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⚧️ Alexandra Merideth Erin [she/her]
You go Amber, go find your good!
She needs to find a therapist first.
Or maybe simultaneously
Therapist is good. Needing to find one sooner is also good. Half the floor needs to find a therapist.
And the rest of the floor probably needs therapy too, we just don’t know it because the focus isn’t on them.
But then therapy’s just kind of a good idea, yeah?
I don’t know about everyone on the floor necessarily NEEDING therapy, but I am pro-therapy enough to think that they could likely benefit from it.
You know what’s incredibly therapeutic sometimes? Really good sex. I’ve been known to feel better for weeks.
I’m honestly utterly unconvinced that talking to a therapist about your problems is terribly helpful. I mean, I’m sure some people get some benefit from it, but having dealt with it as a kid, I found it silly then and looking back it was not even remotely beneficial. I particularly dislike the idea that bringing out memories of unpleasant events is something that I “need” to do, I’m relatively happy now, and I’m really good with the concept that the unpleasantness will be unexplored for the rest of my life. And at nearly 50, I think I’m qualified to decide that for myself.
So yeah, if therapy is beneficial to you, go for it. As for me, not going there.
TMI, my good fella.
Though method helps to prevent mistakes, I still think therapy depends on the therapist and how s*he is able to get the client. Not all therapists can successfully work with all clients, and occasionally you get therapists that are actively harmful to all their clients. Assholes come in all professions.
And depending on who one is, some methods are mores suitable to get somewhere then others. With words, I can run rings around anyone without getting anywhere.
I went through several who were just able to help keep me functional, but was successful with body work to actually change a lot of things.
I didn’t have a clue why it worked then, but reading “The body keeps the score” by Bessel van der Kolk offered a lot of explanations.
Never heard of the book, but I really should take a look on it. It astounds me how often I forget that my body is me. It took me years under really stressful circumstances, and being totally unable to cope with them anymore, to begin to actively listen to what my body was saying. Took me that long to realize I was the cause of my anxiety attacks and that I was the who could assuage them.
Also, that staying idle (and alone) is really really bad for the brain.
Can I ask why you choose s*he over they?
This makes a lot of sense!
What I got from therapy was learning to stop avoiding my problems and to actually consider them critically and work on them. But not everyone needs that. And it wasn’t exactly the solution to all my problems, I guess it mostly just gave me the momentum to start working on them.
So I guess it’s more like therapy is just one tool of many for self-care? I dunno, I’m certainly still learning about this stuff myself.
I’m reading The Body Keeps the Score now and can highly recommend it. Based on year’s of clinical experience and presents a wide range of potential therapies. If you’ve had a 15 minute lecture on ACE, this will expand on that. It’s not a fad but intensely researched and very highly regarded by professionals. But written for the interested lay person.
One of his points: no one therapy works for everyone. No therapist who only uses one tool is any good.
@DannyZebra: it didn’t come to mind. I’m not a native speaker and though I understand “they” when I read it, it seems weird to use because of plural in singular sentence.
@CJ: If it helps, it’s not actually plural, in that it’d be the singular “they.” Native speakers use it all the time (even the ones who cry, “But grammar!” when you ask them to use someone’s correct pronouns). Often it’s taught in prescriptivist grammar lessons to both native and non-native speakers that “they” is always plural, but we’re starting to see a shift in that. I’m not sure if German (is that your native language?) has an equivalent that you could equate it to, but some languages do and that can help non-native English speakers get more comfortable with it.
@Yumi I mean, singular they is much older than the perscriptivist lessons saying it’s incorrect- the idea that singular they is incorrect was invented in the 18th century by latin-obsessed grammarians. But no one ever really stopped using it in common language and it really never made any sense to stop using it- it’s useful!
Also, therapy is different when you’re paying for it yourself (even with insurance). As a child, I was never really able to work *with* a therapist, because I saw them as authority figures who could get me in trouble if I said something wrong, and never really believed they wouldn’t tell my parents what I said.
oh, and singular “they” gets less weird if you compare it to singular “you”. “they are”, “you are” etc – “you” used to be plural too!
and now it’s been so long since it was that “y’all” has been invented to fill the gap (and sadly cursed to be seen as some uncivilized southern-US thing, ugh)
The German language is a total failure for gender-neutral pronouns.
