Discussion (97) ¬
[ Comments RSS ]
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social ⋅ 19d
Gwen Snyder is uncivil @gwensnyder.bsky.social ⋅ 19h
Ash Parrish @adashtra.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Katie @katiestp.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Hunter S Schafer @bolt451.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
DaisyFM ✒︎ @daisyfm.net ⋅ 2d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 2d
Hunter S Schafer @bolt451.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Loading ...
(he/him)
⚧
New game! BOLTED 
New theory: Amazi-Girl and Mike have a timeshare arrangement on Amber’s head.
As does a nice couple from Dayton, the Walshes. They only attended the presentation to get a free hotel stay during their vacation in Hawaii, but decided the opportunity was too good to pass up.
If we ever see Amber talking to herself about crocheting or giving advice on golf swings, it’s the Walshes turn in her head.
Okay, I’d legit love to see this
Wait, so is she two people when the Walshes take over? Or do they alternate?
Amber’s head contains terabytes of crackfic, she’s got a lot of storage and processing power in there.
By overclocking, she can support up to four personalities at once. It’ll come in handy of she ever takes up Bridge.
Makes sense to me, thanks for the insight.
Hmmm… interesting, but is that how Introjects and alters actually work? Do they each have allocated nutrients, memory and executive processing power or do they have their own?
From what I’ve read, alters share the same brain and nutrients, it’s sort of like dual-booting a computer? The patterns are still stored and preserved, but not necessarily retrieved (like recalling a memory or speaking style) or modified (like storing a memory or emotionally growing). For people with DID, the brain has broken off partitions to deal with difficult info without putting any established personality at risk.
Even people who aren’t plural have a weaker form of this- if we hang out with old friends after a long time, we fall into old mannerisms and emotions, as if we had never grown out of them. For DID, you also actively suppress and separate that mindset, so eventually it becomes its own person.
” The patterns are still stored and preserved, but not necessarily … modified (like storing a memory or emotionally growing).”
Not sure where you got this info from, but everyone in a system definitely stores their own memories, and can change as a person. Unless I’m completely misinterpreting what you meant there…?
Not exactly – everyone is running off the same brainpower. (This can actually be a detriment if too many people want to front/speak at once, haha.)
What they decide to do with that brainpower can vary wildly, though.
Hmmm…. is there any way to increase the fixed pie of brainpower and working memory for alters in a system to use?
Mr. Walsh lets Mrs. Walsh talk all the time, he’s not very talkative and she loves talking, so he just lets her enjoy herself.
Okay, I probably skew a little older than most who read this webcomic, but when I saw the name “Walshes”, I immediately thought of Beverly Hills, 90210.
Magikarp-FITE-ME.jpg
[alt since I can’t find that]
“Those mom jeans look good on you.”
(Kill Bill sirens)
Eh, you beat each other up for a bit and then stopped a quixotic murderer together. That’s enough to make things amiable.
“Let’s fight!” “Them’s fightin’ words!” (The Simpsons’ parody of Thelma & Louise)
Lurleen! Mmmmm.
Also, getting along with people is awful. You have my sympathy Sal.
*reads subtext*
What you talking about Amber’s shirt looks pretty nice.
It’s a callback to Joyce’s grasping-at-straws jab at Dorothy the other day.
I know. I actually think it looks good on her.
that’s not the subtext, that’s the hovertext.
the subtext of the strip is that someone who brings up “semantics” to derail a conversation is probably being gratuitously antagonistic.
Hopefully not your intention here though.
JK LOL
please! i would never spend 20+ minutes excruciatingly workshopping a single pointless comment purely for the sake of making it self-referential!
/s …yes this was just a silly joke =P
Just play mario cart
Look, ever since Rapey McGee’s asshole buddies got arrested, she hasn’t had anyone to fight, Amber. Habits are hard to break and her hands are twitchy.
Help a girl out.
Now what *magic words* do you think are gonna be enough to summon AG?
Replace violence with makeouts and cuddling, it works wonders for most people. Those people currently single, including myself, will just have to imagine it.
So it seems that Sal still doesn’t know about the mental split between Amber and AmaziGirl. As for wanting a fight, I’m convinced that normal(relatively) talking and being is too foreign a concept for Sal.
Two questions today: Do you think Amazi-Girl will actually care that Sal is dating Danny? And how long can Amber keep this up?
I agree, Sal definitely still thinks that Amazi-Girl is something that Amber does, and that the split is a verbal conceit. In fairness to Sal, I’ve met plenty of people who play a character whom they talk about in 3rd person (such as actors, and tabletop roleplayers) and probably not so many people who have DID.
