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David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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“AFTER you said you banged his mom, there was stuff about bust freds”
I have forgotten what those words were.
Something about rosebuds? Who the hell knows what that means.
You sleigh me.
They touched weiners and then did a weird secret handshake with them. It’s very awkward to replicate in public.
Also Ethan, you have a weird sense of normal since your normal was still when your best friend was a vigilante.
It’s basically The Perfect Cast from A Goofy Movie, but with wieners.
Garsh!
A-hyuk.
The sentimental stuff real mike said in while bleeding in the car, or the brain hallucination Mike about banging his mom?
Why not both?
(said in the Zoidberg voice, obviously)
Weirdly enough, his last words were also “didja know me and Ethan recently touched weiners?”
I mean…last words or no, it’d be nice to pass that on to Ethan, anyway, Amber.
Yeah… I hope that one day she tells him. Part of her – the “Mike” part – knows that she should.
She was the last person who was with him before he was hospitalized. Her natural response is to be guilty to the extreme, which as Ethan pointed out yesterday doesn’t /help/ them. She /has/ other options – like passing on Mike’s message – if only she could take them.
Wasn’t his message about the crooked police? It seems like that was more a warning for Amber.
No, it was that Ethan and Amber were good friends – best friends.
In panel 2, I’m getting echoes of Buffy’s “Lie to me”.
Panel 2 reminds me too much of the present day. Just substitute “coma” for “coronavirus.”
You’ll see a man strapped upside down inside a bed
That breathes for him till they agree he’s dead
And all the lousy little singers comin’ round
Tryin’ to sound like Leonard Cohen
And the lies keep growin’.
Here’s the filk that’s from.
Did Amber know about the consensual mutual Weiner touching?
Yes.
And she’s very disappointed she hasn’t received the detailed descriptions she desired, if only because it means she can’t check the accuracy of her fanfics.
I choose to believe she’s the author of the other “The Rise of Skywalker.”
Is the other Skywalker his son with Ethan’s mom?
Skywarner
Owlie Skywarner.
I was going to quote Animaniacs but somehow I don’t think anybody cares.
I care!
I care as well. Animaniacs quote, please!
HELLOOOO NU–oh wait there’s no nurse in this scene.
I considered such a reference also.
Are we going to hear that Mike said he loves Ethan here? It’s sort of been hinted that he caught feelings.
“Things will be normal again.” That feels a bit poignant given current events.
Things will be normal again, because things always get normal again.
Few ever mention that it’s rarely the same normal.
And that’s normal.
Christ alive Amber go see a doctor. You are in the place with the most medical professionals by sqft. Sort this out.
Ethan is not so subtlety showing he’s running out of energy for all this.
1. Intensive care isn’t a psych unit.
2. Even setting that aside, just being in a psych unit isn’t a guarantee you’ll get competent care, and even being admitted voluntarily doesn’t mean she’ll be able to leave if that care is bad. (Have I mentioned recently That Time My First Psychiatrist In Outpatient Care Tried To Undiagnose My Autism, despite it not being what I was there for and a credible diagnosis from the literal experts in the field, over more time than he’d known me, and by the way they were located less than 11 miles away? Because that’s an EXTREMELY MINOR grievance from a mostly helpful experience and he STILL changed it without telling me, we only caught it checking before discharge.)
3. DID is extremely misunderstood even by the psychiatric community at large. The odds of getting bad care – care that could in fact make things way worse – are exponentially higher for Amber than, say, Ruth. (And it was still a risk for Ruth. Inpatient is by all accounts really unpleasant and an absolute last resort. By which I mean ‘I was actively suicidal when I got admitted to outpatient and it was still agreed I’d be better off there if I wasn’t a current threat to myself.’)
4. And even setting all THAT aside, she’d get a huge hospital bill for her stay and wouldn’t have a permanent psychologist or psychiatrist at the end of it all, because you don’t see someone permanent in the hospital any more than you see your permanent doctor in the ER. Totally different experience.
