A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
Augustine
Winter Jay Kiakas, Windy
August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Ozzie the Vampire
Eric Lide
Ozzie and her best friend Kimmy are your average everyday normal art students – except one is an immortal vampire with superpowers and the other possesses a magic talking grimoire. Also they have to save their town from a demonic invasion.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Novae
KaiJu
A historical romance with a touch magic and a dash of astronomy. It chronicles the romantic adventures of Sulvain, a sweet tempered necromancer and Raziol, a passionate 17th century astronomer.
Three Panel Soul
Matt Boyd, Ian McConville
It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Angel's Orchard
Harry Bogosian
After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
The Weave
Rennie Kingsley
A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
Little Tiny Things
Clover
What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
Monster's Garden
Ash G.
Champion pit fighter Kilo Monster was content to spend the rest of his days tending to his quiet garden alone... until he met a curious robot girl and her human family.
Freakshow
Scotty
A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
The Messenger
indui
In a ruin-abound town cursed with bad luck, Kai and Kalla--a young boy and a fledgling dragonbird spirit--take on a quest in hopes the reward will solve all of their problems.
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
Peritale
Mari Costa
A fairy godmother with no magic tries her best to successfully fulfill a Fairytale and win the respect of her peers.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Heroes of Thantopolis
Izzy Strontium Hall
A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
BOOKMARK Click "Tag Page" to bookmark a page. When you return to the site, click "Goto Tag" to continue where you left off.
BUFFER WATCH
Comics are currently drawn and uploaded through:
If you’re going to simulate an entire human being as essentially a subroutine in your brain, it needs to be a fairly straightforward and predictable one.
Amber can run 1 Mike, 3 Galassos, 7 Marys, or 37 Dannys before she experiences significant lag.
Now, consider the case of Willis who runs them all. Though I must admit, not apparently in real time. The same processor is handling the entire graphics load though, so who knows.
But the graphics load of about 10 frames per day not even as pixels, as abstract line work. That’s a pretty low graphics load from a compression standpoint.
How the hell is Danny that much more predictable than Mary? Just think of the most assholishly compulsive heteronormativity thing to say, cloak it in a facade of ‘concern’, and you’re good.
Mary turned unexpectedly friendly in her last appearance, due to getting a boyfriend. That’s the sort of unpredictable behavior you need to allocate extra resources for.
Most surprisingly thing Danny has done in either universe is purchase a hat.
Nope! Because that relationship is founded on being smugly righteous and superior to everyone else, TOGETHER! (And planning on getting married to justify their desire to bone. Far as we know they haven’t yet.)
Amber: How was I supposed to know that the correct response to your concern for my identity crisis wasn’t to dissociate a completely new identity based on our mutual childhood friend?! I mean, I’m not a mind reader for goodness sake!
(Do not assassinate a former US President, kids. It is a very, very bad thing to do. Also wash your hands, wear a mask when you go outside, and stay in your school video conference. *80s cartoon smile*)
But also I mean, technically H.W. Bush was a president in the 90s and also deceased.
Ninja Rick will never return but maybe Ninja Dave will show up or someone otherwise obsessed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the way that Ethan is with Transformers.
Sentai Paul, who is EXTREMELY into Super Sentai and other tokusatsu shows (but not Power Rangers, which is an Americanized abomination for kids, he will not recognize the irony of this statement, don’t waste your time.)
Introjects are as permanent as other kinds of alters. Think of it this way, a huge force of events was big enough to shunt a new identity out. Good news isn’t going to shove the identity ‘back in’, let alone the idea that the counter “impact” would be as much force.
I wonder if hallucinations are going to be the new norm for Amber, which is fine if that’s the case, I’m just curious. I deal with hallucinations myself so it’s always interesting to see it portrayed.
Also, can Hallucination Mike bang real mothers? Has science gone that far?