Why, Sal herself might someday learn that she’s related to the Duke of Thingley.
Sal apparently doesn’t read the comments.
Rude!
Sal’s been around Amber/AG long enough, and is perceptive enough, that she has to have noticed there’s a split. She may not grasp the severity of it, but she’s likely aware it exists.
I’m afraid I don’t see how anything Sal’s said so far implies that she doesn’t know that Amber and AmaziGirl are two different people. Especially considering previous dialogue implies that she’s aware of it (stating that Jennifer picking a new name “ain’t like you(AmaziGirl) or probably Carla,” for example)
Yeah, Sal knows, but either she can’t totally wrap her head around one alter dating someone but not the other or she recognizes that both AG and Amber were dating Danny, because they were way more synced at the time and Danny figured he was dating both of them. (He was thinking Clark Kent/Superman, but to be fair I think so was AmbG.)
to be fair to sal, individual headmates dating people instead of just the whole system dating someone isn’t super common. usually it’s sort of a package deal situation.
Oh yeah! I’d forgotten that strip. So Sal at least knows that the split exists and that it’s Very Important to Amber & Amazi-Girl. So I guess she’s just pretending that it’s “gaddang semantics” in the hopes of getting a rise out of them, here!
I thought I remembered that Walky once said something along the lines of “you’re really not just one person, are you” but if so, I can’t find it. Was it Sal who said something like that?
Ethan knows too. (and he’s very, very unhappy about it, since Amber’s/AG’s lack of communication kinda led to their best friend being unidentified and alone in a coma for a day.)
Does anyone else know the deal?
— oh yeah! Walky and Sal know that Amber and Amazi-Girl aren’t just a conceit, that they don’t necessarily share memories.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/themask/
(Walky learns that Amber =/= AG)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/runin/
(Panel 1, Sal’s asking which one knows what)
Walky knows – at some point he met AG after talking to Amber and them not sharing memories tipped him off (or Amber after talking to AG, I don’t recall.) Plus he told Booster in the reintroducing-the-cast-to-newcomers section, so obviously they know (presumably AmbG aren’t really hiding it to begin with now that AG’s no longer a vigilante, at least to friends they already trusted with the first secret.)
Amber’s talked about it in very blunt ‘sharing a meatbag’ terminology to Danny since the breakup, but I’m not 100% sure he got it at the time – he certainly didn’t BEFORE then. It is however fairly likely he knows since the kidnapping. Likewise ambiguous was Dina, who previously thought AmbG making the distinction in their dorm was for Dina’s benefit I believe? However, I’d lean on the side of her knowing given her pep talk to Amber specifically about Amber’s good points as they were leaving the basement after Ross’s death.
On the subject, because AmbG not sharing memories ultimately caused them all so much trouble, I suspect that most if not all of them were let in on what happened afterwards – at the very least, we know Ethan found out, and I’d bet Joyce, Becky, Dina, and Dorothy all got that with a brief apology. I’d assume Sarah as well when everyone else knows if only out of politeness, but Amber’s much closer friends with the others.
Malaya, Marcie, and Carla may or may not know – we haven’t seen them interact enough to get a good sense either way. No clue about Faz, but I don’t expect to see him any time soon anyway.
Everyone who I haven’t mentioned, I assume doesn’t know – despite their best efforts, neither Joe nor Ruth have made much headway bonding with Amber, and the rest of the major cast don’t really have relationships with her that would merit it. (Booster wouldn’t either if they hadn’t been a handy Exposition Recipient.)
* Most if not all of the kidnapping victims, I mean – of the six non-AmbG victims, Walky definitely knew beforehand and Dina seems like she might have, and Ethan found out afterwards, leaving Joyce, Becky, Dorothy, and Sarah as very possibly knowing now but not finding out onscreen.
Yeah, I think most of the main cast knows she’s AG by now. Off the top of my head, Joyce, Dorothy, Walky, Sal, Danny, Ruth, Marcie, Becky, Sarah, and Ethan all know. Obviously Mike found out too.
Cast members that are in the dark are people who aren’t really ‘main’ characters nor do they interact much with main characters who have reason to put the pieces together – folks like Raidah, Jacob, Malaya, Carla (who is a motherfucking goddess but also doesn’t really know Amber very well), Lucy, Roz, THANKFULLY Mary, and the teachers like Leslie and Robin.