Whenever I talk about someone like Leslie Feinberg, I avoid pronouns and instead mention their name wherever I would need a pronoun.
Just googled a bit. Most of the gender-neutral pronouns mentioned I haven’t heard before. There is not one that can be said to be widely used, though I would probably understand about half when reading them repeatedly in a text. This might be because the plural is a homonym to singular feminine form. And though any gender is expected to be ok with being subsumed under the masculine form, the sky will surely fall if they should be subsumed under a feminine-sounding one.
You seem to have a specific idea of what therapy is, and it’s really not always like that. Sometimes it is, ideally if that’s what’s helpful for the client.
You can certainly decide for yourself if you want therapy or not. I mean, I specifically said that I don’t think everyone on the floor needs it, just that they could benefit from it. And yeah, them benefiting from it depends on a lot of factors, including therapist fit and modality.
Therapy has been very helpful for me and many others I know. I’ve also talked to people who are resistant to the idea when it does, in fact, seem like something they need, in part because of the additude that it wouldn’t be helpful, and that can be pretty sad.
But there are a couple – Amber, Joyce, Ruth, Billie at least, who really need therapy in some form. And probably more. They’ve got specific problems that are really hard to overcome on your own. Ruth is in therapy. Billie is supposed to be going.
Others who might well benefit from it on broader grounds, like Dorothy is. If they find someone who’s a good match for them.
Sal’s been in therapy and apparently didn’t find a good match. She’s got no use for it.
Depends on the patient, and the therapist, and for that matter the specific combination of the two.
I’ve got a really good therapist at the moment, but I’ve had a lot of mediocre ones who didn’t help much, and one really, really bad one. I’ve also had a few who I concluded were very good therapists, but in retrospect weren’t really the right therapists for me.
So it’s basically a case of, Your Mileage May Vary, Previous Results Are Not An Indicator Of Future Performance, Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball, etc. .
As long as you don’t push that view on others when they really need therapy,because seriously, there’s nothing more annoying that friends who thinks you need sex when you are in a ver y bar place ( specially if it is because of sex)
Yeah. I’m asexual. You have any idea how many people thought they could fuck me and fix me? Therapy works great with the right person. But people trying to fuck me because E
I’ll “feel better” is annoying.
Even for sexual people, sex may perk you up in the short run, but it doesn’t usually address long standing problems.
Even in this comic: Billie and Ruth have had plenty of good sex – they’re still depressed and alcoholic. Amber had sex with Danny, certainly didn’t make her disassociation go away.
It’s unlikely to happen but a group therapy session with Ruth’s floor would be interesting. Messy but interesting.
She found her good. She dumped him like week old trash.
Aw, sweet last line.
Amber’s and Ethan’s interaction is genuinely heartwarming
I really love how consistent their friendship is & how seriously they take it
Same!
Yeah, it makes me happy that she’s got somebody who knows her too well to ever be pushed away when she’s having a rough patch, and that she’s telling him how he’s good for her
Aw, Amber…
I…don’t know what to take from this.
Sometimes people make bad choices and come out of them okay. Sometimes people make bad choices and come out of them feeling broken. Sometimes people make bad choices and don’t come out of them.
Sometimes people make good choices! …or so I hear.
In a parallel universe there is a webcomic called Sensibling of Age all about that.
In a perpendicular universe there’s a webcomic called Cumming of Age and we can see glimpses of that universe through Slipshine.
Even good choices can break you. It’s a broken world. You can make good decisions while those around you don’t and you can all go down together.
Serving your country isn’t a bad choice, but it can have real steep costs.
‘Amber’s screwed up, and knows it, but doesn’t seem to intend to drive away anyone who can support her, any more, which is a good sign.’
Eh, she doesn’t INTEND to. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t.
Ethan’s just her ‘exception’ – the one she doesn’t drive away. Thank Jeebus for that.