There have been times (mainly during the stalking) where I thought shit was bad enough inpatient might have been necessary. And hell, she’s still in incredibly worrisome shape. It is still a scenario that you do not enter lightly, and you do not enter expecting to be anywhere else for probably multiple weeks in this case. Honestly I think she’d be better served trying to find a DID-supportive therapist she clicks with, which tends to mean trying more than one person. Which you can’t really do in psychiatric inpatient.
3) Honestly? It’s not even about the DID at this point. A-G may not need therapy, but Amber is fuckin’ seeing people. That’s not good.
In fairness, some of that is likely sleep deprivation. She didn’t sleep for like two days before the kidnapping.
I think it was closer to a week…she certainly didn’t get much rest when AG was in the driver’s seat, either.
It was only the night of the kidnapping she was explicitly called out as “not going to sleep at all”, but arguably with AG running around during Amber’s sleep time, she’s been getting very little for weeks now.
Yeah, it’s HIGHLY unlikely Amber would be able to discuss her issues in any detail without eventually letting on that AG exists. Especially if, as people have suggested, Mike isn’t a hallucination but another alter, she cannot have any kind of effective mental healthcare without bringing it up. (It’s also generally not going to be helpful as she avoids that fact anyway. The ‘Amber is Bad And Violent, AG is Good and Heroic’ issue’s probably not resolving completely overnight, they BOTH have self-loathing/low self-worth issues like whoa, and the wakeup call was in part ‘we weren’t sharing memories even when something VITALLY important occurred, putting us and our friends in danger and leaving Mike alone in that hospital in a coma.’) And then, once again, the problem arises and seems PARTICULARLY fraught in a place that can tell her she can’t leave.
I’ve had DID friends in psych units here in Australia (not sure how that compares to the US) and their experiences have varied a lot.
Time 1-forced to be there, friend had to lie about not having DID to be released, I called but was told they were in a session but they weren’t (bastards).
Time 2-voluntarily admitted to a small place after being on a wait list to get in, allowed out on day trips, chatted several times with them, they stayed there for weeks, left so much better than before.
Time 3 (different friend)-voluntarily admitted herself, forcibly drugged for being aggressive, allowed visitors bearing snacks, was less of a danger to herself when she left.
I don’t think inpatient would be good for Amber right now, because even if it was free with great psychologists, I don’t think she is in the right state. For one, she isn’t a danger right now, and two, I think she is still finding it hard to face up to her issues.
She does though have to get a therapist. If they aren’t right for her and actively make her worse, then she has to find another. The probability of getting better outweighs the risk of getting worse. She is in a terrible state, in a terrible situation, but she needs to move forward.
‘Varies quite a lot’ is the story here as well. Like I said, my experience in outpatient was mostly positive, That One Doctor excluded. But the worst case scenarios can sound… very similar.
I agree she needs to find SOMEONE, and even DID peer support probably won’t cut it for the level of self-loathing she’s hit. (‘I blame myself on at least some level for my friend being comatose because of my shitty, shitty dad who proceeded to murder a guy’ is one of those things that needs a LOT of unpacking.) But here in this hospital is not the place to do so.
Also if she hasn’t slept for a solid 12 hours yet she really needs to do that too. It will not help everything, it will not even catch up on her sleep deprivation, but it will help at least a little.
Amber is out here seeing doing her best Haley Joel Osmont impression and you don’t think maybe she might need to see someone? This shit isn’t going away on its own and it is definitely not getting better
You’ll notice I said she should try and find a DID supportive therapist at the bottom there. There is a WORLD of difference between finding someone to see regularly and admitting yourself to a psych unit. At a hospital, what she’d be doing is the latter. And seriously inpatient is an absolute last resort. (Among other things, one of the reasons I ended up outpatient was because inpatient doesn’t allow anything you can conceivably use to strangle yourself with, such as charging cables. Given this would cut Amber off from coping mechanisms like gaming, AND isolate her from the Warner Situation, let alone ALL the potential pitfalls of being admitted with DID, I really do not think she should go to inpatient right now.)
I want very much for Mike to not die
Hot take: Ethan’s friendship with Amber has been one sided as all get out in terms of emotional support, and mostly because of Ethan’s guilt over the way he came out to her.