Out of the ‘core’ main cast I think only Joe and Jennifer are in the dark and that’s wilfully so in Jennifer’s case. Meanwhile I think Booster is the only one who knows she’s plural but does NOT know she’s Amaze-Girl.
Hey, auto correct, can you fuck off on calling her Amaze-girl two seconds after I post? Thanks and fuck off.
Amber told Richard that she dissociated sometimes, and for all we know despite appearances he remembered and worked out what it meant after hearing more about the kidnapping over Christmas, as he probably did. Stacy might unconsciously be aware, but I’d be willing to bet she thinks of the change in personality as merely an adorable quirk of Amber’s. “Oh, don’t worry, she just does that sometimes. When she was three she had an imaginary friend I had to leave an extra plate out for. Isn’t that sweet?”
Richard is a doctor, I agree it’s far from impossible that he’s got a clue.
He’s a doctor, but this isn’t anywhere near his field. No reason to think he’s worked it out from minimal clues and has kept it to himself since.
Downplaying and deflecting are the entirety of Stacy’s playbook anyway.
It’s possible but we don’t have confirmation he really understood or took it seriously so I’d leave him up in the air.
Most of those I’d leave open. There’s long been a tendency around here to not only assume characters recognize Amazi-Girl as Amber, but that they also pick up on hints about Amazi-Girl not being Amber. It’s certainly possible some characters figured it out or got read in on the secret behind the scenes over the timeskip, but I wouldn’t assume it without confirmation.
That said, Sal does seem to know.
Reasonable. The reason why I think there’s decent odds the other kidnapping victims know is because the question of ‘if AG (who we think is you) knew they showed up yesterday and were teamed up, why didn’t you warn someone?’ is a bit inevitable, and in that I think Ethan was just the one of those ‘I wasn’t sharing memories with AG’ conversations we saw. But it’s entirely possible Becky and Joyce didn’t ask out of greater trauma.
I get the sense that it’s just a timing issue. Sal knows it might be a few days until she can speak to Amazi-Girl at their next roller derby practice or meet or whatever. And she wants to get this out in the open as soon as possible.
She may not know exactly when Amber and Amazi-Girl get in touch to share memories, but she can presume it’ll happen eventually, and hope that Amazi-Girl doesn’t mind being told via Amber instead.
Didn’t Malaya once claim that Sal’s accent goes away when Sal gets upset? Far be it from me to believe Malaya’s take on anything, but it would be fun if Sal’s accent intensity in this strip means she’s actually very pleased with the interaction.
Malaya’s probably right that Sal’s accent wanes at times, but she’s definitely wrong about it going away when she’s pissed [1], [2]
Makes sense. Oh well!
i mean, she does let an “I” slip through in that 2nd link
It also disappeared when she was talking to herself about giving Danny his new hat, that she didn’t know why she couldn’t just go up and give it to him instead of trying to accidentally bump into him at their usual hangout, before going “… yeah I do.”
I’m highly amused by how Sal’s behaving here. But I imagine most of us are.
Aside from that, I think that last comment by her implies she doesn’t know that Amber and Amazigirl (Passion and Resolve? I don’t know if that name change took) are different people.
Yeah, I get a similar feeling that Sal doesn’t know, which makes me wonder how she will respond if/when that comes up.
Sal’s been on a roller-derby team with Amber/AG for a few months now, and she’s a perceptive person.
Yeah. She specifically referred to Amazi-Girl by name after the roller derby meet.
And just two comments ago she didn’t react with surprise when Amber said that Amazi-Girl isn’t available at the moment, and implied that Sal and Amazi-Girl are better friends than Sal and herself.
*two comics ago
Not two comments ago. D’oh!
At the very least, Sal recognizes that AG isn’t just a role that Amber play-acts at will.
I think Sal might not have been sure which of them Danny was dating (and to be fair their split was much less pronounced at the time), so she’s just covering her bases. Now that it’s been made clear, Sal could basically say “tell her the next time you talk or share memories or however it works for you”. If Amber and AG were two physically separate characters, and Amber saw AG more often than Sal, she could say “tell her the next time you see her” and it would make as much sense.
How I’m reading it is that Sal knows there’s a split. She compares Jennifer insisting on no longer being referred to as Billie as a far different thing than how Amber and AG are separate.
What I think might be the issue is that Sal recognizes the both of them as separate, she might not think they have different opinions about it.
My response to panel 4, Amber you say that as if he didn’t fall for both of you, Fractured mind and all…and that both of you didn’t fall for him.
ok but Danny/Sal/Amber/Amazi-girl love square????
