What do you do when the person you're in-love with is an anonymous romance novelist? Get your best friend to hire your worst enemy for help!
Real Science Adventures
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Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
The End
August Brown, Cory Brown
Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
The Automan's Daughter
Mike Stamm
Aisha Osman and her uncle Siddig outwit bikers, spies and kidnappers while gearing up for a showdown with the formidable Widowmaker mecha.
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Sam & Fuzzy
Sam Logan
Troubled by gangster rodents, lovesick vampire stalkers, or confused ninja assassins? Don't panic! Sam and Fuzzy are here to help. (For a reasonable fee.)
Awaken
Koti Saavedra/Flipfloppery
Superpowers, monsters and conspiracies. Piras, the spoiled Dameschi heir, fights to recover his identity after becoming a terrorist!
Lilith's Word
inkPangur
If you had the power to make any wish come true using just one word, what would you say?
Cut Time
Juby
Rel and her trusty avian friend Fugue are on a quest to save a world that's lost track of time. Follow them and their new recruits, in a story written with help from the stars.
The Witch Door
Anni K.
Katariina Lehto discovers her neighbor is a witch called Jousia Muotka. Jousia introduces Katariina to the strange people and places beyond the witch door...
Anarchy Dreamers
Emily Ree
Sparkly undead kids fight society's worst Nightmares in this pastel-punk urban fantasy coming-of-age!
The Sanity Circus
Windy
Magic, monsters and mysteries await in the odd city of Sanity. It's up to Attley and a colorful group of characters to find out just what is going on.
Goodbye to Halos
Valerie Halla
Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Monster Pulse
Magnolia Porter Siddell
Four kids run afoul of a creepy secret organization's experiments, which turn their body parts into fighting monsters. Part sentimental coming-of-age story, part monster-training shonen manga, with just a bit of sci-fi body horror.
Knights Errant
J.R. Doyle
Wilfrid's humble quest for revenge becomes bigger and bloodier by the day.
Starhammer
J.N. Monk, Harry Bogosian
A teen girl inherits a powerful alien artifact and proceeds to make a series of increasingly poor decisions
[un]Divine
Ayme
A highschool senior thought giving up his soul for a demon was a good idea. It wasn't.
Kochab
Sarah Webb
A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Ghost Junk Sickness
Studio CARTRIDGE, Laura Lee
Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
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.
Kiwi Blitz
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
Steffi thinks she can use her kiwi mech to become a superhero. This idea turns out to be very stupid.
Caramel Corn
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Sarah is the only human left in a world full of mythical creatures and monsters. All she wants to do is live a quiet life, but everything changes when she meets her guardian angel, Jacob.
El Goonish Shive
Dan Shive
WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
Wilde Life
Pascalle Lepas
Oscar decided to rent an old haunted house, and that's when things got weird...
Star Trip
Gisele Weaver
Jas is a human taken from her home planet on a trip across the galaxy she will never forget.
Sufficiently Remarkable
Maki Naro
Two young women living in Brooklyn discover that you're always coming of age.
Jailbird
Charlie Davis
An all-ages comic about a recently escaped prisoner's struggle to understand the outside world, and vice-versa. Also, a magic cape!
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.
Demon's Mirror
Harry Bogosian
Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
Girl Genius
Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio
In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all-out war, Mad Science rules the World...with mixed success.
Tigress Queen
Allison Shaw
A barbarian warlord and a pampered prince try to avoid a marriage alliance that could end decades of violence.
The Lonely Vincent Bellingham
Diana Huh
Vincent is an unkind man looking to disappear, and finds himself in the care of a vampire and her two wicked children.
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.
Fireweeds Moors
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A cat-headed man and a girl with a sandwich hankering accidentally end up in a myth-infused country where magic chalices are a really big thing.
Godslave
Meaghan Carter
Edith has been thrown into the dangerous world of modern-day Egyptian mythology. Fighting monsters and dealing with family drama of godly proportions.
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Lighter Than Heir
Melissa Albino
A young Volant woman joins the military in an effort to upstage her war-hero father.
Atomic Robo
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener
The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
Paranatural
Zack Morrison
Superpowered middle schoolers fight evil spirits in their rural hometown. Come for the jokes, stay for the cast, the creatures, and the mystery that ties them all together!
Hazy London
Scotty
A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
Never Satisfied
Taylor Robin
Lucy Marlowe, a magician's apprentice, competes against other apprentices for an important, magical, Goverment Job.
Devil's Candy
Rem, Bikkuri
A lush fantasy about boy genius Kazu Decker, the girl he constructed for his 9th grade science project, and the world of devils and monsters they live in.
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Between Failures
Jackie Wohlenhaus
The low stakes adventures of an assorted group of 20 somethings trapped in the declining years of American retail. They are naughty and say lots of swears.
Whomp!
Ronnie
A depressed, portly, hirsute anime fan stumbles through life in the ever-pursuit of chicken nuggets and other life-shortening indulgences.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Wychwood
Varethane
When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
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!
Go Get a Roomie
Clover
Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
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It’s not because she would vote for Trump to be a politician, she’s just happy he’s not extinct. Dina loves dinosaurs, even the dumb and slightly bloodthirsty ones.
No, this is progress. She keeps breaking into his room to watch him sleep, Cullen style, but this time she decided to do something productive while she was in there.
Quick! Dobler v. Dommer this. If it’s cute, Dobler. Creepy is Dommer.
…and they said watching every episode of How I Met Your Mother even if it is one I’ve already seen was a waste of time. I was preparing for this moment!
Yeah, if she goes to a shrink, he’s become mentally disturbed in the midst of their first session and try to shove a lime into her ear. That’s how coconuts she is.
Your May avatar, lack of punctuation, and subject of address make it fittingly difficult to judge whether you’re being sarcastic. And also inspire bizarre crossover slashfic in my rage-insomnia-and-burrito addled mind.
Okay, my overly literally mind and I are trying to imagine what mental state might qualify as COMPLETELY insane. I’m not to the point of visualizing that yet and already it’s not pretty.
Well, “insane” in this context is a pretty crappy term to lob at Amber, for starters.
Other than that, Amber is heavily dissociating between her alters and has been pushing at the boundaries between them since her fights with Blaine and Sal. If things continue to worsen we could actually see Amber start to experience blackouts during her Amazi-Girl episodes.
Ninja Laundromat…. Ninja Burger could expand into that business. We will sneak into your secret base to deliver food, and launder your minions’ uniforms!
Had. They were called Heinzelmännchen and worked unpaid. Come to think of it, they might have been the direct inspiration for house elves in the Potterverse.
Probably not. Dina might actually just think it was nice of Amber to do his laundry for him, without realizing that it is super weird to break into someone’s room to take it for them.
I believe that’s the point. Of the comic, anyway; Amber and Amazi-Girl are probably more interested in settling books, and maybe admiring sleeping Danny one last time.
Yeah, and it’s some major problems with the Amazi-girl alter which kind of have always been there. Like, we’ve seen Amazi-girl break into people’s rooms while they are sleeping for personal reasons (like making sure Billie and Danny didn’t sleep together). We’ve seen Amazi-girl have less than stellar regard for people’s boundaries and be more interested in settling what is “owed” and standing for “order” over simply treating people right and being forgiving.
But now, we’re seeing the dark side.
I think it’s interesting, because it’s a thing that happens with people who have DID and have a “golden alter”. The alter you presume is the guardian of everything good and pure about you, so you ignore their major issues or problems until the nasty side of their awful becomes apparent.
For me, luckily, that mostly just fucked me and in ways that served as critical wake-up calls to stop trusting said alter with so much power. For Amber/AG, unfortunately, her golden alter is much more outwardly focused and that has the potential of being really bad for her and others in her life as she continues to drift in this paranoid, inflexible, creeper direction.
Hopefully, AG thinks this “evens” them out, so that she will be less tempted to creep on Danny in the future.
Huh, a comic where nothing horrible happens and there’s only characters I like. It’s been so long I’ve forgotten how to react! I’ve missed you Danny and Din!
Interesting. Amber made that promise, not Amazi-girl. And Dina, who has made a point of noticing AG/Amber’s alter states and makes a point to refer correctly to things by her understanding of them refers to the one who sent her as Amber.