Maybe if you had just gone with a classic “First!”, you would have been.
But that would have resulted in an automatic post deletion. #1 rule of the comments section.
Amber without Ethan is like Batman without Alfred.
He can go through Robins like kleenex, we all know who is real support is.
But man of steel, woman of Kleenex was about Superman.
Nah, Lois Lane is more like a handkerchief. There’s only one of her.
how did Mike get those abs anyway, he never struck me as a gym guy
he exercises when alone in his room for the express purpose of annoying people who think he never exercises but is somehow in better shape than them. Listening to recorded lectures while doing crunches, to improve his spite-grades while being able to say he didn’t touch a book the whole time.
This sounds incredibly correct.
This makes way too much sense.
well, my headcanon is now established
*plays the Gene Loves Jezebel song on the hacked Muzak*
I still harbor a bit of resentment for Amber, despite her being one of my favorite characters. She still owes Danny one hell of an apology, and I dunno, I imagine she realizes that and that’s been part of why she’s put distance between them, but I do wish she’d clear the air there and get some closure. “Hey, sorry for doing a spot on impression of how my Dad talked about my mom. Let’s do coffee sometime.”
Beyond that, though, I hope Mike does better by Ethan than any of the three of them expect from him.
They already talked about the breakup, and it’s Amazi-Girl who owes him an apology over that.
I think she’s been avoiding him since then because of what she’s talking about here: he’s good for her, but so much so that she can’t handle that. She thinks so highly of him and so poorly of herself that him being nice to her just makes her feel worse.
And her breakup with Danny was absolutely NOTHING like how Blaine treated Stacy. Yelling at someone and dumping them is nothing like what he did. Amber/Amazi-Girl actually had reasons to be angry, even if they weren’t great reasons. Blaine would only have needed “I’m not immediately getting what I want from this person”. He also wouldn’t have stopped at raising his voice. Hell, she didn’t even insult Danny. AG just accused him of letting Sal turn him against her, and then she dumped him.
Comparing THAT to Blaine’s behavior is completely uncalled for.
This is probably where she slips the deepest into Blaine mode: when she insults and berates him for not treating Amazi-Girl as a completely separate person.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/amber-2/
She does, but she also immediately freaks out and tears into herself for it.
She doesn’t actually apologize, but that’s because she’s too busy berating herself. Not quite Blaine’s style.
I dunno, the bit where Amber gets a red panel while calling Danny a dumbfuck because he couldn’t do the one thing she asked him to is pretty insulting. And it’s clearly linked in her mind to how Blaine acts (it’s linked to his whole ‘You couldn’t even stop some punk with a knife’). It’s one of those cases where she catches herself acting like Blaine, hence the self-loathing revolving around her breakup. Sure, she wasn’t beating Danny and cheating on him; but, as the strip Needfuldoer links to shows, she still slipped into a Blaine mindset.
And, of course, now that Amazi-Girl’s off doing her own thing without Amber even being aware of it, things are worse. And we have to remember that Amber is the only character who at least vaguely senses just how far the dissociation goes: everyone else who knows about both identities assumes that they’re deliberate, that the two personalities are still really the same. (Hence why Danny made the mistake of kissing Amber.) So honestly, Danny would be completely justified in thinking she owes him an apology; until it becomes clear just how severe Amber’s mental issues are, it’s quite fair for other characters to judge both of them together.
And now I realise that I just defended Danny. I need a shower.
Hush Danny’s great
Even there, it was a brief outburst of anger, which she almost immediately apologizes for and is horrified by. That red panel is the creation of yet another traumatic memory she will agonize over because her own anger scares the hell out of her.
That’s not a “Blaine mindset”. She just got angry and snapped at him. The fact that Danny didn’t understand why he shouldn’t have kissed her there doesn’t make “being kissed when you don’t want to be kissed” a less reasonable cause for anger.
As I said though, she DID talk about it with Danny, and he’s getting a clearer grasp of Amber’s dissociation than anyone else seems to have gotten (except possibly Ethan, though that’s unclear), and while he hasn’t yet gotten an explicit apology (something which has been come up), he understands that the reason isn’t because Amber isn’t sorry. It’s because she doesn’t believe she deserves his forgiveness.