I’m not gonna post this under every comment on the subject, but Sal knows about AG and Amber being different people: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/sip/ (‘It’s not like you or probably Carla, with like, some kind of dysphoria.’ Meaning she considers getting AG’s name right on par with not deadnaming Carla.)
But I don’t think she totally gets that different alters in a system can have romantic relationships that aren’t across the board (or for that matter, different sexualities and genders.) And to be fair to Sal, they were effectively both dating Danny – among other reasons, AmbG were getting along a lot better up until the end of that relationship, and it still didn’t get REALLY bad until after the breakup (where AG started blaming Sal for costing ‘us’ Danny, IIRC.) Amber posed as Danny’s fake-not-fake girlfriend on family weekend to get away from Blaine, and when Danny was uncomfortable because he was dating AG Amber got a bit frustrated there as I recall, since she was AG (at the time they weren’t being written as a system, but with the retcon this still makes sense as I’m not sure either of them really realized AG was her own person rather than strong compartmentalizing up until the car chase made Amber realize she wasn’t controlling their body. I believe that was also around the point she didn’t let Danny kiss her because he was AG’s boyfriend, not hers.) So in all the ways that matter, Amber WAS dating Danny along with AG.
Very thorough, although I’m kinda confused about how both AG and Amber were dating Danny in the “ways that matter”.
Also, I’ve heard some commenters refer to AG as a “tulpa”. What’s the difference between a Tulpa and an alter, if there is one?
My very limited understanding is that alters are created out of necessity and trauma, tulpas are created consciously and/or willingly. WE (a DID system) disagree that Amazigirl is a tulpa as she very clearly operated to help cope with trauma.
Thanks for clarifying.
However, I am still curious. Are there any other differences between tulpas, alters and intojects besides HOW they’re created?
To my knowledge, no, although there are likely subtle distinctions. Like, I’m sure the functions they serve differ on average because the circumstances around their creation are different. There are likely some differences in intra-system relationships since relationship-building with people you’re involuntarily living with is very different from that of people you chose to live with. And of course, alters in DID can be separated by amnesia and be unaware of one another and as far as I know, that’s generally not the case for tulpas since the point of the amnesia is to protect the host from the memory of the traumas.
Introjects aren’t a separate category though, they are a sub-category of alter/identity. Introject just means an identity that’s based off of someone from the external world. Introjects can be based off of real people or fictional characters. Similar categories are things like gatekeeper, protector, persecutor, sexual alter, social alter, Little, caretaker, etc. I don’t know how much this terminology differs among tulpas, though I imagine there’s a fair amount of crossover.
Thank you so much for responding; honestly I’m getting more fascinated by the minute!
Can a Tulpa technically be an introject just by being based of a real or fictional character?
Also, does a trauma or event need to be real to trigger the formation of an introject or alter? Can it be in a dream? And if so, could it be in a lucid dream?
Do alters and tulpas have similar capabilities? Can either of them retain your skills or semantic memories (like driving or programming), or do they have to learn those themselves?
I’m afraid that outpaces my knowledge of tulpas BUT if tulpa-systems and other non-trauma-based plurality work more or less the same as DID systems, just minus the trauma and the dissociation, then these would be my answers:
I don’t see why a tulpa couldn’t be an introject. While in DID the creation of alters is mostly involuntary, it’s still based in necessity and so there is a lot of logic to why certain alters are who they are, and sometimes real people or fictional characters are exactly what’s needed. It would follow that if you had more conscious choice in that process that sometimes that would be the case with tulpas too.
I’ve never heard of an alter being created in response to a traumatic dream. Seems like that wouldn’t be impossible but not super likely since alters that front are typically created to deal with an ongoing external reality that the host cannot cope with alone, and alters that don’t front are created to handle the ongoing reality of the inner world– such as storage of memories, emotions, or managing intrasystem relationships. In both cases, an alter is created to handle something that will continue to be necessary to handle. A dream usually doesn’t have long-lasting impact in that way.
The only exception I can think of is that sometimes alters interact or communicate in dreams. If an alter was consistently causing nightmares or terrorizing other alters in dreams, that might necessitate a split to handle that problem.
I don’t know how memory and skills transfer between tulpas. In DID, the degree to which skills transfer between alters depends a great deal on the amount of amnesia and communication between them. If there was no amnesia, then I don’t know whether skill transfer would be inhibited it at all. There is some amount of natural aptitude that varies between alters, just like some people are going to be naturally better at drawing than others. But if communication is good and memories are shared, then most of the necessary information for skill transferring is possible.