Which suggests that Amazi-girl may have finally relented her control and kept enough of the details of last night hidden from Amber, that Amber doesn’t think it particularly noteworthy…
Though, the fact that she notes the “original designs” part also could hint that she’s still being dominated by the Amazi-girl alter which would be awful for her on so many levels.
Arrgh, I can’t wait to see what is going on with her.
If so, that’s BAD. If AG can keep secrets from Amber, they’re dissociating even further. I’m hoping that Amber remembers everything, and is simply being honorable and paying her debts.
Oh yeah, very much. It would mean that she was going into the not sharing memories type of DID that gets all the psych paper headlines and the public attention and that is a lot harder to fix without outside therapist aid.
Or you know, it could be there are no alters. It could be that while Amber is messed up in some ways that she isn’t messed up that particular way. Confusing roles with independent personalities is a natural error. But the fact that Amber wants to keep them separate doesn’t mean they actually are. The fact that Amber can promise that Amazi-girl will thank him later is a pretty good indication there is no real seperaration.
Amber is justifiably upset with Danny but still made a promise. She found a way to keep it without compromising.
After all, if he’s in a supersuit, he’s not Danny, and if he’s not Danny, she can BEAT THE EVERLIVING TAR OUT OF HIM.
…No, I don’t think she’s that far gone yet. It would hopefully take some extra-strength trauma to push her down that particular road. If we’re lucky she’ll go with one of the paths that leads to SOME THERAPY.
I think this was definitely an Amazi-Girl decision. Amber knows you’re not supposed to care about underaged drinking, and that surfing on cars gets you killed, but Amazi-Girl is too busy being morally vindicated by existing.
Yup. Amazi-girl is fixated on her weird and continuously getting weirder moral stances and the way that they get stretched and twisted with every Sal encounter.
Like in here, she’s decided that fairness and being equal are critically important, so she “pays back” what she feels she still owes and feels that is enough and shows how she is the bigger woman to stick to “her morality” despite “Danny’s horrific betrayal”.
Now, all of that is kind of twisted from the reality, but it’s the narrative that the Amazi-girl alter is running away with and hopefully the Amber alter can start recognizing soon how toxic that line of thinking and Amazi-girl’s shifting morality really is.
On that first part, I realized that I was wrong about my statement that Amber is fine with underaged drinking, because I recalled that part where she thought Amber was allowed to be inconsistent and helped Billie to her room, and now remember that Amber got super pissed off at Danny for drinking at the party and was not only going to call him a “smug ass motherfucker”, but then texted him that when Ethan interrupted her.
In short, the one time Amber has ever gotten angry at him without immediately bursting into tears? When Danny violated one of Amazi-Girl’s rules, and it was still based on the idea that, if Danny was caught drinking then he would be expelled, and Amber would go crazy and fight back to try and save him like she did to Blaine. It’s just another example of how Amber needs to be put in a little box for her own good.
OR Amber could get the help she needs to realize that people sometimes flip out after years of abuse by a parent. The cops obviously didn’t do anything about Amber stabbing Sal, so she got an early taste of the whole “white kid gets away with a self-defense argument and a ‘don’t do that again’ card while the black kid goes to jail scenario.” Both of them were messed up, both of them acted out and tried to hurt someone, Sal went to jail and she went back home to her abuser.
Notice how much better all of this would have gone if the cops had put them both in the tank to cool off until a trained counselor could get there, and then gotten them mental help instead? Oh yeah, can’t do that in this country. XP
I think it’s almost certain that Amber got away with any kind of punishment because she was a traumatized white girl wreaking vengeance on the evil black criminal who wronged her. I sorta theorize that Blaine and the Walkertons cut a deal that let Amber avoid punishment while Sal got to go to a boarding school instead of juvie, but that’s only conjecture so far.
As for that last paragraph, absolutely. Amber never got the chance to deal with stabbing Sal, and it’s been festering in her head since. Her mom wanted her in therapy, but Blaine decided that therapy is for little sucky babies and instead Amber needed to learn to toughen up instead of being scared of people with knives. I’m trying to find the right way to put this, but Amber needs to learn that she can be wrong, that she has done wrong, and that it’s okay for her to be wrong, because the people in her life aren’t suddenly going to abandon her for fucking up.
She’s been abused. She’s been raised very awfully by a complete scum-sucking piece of shit who has filled her head with so many awful narratives surrounding violence and emotions. She’s been done very very wrong and has a number of mental health conditions she’s trying to figure out completely on her own.
And part of that, if she’s going to get healthy, is she’s going to have to learn how to let herself be wrong without feeling like that is going to put her in a vulnerable state with her father. How to be angry without feeling like she’s going to become her father. How to be triggered without finding an excuse to blame the person who triggered her as if it was an orchestrated attack. How to be DID without trying to force her personalities into ill-fitting boxes of “good stuff” and “bad stuff”. How to be anxious without beating herself up. How to be a survivor without ripping herself and those important to her apart trying to cope with it.
And that’s really hard to do. Most simply because she’s got nothing to guide her and all her automatic responses and guidelines that she’s been rote trained to do or had to adopt to survive her shithead of a father are actually counter to her healthy recovery in her life post-shithead.
In this, she reminds me of my ex and I hope she can find the path my ex could not.
That, and I don’t think that the actual act of actually breaking into a room is in Amber’s skillset. Or in her “I can do this without a freakout” mindset.
So she basically doesn’t want to feel in debt to him in any way? Is she feeling the vaguest hints of guilt and is trying to resolve it, albeit it in a kind of ridiculous/creepy way?
Is this a way if only in her own mind to completely sever ties?
Idk, it’s kind of weird to be fixated on doing his laundry even if it was one of the last things he did for her I guess as her bf (besides caring that she lives or dies, but she can’t thank him for /that/, in her mind he betrayed her).
But then she’s in a pretty strange head space right now I guess… probably amazigirl near full time. (Ugh).
I am trying to remember the last time we saw Amber as herself and not her alter-ego. Has that happened since the break-up? If not, hasn’t it been days in comic book time?
I believe so. I mean she went the amazigirl route during the breakup and wasn’t wearing the costume- even outside the mask she is likely still in ‘amazigirl mode’.
Probably doesn’t want to think/have any true emotional fallback like being sad tbh- instead she embraces anger and ‘justice’. And justice also means ‘paying your debts’ and the favours people did, not just doling out pain to the people who ‘do wrong’… I guess? Idk, it’s odd. But then this is the girl who to be ‘consistent’ as Amazigirl decided to make a big deal about underage drinking (though that was more so she didn’t have to examine herself too much for using it as an excuse to try to beat down Sal).
The last time we saw Amber was yesterday when she was saw Danny and Sal together and slipped into the Amazi-Girl persona. As far as we know, she’s been Amazi-Girl since.
It’s my suspicion that Amber either hasn’t come back or has only just come back right before sending Dina out. Either way, it could spell some major badness as far as her DID goes.
I’m gonna make a guess and say the next time we see Amber, it will be her coming back to normal and putting the costume away. We know she’s showing up sometime next month, so there’s plenty of time.
And, yeah, with what you’ve informed me about DID Amber has done one of the scariest things imaginable. She let Amazi-Girl take the reigns for most of the day and make unilateral decisions for both alters.
Yeah, it’s not something I’d really recommend and has tended to go badly in my experience to put it mildly (I am glad in so many ways that I’m no longer a dumb ass middle schooler).
And based on the preview panels, we’ll see Amber at least by July 19th, though we may see her earlier. I’m definitely very nervous/excited to see her response/interpretation of the whole scenario.
I hope Danny rolls with this, it’s time to let this whole bad situation mellow out and die. Danny may be a dumbass sometimes, but he’s a genuinely good guy, and doesn’t deserve to be abused any more than Amber did. She needs to sort her own problems out instead of reaping them onto others.
Yeah, he needs to move on to someone able to offer him a more stable relationship, like his other-universe canonical relationships of Sal, or Billie, or maybe Ruth.
Yeah, in reality, taking a serious bent, what he needs most is to work on what Danny is without a partner and believing that that individual can be a whole person with a future and value before going in a relationship with anyone.