We know she hallucinated Blaine right after stabbing Ryan, but that was only the once. (It was, however, more detailed, with shading. Maybe because Hallucination Mike started in part trying to get Amber to realize he was Not Okay after AG changed controls again? Or maybe artstyle changes, or purely for reader benefit. Who knows.) All we know for sure is it’s not just Mike.
Probably only the ones who accept equally hallucinatory nickels. It’s more of them than you’d think!
Well we’ll have to see if she continues to hallucinate Mike after he gets out of the hospital. Which I am declaring as a when, not if, because I don’t think Willis is ready to kill him off.
I believe you may be the second person here to use the word introject. The meaning is reasonably clear from context and structure. Is it a technical term from either psychiatry, occult studies, or video game programming?
an introject is an alter that draws their personality from an external source, as opposed to being more or less invented in-house. a fictional introject would be, say, if i developed an alter based on/who believed themself to be peter parker, but there can also be introjects based on real people in ones life, celebrities, or really any person the brain latches onto and internalizes the patterns of at the time of the alter’s formation. it’s pretty common for ppl with DID to form alters based on their abusers, for example.
Amazi-Girl isn’t shown like Mike is – the one time she makes a visible appearance when she’s not driving the body, she’s monochromatic blue, not full, if flat, colours. Which points to Mike being a hallucination caused by something like a week without sleep when he first showed up.
I’d question if this is really the time for Ethan to be saying this, but given if she was less exhausted, she might just brush him off, maybe there is no good time for it, just whenever it gets done.
Is anyone else’s comic not aligned anymore so you can both longer do the hover text on mobile under the 2nd last panel? There is no way to click it because the next and last comic buttons are now in the way. This started happening last night and I hoped it would resolve with today’s comic :'(
No hovertext for me either, here or on previous comics where it did work the day before yesterday. I don’t get a click either…
i hope this is fixed soon..
I’m not sure I understand Ethan’s comment. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the use of the word “remorse” here, but if someone else is telling Amber how guilty they felt about something, why is AMBER apologising?
Ethan is telling her not to beat up on herself. She knows what he means, even if she refuses to accept it. But Ethan is being neither cruel or obvious, though he is speaking from the privileged position of an old friend who is permitted to be blunt.
Y’know, audiovisual hallucinations can be quite serious. Especially since Amber has had a lot of emotional and mental stress ON TOP of a fairly recent head trauma.
She is also *severely* sleep deprived, and has been for multiple days now. In fact, I don’t think brain!Mike has shown up when she wasn’t sleep deprived, yet.
I’d been just kind of thinking of “brain Mike” as a joke up until now, but taking it more seriously… does Amber have dissociative identity disorder AND schizoaffective disorder?
Not necessarily with the later. Mike could be an introject, he could be a hallucination from sleep-deprivation, it could be she has developed psychotic episodes because of the recent trauma. Or it could be linked to her PTSD as psychosis commonly co-occurs with it and to my knowledge, if you have DID you are very likely to have c-PTSD.
I haven’t been able to read the alt-text on my mobile in the last few days. Has anything changed? This is especially frustrating since that Comic Chameleon piece of crap has been stuck for more than a week on all comics I read.
Yeah, the no alt text on mobile is apparently a problem for many of us right now, as I learned in yesterday’s comment section when I was having that problem. Good to know that the comic chameleon problem is also happening to other people though, and it’s not just me! For quite a while, it’s been a few days behind, and now it has exactly one comic available from after July 1st. And that is not from a series is read.
I’ve been trying, but there’s literally no way for me so far to view the last exchanges between Ethan and Amber as anything but him taking his frustrations over the situation out on her, when she has been doing literally nothing but trying to make the situation better in as much as she is capable. Instead of owning his own shit – like ignoring and writing off Mike the night of the attack, not even wondering where he was until he found out he was in the hospital – he seems to be putting all his negative feelings onto Amber as though all of it was her fault and she could have somehow done more or avoided this entire thing, and like it is her fault that he gets into these messes, largely because she had the misfortune of having Blaine as her father.