I’d argue Mike’s biggest contribution to Ethan’s development is getting him to actually enjoy life and pursue his desires without being shackled by unnecessary self recrimination. Which he does with gusto.
Except when it comes to his actual object of desire, Danny.
…which, of course, is because he’s afraid Amber would totally lose it.
+5 Insightful
We know that in the summer preceding this semester, Amber did a lot of tanking for Ethan with regards to homophobia. (Whether or not he really wanted that is a question in itself, but once he HAD come out – and as far as we know, that was something he wanted to do at the time unless I’m super-misremembering the early stuff, which: possible! – the homophobia was inevitable.) So I think they were on better footing (we know they were before that point, at least,) but that burned them both out a lot to begin with. Amber having a pretty steady Shit Getting Worse since Fall Freshman Family Weekend has helped nothing there. I think it’s possible for them to get back to better ground, but it’d take a LOT of therapy and some serious effort.
At the moment, though, yeah, this is not even and I am glad Ethan’s trying to bring up one of the major issues there. (There’s not exactly good timing for ‘I care about you but I don’t have space to process my shit when you take all this guilt on yourself and it’s not healthy for you, either.’ And they’re both completely out of mental energy for that to be broached tactfully.)
Didn’t Amber help and support Ethan during the previous summer, when he came out to his awful, homophobic parents? I don’t think it was totally one-sided.
In-comic, from when the semester started (NOT counting times before)… yeah, it’s been largely Ethan supporting Amber. Mostly because Amber needed a lot more support than Ethan did. But when Ethan went ahead and started with casual sexings, Amber did fully support that and said as much. That’s one of his biggest decisions in the entire story to date and probably the one he was most doubtful of, and she supported it.
Ok not onesided. Just horribly lopsided.
Amber did *try* to get Ethan to the enjoying life as himself stage. He decided to hide in the closet again. IN FACT, as I recall, he even tried to use the fact that Amber emotionally exhausted herself defending him from his family and needed a break to justify trying to hide it again, which was to try to avoid her calling him out on acting awful. And he insisted he *was* happy in his relationship with Joyce when she challenged him on it again.
I would actually say Amber tends to be more actively supportive than Ethan is and more willing to challenge him, than the other way around. Ethan’s support tends to be more… passively talking about wanting to support her to Danny and offering her toys but very little of what he does is actually helpful or his advice is hypocritical which allows her to either throw it back at him or dismiss it. And he kind of actively downplayed Sal being around the first time she mentioned it (which she actively went to warn him about) because he wasn’t still feeling bad about it or concerned about it… but Amber was. She didn’t get over the robbery in the way he did or to the extent he did. He was more concerned with her behaviour than her actual concerns driving her behaviour.
Amber also actively avoids relying on Ethan like. A lot. There are multiple occasions where she just flat out didn’t tell him stuff and then he’s surprised to learn it.
I find it difficult to say that it is one-sided or lopsided because we know as a child, Amber relied on Ethan a lot as he understood her well. We also know that Amber, someone with a lot of anxiety issues, argued with Ethan’s family on his behalf for an entire Summer, despite herself being heartbroken at the time that Ethan did not love her in the way she loved him.
Like, they’ve definitely been there for each other before. But Amber has been distancing herself from Ethan as someone she relies on. And he… hasn’t really made the effort to do anything about it. Like. Amber generally approaches him, not the other way around, and mostly just to talk. So he’s been offering advice when it is convenient, and even the toy he offered her after she stabbed ‘Ryan’ was something he had already conveniently ordered himself and it was Danny who suggested he try to help with her.
He says that Amber makes it hard for other people to feel bad around her. And this is true. Amber self-internalises blame that isn’t hers to claim or hold and if you’re not trying to blame someone, that makes it difficult to express those feelings around them.
But Ethan also doesn’t actively go to Amber like ever for support or to support her. And he really really REALLY did not seem to understand remotely that the robbery traumatised her severely. Looking through the strips right before Amber and Sal fought, Ethan thought it would be cathartic for her to talk about it with Sal and Walky.