Which is why his confessing his attraction to Ethan was such an important move for him, even outside of his acceptance of his identity as a bisexual man.
Danny spilled how hot he was for Ethan not because he was hoping to get up all in that glorious manchest, he did it for himself. Because he wasn’t going to allow himself to be ashamed of his own feelings, and did so with no real regard for pursuing a relationship with Ethan.
Coming from the guy who told Amber he was fine with her almost swearing at him, not because he forgave her and understood that she lashed out and felt immense guilt, but because he’s just naturally accepted that abuse is a thing to put up with, that’s incredible. It’s the first step into building himself into a Danny that deserves to be happy for himself, and not just the Lois Lane or the guy hanging around the White House updating servers.
Amber is…really abusive and creepy. She got into this situation because she freaked out over Danny having a conversation with Sal and telling her she should take a break.
Then, she decides to break the boundaries that she’s set up by breaking into his room and doing his laundry, then using Dina to communicate to him. I can’t really parse her message from what Dina’s saying, but you can sense that subtle blaming in that whole “I broke into your room and did your laundry instead of having sex with you because I am super pissed at you for talking to Sal”.
When Danny helped Amber by doing her laundry, she said that Amber-girl might pay him back for it later. I think sex was implied there, and so now I think she’s saying that she wanted to do that, but had to pay him back another way, because of this whole…scenario.
Amber did his laundry because she felt compelled to pay him back for his earlier kindness, and now she doesn’t want to have sex with him anymore. It’s not “I’m so angry I’m going to do your laundry grr argh.”
It’s that need to put Danny’s kindness in a box, I think, is what’s worrying.
The laundry wasn’t an “excuse” for sex. She wanted to have sex with him because Danny is her boyfriend.
We aren’t gonna know until later, but I’m reasonably certain this is just “do a nice thing because he is owed this kindness, then never speak to him again.”
Yeah, that part where she’s putting Danny’s kindness in a box that is a worrying sign for how Amazi-girl is starting to view the humans in her life (well, maybe not starting to). Basically more props than actual people.
As Granny Weatherwax notes, nothing good comes from viewing people as things.
Looking back, I think she’s done it before. You know, Sal is the Evil One, Dorothy is her Jimmy Olsen who squeals about how she’s more than human, Danny was her Lois Lane and after Amazi-Girl has a rousing day of fighting crime they cuddle and play Mario Kart, and the students at the campus are cheering citizens who Amazi-Girl must rescue from ne’erdowells. Amazi-Girl is a creature of compartmentalizing, after all. She needs things to fall in specific boxes because that’s just where they belong.
Yeah. All of this. And I think the argument with Danny where they broke up shows just how hostile she is to the notion of one of the people in the boxes getting up and moving around. Like, she decided Danny was part of an evil conspiracy against her, simply because that was easier for her to believe and internally accept than the notion that Sal, the evil one, wasn’t actually pure evil and might actually have some good qualities and be capable of doing good deeds such as saving her life.
I’ve been worried about Amazi-girl’s inflexibility for awhile, but this box enforcement is a really bad look for her and something she’s going to need to handle sooner rather than later if she doesn’t want to continue to do things she’s going to be regretting later.
I think it might be a bit of spiteful break-up accounting.
“You don’t get to walk away from this with me owing you anything.”
The breaking-in part is mildly creepy, but everything else is the normal irrational weirdness I’d… not exactly expect, but be unsurprised to find in a breakup.
I’m happy to see that Amber isn’t too far gone into rage mode to make a nice gesture. Though she is apparently far gone enough that she thinks the way to do it is break into his room while he’s sleeping, soooo…. still kind of worrying.
Eh, I laughed. We’ve seen Amber breaking into places being played for comedy before, we’ve seen the same done for Joyce, Billie and Ruth, so I’m not gonna set up my fainting couch for her very angrily doing his laundry. It’s worrying now because now we get that Amber’s behaviour is the result of massive amounts of untreated trauma and mental health problems, rather than “lol shes a superhero”, but Amber doing weird shit she can get away with due to being Amazi-Girl has been a consistent thing in this series since its inception.
To me, this strip is an indicator that she’s not nearly as done with Danny as she wants to be. That she felt the need to owe him despite his “betrayal” because he had done her a kindness she hadn’t yet repaid, and thus in Amazi-Girl logic, she must give back in order to remain morally absolute and just. Now she’s in the clear and she can totally hate Danny forever for talking to Sal being swayed by the Evil One and attempting to stop the mission. An important strip to me is how we’re going to see Amber react to their breakup, because as far as we know she still hasn’t shifted back since originally slipping yesterday.
Wait, sorry, I’m using the wrong script. I meant to say that Amber is Toxic, Broken, in the Cycle of Abuse, and other total buzzwords for dehumanizing the mentally ill.
Yeah, that’s a large part of why I’m worried about her and where she’s at (and especially which alter is in charge at the moment). She’s in a dark bad space and making very suspect decisions based on reasoning that’s getting more and more twisted according to her strong desire to keep Amazi-girl “consistent” (I noted a long while ago that that consistency was a really bad sign with Amazi-girl that would turn out bad and that’s seemed to bear out).
And it’s making the more “ha ha, amusing” aspects of her character much more, “um, er, now that we know more about this alter and what is driving her and how she reacts to people she has deemed her “enemies” a lot less cute and a bit more nervous laughter inducing.
And yeah, I really want to know how the Amber alter is going to respond to the breakup, because I feel that is gonna determine a lot about whether Amber is going to take steps to try and take care of herself or if she’s going to need a shake-up bigger than nearly dying or breaking up with her boyfriend over a runaway piece of paranoia in order to get her to realize that things continuing as they are are not sustainable.
Honestly, I really think it’s going to take her final confrontation with Sal for her to realize how bad things have gotten. Being confronted with the fact that the monster in the dark is a human being with friends and family and realizing that, if Sal is an actual person, and Sal had reasons for why she did those actions, then Amber didn’t just lose herself to her rage, she violently scarred a real human being. Not a concept. Not a villain. Not even just the asshole who took her Ethan hostage; but a scared kid who did something stupid and violent out of a crushing sense of despair, just like Amber.
With the way things are going, I’m also really convinced that it’s going to be Sal who helps pull her out of the darkness. Apart from Sal’s major character arc right now being based on how she has no one she can connect with except for Marcie, Sal has been there. Sal’s gone through Amber’s journey and came out of it. Worn down and bitter, but also with a strong sense of fundamental being and the assurance that, even with her one big mistake, the love of her parents shouldn’t be conditional. And I think with all that Sal’s been put through, she’s going to be able to be there for Amber in a way that nobody was there for her.
Also Sal and Amber teaming up at roller derby would be super cute.
And, yeah, much as I’m ready to roll with this as a joke with a side order of uneasiness, because I’m used to Amazi-Girl doing weird shit in the name of lulz, we’ve spent so long defining Amazi-Girl’s actions as fundamentally unhealthy to Amber, and now we’re starting to see that leak to other people. I can’t exactly say it’s unfair that folks are skeeved out by this, even if I’m not willing to jump on the “fuck off you mentally ill abuse victim you arent owed anything” bandwagon.
All that makes a lot of sense to me and I think you’re right that she’s going to need a major confrontation with Sal in some manner to truly make it click how toxic her current path is.
And I think you’re right that Sal will be the one to help her set things right in her head because they do have so many similarities (being abused, having lots of anger and rage that they had/have to get a grip on expressing healthily, awkwardness about trusting other people to let in emotionally, trained in bad habits by an abusive parent who occasionally pops up to reset a lot of progress).
And I think this is her doing things that are not so okay and where AG’s actions take on a little bit of menace because of how we see her mental processing has gotten warped. But I have a lot of hope that Amber/AG will make it to the other side of this without becoming her father. That she will eventually figure it out and get better.
I want to believe in that and I think she deserves to be able to try to make it there.
Okay, it looks like Amber is going to turn into a stalker ex-SO with a difference, doesn’t it? She won’t go around breaking Danny’s stuff but maintaining it!
