Perfectly reasonable that he sees it that way, but I’ll defend Amber a bit here. Assuming they’re both overreading AG’s text to Ethan and it really just says “We’ve broken up”, not “I forbid you contact with Danny”, then it’s really just Sal that Amber has a problem with Danny talking to. And that’s all tied up in her triggery reaction to Sal, not in any attempt to control Danny. She didn’t have any problem with Danny going to Joyce’s party and talking to anyone there before she showed up – though she would have if she’d known that Sal was there.
Amber certainly has problems, serious ones, but that kind of controlling abuse isn’t one of them.
Vi
Yeah, I don’t think Amber is anything like her father. I think she’s badly handling her trauma, and obviously that’s causing her to act in a bad way, and be cruel to both the people she loves and herself, and she could use some therapy for sure- but she’s not an abusive person, and she’s not a bad person. I can’t imagine her trying to keep Danny and Ethan from talking, and even if she felt like she wanted to, I think it’d be based in hurt, because she feels like she keeps driving people away and they keep choosing someone else over her, (which would relate to her feelings about Ethan) rather than a desire to control anyone. I think the only person she wants to be able to control is herself. She’s a good kid, she’s just also not taking care of herself like she needs to be, and it’s coming out negatively. Danny had no way of knowing about her history with Sal, and /Sal/ doesn’t know about her history with Sal- if he had known, he probably would have been more tactful about it.
DOA has been good at showing how trauma manifests in different ways. Joyce can’t be alone anymore, because of hers, and Amber’s anger probably comes from not properly processing her trauma as related to her father and Sal. She probably would be able to move on from it after some therapy.
ischemgeek
I both agree and disagree.
I don’t think Amber is the shitbag Blaine is. But I think she is understandably worried that she’s like him, and I think she does have some traits similar to him.
Her anger, for example. She genuinely does have anger issues.
Her tendency to externalize blame, as another example. Sal is the one at fault for saving Amazi-Girl’s life, not Amazi-Girl’s own mistakes in the chase. Danny is responsible for ‘betraying’ her, and Sal ‘turned’ Danny against her, rather than she considering the fact that Danny has no way of knowing her history with Sal and furthermore he might be speaking from concern for her well-being rather than a desire to betray.
Her tendency to initiate, instigate and inflame conflicts when she encounters them, rather than seeking to defuse and avoid them. See the parking lot fight, or the situation with the engineers vandalizing the sign – Amazi-Girl and Amber both look for the violent solution to the problem before non-violence is even considered.
I could go on here. I don’t disagree with you that it’s a response to the trauma of an abusive upbringing and having her best friend held hostage – but that doesn’t mean Amber’s worries of being like Blaine are entirely unfounded. I think she’s at a cross-roads, and depending on which way she decides to walk, she can either start to heal from her trauma, or she can continue to become more and more abusive and volatile.
From personal experience: That your abuser doesn’t want or intend to be abusive does not mean they aren’t. When I was growing up, my dad was Blaine-level awful at times, and genuinely thought he was doing good because he was less awful than his parents – stuff he would’ve gotten the switch or belt for, he hit me with his hands over, and stuff he would’ve been smacked for, he just berated me over at full bellow for hours while threatening violence if I started to cry. He thought – and was right – that he was doing better than his folks, but he used that to defuse any suggestion that he might be over-reacting or abusive. I worry that Amber is falling into the same trap.
Patrick?
This one. This this this.
Amber isn’t trying to be the bad guy. She’s just trying to defend herself. But that’s not enough to make her behavior acceptable.
damn. it hurts how much i relate to this. and i genuinely like my dad! but he hurt me a lot growing up.
TachyonCode
Experience, as they say, is the best teacher. But no one ever said that The Experienced are necessarily the best students. In fact, as you implied, we often need an external perspective from someone we trust – a tutor, or a mentor, or a therapist – to actually make sense of our experience without becoming overly-immersed in our own understanding of our personal narratives, and to help us avoid indulging our own sometimes flawed assumptions.
Amber, by dint of putting on the pretense of an invulnerable heroic mantle (Amazi-Girl), does not trust anyone enough to acquire such a person of influence (except, possibly, Ethan), and is slowly losing what little attachment she has to what grounds her now (Danny). This state of perpetual distrust-by-default can of course be called paranoia, but it’s a little more complicated than that.
