you are to do that. I’ve learned a lot since I started reading the comic, much of it through your awesome comments. I really look forward to your thoughts on things, and I hope you know that as someone who used to be a Joyce (and is now much more of a Leslie) people like you were so important in helping me open my mind and be less shitty. You’re fighting the good fight and I think that’s amazing. Just be sure you have enough time to take care of yourself in these rough times >hugs if wanted, other gesture of support if preferred<
*Appropriate gesture of support*
*Internet supportive gestures*
Cerberus, nobody should have to deal with that shit, let alone someone as awesome as yourself. I’m sure you get this a lot, but you also don’t get this enough: You’re awesome and thank you. Thank you for being you — for being all of the things that make you you, without exception — and I’m sorry so many people put you through the gauntlet trying to make you not be you.
Because the world is a better place as long as you’re in it, and you need to hear that. You need to hear that over and over again, so much that it drowns out the hate. You are loved, and you deserve to be loved, not despite all of the things you are but because of them, and because of the fact that, despite the world trying to push you down, you take the time to lift others up.
And you aren’t under any obligation to do so, despite what society may tell you — you have every right to curl up into a ball and hide away from the world forever. But you don’t. You find the people who are struggling, even if it’s only a tenth of a tenth of the struggle you’ve lived through, and you lift them up. And you do it all even while other people want to deny your existence from three, four, even five different directions.
You are an inspiration, Cerberus. So thank you, and I’m sorry.
— A bearded college freshman one paragraph away from weeping openly in a crowded campus gyro place
{appropriate gestures of support} and many thanks
from the spouse of a multiple (his preferred term)
MPD was removed from the DSM, yes, but DID is a very valid thing that some people have. Multiple Personality Disorder is separate from Dissociative Identity Disorder.
But don’t these two labels describe the same thing essentially?
Yep. The name was changed because blah blah blah pedantic. Ain’t science fun?
Talk to Willis, not us.
Whether or not DID is actually real doesn’t really matter as far as Amber is concerned. What matters is whether that’s what Willis is intended to portray her as having in the narrative. If he thinks it’s a real thing and is basing her character on his understanding of it, then trying to understand Amber’s behavior as if it isn’t real won’t make any sense at all.
You know, even if Cerberus wasn’t right here in the comments telling us about her experience (and I don’t think she’s the only one, either), and even if I didn’t know other people with DID, your logic would still be irrevocably flawed.
“…while [MPD] was in the DSM, it was used to HORRIFICALLY ABUSE WOMEN. Imagine being involuntarily committed for years…”
I mean. Do you understand how many psychological diagnoses this is true of? Involuntary commitment and abuse of people with psychological disorders is just… it’s par for the course. It’s what a lot of mental health “treatment” was, and to be frank still is for entirely too many people.
If “this was used to abuse patients, involuntarily commit them, and take them away from their children” made a personality disorder, developmental disorder, or mental illness not real, then we would literally have no field of psychology.
Autism wouldn’t exist. Schizophrenia wouldn’t exist. Avoidant Personality Disorder wouldn’t exist. Antisocial Personality Disorder wouldn’t exist. Hell, Clinical Depression wouldn’t exist. Your criteria here for saying MPD (DID) isn’t real is just… it isn’t workable.
Sure, certain diagnoses have been used to abuse people without them, too, but those people aren’t worth more than the people who did have those conditions and were also horrifically abused.
So, let’s not contribute further to the abuse and suffering of people who have been harmed by the psychological community by invalidating folks with DID, especially not by telling them that somehow acknowledging the existence of their disorder is “promoting the abuse of women”.
Don’t forget that the word “hysteria” basically meant “vagina-induced madness” originally. Simply having a vagina was once considered a sufficient explanation for and/or evidence of mental illness.
As was being a lesbian. But the only people who argue that lesbians don’t “really” exist are the bigots trying to legislate and discriminate queer folks out of existence.
Thank you, this is something I was having a hard time thinking of trying to word and get across myself.
To add, DID IS in the DSM – the old term MPD isn’t because it was UPDATED to DID which better describes the condition.
Women being horrifically abused in asylums doesn’t mean women don’t suffer from mental illnesses, it means the doctors at those asylums were extremely uninformed and prejudiced when it came to treatment.