Maybe (and I know this may sound weird) she wants to keep associating with Danny but she’s too afraid of Amazi-Girl and Dark Amber to approach him personally? Or maybe, on a certain level, all of the personae miss him so much that they’re looking for excuses to have something to do with him? Either way something tells me that poor Dina is going to find herself the go-between in the most abnormal relationship on campus!
That’s where my mind went, too. But then I thought about who would be stealing his clothes, and figured it would be “Amazi-Girl.” So I could see this more as AG tying up loose ends so “Amber” has no excuse to go see him again.
Either way works–either gives the idea that at least “Amber” realizes there’s a problem. Which means she might actually try to fight becoming Amazi-Girl.
Well currently in the process of dodging that bullet and maybe it’ll curve to hit you, but you’re dodging. Now go to town, downtown, on Ethan cause fuck it.
Oh, when I first read this, I thought Amber broke into his room to trash his clothes, but then changed her mind after. The alternative, with her doing his laundry, seems a bit more creepy. Breaking in is not good in any circumstance, but I would’ve understood a bit more if she did it out of petty revenge instead of paying off a debt.
So what’s the deal? Does Amber hate Danny or not? She very clearly declared he’s no longer with her, due to circumstances unknown to Danny, so one would think she’d not go out of her way to do anything positive for him. I don’t know, I’d be pissed off at this mixed signal behavior.
Amber thinks she has to hate Danny now because he “betrayed” her by talking to Sal and wanting her to stop being Amazi-Girl. Even during the last chapter, Amazi-Girl noted that she Amber did really need him, and that Sal had taken “our” Danny.
By doing his laundry for him, Amber is trying to pay him back for doing her laundry for her when she had a PTSD episode and ran away. She was planning on some Amazi-sex with him, but because they broke up that’s not gonna happen, so instead she did his laundry so she could tell herself that they’re even. She’s trying to be the bigger person because she needs Amazi-Girl to be constantly moral and just, and not paying Danny back, despite his shocking betrayal, is in violation of that narrative she built.
Amber is dissociating, possibly to the point where her different parts aren’t sharing memories. Parts of her still love Danny, and parts of her think he’s the enemy.
Letting yourself into your boyfriends room and doing his laundry is a cute gesture of intimacy. It is pushing boundaries you HAVE EARNED THE PERMISSION TO PUSH.
Doing it to your ex is AT BEST a spiteful gesture to “get even” or some bullshit like that, but it’s also sends a very clear message of insecurity. “Look what I did without asking and that you couldn’t prevent me from doing. What else might I do, hmmm?”
As noted, Amaziegirl has never been a big one on boundries, so I really hope this is only a spiteful way to show Danny that shoe doesn’t need him, but what worries me is that this is not something hateful blurted out in the heat of the moment. This took planning, premeditation and resolve to carry out.
In short, I have no idea of how Amber and Amaziegirl are interacting in this, and that’s what worries me.
I really don’t think Amber’s trying to threaten Danny with this. Like, that seems to be extrapolating to the nth degree.
I think you’re right on her trying to prove she doesn’t need Danny, though.
In short, it is pretty spiteful of Amazi-Girl, because she’s trying to go “Okay, we’re even now. I showed you that, despite your villainy, I can still do nice things for you. Now let’s never talk again.” I also think it’s tinged with a bit of “I should do something nice to pay him back” because for all her bluster, I don’t think she hates him nearly as much as she thinks she needs to.
I also don’t think it’s a conscious threat from Amber, but it doesn’t have to be a conscious threat to be rather, or extremely, threatening.
Danny has seen Amber’s rage and pain, it’s been directed at him, and at at least one point I would judge that there was a non-zero chance of him suffering physically from said rage and pain. He’s seen her beating people, and he saw her beat one person badly enough to send him to the hospital. (It doesn’t even matter whether Blaine deserved it, because it happened. And Amazi-girl’s and Amber’s bar for ‘deserves it’ might be different now.)
Now he knows for sure that she can come and go from his room anytime she wants, and he would never know, and he cannot stop her. She can literally do anything she wants to him or his possessions, or to Joe, and he can do nothing about it. Anytime she wants. For reasons he might never know and cannot predict.
That is terrifying. Whether she intended it to be or not.
Yeah, that’s probably where Amazi-girl is coming from there, but Danny would definitely be justified in interpreting this in a more negative way given that they aren’t together anymore and more importantly, now that Amazi-girl has openly stated that she views Danny as a villain who has wronged her.
Like, I don’t think it was intentional, but making a point about “settling accounts” when you’ve just gone on a massive rant spree about how you need to settle the score with enemies who’ve wronged you carries some unfortunate connotations nonetheless.
Yeah, I can see what you, Bagge, and anonymysly are getting at. I don’t think this is going to develop into anything, buuuuut it is really weird and could be construed as a threat, even if I’m not convinced it plays out that way.
Okay. Wow. We all knew amber was crazy, but damn. She is super crazy. Like a danger to herself and others crazy. Breaking into her ex-boyfriend’s room to do his laundry because she owed him a favor? She needs to be institutionalized.
Just as a side note, is anyone else curious as to whose bed Joe woke up in this morning? I mean, it’s not surprising that he’s elsewhere, but I’d still assumed it was his own bed and I doubt enough time has passed for him to be “up and at ’em” on a Sunday.
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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 ⋅ 2d
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
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 13h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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Danny: “But hold on, she can’t have cleaned ALL my clothes or…wait…”
Danny reaches into his underwear and pulls out a dryer sheet.
Danny: “…HOW?”
Dina: “Amber also wishes me to inform you that you are a very heavy sleeper.”
#Canon
At least it wasn’t stuck to the back of his school uniform.
No, it didn’t happen when Danny was asleep. He’s just that clueless.
Oh, come on, Amber. Don’t drag Dina into your bullshit. We like Dina.
Dina is Amber’s roommate. Dina knows Amber is Amazi-girl. She’s involved no matter what Amber does.
Also, nothing could make us not like Dina.
Don’t say that, Willis will take that as a challenge!
Dina walks into her room, revealing a bound and gagged Amber.
“Hail Hydra.”
“Dinosaurs aren’t actually that cool”
The cretaceous was a period in which god created the world 3000 years ago, all hail jesus!
Next storyline: Dina dumps Becky for Blaine.
Blaine? Oh please, everybody knows she’ll dump her for the one and only…Faz.
No, that would just make Hydra about 20% cuter.
Dina takes off her dinosaur hat to reveal a ‘TRUMP IN 2016’ cap.
WINCE *GAG*
…
*snatches hat and throws it down garbage chute*
…
Nope, still like Dina!
It’s not because she would vote for Trump to be a politician, she’s just happy he’s not extinct. Dina loves dinosaurs, even the dumb and slightly bloodthirsty ones.
Yeah, Amber’s gone bye-bye…
She must go underground, and cut all ties to protect them.
No, this is progress. She keeps breaking into his room to watch him sleep, Cullen style, but this time she decided to do something productive while she was in there.
Not sure if that is cute or creepy. Or maybe both.
Creepy. Definitely creepy.
Quick! Dobler v. Dommer this. If it’s cute, Dobler. Creepy is Dommer.
…and they said watching every episode of How I Met Your Mother even if it is one I’ve already seen was a waste of time. I was preparing for this moment!
Dalmer, not Dommer. As in Jeffery Dalmer.
Dahmer.
Dharma
Greg?
Dalmer Definitely Dahmer
Amazi-girl always keeps her promises.
Batman glides in
Batman: Go after her kid.
Danny: but-
Batman: follow the nemesis and you’ll find your hero. Also, I’m Batman!
Batman glides away
There is no hero here.
It is the fabric softener we need, not the fabric softener we deserve.
Batman doesn’t use fabric softener. Batman uses starch.
Is that why he can’t turn his head in that costume?
Bat Starch. In the Bat Washing Machine that’s in the Bat Laundry Room. All clearly labeled, of course.
*Bat Labeled. With the Bat Labelmaker.
I’m now imagining little tiny fine print on the labels that read: “Bat Label.”
Sounds more like LEGO Batman than Nolan Batman.
Of course, LEGO Batman is best Batman*.
*LEGO Movie Batman, of course, not LEGO Video Game Batman. Yes, they are two separate Batmen, it’s canon (In LEGO Dimensions, they actually meet).