By engaging in this distrust, Amber makes and indulges several assumptions: that those who are violent are necessarily toxic (see: Blaine), that those who are toxic are necessarily those who behave violently (see: Sal), and that toxicity is inherent in some people (in her opinion: Blaine, Sal) and contagious to others whom she perceives as vulnerable without someone to protect them (probably: Danny, and though mostly irrelevant to this conversation, also Ethan).
Amazi-Girl, of course, defies these conventions – as far as Amber’s concerned, she has to – so she is violent but not toxic, and trustworthy but not vulnerable. She’s also very suspicious of the influence of individuals she deems toxic, of course (otherwise she’d have no idea who else to villainize or protect), but in her own mind Amber probably defends this as vigilance strictly against toxicity, and not a blanket paranoia or hypervigilance per se – which probably would have been a reasonable defense, if not for her trauma entering the mix at a very inconvenient time.
So now, while ego and alter-ego were both already inherently distrustful and suspicious of any interlopers and unknown quantities in Amber’s life, the distrust and suspicion were never as bad as they are now. As a result of her being triggered by an unfortunate convergence of events, this distrust apparently has evolved to extend to “people she trusted who she now is painfully aware do exist and can be exposed to contagious toxicity even when she’s not personally observing them”, and thus her worldview can at this point properly be called Paranoia.
(It’s probably apparent that I have some experience with this.)
In the present scenario, Amber is assuming Danny has been affected by what she perceives as influential toxic corruption in the form of Sal: He’s making the (“corrupt”) suggestion that she hang up her untouchable alter-ego (and not really giving her a reason she’d accept). In her worldview, listening to him is now equivalent to letting toxicity win or dominate, and his suggestion implies Danny has given himself over to Sal’s influence. Not only that, but as far as she’s concerned, he’s being just a tad evangelical about it, by suggesting there’s no reason Sal should be considered persona non grata in Amber’s book, and simultaneously outright stating that she isn’t in his own book.
By opposing these particular suggestions, and embracing her opposition to them with reckless abandon (which is itself an extreme and integral trait belonging to Amazi-Girl, manifesting another aspect of Amber’s idealized notion of heroism), she accelerates towards becoming self-centered, taking her attachments to things that are in reality external to her “self” (Danny) and being zealously territorial and domineering towards the objects of her attachments (at the moment, thankfully, it’s just Danny) which refuse to maintain the same boundaries she perceives as absolutely necessary.
In other words, by making the idea of Amazi-Girl so unbreakable, she has established several taboos for others, while reasoning with minimal or no grounding in an understanding of how trustworthy people behave or function – a behavior pattern which is, make no mistake, at the root of the development of many a sociopathic personal character.
Having no mentor or therapist, however, she isn’t cognizant of this flaw in her reasoning processes, and so doesn’t see how her character is becoming tragically more like her father’s, but as the audience, it’s quite apparent to us.
Needfuldoer
I don’t see it as abusive control, I think Amber’s engulfed in her internal coping narrative to the point where she’s lost sight of where it ends and reality begins.
She became angry when she caught Danny talking to Sal, then enraged when he didn’t understand why that was a problem for her, even though she never told him about it. Remember, the core law of Amber’s world is that Sal is evil. Danny associated with evil, then didn’t follow the script when caught, so now he’s blacklisted. The fact that he had no way to know Amber’s history with Sal is irrelevant, because anyone can tell Sal is obviously pure evil.
Her intentions explain her actions, the don’t excusethem. It is abusive control, it is just, like much abuse, partially predicated by her past trauma.
Her intentions mean she may be able to recognize this with time and improve, which is hopeful. And, as many have pointed out, this is relatively minor compared to much of what she’s been through, so she is fighting not to become the monster, which is admirable.
But what she does here and now counts. You don’t get a mulligan on hurting other people.
Needfuldoer
It is abuse, and certainly isn’t excusable, but she decided to cut Danny out completely rather than force him into “his place” in her world.
trlkly
If only it were that simple. Amber’s is not someone with a normally functioning brain who grew up in an abusive household and thus considers lesser abuse to be normal. If that’s anyone, that’s Danny.