Sakes alive, please DON’T say women are incapable of having mental illness, there’s already rampant sexism in the field of psychology: women do not get diagnosed correctly or even diagnosed at all in many cases
It’s very frustrating. It’s even difficult for women to find doctors for their own physical issues. We are constantly dismissed as “crazy” or “hormonal” and I believe that a lot of us go for years (usually until it gets very bad or we’re reaching our early 30s) before we even become remotely taken seriously.
Example: https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/why-are-there-no-good-gynecologists-for-single-women
Something that has always stood out to me as morally wrong and scientifically false is how women are treated as being completely irrational during menstruation because they’re “hormonal”. Thing is, biologically that is when a woman is most hormonally masculine. So men claim that women are overly emotional and irrational during a period of time that women’s biochemistry is the closest to men’s. That’s some illogical sexist hypocrisy right there.
It really is! It makes me so mad sometimes. It’s almost hilarious if it weren’t so tragic, because we women are “hormonal”, but attacking or killing someone because they rebuffed your advances or blowing up at the tiniest things a girlfriend does, etc. is pretty fucking emotionally unstable. And yet we’re the emotional ones. But it’s all, of course, simply projection.
PMS is a culturally bound disorder. It literally has no biological significance. Women get cramps, and we as a society have given them the excuse to release their negative feelings then (and not at other times) so they seem “hormonal.”
So, if anyone treats someone like that, they need to have their license pulled.
That’s bullshit. I know because I experience it. I might not experience it to a degree that I lose all sense of rationality because that is not how it works but I definitely feel more irritable and depressed when it’s that time of the month even when I’ve taken care of my cramps with drugs.
Well I mean… yeah. When I’m bleeding from my vagina, regardless of my pain levels, I get pretty fucking irritated at having to deal with it at all. That said, yes, there are some biological components related to hormones – it just so happens that there is ALSO a cultural part to it. Honestly, why people insist on it being one or the other is mind boggling.
This. I have bipolar, and I was given antidepressants as a teenage girl, which made me rapid cycle (think elated to suicidal, several times a day). I tried to kill myself, and they concluded I was MAKING MY MOOD SWINGS UP and tripled my dose. That nearly killed me, literally. But you know what saved my life? Finally encountering mental health professionals who respected my humanity.
The mental health field seems to have more than its supply of people all too ready to dismiss the thoughts and feelings of other humans, or insist that the person least able to tell you what’s going on inside a head, is the person to home that head belongs.
I don’t say that to scare people away from getting the help they need, but sheesh, it’s ironic in a terrible way.
Whom, not home… ugh.
Yeah, no, I spent 20 years being completely untreated for the shit going on in my head, and was constantly told that I was making everything up while also being told that if I would be treated terribly by everyone in the medical and psychological field if I *did* have an official diagnosis.
Funny thing is that I have been treated pretty fucking terribly by most people in the medical and psychological fields, but I’m still happier now that I’m being actually treated. I just have to put my foot down and tell people that they’re fucking stupid for dismissing me A LOT.
I find it funny that (judging from the link in your name) a scientific racist is trying to “protect” women.
Danny’s actually angry. Fuck. The world really is ending soon.
It is called a multiple personality DISORDER for a reason, if they could keep their personalities organized, it wouldn’t be a DISORDER, it would be ordered.
Well no, it’s a disorder because it’s detrimental to the sufferer’s well being not because of any connection to order/disorder. OCD can be super ordered in its manifestation and it’s still a disorder.
That is the connection. They are disordered. If you can cope with everything and keep it in order, then you don’t have a disorder.
And OCD is not remotely “super ordered.” It’s about thoughts that you can’t control–hardly order at all. How do I know? I have it.
Just because something looks superficially ordered on the outside doesn’t mean it’s not disordered in the brain.
Whether it’s a disorder (or really a psychological malaise of any kind) depends basically on one criterion: Does it, or does it not, adversely affect the patient’s ability to function in society, to a statistically significant degree?
And hate to burst your bubble, but it hasn’t been called multiple personality DISORDER for a couple DSMs. It’s called Dissociative Identity Disorder.
It can also adversely affect others who interact with the person. You have to remember that, or else people who seem successful would be told they have no disorder.