That girl needs therapy.
like down on the couch?
What does that mean?
She’s a nut. She’s crazy in the coconut.
Yeah, if she goes to a shrink, he’s become mentally disturbed in the midst of their first session and try to shove a lime into her ear. That’s how coconuts she is.
+1 to this comment string.
I simply have to listen to that song again.
Now let me get this straight…
What does that mean?
Purely psychosomatic.
*ghost saxophones*
Playing Yakety Sax.
Sometimes a parrot talks…
Yes, some birds are funny when they talk
nice job, Dina
Your May avatar, lack of punctuation, and subject of address make it fittingly difficult to judge whether you’re being sarcastic. And also inspire bizarre crossover slashfic in my rage-insomnia-and-burrito addled mind.
Burrito addled is my new favorite adjective.
That’s odd; rage, insomnia, and burrito is my favorite breakfast.
Someone’s taking lessons from Ruth, I see.
At least she isn’t completely insane
Yet.
…..
Okay, my overly literally mind and I are trying to imagine what mental state might qualify as COMPLETELY insane. I’m not to the point of visualizing that yet and already it’s not pretty.
Well, “insane” in this context is a pretty crappy term to lob at Amber, for starters.
Other than that, Amber is heavily dissociating between her alters and has been pushing at the boundaries between them since her fights with Blaine and Sal. If things continue to worsen we could actually see Amber start to experience blackouts during her Amazi-Girl episodes.
This.
So… insane?
I mentioned this before, but at this rate she’ll become DoA’s Punch/Counter-Punch.
I do call “incompletely sane” on her.
That’s true, She’s not gone but she sure as Hell ain’t all there.
^this:
Pretty close to my sentiments.
save him
I suppose if the computer degree doesn’t pan out, Amber could start a Night Cleaner job. She gets paid to do your house chores while you sleep.
… This sounds like something the rich and affluent already have.
Ninja Laundromat…. Ninja Burger could expand into that business. We will sneak into your secret base to deliver food, and launder your minions’ uniforms!
Had. They were called Heinzelmännchen and worked unpaid. Come to think of it, they might have been the direct inspiration for house elves in the Potterverse.
Whoa.
Don’t worry Danny, Joe is in a meeting with Walky’s mom.
Ahh, wrong comic?
Aw man, did Sal abduct him from the wrong continuity? That’s going to play merry hell with his SEMME registration process.
It says it right there in the Twitter feed ‘She jumped six stories.’
I’M SO IMPRESSED AND ANGRY
…You win.
Did Amber steal his clothes as revenge?!?
When Amber met with Sal in the hallway she ran and left her basket full of clothes. And good guy Danny decided to do her laundry.
Oh riiiiight. Last act of kindness before the breakup.
She wants a clean break.
*Drum peal
Here’s a +1.
Oh my goodness, thank you for this. My brain is so fried I could not remember what this was referencing.
Yeah right? I really should buy the books this winter.
Oh…I thought Amber’s “original design” was more directly related to him not having any clothes…
Nothing says
“file a restraining order”“I love you” like sneaking into someone’s residence and stealing their dirty laundry.… Okay, I can’t do the archive trawl at the moment, was the favor, what, back when she escaped Blaine for a few hours as “Danny’s new girlfriend”?
Oh dear. Oh DEAR this is some nasty compartmentalizing then.
No, she fled leaving some laundry in the hall, so Danny did it for her.
It is from when she abandoned her laundry and Danny kindly did it for her.
She has repaid THAT favour by doing his laundry for him and having Dina take it back to him.
Okay, that’s slightly less troublesome then. Still, DEFINITELY not a good sign.
That bag needs a big dollar sign printed on it. If you’re going to steal, big sacks should have dollar signs.
This can’t be an interaction between Dina and Danny. Where’s the raptor?
In the bag, being about the size of a chicken.
Clever girl.
If you look at Dina’s “Bird is the word” shirt, there is a raptor between Is and The.
Was “It was very thoughtful of her” also something Amber told Dina to say?
Also, now I’m totally waiting for Danny to discover Joe was in the room after all.
Probably not. Dina might actually just think it was nice of Amber to do his laundry for him, without realizing that it is super weird to break into someone’s room to take it for them.
This is actually pretty damn creepy. The pattern of unhealthy and invasive behavior continues…
I believe that’s the point. Of the comic, anyway; Amber and Amazi-Girl are probably more interested in settling books, and maybe admiring sleeping Danny one last time.
Oh of that I have no doubt. I’m not judging the comic’s writing, I’m judging the character’s actions.
Yeah, and it’s some major problems with the Amazi-girl alter which kind of have always been there. Like, we’ve seen Amazi-girl break into people’s rooms while they are sleeping for personal reasons (like making sure Billie and Danny didn’t sleep together). We’ve seen Amazi-girl have less than stellar regard for people’s boundaries and be more interested in settling what is “owed” and standing for “order” over simply treating people right and being forgiving.
But now, we’re seeing the dark side.
I think it’s interesting, because it’s a thing that happens with people who have DID and have a “golden alter”. The alter you presume is the guardian of everything good and pure about you, so you ignore their major issues or problems until the nasty side of their awful becomes apparent.
For me, luckily, that mostly just fucked me and in ways that served as critical wake-up calls to stop trusting said alter with so much power. For Amber/AG, unfortunately, her golden alter is much more outwardly focused and that has the potential of being really bad for her and others in her life as she continues to drift in this paranoid, inflexible, creeper direction.
Hopefully, AG thinks this “evens” them out, so that she will be less tempted to creep on Danny in the future.
Again, it’s like the Daffy Duck cartoon in which Porky tells Daffy that it is better to press shirts than to press luck.
Hmm, wow. just wow.
1/Steal Underwear
2/Wash Underwear
3/Return Underwear
4/???
5/Profit?
Well, this is awkward.
The superhero vigilante thing is just a front. The real money is in the laundry.
Yeah, people sometimes forget cents in their pockets and even bills.
it’s all a money laundering scheme
Yup. That’s how you really clean up.
After buying detergent, it’s just a wash really.
Well, that’s just your spin.
That is just creepy. Oh Amber.
I’d be kind of surprised if she didn’t damage the clothes in some way, since she was so furious with him.
She probably took her anger on a couple of lawbreakers on the campus.
Oh well this is just creepy as hell.
Hopefully Danny doesn’t have a pet rabbit.
Not anymore he doesn’t.
Unless you meant Joe.
How dare you give us a hint at Joyce’s impending melt down and try to placate us with Dina…. Its working but I am not happy about it…
Who are you trying to kid?
Wow, Amber is a creep!
This could go to some terrible (great!) places.
Huh, a comic where nothing horrible happens and there’s only characters I like. It’s been so long I’ve forgotten how to react! I’ve missed you Danny and Din!
Here’s what led to today’s strip:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/sugar-2/
Amazi-Girl was supposed to “thank” him later, is now unable to for “reasons”.
Thank you, I was wondering what the original designs were. Should of figured it was sex.
Interesting. Amber made that promise, not Amazi-girl. And Dina, who has made a point of noticing AG/Amber’s alter states and makes a point to refer correctly to things by her understanding of them refers to the one who sent her as Amber.
Which suggests that Amazi-girl may have finally relented her control and kept enough of the details of last night hidden from Amber, that Amber doesn’t think it particularly noteworthy…
Though, the fact that she notes the “original designs” part also could hint that she’s still being dominated by the Amazi-girl alter which would be awful for her on so many levels.
Arrgh, I can’t wait to see what is going on with her.
If so, that’s BAD. If AG can keep secrets from Amber, they’re dissociating even further. I’m hoping that Amber remembers everything, and is simply being honorable and paying her debts.
Oh yeah, very much. It would mean that she was going into the not sharing memories type of DID that gets all the psych paper headlines and the public attention and that is a lot harder to fix without outside therapist aid.
Or you know, it could be there are no alters. It could be that while Amber is messed up in some ways that she isn’t messed up that particular way. Confusing roles with independent personalities is a natural error. But the fact that Amber wants to keep them separate doesn’t mean they actually are. The fact that Amber can promise that Amazi-girl will thank him later is a pretty good indication there is no real seperaration.