Amber is someone with a mental illness who has channeled her abusive parts into an alternate personality. One that she thinks she can control, but is clearly losing control over.
Her problem isn’t knowing what she’s doing is wrong. Or, at least, that’s not her only problem. Her big problem is that she’s losing control over herself.
In fact, I fully expect her to be beating up on herself fairly soon. As Danny says here, she literally hates a whole part of herself.
I don’t think she could actually become her father. I think her mental illness precludes that. What’s worse, though, is that she could lose control and become not her father, but a worse version of ToeDad.
Nyzer
Pretty much. And I’ll say this: Amber’s biggest quality that separates her from Blaine is that she usually realizes, at least after the fact, what she’s doing and who she’s emulating. She is abusive, but she isn’t trying to be, she isn’t blinding herself to that, AND she’s trying to get away from that part of her personality.
Unfortunately for her it’s not a quick process. She’s made it as far as being able to interact with people in general, as both personas, without revealing the extent of her damage. But she hasn’t made it far enough to be able to deal with the people closest to her when they do something she doesn’t agree with, or to deal with Sal, who she associates with her initial rage breakthrough. Amazi-Girl is better in both regards but not by much: as Amber, she gets enraged and becomes completely irrational; as Amazi-Girl, she still gets enraged, she can just control her actions.
Clif
Amber is not mentally ill. She is however messed up. She does not have alternate personalities, she has an assumed identity. She is perfectly aware of what she is doing as a coping mechanism. It is a less than perfect arrangement, but it allows her to deal safely with her aggressive and violent aspects by surrounding them with Amazigirl’s strict comic-inspired code. However insane attempting to be a super-hero may appear, by dent of hard effort and developed skill, Amber succeeds at it. At the same time, the Amazigirl identity is important to Amber and she is not going to be easily receptive to any suggestion that she give it up. When she tell’s Danny that Amazigirl is more important to Amber than he is, she is saying nothing more than the unvarnished truth.
There is plenty of evidence that Amber has issues with anger and violent impulses she can’t control. Repeated echoing comments to the contrary, there is no evidence that Amber is particularly controlling and no evidence that she is particularly abusive. She takes actions which are primarily dangerous to herself and not to other people. Even when a “wrong-doer” deals with Amazigirl, they are met with violence only in response to violence.
Amber believes that Sal is dangerous. This is a completely reasonable assumption given what she knows. Given that, it is completely reasonable she would fear Sal’s association with Ethan or Danny.
There has been quite a lot of Danny-hate in the past for not acting on information he didn’t have. Danning things up. But in this case, he actually screwed up badly. Amber was actually in the process of giving him the information he needed to know to understand where she was coming from so he would know what she needed to know. Instead of listening, he pushed ahead with the spiel supporting Sal’s point of view. What Amber does is dangerous. If Danny didn’t know her behavior was risky before this point, he is stupider than he has been shown as being. Taking that risk was part of why Danny was proud of her. Amber, and what she does hasn’t changed; Danny’s opinion of it has changed. Amber is completely right. Sal got to him. What she is hearing from Danny is exactly what she was hearing from Sal in the aftermath of the rescue. She trusted Danny to be supportive. He is failing that trust. She is angry about it and has every right to be.
Given communication the situation can be fixed. I am rather pessimistic that it will be in the short run and possibly not the long run either.
But: Amber is not crazy. Amber is not insane. Amber is not about to go postal. Amber is not dangerous except in a limited context. Amber is not abusive. Amber is not particularly controlling. Amber is not her father, albeit this is largely by choice.
Could I be wrong about any of these things? Well sure. Willis gets the last word.
Gabriel , I expect ,
A little feeling,
That your soul jumps into the water,
My body ocean .
Zephyr , the wind,
You lie like a child,
And you’re running around up there ,
Once your sky splits .
Are you done for him ,
Are you made me me?
I do not expect that In sign from you .
If you harm him,
I miss you,
So be it , but tell me … tell me
Oh oh oh…
Gabriel , my king ,
My angel in whom I believe ,
If love comes from above ,
Will you make a choice !