Calling her angry outburst a “Blaine mindset” both perpetuates the harmful “cycle of abuse” myth, and but it’s just a gross equivocation in general. It’s like calling a wildfire “volcanic activity” because both fire and lava are hot. “Getting angry and mean” is a VERY broad category. The difference between Amber and Blaine is not merely one of magnitude.
I don’t think Ethan has even as clear a grasp as Danny. We’ve seen almost nothing of it on screen and the split has gotten a lot worse over the last months. Likely he’s got a good grasp on how it was at the start of school, but no idea how much it’s slipped since then.
Danny has more clues, though it’s not clear how he’s put them together. Amber’s talked to him pretty openly, if casually, about it: “I’m me and she’s her. … We still share this 5’2″ meat vehicle.”
Most of the serious clues were after they broke up though. Partly again, because she’s been getting worse.
Of course, she’s talked to no one about not sharing memories any more.
If it was just the one, maybe I’d be in agreement with you, but their breakup had her treating him like property. That, too, was abusive.
I’m not saying it’s some destiny that she is doomed to behave like Blaine, clearly not, but she has demonstrated abusive behavior in their relationship. That’s demonstrable, and troubling.
When did she treat him like property?
Her extremely possessive behavior when she saw him with Sal, property maybe not being the best way to phrase it, but that, too, was controlling, abusive behavior.
That’s slightly more reasonable, except that she immediately dumped him, and started avoiding him. She didn’t threaten to dump him if he ever spoke to Sal again. She didn’t deliver an ultimatum or make any demands. She even avoided him after that.
Yes, it was an extreme overreaction to view what Danny did as betrayal, but 1) that was the result of her past trauma screwing her reaction and 2) she has every right to dump him, at any time, for any reason, even a bad reason
The “Blaine mindset” aspect of that isn’t the fact she lost her temper: it’s how she loses her temper, calling him a worthless piece of shit who can’t even obey a simple instruction. Yes, she’s horrified and immediately apologizes, but that doesn’t relieve the terror of the fact that when she gets angry, she instinctively acts/speaks like Blaine. As she tells him to his face, she’s saddled with his stupid, pointless rage. That’s where the trauma lies: the quality of her anger is as belittling as what Blaine does. Compare the strip linked to above with http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/freezeup/, or how Blaine speaks about Stacy.
Ordinarily, Amber’s not like that, so yes, you’re right that the difference between her and Blaine isn’t entirely a question of magnitude. Unlike Blaine, she’s aware of how awful her anger is (though she may not have the healthiest way of dealing with it, shall we say). It’s why she agonizes over her red panels. But whether you buy into the cycle of abuse or not, the fact that she herself associates her anger with Blaine makes me think there’s something there. Ruth’s advice to her is important, when she points out to Amber that she’s not destined to grow into her father; but that doesn’t mean the potential for her to do so isn’t there. It’s what she’s on guard against.
Maybe the apology can come through her helping to hook Danny up with Ethan. Someone she can acknowledge would be good for Ethan. Of course, first she’d have to stumble over the fact that Danny is questioning bisexual.
There’s gotta be some term for the phenomenon that commenting “first comment” on something inevitably means that someone’ll beat you to it.
(…anyone else remember when the last part was called being “ninja’d”?)
oh whoops the comment I was replying to got deleted, NOTHIN TO SEE HERE FOLKS
If you were replying to someone who merely commented “first”, it was because posting that (and nothing else) as one’s comment isn’t allowed here.
You fell victim to the #5 rule of “read before posting”. Don’t do “firsts”; they get deleted by The Cheese (or maybe Willis, no one really knows) and any comments that replied to it get orphaned and look weird.
yeah, I knew about the rule and thought it was kind of weird that that had gotten through…. but didn’t think through that it wouldn’t have had time to get deleted, and might get zapped while I was typing. Oop.
“First!” comments are annoying. “First!” comments that turn out to not actually be first are…hilarious. I will miss the lost comment.