Amber is justifiably upset with Danny but still made a promise. She found a way to keep it without compromising.
Well noted!
Guys… What if she made Danny a super suit…
Guys…
This could be her delivery method.
Unfortunately Danny’s only viable superhero identity is Doormat Boy.
He drops people into the piranha tank?
Danning things up?
After all, if he’s in a supersuit, he’s not Danny, and if he’s not Danny, she can BEAT THE EVERLIVING TAR OUT OF HIM.
…No, I don’t think she’s that far gone yet. It would hopefully take some extra-strength trauma to push her down that particular road. If we’re lucky she’ll go with one of the paths that leads to SOME THERAPY.
See, this just proves why everything is Sal and Danny’s fault. Right?
Ugh. Amber.
That is incredibly creepy
“Creepy ex-girlfriend!”
“Actually, technically, Amber isn’t his ex-gir-”
“CREEPY EX-GIRLFRIEND!”
“Uh..”
“Also, do you really think it was AMBER that broke into his room?”
(Conversation courtesy of the voices in my head.)
Damn, people and their alter egos, always inducing confusion!
I think this was definitely an Amazi-Girl decision. Amber knows you’re not supposed to care about underaged drinking, and that surfing on cars gets you killed, but Amazi-Girl is too busy being morally vindicated by existing.
Yup. Amazi-girl is fixated on her weird and continuously getting weirder moral stances and the way that they get stretched and twisted with every Sal encounter.
Like in here, she’s decided that fairness and being equal are critically important, so she “pays back” what she feels she still owes and feels that is enough and shows how she is the bigger woman to stick to “her morality” despite “Danny’s horrific betrayal”.
Now, all of that is kind of twisted from the reality, but it’s the narrative that the Amazi-girl alter is running away with and hopefully the Amber alter can start recognizing soon how toxic that line of thinking and Amazi-girl’s shifting morality really is.
On that first part, I realized that I was wrong about my statement that Amber is fine with underaged drinking, because I recalled that part where she thought Amber was allowed to be inconsistent and helped Billie to her room, and now remember that Amber got super pissed off at Danny for drinking at the party and was not only going to call him a “smug ass motherfucker”, but then texted him that when Ethan interrupted her.
In short, the one time Amber has ever gotten angry at him without immediately bursting into tears? When Danny violated one of Amazi-Girl’s rules, and it was still based on the idea that, if Danny was caught drinking then he would be expelled, and Amber would go crazy and fight back to try and save him like she did to Blaine. It’s just another example of how Amber needs to be put in a little box for her own good.
OR Amber could get the help she needs to realize that people sometimes flip out after years of abuse by a parent. The cops obviously didn’t do anything about Amber stabbing Sal, so she got an early taste of the whole “white kid gets away with a self-defense argument and a ‘don’t do that again’ card while the black kid goes to jail scenario.” Both of them were messed up, both of them acted out and tried to hurt someone, Sal went to jail and she went back home to her abuser.
Notice how much better all of this would have gone if the cops had put them both in the tank to cool off until a trained counselor could get there, and then gotten them mental help instead? Oh yeah, can’t do that in this country. XP
I think it’s almost certain that Amber got away with any kind of punishment because she was a traumatized white girl wreaking vengeance on the evil black criminal who wronged her. I sorta theorize that Blaine and the Walkertons cut a deal that let Amber avoid punishment while Sal got to go to a boarding school instead of juvie, but that’s only conjecture so far.
As for that last paragraph, absolutely. Amber never got the chance to deal with stabbing Sal, and it’s been festering in her head since. Her mom wanted her in therapy, but Blaine decided that therapy is for little sucky babies and instead Amber needed to learn to toughen up instead of being scared of people with knives. I’m trying to find the right way to put this, but Amber needs to learn that she can be wrong, that she has done wrong, and that it’s okay for her to be wrong, because the people in her life aren’t suddenly going to abandon her for fucking up.
All of this.
She’s been abused. She’s been raised very awfully by a complete scum-sucking piece of shit who has filled her head with so many awful narratives surrounding violence and emotions. She’s been done very very wrong and has a number of mental health conditions she’s trying to figure out completely on her own.
And part of that, if she’s going to get healthy, is she’s going to have to learn how to let herself be wrong without feeling like that is going to put her in a vulnerable state with her father. How to be angry without feeling like she’s going to become her father. How to be triggered without finding an excuse to blame the person who triggered her as if it was an orchestrated attack. How to be DID without trying to force her personalities into ill-fitting boxes of “good stuff” and “bad stuff”. How to be anxious without beating herself up. How to be a survivor without ripping herself and those important to her apart trying to cope with it.
And that’s really hard to do. Most simply because she’s got nothing to guide her and all her automatic responses and guidelines that she’s been rote trained to do or had to adopt to survive her shithead of a father are actually counter to her healthy recovery in her life post-shithead.
In this, she reminds me of my ex and I hope she can find the path my ex could not.
Gotta keep the narrative alive, no matter how tough the mental gymnastics may be.
That, and I don’t think that the actual act of actually breaking into a room is in Amber’s skillset. Or in her “I can do this without a freakout” mindset.
Just to let you know, using Dina as a method for us to forget about Joyce’s current religious meltdown thanks to Toedad is working.
The existence of this comment seems to disprove its content.
It went Meta?
UM OKAY i am hoping they do not interact anymore after this BUT SURE
So she basically doesn’t want to feel in debt to him in any way? Is she feeling the vaguest hints of guilt and is trying to resolve it, albeit it in a kind of ridiculous/creepy way?
Is this a way if only in her own mind to completely sever ties?
Idk, it’s kind of weird to be fixated on doing his laundry even if it was one of the last things he did for her I guess as her bf (besides caring that she lives or dies, but she can’t thank him for /that/, in her mind he betrayed her).
But then she’s in a pretty strange head space right now I guess… probably amazigirl near full time. (Ugh).
IMO, yes, all of this. Especially the part where it’s weird, ridiculous and/or creepy.
I am trying to remember the last time we saw Amber as herself and not her alter-ego. Has that happened since the break-up? If not, hasn’t it been days in comic book time?
I believe so. I mean she went the amazigirl route during the breakup and wasn’t wearing the costume- even outside the mask she is likely still in ‘amazigirl mode’.
Probably doesn’t want to think/have any true emotional fallback like being sad tbh- instead she embraces anger and ‘justice’. And justice also means ‘paying your debts’ and the favours people did, not just doling out pain to the people who ‘do wrong’… I guess? Idk, it’s odd. But then this is the girl who to be ‘consistent’ as Amazigirl decided to make a big deal about underage drinking (though that was more so she didn’t have to examine herself too much for using it as an excuse to try to beat down Sal).
The last time we saw Amber was yesterday when she was saw Danny and Sal together and slipped into the Amazi-Girl persona. As far as we know, she’s been Amazi-Girl since.
This.
It’s my suspicion that Amber either hasn’t come back or has only just come back right before sending Dina out. Either way, it could spell some major badness as far as her DID goes.
I’m gonna make a guess and say the next time we see Amber, it will be her coming back to normal and putting the costume away. We know she’s showing up sometime next month, so there’s plenty of time.
And, yeah, with what you’ve informed me about DID Amber has done one of the scariest things imaginable. She let Amazi-Girl take the reigns for most of the day and make unilateral decisions for both alters.
Yeah, it’s not something I’d really recommend and has tended to go badly in my experience to put it mildly (I am glad in so many ways that I’m no longer a dumb ass middle schooler).
And based on the preview panels, we’ll see Amber at least by July 19th, though we may see her earlier. I’m definitely very nervous/excited to see her response/interpretation of the whole scenario.
The breakup was yesterday (Saturday).
I hope Danny rolls with this, it’s time to let this whole bad situation mellow out and die. Danny may be a dumbass sometimes, but he’s a genuinely good guy, and doesn’t deserve to be abused any more than Amber did. She needs to sort her own problems out instead of reaping them onto others.
Yeah, he needs to move on to someone able to offer him a more stable relationship, like his other-universe canonical relationships of Sal, or Billie, or maybe Ruth.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
((To clarify, this is me snarkily anticipating future train wreckage, rather than suggesting that Danny needs a girlfriend to make him whole.))