Specifically, nothing he has said has bee supportive, kind, or empathetic to the shit she has been through over the past few days, and now it feels like gaslighting suggesting he can’t even get frustrated at her without her, what? Wanting to do something about it? Of course she does. Like it’s her fault she takes it personally that he is venting at her about… Her, and the situations he ends up in because he’s known her this long.
I think he was trying to say “these situations suck” and was kinda looking for “yep” rather than an apology which then moves the conversation to mediating her unwarranted guilt because it leads to things like stabbing Sal’s hand (with Blaine’s provocation, but her trying to protect Ethan even though he and Sal were cool with each other indicates she still viewed her as an active threat to him, so she may still have been scared of her while she was restrained when they were younger (especially with the crippling social anxiety). She then Batmaned into a caped vigilante, putting herself at risk, and if you go with “Blaine targeted Amber and her friends to get to Amazigirl even though he didn’t know they share a body/some memories/started out as the same person, meaning that put them at risk” then she’s responsible but that thinking is convoluted).
Her guilt can’t be ignored because it leads her to unpredictable and potentially dangerous/criminal acts. But it does derail his ability to discuss how *he* feels.
Either that or he’s exhausted, worried and angry and doesn’t have the mental capacity to also be gentle right now?
1. Amber bodyjacked Amazigirl and gave Blaine his just desserts, which is to say beating him until he started exhaling blood.
2. Since Amber is just Amazigirl’s alter, Blaine concluded he got his ass handed to him by a masked vigilante ninja.
3. Blaine realized a ninja existed on campus he could leverage for his plans by using hostages.
4. Every part of Blaine’s plan showed clear signs of being affected by his beating and a latent desire to get his newfound rival back.
Why would Ethan have wondered where Mike was the night of the attack? Mike was at the party. Left the party, apparently to go home and Ethan didn’t happen to see him the next day. This happens. No reason to think it’s a big deal.
Nor any reason to worry about the people who aren’t kidnapped when you’ve been kidnapped yourself. Ethan’s got his issues, but they’re really not tied up in this.
Ethan reads to me like someone who is…burnt out on how his close friend acts and is reacting with an unreasonable response. It’s not good, but it…happens. It’s something I’m quite familiar with in my group of people that have a lot of the same issues as the cast of DoA.
Yeah I *get* Ethan’s frustration, it’s hard to know what to do/say when a friend is constantly apologizing and being self-deprecating, it’s really awkward and uncomfortable and kind of makes you have to constantly spend time making them feel better about themselves…
BUT I have also BEEN that friend who is like Amber (with the self-deprecating guilt and severe anxiety & social awkwardness, not the dissociative identity disorder), and I know that often this behavior is the result of serious insecurity and real guilt, and the last thing you want to do is make your friend feel worse, but you also already feel like you’re making your friend feel worse by existing/being a screw-up and…it just sucks for everyone involved, on all sides.
tl;dr I get Ethan’s frustration but I also get Amber. She probably needs to hear the things he’s saying but he needs to understand she’s trying her best.
Really she just needs to talk to a darn professional already because neither of them is equipped to deal with her struggling mental health on their own atm. Her brain is undoubtedly not a fun place to be in right now.
Really wish Ethan had a better understanding of DID. Heck, wishing *Amber* had a better understanding. Hallucination Mike strikes me as a guilt-induced introject, but Ethan seems to think Amber is just being dramatic and neither of them are in a state to discuss what’s really happening with introject!Mike.
I can definitely understand Ethan’s frustrations with Amber, I tend to do the thing he thinks she does where I try to overcompensate to “prove” that I’m sorry (though not via a vigilante headmate), but there’s a frustrating and understandable communication breakdown here.
Given that Ethan just learned that she’s DID yesterday, right after a traumatic kidnapping with his ?friend? in a coma, I think he’s doing all right.