Zephyr , you lie ,
Fever in the blood,
I pray that again
You come back to me in time.
Are you done for him ,
Are you for me?
I expect a sign from you .
If you harm him,
I miss you,
So be it , but tell me … tell me
Oh oh oh…
Gabriel
Grabiel , expects ,
In more than one sense ,
A pleasure burning her skin,
The two wings forward!
This is what happens when an abuse survivor gets out and gets close to someone who isn’t terrible. Danny’s got no clue how to deal with someone who doesn’t spend their time convincing him he’s a useless shit.
(No, Amber didn’t, but she was too much of a mess in other ways to undo what his parents did)
Nonsense, Danny’s overflowing with self-esteem and totally believes that he’s worthy of awesome partners that don’t belittle him. And this is clearly because of all the wonderful support his family have given him, never treating him like he’s just ancillary baggage to whatever “great girl” who he manages to “tie down”.
It would have been interesting to see a little more of his and Dorothy’s relationship. I can’t see her spending her time convincing him he’s a useless shit. Granted they were younger and he was still with his parents everyday, but I’m sure she tried to help too.
Ah, but Dorothy is an overachiever. Which means while she would doubtless tell Danny he’s wonderful and worthy of love, she would also encourage him to live up to his potential and set a near-impossible-for-him example of what that means.
Combined with the denigration of others, Dorothy – through no fault of her own – would probably be “proof” that he’s just not as good as other people.
Though, even as an Amber defender, I would say that the way she broke up with him can count as making him feel like shit, like he was the one doing something wrong.
trlkly
(in case you don’t know, I’m an Amber defended in the form of “she has a mental disorder and is not a horrible person” camp, not the “Amber didn’t do anything wrong” camp.)
Don’t either of them know about Amber’s mental illness? I assumed Ethan did.
Circeus
I don’t know if they realize how problematic it is. I’m pretty sure they just assume it’s a persona that gives her extra freedom, not an actual near-split personality. It doesn’t help that Danny (as I remember) doesn’t have much knowledge of the background, so OBVIOUSLY couldn’t predict that Sal could be a trigger (and Ethan has never interacted with Sal at all).
Serial killers also have a mental illness. It’s called antisocial personality disorder. That doesn’t mean that they should be given a free pass when they go around murdering people.
Speaking as someone who has borderline personality disorder, which is characterised as an extreme instability in interpersonal relationships, I can either sit back and be like “well it doesn’t matter if I hurt people with my behaviour cause I have a mental illness” or I can do what I actually do, which is recognise the symptoms and stop myself before I go around hurting people.
trlkly
Doesn’t make it okay to treat you like a horrible person. That’s bigotry, and I do not stand for it.
There’s a difference between treating people like a horrible person just for having a mental illness, and treating people like a horrible person because they do horrible things regardless of their reason for doing so. It is never OK to hurt your loved ones.
… when I went to Uni, because I wasn’t being bullied and abused by people around me, I spent a lot of my time marveling at how nice everyone seemed and on the other hand also waiting for the other shoe to drop because I knew my dad could seem that nice but he wasn’t really so I was waiting for people to drop their masks, but it never happened.
Cue a bunch of really strange conversations I had with people where I was basically fishing for harsh criticism because I didn’t trust that they didn’t have it and apologizing excessively.
Eventually someone told me to quit apologizing for existing and that I’m not the monster I think I am, and that the only time I get annoying is when I’m trying to convince others of how horrible I am. Not exactly the most tactful way to put it, but it actually made me re-evaluate my base assumption of what I as a person was worth.
Hopefully Danny has someone to say something similar to him.
148 thoughts on “Damaging”
DarkoNeko
Wow, the victim relationship part is really showing.
DarkoNeko
“there are people I shouldn’t be talking to”. He’s getting in his head those aren’t his choice anymore.
Add that to the text Amber sent to Ethan earlier too… 😐 controlling
miados
not a perfect comparison but something i heard before
“It is good for your significant other to be your best friend. It is bad for them to be your only friend.”
DarkoNeko
That’s a fairly good point.