Yeah, in reality, taking a serious bent, what he needs most is to work on what Danny is without a partner and believing that that individual can be a whole person with a future and value before going in a relationship with anyone.
Which is why his confessing his attraction to Ethan was such an important move for him, even outside of his acceptance of his identity as a bisexual man.
Danny spilled how hot he was for Ethan not because he was hoping to get up all in that glorious manchest, he did it for himself. Because he wasn’t going to allow himself to be ashamed of his own feelings, and did so with no real regard for pursuing a relationship with Ethan.
Coming from the guy who told Amber he was fine with her almost swearing at him, not because he forgave her and understood that she lashed out and felt immense guilt, but because he’s just naturally accepted that abuse is a thing to put up with, that’s incredible. It’s the first step into building himself into a Danny that deserves to be happy for himself, and not just the Lois Lane or the guy hanging around the White House updating servers.
Amber is…really abusive and creepy. She got into this situation because she freaked out over Danny having a conversation with Sal and telling her she should take a break.
Then, she decides to break the boundaries that she’s set up by breaking into his room and doing his laundry, then using Dina to communicate to him. I can’t really parse her message from what Dina’s saying, but you can sense that subtle blaming in that whole “I broke into your room and did your laundry instead of having sex with you because I am super pissed at you for talking to Sal”.
I don’t really get anything about sex from this at all honestly?
When Danny helped Amber by doing her laundry, she said that Amber-girl might pay him back for it later. I think sex was implied there, and so now I think she’s saying that she wanted to do that, but had to pay him back another way, because of this whole…scenario.
Amber did his laundry because she felt compelled to pay him back for his earlier kindness, and now she doesn’t want to have sex with him anymore. It’s not “I’m so angry I’m going to do your laundry grr argh.”
It’s that need to put Danny’s kindness in a box, I think, is what’s worrying.
You’re oversimplifying it. shows Amber thanking Danny for doing her laundry. She says, “Amazi-girl will thank you later.” In the comments of this particular comic, you said, “Amber means that they’re going to frick frack.”. I agree with that.
In this comic, when Dina communicates that Amber could not repay him by “her original designs”, she’s saying that she originally wanted the laundry thing to be an excuse to have sex with him. She reframed it as a transaction in which she owes him labor, which is something I would do if I were really pissed off at somebody who had done something for me. She’s also been on a bit of a streak in which she’s only been portrayed as Amazi-girl, being particularly violent (you might recall the May 12 strip in which even the victim of the thief she was beating up was scared. She said in the May 14 that she was actively beating people up to work through her feelings on what he’d done. The June 4th strip shows her actively thinking about doing something bad to Sal, who she’s tried to accost multiple times regardless of whether or not she’s actually committing a crime.)
It’s up to interpretation, and we don’t know how Amber is feeling right now, but I do think that she’s communicating to him that she did her laundry because she’s pissed with him.
The laundry wasn’t an “excuse” for sex. She wanted to have sex with him because Danny is her boyfriend.
We aren’t gonna know until later, but I’m reasonably certain this is just “do a nice thing because he is owed this kindness, then never speak to him again.”
Yeah, that part where she’s putting Danny’s kindness in a box that is a worrying sign for how Amazi-girl is starting to view the humans in her life (well, maybe not starting to). Basically more props than actual people.
As Granny Weatherwax notes, nothing good comes from viewing people as things.
Looking back, I think she’s done it before. You know, Sal is the Evil One, Dorothy is her Jimmy Olsen who squeals about how she’s more than human, Danny was her Lois Lane and after Amazi-Girl has a rousing day of fighting crime they cuddle and play Mario Kart, and the students at the campus are cheering citizens who Amazi-Girl must rescue from ne’erdowells. Amazi-Girl is a creature of compartmentalizing, after all. She needs things to fall in specific boxes because that’s just where they belong.
Yeah. All of this. And I think the argument with Danny where they broke up shows just how hostile she is to the notion of one of the people in the boxes getting up and moving around. Like, she decided Danny was part of an evil conspiracy against her, simply because that was easier for her to believe and internally accept than the notion that Sal, the evil one, wasn’t actually pure evil and might actually have some good qualities and be capable of doing good deeds such as saving her life.
I’ve been worried about Amazi-girl’s inflexibility for awhile, but this box enforcement is a really bad look for her and something she’s going to need to handle sooner rather than later if she doesn’t want to continue to do things she’s going to be regretting later.
I think it might be a bit of spiteful break-up accounting.
“You don’t get to walk away from this with me owing you anything.”
The breaking-in part is mildly creepy, but everything else is the normal irrational weirdness I’d… not exactly expect, but be unsurprised to find in a breakup.
I’m happy to see that Amber isn’t too far gone into rage mode to make a nice gesture. Though she is apparently far gone enough that she thinks the way to do it is break into his room while he’s sleeping, soooo…. still kind of worrying.
Eh, I laughed. We’ve seen Amber breaking into places being played for comedy before, we’ve seen the same done for Joyce, Billie and Ruth, so I’m not gonna set up my fainting couch for her very angrily doing his laundry. It’s worrying now because now we get that Amber’s behaviour is the result of massive amounts of untreated trauma and mental health problems, rather than “lol shes a superhero”, but Amber doing weird shit she can get away with due to being Amazi-Girl has been a consistent thing in this series since its inception.
To me, this strip is an indicator that she’s not nearly as done with Danny as she wants to be. That she felt the need to owe him despite his “betrayal” because he had done her a kindness she hadn’t yet repaid, and thus in Amazi-Girl logic, she must give back in order to remain morally absolute and just. Now she’s in the clear and she can totally hate Danny forever for
talking to Salbeing swayed by the Evil One and attempting to stop the mission. An important strip to me is how we’re going to see Amber react to their breakup, because as far as we know she still hasn’t shifted back since originally slipping yesterday.Wait, sorry, I’m using the wrong script. I meant to say that Amber is Toxic, Broken, in the Cycle of Abuse, and other total buzzwords for dehumanizing the mentally ill.
Yeah, that’s a large part of why I’m worried about her and where she’s at (and especially which alter is in charge at the moment). She’s in a dark bad space and making very suspect decisions based on reasoning that’s getting more and more twisted according to her strong desire to keep Amazi-girl “consistent” (I noted a long while ago that that consistency was a really bad sign with Amazi-girl that would turn out bad and that’s seemed to bear out).
And it’s making the more “ha ha, amusing” aspects of her character much more, “um, er, now that we know more about this alter and what is driving her and how she reacts to people she has deemed her “enemies” a lot less cute and a bit more nervous laughter inducing.
And yeah, I really want to know how the Amber alter is going to respond to the breakup, because I feel that is gonna determine a lot about whether Amber is going to take steps to try and take care of herself or if she’s going to need a shake-up bigger than nearly dying or breaking up with her boyfriend over a runaway piece of paranoia in order to get her to realize that things continuing as they are are not sustainable.
Honestly, I really think it’s going to take her final confrontation with Sal for her to realize how bad things have gotten. Being confronted with the fact that the monster in the dark is a human being with friends and family and realizing that, if Sal is an actual person, and Sal had reasons for why she did those actions, then Amber didn’t just lose herself to her rage, she violently scarred a real human being. Not a concept. Not a villain. Not even just the asshole who took her Ethan hostage; but a scared kid who did something stupid and violent out of a crushing sense of despair, just like Amber.
With the way things are going, I’m also really convinced that it’s going to be Sal who helps pull her out of the darkness. Apart from Sal’s major character arc right now being based on how she has no one she can connect with except for Marcie, Sal has been there. Sal’s gone through Amber’s journey and came out of it. Worn down and bitter, but also with a strong sense of fundamental being and the assurance that, even with her one big mistake, the love of her parents shouldn’t be conditional. And I think with all that Sal’s been put through, she’s going to be able to be there for Amber in a way that nobody was there for her.
Also Sal and Amber teaming up at roller derby would be super cute.