I’m not sure Ethan just thinks she’s just being dramatic – though he certainly doesn’t get what she means by “the angry Mike in my head”. He doesn’t really get the DID, but I think he does have an idea of the self-loathing and that’s more what’s driving her to over apologize and try to go beyond what anyone would ask to make up for things.
Oh I love that this is finally being said flat-out, especially by Ethan. Amber’s always genuinely sorry when things go wrong, but she’s so focused on her own guilt rather than actually listening to the people around her that she winds up behaving in a very self-centered way. It’s a problem I get, but she’s really gotta learn to break the pattern at some point.
Maybe not quite the same, but I kinda feel both Ethan and Amber here. When a friend is doing bad mentally and you try and you try to help them, try to change their thought-patterns, distract them, encourage, cheer them up, but they keep going right down the hole again and again and you feel tired and frustrated because it’s the same spiral.
I’ve been in the position both of the friend who tries to help, and the friend with the problems. I feel frustrated when I’m hurting because others are pulling me up again and again and yet my brain goes down and I struggle to break the pattern and feel guilty about that … AND I feel frustrated because I’m trying to pull my friend up again and again and they keep going down the same pattern, and feel guilty that I’m frustrated at them, because I should be understanding since I have the same issues.
Even apologized to my therapist for going on about the same thing again and again. Tho she said ‘this is my job, and this is exactly the problem you’re here for – doesn’t matter how many times you lay it on me, it’s OK’.
Might have gone of topic here. Point is: I feel you both.
I’m sure what I’m saying isn’t 100% accurate but I would not be surprised if the people who think Ethan is being an asshole without qualification are pretty young. The alternative is that there are grown ass people who genuinely believe one should without exception and without reservation constantly and uncritically support friends no matter what.
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 17h
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. Her partner, Billy Evans, is now trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics.” nyti.ms/3FbtZm9
www.ebay.com/itm/23609767...
selling my netflix war for cybertron megatron -- the walmart exclusive one that came with pinpointer and lionizer (but being sold here without pinpointer and lionizer)
Gran... IS ALIVE?
okay, juliette still has brown hair, so this is probably definitely a flashback
i'm just surprised that the comic has remembered her, at all
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 17h
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
Loading ...
the best thing about Mike is the perfect Mike replica is just him saying the same thing
If you’re going to simulate an entire human being as essentially a subroutine in your brain, it needs to be a fairly straightforward and predictable one.
Amber can run 1 Mike, 3 Galassos, 7 Marys, or 37 Dannys before she experiences significant lag.
Okay, but how many Dinas, though?
0.0002
Now, consider the case of Willis who runs them all. Though I must admit, not apparently in real time. The same processor is handling the entire graphics load though, so who knows.
But the graphics load of about 10 frames per day not even as pixels, as abstract line work. That’s a pretty low graphics load from a compression standpoint.
How the hell is Danny that much more predictable than Mary? Just think of the most assholishly compulsive heteronormativity thing to say, cloak it in a facade of ‘concern’, and you’re good.
Mary turned unexpectedly friendly in her last appearance, due to getting a boyfriend. That’s the sort of unpredictable behavior you need to allocate extra resources for.
Most surprisingly thing Danny has done in either universe is purchase a hat.
True, true. Even the ukulele fits into Friendly Bi Guy Paradigms.
I suspect her simulation would have needed to be updated to cover the Bi part.
So…..you are saying that penis is a cure for whatever the hell was wrong with Mary?
Nope! Because that relationship is founded on being smugly righteous and superior to everyone else, TOGETHER! (And planning on getting married to justify their desire to bone. Far as we know they haven’t yet.)
I feel like you aren’t giving Danny enough credit, and giving Mary too much. The Mike and Galasso’s thing I’ll buy though.
I’m just being snide, Danny’s a good egg.
The hat needs to die, though. Hopefully with Amber’s video game habits, her simulation of him would have cosmetic options.