There’s an Ozymandias parody in there somewhere.
“Look on my First, ye Mighty, and despair!”
I met a commenter from an antique site
Who said, Two vast and thoughtless sins accursed
When posting one’s opinions late at night:
Tweeting on Ambien, or claiming First.
The former gets you scorned; the latter, worse,
Can get your comment wiped out by the mod.
I write this cautionary tale in verse,
In hopes that readers think, and poke not God.
(The God and mod of this fair strip, I mean,
No deity but merely mortal man
Named Damn You Willis since he likes our pain,
Who reads each comment and exerts his ban.)
This parody is not too good, I think –
Though sonnet form, its thoughts aren’t worth the ink.
Not bad!
nice
I miss my inner poet. she was quite prolific in grade school…
On one comic I read, no comments appear until approved by the author. Since he presumably has better things to do than mod comments 24/7, he approves periodic batches. Since not all readers seem to be aware of this, you occasionally see multiple “First!” posts. None of them are ever actually first.
Gunnerkrigg Court?
I still often see that term used, in this very comment section.
Nice! Glad to hear it’s still in use.
Impressive. Ninjas can be difficult to see.
‘Surviving with someone who’s bad for you?’
I can’t tell if Amber is thinking of her mom, here.
That is very likely
She seems to love her mom, so I think she’s in the “good” column along with Danny and Ethan.
I don’t think she has anyone bad for herself in mind. She’s just envious of how Ethan seems like he’ll be able to make a bad romantic decision and walk away relatively unscathed
No, but there is the fact that Stacy seems to have survived Blaine, while Amber (in her mind) hasn’t. If she’s thinking of Stacy, it may just be another way to run herself down — ‘My mom could survive an asshole, but…’
Of course, there’s the whole ‘You love monsters, Mom,’ bit, which makes that situation a tad more complex.
Maybe, but darker.
I think she’s thinking that Ethan will be okay with this because he walked away mostly unscathed from his previous bad romantic decision – he dated her and she knows just how much of a monster she is.
That this is bullshit also calls into question whether she’s right about him being able to cope with Mike.
OTPlatonicrelationship right here, y’all
Fuck yeah
BrOTPs are the best!
It’s almost like a MOIRALLEGIANCE.
I get that. Experience tells me I can only chase the women who will make me do things I don’t want to, because otherwise they are a danger.
Amber looks really cute in profile.
Sometimes, Amber is extra-cute and, thanks to wistful sadness, even a little adorable. This is one of those times.
Ethan can survive Mike, but then again is he really the target of whatever Mike is doing?
Isn’t it firmly established from past interactions that he is targeting Danny? However I believe it was Amber who told him Danny was offlimits to him so that’s when he started flirting with Ethan?
Nah, it was Ethan who asked him not to do his “Mike stuff” on Danny. So he decided to seduce Ethan to reduce Danny to a jealous whimpering mess.
Mike, Amber and Ethan had a threesome in Shortpacked. IIRC, Ethan wasn’t 100% sure it was a mistake.
Mike is objectively a bad match for Ethan, but whatever floats Ethan’s boat. Ethan should get a more faithful and less sociopathic boyfriend. Where’s Danny?
Hopefully far away until after Methan crashes and burns, since Mike is doing this specifically to make him jealous.
(I am not holding my breath on this, however.)
Currently duetting ‘Walk the Line’ with Sal on the front steps.
Scenes like this remind me how IRL this would take a lot more “ehhh”s and “ummm”s until Amber can formulate her thoughts correctly. Anyway, this shows some hope for her character development, so all’s good.
No, Ethan. Don’t take that comment as validation. Sure, you could “survive” being with someone bad for you, but that’s like saying you could “survive” your childhood years getting bullied every single day. It’s still not good for you, and it can leave lasting scars, both physical and mental. Get out while you still can.
Being with someone bad for you is hard, but being with someone good when you don’t feel like you deserve them isn’t any easier.
Be my bad boy, be my man
Be my weekend lover
But don’t be my friend
You can be my bad boy
But understand
That I don’t need you in my life again
“Yes and always.” …Aww.