Rex Vivat
Yeah. This incarnation of Amber isn’t really far off from her father, isn’t she?
thejeff
Perfectly reasonable that he sees it that way, but I’ll defend Amber a bit here. Assuming they’re both overreading AG’s text to Ethan and it really just says “We’ve broken up”, not “I forbid you contact with Danny”, then it’s really just Sal that Amber has a problem with Danny talking to. And that’s all tied up in her triggery reaction to Sal, not in any attempt to control Danny. She didn’t have any problem with Danny going to Joyce’s party and talking to anyone there before she showed up – though she would have if she’d known that Sal was there.
Amber certainly has problems, serious ones, but that kind of controlling abuse isn’t one of them.
Vi
Yeah, I don’t think Amber is anything like her father. I think she’s badly handling her trauma, and obviously that’s causing her to act in a bad way, and be cruel to both the people she loves and herself, and she could use some therapy for sure- but she’s not an abusive person, and she’s not a bad person. I can’t imagine her trying to keep Danny and Ethan from talking, and even if she felt like she wanted to, I think it’d be based in hurt, because she feels like she keeps driving people away and they keep choosing someone else over her, (which would relate to her feelings about Ethan) rather than a desire to control anyone. I think the only person she wants to be able to control is herself. She’s a good kid, she’s just also not taking care of herself like she needs to be, and it’s coming out negatively. Danny had no way of knowing about her history with Sal, and /Sal/ doesn’t know about her history with Sal- if he had known, he probably would have been more tactful about it.
DOA has been good at showing how trauma manifests in different ways. Joyce can’t be alone anymore, because of hers, and Amber’s anger probably comes from not properly processing her trauma as related to her father and Sal. She probably would be able to move on from it after some therapy.
ischemgeek
I both agree and disagree.
I don’t think Amber is the shitbag Blaine is. But I think she is understandably worried that she’s like him, and I think she does have some traits similar to him.
Her anger, for example. She genuinely does have anger issues.
Her tendency to externalize blame, as another example. Sal is the one at fault for saving Amazi-Girl’s life, not Amazi-Girl’s own mistakes in the chase. Danny is responsible for ‘betraying’ her, and Sal ‘turned’ Danny against her, rather than she considering the fact that Danny has no way of knowing her history with Sal and furthermore he might be speaking from concern for her well-being rather than a desire to betray.
Her tendency to initiate, instigate and inflame conflicts when she encounters them, rather than seeking to defuse and avoid them. See the parking lot fight, or the situation with the engineers vandalizing the sign – Amazi-Girl and Amber both look for the violent solution to the problem before non-violence is even considered.
I could go on here. I don’t disagree with you that it’s a response to the trauma of an abusive upbringing and having her best friend held hostage – but that doesn’t mean Amber’s worries of being like Blaine are entirely unfounded. I think she’s at a cross-roads, and depending on which way she decides to walk, she can either start to heal from her trauma, or she can continue to become more and more abusive and volatile.
From personal experience: That your abuser doesn’t want or intend to be abusive does not mean they aren’t. When I was growing up, my dad was Blaine-level awful at times, and genuinely thought he was doing good because he was less awful than his parents – stuff he would’ve gotten the switch or belt for, he hit me with his hands over, and stuff he would’ve been smacked for, he just berated me over at full bellow for hours while threatening violence if I started to cry. He thought – and was right – that he was doing better than his folks, but he used that to defuse any suggestion that he might be over-reacting or abusive. I worry that Amber is falling into the same trap.
Patrick?
This one. This this this.
Amber isn’t trying to be the bad guy. She’s just trying to defend herself. But that’s not enough to make her behavior acceptable.
vivid
damn. it hurts how much i relate to this. and i genuinely like my dad! but he hurt me a lot growing up.
TachyonCode
Experience, as they say, is the best teacher. But no one ever said that The Experienced are necessarily the best students. In fact, as you implied, we often need an external perspective from someone we trust – a tutor, or a mentor, or a therapist – to actually make sense of our experience without becoming overly-immersed in our own understanding of our personal narratives, and to help us avoid indulging our own sometimes flawed assumptions.
Amber, by dint of putting on the pretense of an invulnerable heroic mantle (Amazi-Girl), does not trust anyone enough to acquire such a person of influence (except, possibly, Ethan), and is slowly losing what little attachment she has to what grounds her now (Danny). This state of perpetual distrust-by-default can of course be called paranoia, but it’s a little more complicated than that.