She would absolutely dress him up in something spandex or something.
Kill the hat. WITH FIRE!
TELL HIM!
DO ETT!!!
Her inner Mike isn’t looking too good…
He looks a bit flat.
Don’t all mikes?
Fall three stories you do, see how flat you look.
God dammit, Ethan, your friend is telling you about an active hallucination right now.
Also yes, Amber, tell him.
I’m wondering if he isn’t more of an introject than a hallucination. Guess we’ll find out.
I learned a new word today!
She now has two people telling her that. Maybe she should listen.
Who else told her that Mike banged Ethan’s mother?
Willis, apparently.
Amber: How was I supposed to know that the correct response to your concern for my identity crisis wasn’t to dissociate a completely new identity based on our mutual childhood friend?! I mean, I’m not a mind reader for goodness sake!
I mean, they’re not wrong…
And you both know how much it was for.
We’re getting the Shortpacked!Gang back together!
Without Ninja Rick or Ronnie?
Ronnie was brought into being because 80s nostalgia was cool at the time.
Now 90s nostalgia is cool, so Galasso would have to resurrect Bill Clinton…who is still alive, so that may present a hurdle.
Certainly with THAT attitude, it will!
(Do not assassinate a former US President, kids. It is a very, very bad thing to do. Also wash your hands, wear a mask when you go outside, and stay in your school video conference. *80s cartoon smile*)
But also I mean, technically H.W. Bush was a president in the 90s and also deceased.
Ninja Rick will never return but maybe Ninja Dave will show up or someone otherwise obsessed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the way that Ethan is with Transformers.
Sentai Paul, who is EXTREMELY into Super Sentai and other tokusatsu shows (but not Power Rangers, which is an Americanized abomination for kids, he will not recognize the irony of this statement, don’t waste your time.)
Kamen Rider Doug.
They have an intense and extremely pointless rivalry.
I like to think Ninja Rick is a groundskeeper at IU, and he’s been in frame before, but we never see him because he’s a ninja.
move aside, Ronnie, it’s George Herbie’s time to shine!
*plays “Prelude/Angry Young Man” on the hacked Muzak*
I’m a little surprised you went with that one and not this one. Just too obvious, I guess?
Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson?
For a nickel?
I guess I needed a break from synth music.
Never a bad time for Styx.
Man, if Mike comes out of his coma, I hope he gets a hairstyle that obeys Euclidean geometry.
He’s the only one of the Amber-Ethan-Mike trio who hasn’t gotten a new ‘do, it’s warranted!
Well his head did get shaved (or trimmed down) when he was hospitalized so that’s likely to happen.
Okay but if Mike comes out of his coma, will imaginary!Mike go away. Or will he fight himself by proxy?
I kind of want Brain Ghost Mike and Real Mike to get into an insult contest by proxy while Amber officiates.
It’d be awful, but.
Amazi-Girl, Amber, Ghost Mike, and Real Mike all end up sleeping together. Two people in a very crowded bed.
Introjects are as permanent as other kinds of alters. Think of it this way, a huge force of events was big enough to shunt a new identity out. Good news isn’t going to shove the identity ‘back in’, let alone the idea that the counter “impact” would be as much force.
Bad timing, Ghost Mike.
From our point-of-view, it’s bad. Alas, not to him.
Darn hovertext isn’t working again.
“TELL HIM I BANGED HIS MOM”
Exactly what Ghost Mike said.
Thanks. I’m hoping this isn’t the new normal.
I think it was meant to be Mike repeating the same thing but louder this time because Amber wasn’t telling Ethan.
Gross, Mike.
You have better standards than Naomi.
But nickels.
OK, it is Naomi. He charged her two nickels.
He knows, Mike.
He knows.
This made me laugh unreasonably hard. Thank you. <3
I wonder if hallucinations are going to be the new norm for Amber, which is fine if that’s the case, I’m just curious. I deal with hallucinations myself so it’s always interesting to see it portrayed.