And, yeah, much as I’m ready to roll with this as a joke with a side order of uneasiness, because I’m used to Amazi-Girl doing weird shit in the name of lulz, we’ve spent so long defining Amazi-Girl’s actions as fundamentally unhealthy to Amber, and now we’re starting to see that leak to other people. I can’t exactly say it’s unfair that folks are skeeved out by this, even if I’m not willing to jump on the “fuck off you mentally ill abuse victim you arent owed anything” bandwagon.
All that makes a lot of sense to me and I think you’re right that she’s going to need a major confrontation with Sal in some manner to truly make it click how toxic her current path is.
And I think you’re right that Sal will be the one to help her set things right in her head because they do have so many similarities (being abused, having lots of anger and rage that they had/have to get a grip on expressing healthily, awkwardness about trusting other people to let in emotionally, trained in bad habits by an abusive parent who occasionally pops up to reset a lot of progress).
And I think this is her doing things that are not so okay and where AG’s actions take on a little bit of menace because of how we see her mental processing has gotten warped. But I have a lot of hope that Amber/AG will make it to the other side of this without becoming her father. That she will eventually figure it out and get better.
I want to believe in that and I think she deserves to be able to try to make it there.
Great post!
Okay, it looks like Amber is going to turn into a stalker ex-SO with a difference, doesn’t it? She won’t go around breaking Danny’s stuff but maintaining it!
Maybe (and I know this may sound weird) she wants to keep associating with Danny but she’s too afraid of Amazi-Girl and Dark Amber to approach him personally? Or maybe, on a certain level, all of the personae miss him so much that they’re looking for excuses to have something to do with him? Either way something tells me that poor Dina is going to find herself the go-between in the most abnormal relationship on campus!
That’s where my mind went, too. But then I thought about who would be stealing his clothes, and figured it would be “Amazi-Girl.” So I could see this more as AG tying up loose ends so “Amber” has no excuse to go see him again.
Either way works–either gives the idea that at least “Amber” realizes there’s a problem. Which means she might actually try to fight becoming Amazi-Girl.
Dodged a bullet danny.
Well currently in the process of dodging that bullet and maybe it’ll curve to hit you, but you’re dodging. Now go to town, downtown, on Ethan cause fuck it.
That’s a good shirt, Dina.
But now that stupid song is stuck in my head.
That’s a bad shirt, Dina.
I don’t know. I now want that shirt.
Because everybody knows that the bird is the word.
I wonder what it says about my time in college that I knew stranger relationships there.
Oh, when I first read this, I thought Amber broke into his room to trash his clothes, but then changed her mind after. The alternative, with her doing his laundry, seems a bit more creepy. Breaking in is not good in any circumstance, but I would’ve understood a bit more if she did it out of petty revenge instead of paying off a debt.
So what’s the deal? Does Amber hate Danny or not? She very clearly declared he’s no longer with her, due to circumstances unknown to Danny, so one would think she’d not go out of her way to do anything positive for him. I don’t know, I’d be pissed off at this mixed signal behavior.
Amber thinks she has to hate Danny now because he “betrayed” her by talking to Sal and wanting her to stop being Amazi-Girl. Even during the last chapter, Amazi-Girl noted that she Amber did really need him, and that Sal had taken “our” Danny.
By doing his laundry for him, Amber is trying to pay him back for doing her laundry for her when she had a PTSD episode and ran away. She was planning on some Amazi-sex with him, but because they broke up that’s not gonna happen, so instead she did his laundry so she could tell herself that they’re even. She’s trying to be the bigger person because she needs Amazi-Girl to be constantly moral and just, and not paying Danny back, despite his shocking betrayal, is in violation of that narrative she built.
Bearing in mind Danny has no idea what significance Sal has in the Amazi-Girl narrative.
> Does Amber hate Danny or not?
Amber is dissociating, possibly to the point where her different parts aren’t sharing memories. Parts of her still love Danny, and parts of her think he’s the enemy.
This makes me extremely worried.
Letting yourself into your boyfriends room and doing his laundry is a cute gesture of intimacy. It is pushing boundaries you HAVE EARNED THE PERMISSION TO PUSH.
Doing it to your ex is AT BEST a spiteful gesture to “get even” or some bullshit like that, but it’s also sends a very clear message of insecurity. “Look what I did without asking and that you couldn’t prevent me from doing. What else might I do, hmmm?”
As noted, Amaziegirl has never been a big one on boundries, so I really hope this is only a spiteful way to show Danny that shoe doesn’t need him, but what worries me is that this is not something hateful blurted out in the heat of the moment. This took planning, premeditation and resolve to carry out.
In short, I have no idea of how Amber and Amaziegirl are interacting in this, and that’s what worries me.
I really don’t think Amber’s trying to threaten Danny with this. Like, that seems to be extrapolating to the nth degree.
I think you’re right on her trying to prove she doesn’t need Danny, though.
In short, it is pretty spiteful of Amazi-Girl, because she’s trying to go “Okay, we’re even now. I showed you that, despite your villainy, I can still do nice things for you. Now let’s never talk again.” I also think it’s tinged with a bit of “I should do something nice to pay him back” because for all her bluster, I don’t think she hates him nearly as much as she thinks she needs to.
I also don’t think it’s a conscious threat from Amber, but it doesn’t have to be a conscious threat to be rather, or extremely, threatening.
Danny has seen Amber’s rage and pain, it’s been directed at him, and at at least one point I would judge that there was a non-zero chance of him suffering physically from said rage and pain. He’s seen her beating people, and he saw her beat one person badly enough to send him to the hospital. (It doesn’t even matter whether Blaine deserved it, because it happened. And Amazi-girl’s and Amber’s bar for ‘deserves it’ might be different now.)
Now he knows for sure that she can come and go from his room anytime she wants, and he would never know, and he cannot stop her. She can literally do anything she wants to him or his possessions, or to Joe, and he can do nothing about it. Anytime she wants. For reasons he might never know and cannot predict.
That is terrifying. Whether she intended it to be or not.
Yeah, that’s probably where Amazi-girl is coming from there, but Danny would definitely be justified in interpreting this in a more negative way given that they aren’t together anymore and more importantly, now that Amazi-girl has openly stated that she views Danny as a villain who has wronged her.
Like, I don’t think it was intentional, but making a point about “settling accounts” when you’ve just gone on a massive rant spree about how you need to settle the score with enemies who’ve wronged you carries some unfortunate connotations nonetheless.
Yeah, I can see what you, Bagge, and anonymysly are getting at. I don’t think this is going to develop into anything, buuuuut it is really weird and could be construed as a threat, even if I’m not convinced it plays out that way.
Uh? Did Amber had a change of mind, did I miss a strip? This seems to come out of nowhere. Well, things seems to go better? MAybe?
A debt has been paid.
Thanks. I had forgotten about that.
Hey Willis, you’ve got a video ad on your page that keeps scrolling the page to itself every few seconds. With sound.
This kind of crap is exactly why people get adblockers.
hiveworks handles his ads, give them the info on it
I did. We’ll see if anything happens. If we’re still getting these ads a week from now, I’ll install an adblocker.
How did Danny know what was in the bag?
Okay. Wow. We all knew amber was crazy, but damn. She is super crazy. Like a danger to herself and others crazy. Breaking into her ex-boyfriend’s room to do his laundry because she owed him a favor? She needs to be institutionalized.
Well, that’s not creepy at all.
This would be the best prank ever. But instead of ‘She owed you one’ say ” I found this out in the street’.
Dina, no. It’s not thoughtful at all. Making people feel uncomfortable and unsafe is not thoughtful.
mrgle.
i really wish that this was gonna be the end of Amazi-girl’s actions. but i feel pretty sure that it’s not.
YOU GET A THERAPY. YOU GET A THERAPY. YOU ALL GET A THERAPY.
I like Dina’s shirt!
The downside of having a superhero as your significant other is that eventually you might have a superhero as your significant Ex.
There was a movie about that …
a so-so movie
amber, thats….thats a little creepy….
Just as a side note, is anyone else curious as to whose bed Joe woke up in this morning? I mean, it’s not surprising that he’s elsewhere, but I’d still assumed it was his own bed and I doubt enough time has passed for him to be “up and at ’em” on a Sunday.
It’s nice that Amber’s paying Danny back for doing her laundry earlier, but this is still kinda creepy.