Right. It’s been a while since I studied this in any depth.
How I see Amazi Girl and Amber right now. As always YMMV
AmaziGirl just had one of her best nights, ever. She bonded with people, did some good and stood on a rooftop with her cape blowing in the wind. Amber became comfortable in that role and had to fight to change into her secret identity, something she is loath to do at the best of times. She finds herself having to reconcile her vision of Sal as the one that made her a victim, and by extension a shame filled failure.
Getting anxious at having to admit to herself the desire to bond with Sal, she is confronted by her ex, one of the few people she has let straddle both aspects of her. He is angry and only wishing to focus the subject of her compartmentalising as it relates to him and their break up.
Now would be a great time for Danny to take a deep breath and ask Amber calmly to explain why being around Sal is anxiety-inducing.
Than again . . . nah. Too boring.
Amber.
Amber, please.
Amber, no.
Amber, stop.
Amber, fOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.
Nice thought.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
New T-Shirt idea: “Danny was right”. Let’s be controversial.
I just keep repeating it but Amber really needs some therapy. Like right now, before she gets herself or others killed with her Amazi-girl second persona.
DID… does not make people prone to violence or murder. I’m sorry that Hollywood has lied to you so badly, but all people with mental illnesses are overwhelmingly more likely to be the victims of violence than to be the perpetrators.
This is fair, but Amazi-girl has already shown a very pointed lack of care for her own well-being and Amber has said that Sal saving her life is the second worst thing that ever happened to her (hinting that perhaps she has suicide ideation)
Sal has rightly pointed out that Amazi-girl could seriously hurt herself and/or others in her relentless, no-holds-barred pursuit of justice
“She needs therapy right now” before she “gets herself or others killed” didn’t sound to me like it was about either suicide or the recklessness of being a superhero (which is what Sal was talking about). I could of course be wrong and if I am then I apologize, but there have been too many comments to the effect that Amber’s mental illness makes her inherently dangerous and I felt the need to say something 🙁
Stigma against mental illness is a real thing and needs to be challenged. That said, in this context, Amazigirl has already almost gotten herself (and Amber) flattened by a truck.
She is running around punching people and getting into violent incidents. Sooner or later IT WILL lead to a tragedy. She was THIS close to dying and getting other people killed during the Becky’s Dad Incident.
Yes and no. That was an exceptional situation, for a number of reasons.
She’s more likely to badly hurt someone working out her frustrations stopping petty crime.
Depending of course on how much Willis is playing fairly by superhero tropes and how much by more psychological realism. Which does seem to vary from story arc to story arc.
And there is always the danger of running into a thug with a gun or knife.
If Amber gets any more anxious, we’re gonna have a new character. He will be small and green and logical.
So…
AG split with Danny because of *Sal* stuff.
AG (and possible Amber) now knows she/s was wrong about Sal.
Amber isn’t sure who actually split up with Danny because of Sal.
Either way, the ‘split’ was based on a false assumption that has now been exposed as such.
So…
Danny and “Amber” slipshine next?
(I think they’d make a better couple than Danny and AG…)
(And besides the last thing Danny needs is to get a complex about women being hypocritical when they split from him.)
(Yes, I do think Dorothy is being a tad hypocritical at the moment.)
(Parentheses.)
There is a whole Danny and AmaziGirl/Amber Slipshine story.
Yeah, but *just* Amber… 🙂
i was oblivious it was valentine’s day until i read the hovertext. i mean i would have found out eventually, but this is pretty upsetting.
I love panel 1 Danny: “If I’ve accurately perceived this situation I’m so angry right now! Let us investigate if I’ve accurately perceived this situation.”
That is how anyone should act in a situation even marginally similar to this. Unfortunately, conclusion-jumping is what everyone does.
Does anyone else suspect that Danny is going to end up in Amber’s contacts list as ‘Perfect Cinnamon Roll’ or something similar?
I’m afraid she will put him under the same heading as Ethan: “Too good for me.”
Then Amazi-Girl will edit the contact to say “Too good for Amber.”