Also, can Hallucination Mike bang real mothers? Has science gone that far?
We know she hallucinated Blaine right after stabbing Ryan, but that was only the once. (It was, however, more detailed, with shading. Maybe because Hallucination Mike started in part trying to get Amber to realize he was Not Okay after AG changed controls again? Or maybe artstyle changes, or purely for reader benefit. Who knows.) All we know for sure is it’s not just Mike.
Probably only the ones who accept equally hallucinatory nickels. It’s more of them than you’d think!
Well we’ll have to see if she continues to hallucinate Mike after he gets out of the hospital. Which I am declaring as a when, not if, because I don’t think Willis is ready to kill him off.
I’m wondering if he’s a hallucination or an introject in her system.
I believe you may be the second person here to use the word introject. The meaning is reasonably clear from context and structure. Is it a technical term from either psychiatry, occult studies, or video game programming?
It seems to be a psychiatric term used with multiple systems for an alter based on a different person.
an introject is an alter that draws their personality from an external source, as opposed to being more or less invented in-house. a fictional introject would be, say, if i developed an alter based on/who believed themself to be peter parker, but there can also be introjects based on real people in ones life, celebrities, or really any person the brain latches onto and internalizes the patterns of at the time of the alter’s formation. it’s pretty common for ppl with DID to form alters based on their abusers, for example.
Amazi-Girl isn’t shown like Mike is – the one time she makes a visible appearance when she’s not driving the body, she’s monochromatic blue, not full, if flat, colours. Which points to Mike being a hallucination caused by something like a week without sleep when he first showed up.
Amber did mention Mike earlier, I think introject, personally.
I’d question if this is really the time for Ethan to be saying this, but given if she was less exhausted, she might just brush him off, maybe there is no good time for it, just whenever it gets done.
Is anyone else’s comic not aligned anymore so you can both longer do the hover text on mobile under the 2nd last panel? There is no way to click it because the next and last comic buttons are now in the way. This started happening last night and I hoped it would resolve with today’s comic :'(
I’m still getting a click sound when I press the blank space there, but the hovertext doesn’t come up.
No hovertext for me either, here or on previous comics where it did work the day before yesterday. I don’t get a click either…
i hope this is fixed soon..
I wonder what changed. Older strips still work. Though I guess the particular older strips I looked at could still be held locally.
Something else weird is that yesterday’s strip doesn’t have an active next button. There’s something going on.
I’m not sure I understand Ethan’s comment. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the use of the word “remorse” here, but if someone else is telling Amber how guilty they felt about something, why is AMBER apologising?
That’s his point. Even when someone else is the one who should be sorry, she’s the sorriest person around.
Emotional abuse can fuck a person up hard. I still catch myself doing that, and I’ve had significantly more space to heal than Amber has.
Sometimes I don’t know if Ethan is pointing obvious problem, or if he is just saying cruel things just because of resentment.
Ethan is telling her not to beat up on herself. She knows what he means, even if she refuses to accept it. But Ethan is being neither cruel or obvious, though he is speaking from the privileged position of an old friend who is permitted to be blunt.
No one’s suggesting this as a book title? I’m shocked.
DOA10: This.
Oh. You meant DOA10: Stuff Like That!
I sincerely hope that you aren’t intending.the last sentence in panel 5 that I’m too lazy to type.
Y’know, audiovisual hallucinations can be quite serious. Especially since Amber has had a lot of emotional and mental stress ON TOP of a fairly recent head trauma.
Just saying.
Brain Mike could also be an introject in her system.
She is also *severely* sleep deprived, and has been for multiple days now. In fact, I don’t think brain!Mike has shown up when she wasn’t sleep deprived, yet.
As an insomniac (and now mother of 3) I honestly didn’t realise hallucinating wasn’t normal until it came up in conversation with my husband…
When was she last not sleep deprived?