By engaging in this distrust, Amber makes and indulges several assumptions: that those who are violent are necessarily toxic (see: Blaine), that those who are toxic are necessarily those who behave violently (see: Sal), and that toxicity is inherent in some people (in her opinion: Blaine, Sal) and contagious to others whom she perceives as vulnerable without someone to protect them (probably: Danny, and though mostly irrelevant to this conversation, also Ethan).
Amazi-Girl, of course, defies these conventions – as far as Amber’s concerned, she has to – so she is violent but not toxic, and trustworthy but not vulnerable. She’s also very suspicious of the influence of individuals she deems toxic, of course (otherwise she’d have no idea who else to villainize or protect), but in her own mind Amber probably defends this as vigilance strictly against toxicity, and not a blanket paranoia or hypervigilance per se – which probably would have been a reasonable defense, if not for her trauma entering the mix at a very inconvenient time.
So now, while ego and alter-ego were both already inherently distrustful and suspicious of any interlopers and unknown quantities in Amber’s life, the distrust and suspicion were never as bad as they are now. As a result of her being triggered by an unfortunate convergence of events, this distrust apparently has evolved to extend to “people she trusted who she now is painfully aware do exist and can be exposed to contagious toxicity even when she’s not personally observing them”, and thus her worldview can at this point properly be called Paranoia.
(It’s probably apparent that I have some experience with this.)
In the present scenario, Amber is assuming Danny has been affected by what she perceives as influential toxic corruption in the form of Sal: He’s making the (“corrupt”) suggestion that she hang up her untouchable alter-ego (and not really giving her a reason she’d accept). In her worldview, listening to him is now equivalent to letting toxicity win or dominate, and his suggestion implies Danny has given himself over to Sal’s influence. Not only that, but as far as she’s concerned, he’s being just a tad evangelical about it, by suggesting there’s no reason Sal should be considered persona non grata in Amber’s book, and simultaneously outright stating that she isn’t in his own book.
By opposing these particular suggestions, and embracing her opposition to them with reckless abandon (which is itself an extreme and integral trait belonging to Amazi-Girl, manifesting another aspect of Amber’s idealized notion of heroism), she accelerates towards becoming self-centered, taking her attachments to things that are in reality external to her “self” (Danny) and being zealously territorial and domineering towards the objects of her attachments (at the moment, thankfully, it’s just Danny) which refuse to maintain the same boundaries she perceives as absolutely necessary.
In other words, by making the idea of Amazi-Girl so unbreakable, she has established several taboos for others, while reasoning with minimal or no grounding in an understanding of how trustworthy people behave or function – a behavior pattern which is, make no mistake, at the root of the development of many a sociopathic personal character.
Having no mentor or therapist, however, she isn’t cognizant of this flaw in her reasoning processes, and so doesn’t see how her character is becoming tragically more like her father’s, but as the audience, it’s quite apparent to us.
Needfuldoer
I don’t see it as abusive control, I think Amber’s engulfed in her internal coping narrative to the point where she’s lost sight of where it ends and reality begins.
She became angry when she caught Danny talking to Sal, then enraged when he didn’t understand why that was a problem for her, even though she never told him about it. Remember, the core law of Amber’s world is that Sal is evil. Danny associated with evil, then didn’t follow the script when caught, so now he’s blacklisted. The fact that he had no way to know Amber’s history with Sal is irrelevant, because anyone can tell Sal is obviously pure evil.
Shadlyn Wolfe
Her intentions explain her actions, the don’t excusethem. It is abusive control, it is just, like much abuse, partially predicated by her past trauma.
Her intentions mean she may be able to recognize this with time and improve, which is hopeful. And, as many have pointed out, this is relatively minor compared to much of what she’s been through, so she is fighting not to become the monster, which is admirable.
But what she does here and now counts. You don’t get a mulligan on hurting other people.
Needfuldoer
It is abuse, and certainly isn’t excusable, but she decided to cut Danny out completely rather than force him into “his place” in her world.
trlkly
If only it were that simple. Amber’s is not someone with a normally functioning brain who grew up in an abusive household and thus considers lesser abuse to be normal. If that’s anyone, that’s Danny.