*sad*
Now is a good time to loop Danny in on backstory. Robin’s too preoccupied to prevent any head-tilting.
oh hello “i have anxiety” no. 1 and “i too have anxiety” no. 2, it’s so nice to see you ah. communi….cating?
my partner and i both have anxiety! our discussions also frequently go about this well ^^;
Apparently, MPD is like magic, in that it has a flair for the dramatic.
And also in that it’s not called that anymore, for… fuck I knew this once. I took psych in HS, and we totally talked about why they changed the name from MPD to DID, but I can’t for the life of me remember what.
Time to ask Professor Google!
… Apparently the name was changed because MPD suggests a proliferation of identities, whereas the actual condition is more akin to fragmentation.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GD6qtc2_AQA/maxresdefault.jpg
This is either gonna end in a lot of shouting, sex, or both
lol hovertext.
The Phantom Danny. Attack of the Danny. Revenge of the Danny. A New Danny. The Danny Strikes Back. Return of the Danny. The Danny Awakens. The Last Danny.
Danny: Resolutions
What, no Danny One?
More like Danny, Party of One. HEYOOOO (i’ll see myself out)
No, Danny Phantom. Turns out Danny’s been secretly a Ghost-based superhero the entire time. That’s why he’s drawn to Amber.
I feel sorry for Danny. He is trying to be a really good person but just the worst of luck for girlfriends…
Danny, please keep having a spine. It’s about damn time.
I think what might be really hurting Danny is… how full of hypocrisy his girlfriends were.
Dotty went all “I’m dumping you because studying and achievement are more important and it’s better for you to find yourself a more normal life.”
Not a week later she is with FRIGGIN WALKY.
Amber/Amazi-Girl were all “How dare you talk with Sal and try to stop me doing super hero thing”
And not long after Danny sees Amazi Girl being all buddy-buddy with Sal.
Let’s be fair, he has all the right to feel like he was stabbed in the back.
Dorothy didn’t break up with Walky because she needed to study. That’s the reason he came up with afterwards to make himself feel better.
Dorothy broke up with him because he was clingy and he kept dismissing her dreams by going ‘Eh, maybe you’ll change your mind, maybe you’ll change your mind’.
Dorothy didn’t break up with DANNY because she needed to study.
Dorothy did not break up with him because she needed to study and because Danny should have a more normal life.
She broke up with him because of one simple reason:
HE DID NOT BELIEVE IN HER.
This was the breaking point for Dorothy – in his ideal imagining, there was a possibility for Dorothy to give up Yale for him, and for someone as ambitious as Dorothy, that complete lack of belief that she would follow through, was the dealbreaker that made her finally breakup with him after trying and failing to get him to consider getting himself some personal goals or at least something he could shoot for rather than just following her along for the ride the entire time.
Gimme some buzzer noise!
Dorothy broke up with Danny for a few reasons, and one of them is it was healthier for DANNY.
He didn’t have a plan or a clue, his method of going about in life was to follow Dorothy around, is that healthy? He desperately needed some independence and the ability to assert himself
He couldn’t do that puppy-dog following her around
Oh just kiss her and get back together already! We all know it’s bound to happen!
What has Danny done to deserve that kind of treatment? Best thing he can do for himself is find someone that appreciates him for himself and isn’t nuttier then a fruitcake…Ethan maybe
I’m thinking that while it’s reasonable to suggest Danny deserves a healthier relationship than he and Amber and/or Amazigirl are capable of happening, it would probably also be fair to respect Amber’s mental health issues, and not ca influenced by childhood trauma at the hands of an abusive father, and not dismissively call her “nuttier than a fruit cake”.
Its because Danny and (to a lesser degree) Ethan have been enabling Amber that we have this situation so while its not her fault she suffered the trauma its about time her friends (the ones that know) told her she needs professional help
You’re right. But they don’t know she NEEDS professional help.
And what part of that justifies insulting Ambster?
She has split personality, dresses up as a superhero, beats people up and puts her life in danger on regular basis. To any sensible person this kind of behaviour screams “SHE NEEDS HELP!”
She dresses up as a superhero and both Danny and Ethan don’t think that’s a tad…unusual?
If Amber feels insulted by my words I’ll apologise to her
Thing is, she dresses up like and acts like a superhero and pulls it off. This is one of those cases where the shifting tone of DoA kind of hurts itself. On the one hand, Amber’s a crazy girl who dresses up like a superhero and is going to get herself and/or others hurt, and we’re actually dealing with some of the psychological realism involved with that.