Thanks for contributing, brain-Mike
I just now realized that Amber is a Hope player. Holy crap O_O
I’m gonna have to agree with hallucination-Mike here, that’s probably what Mike would want to say if he were conscious right now.
I’d been just kind of thinking of “brain Mike” as a joke up until now, but taking it more seriously… does Amber have dissociative identity disorder AND schizoaffective disorder?
Not necessarily with the later. Mike could be an introject, he could be a hallucination from sleep-deprivation, it could be she has developed psychotic episodes because of the recent trauma. Or it could be linked to her PTSD as psychosis commonly co-occurs with it and to my knowledge, if you have DID you are very likely to have c-PTSD.
I haven’t been able to read the alt-text on my mobile in the last few days. Has anything changed? This is especially frustrating since that Comic Chameleon piece of crap has been stuck for more than a week on all comics I read.
Yeah, the no alt text on mobile is apparently a problem for many of us right now, as I learned in yesterday’s comment section when I was having that problem. Good to know that the comic chameleon problem is also happening to other people though, and it’s not just me! For quite a while, it’s been a few days behind, and now it has exactly one comic available from after July 1st. And that is not from a series is read.
I’ve been trying, but there’s literally no way for me so far to view the last exchanges between Ethan and Amber as anything but him taking his frustrations over the situation out on her, when she has been doing literally nothing but trying to make the situation better in as much as she is capable. Instead of owning his own shit – like ignoring and writing off Mike the night of the attack, not even wondering where he was until he found out he was in the hospital – he seems to be putting all his negative feelings onto Amber as though all of it was her fault and she could have somehow done more or avoided this entire thing, and like it is her fault that he gets into these messes, largely because she had the misfortune of having Blaine as her father.
Specifically, nothing he has said has bee supportive, kind, or empathetic to the shit she has been through over the past few days, and now it feels like gaslighting suggesting he can’t even get frustrated at her without her, what? Wanting to do something about it? Of course she does. Like it’s her fault she takes it personally that he is venting at her about… Her, and the situations he ends up in because he’s known her this long.
I just struggle to like Ethan at all right now.
I think he was trying to say “these situations suck” and was kinda looking for “yep” rather than an apology which then moves the conversation to mediating her unwarranted guilt because it leads to things like stabbing Sal’s hand (with Blaine’s provocation, but her trying to protect Ethan even though he and Sal were cool with each other indicates she still viewed her as an active threat to him, so she may still have been scared of her while she was restrained when they were younger (especially with the crippling social anxiety). She then Batmaned into a caped vigilante, putting herself at risk, and if you go with “Blaine targeted Amber and her friends to get to Amazigirl even though he didn’t know they share a body/some memories/started out as the same person, meaning that put them at risk” then she’s responsible but that thinking is convoluted).
Her guilt can’t be ignored because it leads her to unpredictable and potentially dangerous/criminal acts. But it does derail his ability to discuss how *he* feels.
Either that or he’s exhausted, worried and angry and doesn’t have the mental capacity to also be gentle right now?
It’s not THAT convoluted.
1. Amber bodyjacked Amazigirl and gave Blaine his just desserts, which is to say beating him until he started exhaling blood.
2. Since Amber is just Amazigirl’s alter, Blaine concluded he got his ass handed to him by a masked vigilante ninja.
3. Blaine realized a ninja existed on campus he could leverage for his plans by using hostages.
4. Every part of Blaine’s plan showed clear signs of being affected by his beating and a latent desire to get his newfound rival back.
Why would Ethan have wondered where Mike was the night of the attack? Mike was at the party. Left the party, apparently to go home and Ethan didn’t happen to see him the next day. This happens. No reason to think it’s a big deal.
Nor any reason to worry about the people who aren’t kidnapped when you’ve been kidnapped yourself. Ethan’s got his issues, but they’re really not tied up in this.
Ethan reads to me like someone who is…burnt out on how his close friend acts and is reacting with an unreasonable response. It’s not good, but it…happens. It’s something I’m quite familiar with in my group of people that have a lot of the same issues as the cast of DoA.