And if the amnesia is severe, then skills don’t consistently transfer. Many DID systems don’t drive exactly for this reason– if you could turn into an 8-year-old at any time, it’s not exactly safe to get behind the wheel. And a lot of systems are unable to work formal jobs because not all of them are trained on the skills of the job.
Also, if anyone who knows more than we do about tulpas wants to chime in, we won’t be offended if you correct us! Most of our knowledge is specific to DID systems, and our guesswork is based on the work we’ve done to separate out the disordered aspects of DID from the plurality parts.
See thejeff’s bit about Mask or No Mask, and my discussion of the ‘cost US Danny’ line and Amber being much more willing to do datey things with Danny in the early stages of their relationship. I think ‘Danny was AG’s boyfriend, not mine’ was a line Amber drew at the end of the relationship (when Danny started realizing this shit was dangerous and was trying to discourage the AG stuff,) and after it was over to try and deflect the idea of friendship. It wasn’t really the case for most of their relationship.
It sort of merged over from “you’re dating AG, so we can’t be dating to keep the secret identity secret” over to a more internal distinction over time. I’m not sure there’s a clear dividing line, though it might have snapped into place after the car chase as you kind of suggest above.
And I think that is rooted in the “all good things belong to AG, all bad things are Amber’s because she’s irredeemable garbage” complex.
Subconsciously, things were going “too well” between Amber and Danny, so she compartmentalized their relationship. (And he did have a relationship growing with both of them, whether or not he knew it at the time.)
Yeah, especially once he started going ‘hey, maybe being a vigilante is actually scary dangerous for you and you shouldn’t do it?’ and AmbG took this as A: A rejection of AG, B: A way Sal was ‘poisoning’ him against them, and C: Clearly he couldn’t actually care about AMBER, that couldn’t be the case, she’s the bad one and if he does she must have done something to trick him or something.
All of which were distorted, one of which she has definitely recognized and worked on and another of which seemed to gel for her post-second kidnapping (‘I can at least care as much about myself as Mike did,’) but she still has some self-destructive tendencies and Amber’s still considering herself a monster, which is bad.
Haha, I shoulda just posted my other two posts here instead.
Yeah, Sal definitely knows that Amber and AG are separate identities, but I think what she’s not understanding right now is that Amber and AG’s rules were that Amber didn’t date Danny, AG did.
Which isn’t to say Amber didn’t like Danny, and early on it was harsh compartmentalization of rules and roles. Back when Danny started hanging out with Sal, Amber commented to Dorothy that she missed him while still thinking he was better off without her, and later on when Sal tries to nudge her back towards him she doesn’t comment on it as part of her roles, but rather that Danny deserved someone better.
So I think it’s not that Amber doesn’t care here, but she’s been heavily muted by Mike’s death on top of getting over Danny since they stopped dating by mid-October. If she were in a healthier state of mind I think she’d tell Sal it’s fine as opposed to insisting that her opinion doesn’t matter, since Danny dated AG, not her.
Also, the first time they slept together, she was Amber by the end. “Mask or no Mask?”
Bee Tee Dubs? I love their Asian Zing sauce!
That’s a restaurant?
B-Dubs is– short for Buffalo Wild Wings.
Mmmm… of all the delicious times I love to live and learn!
What’s your favorite SAUCE there?
I just don’t get what is meant by ‘Bee Tee Dubs’. BTW I could understand, but huh?
[/clueless_old_guy]
It’s by the way. Bee Tee Dubs, B T Dub(ble U), BTW.
Thnx
“/clueless_old_guy”
?? you can turn it off?! Please tell me how!
I mean just tell Amber that CapxFalcon was a better ship than Stucky or something.
“It feels unnatural, y’know”
I would like to see Sal and AmaziGirl fight for Danny♡. FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!!!!
If AG is not in a fighting mood, Ghost Mike sure will be.
“I don’t like us getting along but we’re gonna do it anyway or so help me we’re turning this car around on the freeway and flipping it!”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/highstrung/
I’m remembering the last panel from this strip, so I thought I’d share in case anyone else wanted to look back on this Sal and AG interaction.
I’m kinda glad they’re not fighting each other anymore, considering how things went the last time they fought.
Bee tee Dubs? Why is she referring to my highschool? Booker T Washington
Avatar?
Don’t be a Becky, Sal
Okay I’m just posting to see what Gravatar is associated with what email address
Okay the Autofox logo is associated with my Gmail account.