I feel like, it would be more accurate to say that Amber *used* to emotionally rely on Ethan a lot and be supported by him a lot. But like. Sal, Walky, Dorothy, Ruth, and Danny… have actively gone to Amber and talked to her before about important stuff when Ethan hasn’t. He’ll actively talk to her if she is right there in front of his face doing concerning things and saying concerning things, and he’ll tell Danny that he finds it concerning, but he won’t go to Amber.
It feels like Ethan just expected when problems happened, she would come running to him, while Amber tried to forge herself into the exact opposite type of person to try to make up for failing to ‘protect’ him. And he’s only really now seeming to start to get how traumatising being held hostage is when Amber found it traumatising the whole time. I also feel that part of why Amber doesn’t share these things with him is because Ethan tries to minimise her concerns whether they are caused by anxiety or not.
Which… does not help. She was legitimately concerned about Sal and what she would do and that they might be hurt by her. And when they did finally have a confrontation about the robbery… it was bad. It wasn’t good. And it freaked him out. It led to Sal and Amber resolving things to a degree afterwards, but Amber was right to think it wouldn’t go smoothly.
I don’t know. I just think there is a lot more to their relationship to be said than ‘Ethan supports Amber’ because I feel like while a lot of the time he cares about her, he is often passive and inactive and only says something when it is convenient and easy. While Amber may not say as often that she cares and worries to other people, she has expressed desires to see him happy, worked to try to help him be happy, criticised when he was leading Joyce on that he was straight and was kind of hurt that Joyce was the one that got to take him to a LGBT+ community meet up because that was an idea she had apparently suggested earlier that was shot down by him. And she obviously to an extent feels like she has to protect him which is an unrealistic expectation, but I feel like her dad bringing that up right after the very traumatising hostage situation MAY have caused it to sink in as part of how she combats some feelings of helplessness.
I don’t know. I just think it is more nuanced and complex.
mike tulpa
I miss seeing mouseover text. It just feels incomplete without it.
Whatever script provided the ‘revealhiddentext’ function seems to have been either removed or broken.
Alt text is: “there is another Skywalker” for those on mobile.
Thanks!
Thank youuuuu~!^^
Thank you!
For those on mobile, click and press on the comic. If using chrome, the resulting menu will have the alt text.
Thank you! The alt text was at the top of the menu.
I read it on Safari on iPad, and that method hasn’t worked for me for a few days now. I haven’t found a way to get the alt text back.
Honestly, “We recently touched weiners” are not bad as last words go
Yeah Eathan maybe telling the distraught married couple that you screwed their son while they’re grieving over his comatoast body, just might be in bad taste….Then again it was probably what Mike would have wanted.
there is ano t h e r s k y w e i n e r
ITYM ‘skywarner’
I am wondering if we saw Mike’s ‘last’ words on panel or if there was more we haven’t seen. Possibly regarding certain Feelings for Ethan.
In a flashback.
Yes, I know. I’m wondering if there was more after that.
“They could be. For a nickel.”
Finally Amber♡! GO AWAY EVIL SPIRIT!!!
I hope there is a strip where Amber tells off imaginary Mike, right before she takes her first dose of Meds, and then watches him fade from existence.
First dose wouldn’t do that. And anti-psychotics are an EXTREMELY tricky group on the whole.
So the next panel would be Mike rubbing it in?
Better than him rubbing one out.
I do not care if it is the second dose, the third, or even the twenty-third. I just want to see the panel where he starts to say something, in his usual asshole manner, and he starts to fade; and every panel after that, he fades a little bit more. And then he gets that look on his face where he realizes he will no longer be an influence on her, and then poof, gone.
Unspoken coda to panel 5: “They’re not allowed to be your last words! Oh god… please don’t let them be his last words…!”
The ghost will disappear when Amber gets her shit together
I’m headcanoning that this hallucination is actually Walkyverse Mike and this is how he spent his time while he was temporarily dead. Haunting this weird girl who hung around his AU self.
I like it!