On the other hand, she actually is a superhero. The narrative lets her get away with superhero tropes that would never actually work in the real world: The secret id thing, the ridiculous levels of parkour, not just getting stomped into the ground on a regular basis, blatantly ignoring basic physics in the car chase – even if it wasn’t quite enough. She needed to be saved by Sal then – who was apparently running on different laws of physics herself at the time.
It’s one thing to find out some girl dresses like a superhero. It’s another to have them drop out of the night and drive off a gang of bullies – which is literally how Danny & AG met.
Danny’s really only just starting to figure out the whole DID thing. It’s not clear to me how much Ethan knows, he hasn’t seen nearly as much of Amber or AG lately and she wasn’t nearly as disassociated at the start of the year. Danny did try to talk to her about giving up the dangerous superhero stuff and that blew up in his face. I’m not sure what more he should do. She’s given no signs of listening to him now. I suppose he could go to the police and try to have her involuntarily committed – or just arrested, but that’s a really big step.
Stuff like this is why I like to describe DoA as ‘realistic-ish’. There are plenty of things that are INCREDIBLY unlikely to the point that the likelihood is negligible (i.e. AG not being dead and Sal’s catch actually working) but have enough similar ‘wait, what, that shouldn’t have worked’ moments in real life (not to mention enough different factors) that people were debating whether or not it could work. The answer generally seemed to be ‘not without some ‘one in a million luck’ type shit if at all’, but the fact people were even bothering shows that it’s not QUITE as out of place in the comic as, say, Head Alien suddenly bursting out of a tv and being real would be.
DoA is more realistic than the Walkyverse is. That said, it’s not 100% realistic – hence why we get Joyce’s 100% white demon possessed face when she’s distressed or Sal and Walky’s hair curling on shock. It serves both comedic and narrative conventions at the same time it tries to be realistic. And when it comes to a choice of ‘being a stickler for 100% realism’ and ‘better story’, better story wins out. Which is why I’d rather say it’s ‘more realistic’ or ‘realistic ish’ or even ‘the characters react more like real people’ than pretend it’s 100% realistic, which it’s never been.
Demon possessed EYES, dammit me.
I think I recall Willis explicitly stating that he skirted realistic physics a bit during Becky and Toedad’s arc so that the universe would essentially conspire to save her from her dad — which she lampshaded when she took communion in La Porte — but I think most of the other “unrealistic” elements are for stylistic purposes, so it’s basically a little bit more realistic than a “realistic” sitcom tends to be. And it works perfectly for the story, since it has the flexibility of being exactly as realistic as it needs to be at any given time, depending on the emotional weight of the scene and what needs to happen to build up the narrative.
Also, cue Willis coming down from on high to correct me.
your shoes are untied
Well, sure, but if Willis didn’t want the chase scene to go down that way, he’d have picked a different way to end it without needing to break physics. The chase had high stakes emotional weight and a good way to show off some of AG, Joyce, Sal Becky, and Dina. And, y’know, cool action sequences I’m sure he’s missed writing since the Walkyverse ended.
There are real people here with real mental disorders. You may not be insulting Amber, but you are insulting the rest of us.
There is nothing good about being dismissed as “crazy,” “nutty,” “insane,” what have you because we have a mental disorder. We are not less than human.
People talk about being toxic. There is nothing more toxic than this casual dismissal of people with mental disorders by these ways of making fun of us for our disease.
I’m sorry you feel that way
Wow, we’re actually going there?
Trolly’s absolutely right the way you’ve referred to Amber has been ableist and dismissive and rather than own up, you’re gonna pretend this is on them for being upset?
Wow.
I don’t want to be rude, but “I’m sorry you feel that way” and “I’m sorry if you were offended” always strike me as particularly shitty apologies, because it totally shifts the blame onto the person who is hurt by your words. Like, maybe what you said is actually hurtful…? Maybe it’s not their decision to be hurt by what you said, but your decision to say it in the first place that caused this?
“You’re gonna pretend this is on them for being upset?”