Yeah I *get* Ethan’s frustration, it’s hard to know what to do/say when a friend is constantly apologizing and being self-deprecating, it’s really awkward and uncomfortable and kind of makes you have to constantly spend time making them feel better about themselves…
BUT I have also BEEN that friend who is like Amber (with the self-deprecating guilt and severe anxiety & social awkwardness, not the dissociative identity disorder), and I know that often this behavior is the result of serious insecurity and real guilt, and the last thing you want to do is make your friend feel worse, but you also already feel like you’re making your friend feel worse by existing/being a screw-up and…it just sucks for everyone involved, on all sides.
tl;dr I get Ethan’s frustration but I also get Amber. She probably needs to hear the things he’s saying but he needs to understand she’s trying her best.
Really she just needs to talk to a darn professional already because neither of them is equipped to deal with her struggling mental health on their own atm. Her brain is undoubtedly not a fun place to be in right now.
I can’t decide if right now Amber need the help of a psychologist or an exorcist. Probably both.
Well, to be frank, she already needed to see a psychologist.
…As did much of the main cast, even before the kidnapping.
Psychologist, Mike is still alive… unless he is having an out-of-body experience…
For a nickel!
Ethan successfully managed to put my feelings into words, thank you
Really wish Ethan had a better understanding of DID. Heck, wishing *Amber* had a better understanding. Hallucination Mike strikes me as a guilt-induced introject, but Ethan seems to think Amber is just being dramatic and neither of them are in a state to discuss what’s really happening with introject!Mike.
I can definitely understand Ethan’s frustrations with Amber, I tend to do the thing he thinks she does where I try to overcompensate to “prove” that I’m sorry (though not via a vigilante headmate), but there’s a frustrating and understandable communication breakdown here.
Given that Ethan just learned that she’s DID yesterday, right after a traumatic kidnapping with his ?friend? in a coma, I think he’s doing all right.
I’m not sure Ethan just thinks she’s just being dramatic – though he certainly doesn’t get what she means by “the angry Mike in my head”. He doesn’t really get the DID, but I think he does have an idea of the self-loathing and that’s more what’s driving her to over apologize and try to go beyond what anyone would ask to make up for things.
Oh I love that this is finally being said flat-out, especially by Ethan. Amber’s always genuinely sorry when things go wrong, but she’s so focused on her own guilt rather than actually listening to the people around her that she winds up behaving in a very self-centered way. It’s a problem I get, but she’s really gotta learn to break the pattern at some point.
+1
It’s a damn good thing he doesn’t know how much I hate his guts.
Has she been to sleep yet?
Maybe not quite the same, but I kinda feel both Ethan and Amber here. When a friend is doing bad mentally and you try and you try to help them, try to change their thought-patterns, distract them, encourage, cheer them up, but they keep going right down the hole again and again and you feel tired and frustrated because it’s the same spiral.
I’ve been in the position both of the friend who tries to help, and the friend with the problems. I feel frustrated when I’m hurting because others are pulling me up again and again and yet my brain goes down and I struggle to break the pattern and feel guilty about that … AND I feel frustrated because I’m trying to pull my friend up again and again and they keep going down the same pattern, and feel guilty that I’m frustrated at them, because I should be understanding since I have the same issues.
Even apologized to my therapist for going on about the same thing again and again. Tho she said ‘this is my job, and this is exactly the problem you’re here for – doesn’t matter how many times you lay it on me, it’s OK’.
Might have gone of topic here. Point is: I feel you both.
I’m sure what I’m saying isn’t 100% accurate but I would not be surprised if the people who think Ethan is being an asshole without qualification are pretty young. The alternative is that there are grown ass people who genuinely believe one should without exception and without reservation constantly and uncritically support friends no matter what.
Just noticed the title of this chapter. Is that a reference to “A Softer World”?