Not at all, I just don’t really feel like apologizing for a throw away comment made about about a fictional character because someone got offended
i recommend you apologize for this even if you don’t really feel like it
Your website, your rules and thats cool so here goes.
I apologize for the comment and any offence the comment caused.
i’m honestly really angry with amber right now, though i do like how she’s finally opening up a bit here
she didn’t even communicate what’s going on with danny, her boyfriend who was so willing to support her because of her own fears
like…amber, i get that you have problems and you have difficulty dealing with your trauma, i understand it can be really hard being neurodivergent, but he was someone who was willing to be by your side and understand what’s going on… at the very least if you couldn’t talk about it long enough due to your inability to deal with trauma, you could at least try to reserve a proper time to at the very least, talk about what’s going on.
like, i get that you hate being vulnerable and to talk to someone about this can make you feel weak, but speaking as a system who dissociates a lot and has a FUCK lot of anxiety i can tell you that support for people with dissociative disorders is really needed and danny really, really seems like the type of person who would understand and be (at least gradually) open minded about it. so yeah, i’m angry with amber because she puts her pride due to her trauma over people who are willing to try to understand and care about her, which also reminds me of my piece of shit dad who can’t control his own fucking temper due to his own trauma and wrecked his own family because of that
but at the same time i also empathise with her because i’ve been through that stage before, i’ve felt disgusted with myself for talking about my feelings with people, i hated being reminded that i’ve been attacked before, i hated being traumatised by incidents that didn’t even seem big and talking about it for fear people might not take me seriously, i hated feeling weak because i’m so fucking anxious of my dad all the time. she has a cesspool of issues for which some of them i can really relate to, and i’m glad i’m almost over that stage now
Looks like she’s having a real issue compartmentalizing now…
Panel One: I like Danny here. He wants to be (justifiably) pissed because AG mistreated and then dumped him over this and he sees her barely two days later with Sal. But he’s too good a man to lose it completely before he knows for sure what happened.
It’s also a nice bit of character growth – Danny’s gotten into trouble before when he does things without knowing what happened.
Panel Two: And yeah, this is definitely rough as hell for Amber. She remembers what happened (I hope) and it was not a pleasant thing. She doesn’t want to fight Danny on this.
And conveniently AG isn’t coming out to talk and explain herself. Amber’s on her own here. Yay, AG.
Panel Three: Okay, now Danny’s mad, and I really can’t blame him. AG dumped him hard and completely overreacted to him seeing her, to the point of nearing if not achieving verbal abuse. She treated him abysmally and now he gets to see her with Sal hanging out? Of course, he doesn’t know the context, but I’d not be surprised if there’s hard feelings towards both of them, especially since Sal told him AG was putting herself in danger (which she was still doing until the night they teamed up, Sal seems to be keeping her grounded so far). That sucks for what happened.
Panel Four: Ooooh, confirmation Amber is not cool with this. Of course, AG doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what Amber wants, but now she’s causing Amber actual psychological harm. Poor Amber. Being the ‘problem’ alter must bite something fierce.
And yeah, Amber is still justifiably pissed – she was hurt badly by Sal and she’s not gotten to discuss it yet. When she has the chance, she’s too triggered to do so, and this is disorienting and upsetting.
Also – confirmation AG does see Sal as a friend. Interesting. I’m not sure Sal reciprocates that – at least, not yet. She doesn’t seem to be particularly affectionate or to like AG more than any of her ‘non-friend’ acquaintances like Joyce and Billie. More like she’s not fighting her anymore and isn’t actively malicious. Which would be fair, as AG was horrid to her before their team up.
Panel Five: I appreciate Danny asking this. The poor guy really just wants to understand this. He wants to know what happened, and who he should be angry with, if anybody. And that’s tricky when DID is in play but he’s trying really hard.
Panel Six: Fucking AG. Not owning her shit here and leaving them to puzzle out her mess. She’s being awful right now. And poor Amber, having to deal with and sort this out. She’s not even sure she knows who was in the ‘driver’s seat’ that time because it was shitty and Amber is surely the source of all shittiness, not AG, so it can’t be her. Same reason she’s suddenly responsible for stalking Sal, even though that was *AG’s* decision.
And yeah, this is confusing as hell for Danny. Poor guy.