Amber is someone with a mental illness who has channeled her abusive parts into an alternate personality. One that she thinks she can control, but is clearly losing control over.
Her problem isn’t knowing what she’s doing is wrong. Or, at least, that’s not her only problem. Her big problem is that she’s losing control over herself.
In fact, I fully expect her to be beating up on herself fairly soon. As Danny says here, she literally hates a whole part of herself.
I don’t think she could actually become her father. I think her mental illness precludes that. What’s worse, though, is that she could lose control and become not her father, but a worse version of ToeDad.
Nyzer
Pretty much. And I’ll say this: Amber’s biggest quality that separates her from Blaine is that she usually realizes, at least after the fact, what she’s doing and who she’s emulating. She is abusive, but she isn’t trying to be, she isn’t blinding herself to that, AND she’s trying to get away from that part of her personality.
Unfortunately for her it’s not a quick process. She’s made it as far as being able to interact with people in general, as both personas, without revealing the extent of her damage. But she hasn’t made it far enough to be able to deal with the people closest to her when they do something she doesn’t agree with, or to deal with Sal, who she associates with her initial rage breakthrough. Amazi-Girl is better in both regards but not by much: as Amber, she gets enraged and becomes completely irrational; as Amazi-Girl, she still gets enraged, she can just control her actions.
Clif
Amber is not mentally ill. She is however messed up. She does not have alternate personalities, she has an assumed identity. She is perfectly aware of what she is doing as a coping mechanism. It is a less than perfect arrangement, but it allows her to deal safely with her aggressive and violent aspects by surrounding them with Amazigirl’s strict comic-inspired code. However insane attempting to be a super-hero may appear, by dent of hard effort and developed skill, Amber succeeds at it. At the same time, the Amazigirl identity is important to Amber and she is not going to be easily receptive to any suggestion that she give it up. When she tell’s Danny that Amazigirl is more important to Amber than he is, she is saying nothing more than the unvarnished truth.
There is plenty of evidence that Amber has issues with anger and violent impulses she can’t control. Repeated echoing comments to the contrary, there is no evidence that Amber is particularly controlling and no evidence that she is particularly abusive. She takes actions which are primarily dangerous to herself and not to other people. Even when a “wrong-doer” deals with Amazigirl, they are met with violence only in response to violence.
Amber believes that Sal is dangerous. This is a completely reasonable assumption given what she knows. Given that, it is completely reasonable she would fear Sal’s association with Ethan or Danny.
There has been quite a lot of Danny-hate in the past for not acting on information he didn’t have. Danning things up. But in this case, he actually screwed up badly. Amber was actually in the process of giving him the information he needed to know to understand where she was coming from so he would know what she needed to know. Instead of listening, he pushed ahead with the spiel supporting Sal’s point of view. What Amber does is dangerous. If Danny didn’t know her behavior was risky before this point, he is stupider than he has been shown as being. Taking that risk was part of why Danny was proud of her. Amber, and what she does hasn’t changed; Danny’s opinion of it has changed. Amber is completely right. Sal got to him. What she is hearing from Danny is exactly what she was hearing from Sal in the aftermath of the rescue. She trusted Danny to be supportive. He is failing that trust. She is angry about it and has every right to be.
Given communication the situation can be fixed. I am rather pessimistic that it will be in the short run and possibly not the long run either.
But: Amber is not crazy. Amber is not insane. Amber is not about to go postal. Amber is not dangerous except in a limited context. Amber is not abusive. Amber is not particularly controlling. Amber is not her father, albeit this is largely by choice.
Could I be wrong about any of these things? Well sure. Willis gets the last word.
Wheelpath
Willis STOP with that mouseover text
Doctor_Who
Telling Willis to stop talking about BUTTS? Good luck with that.
DarkoNeko
He got infected by JephJacques.
John
I think that was the other way around.
CheredisTyping
Pretty sure they just infect each other. Never ending butts syndrome
ChrisHerself
The Neverending Butt Disease, la la la, la la la, la la la
Orion Fury
He love’s teasing the shippers, doesn’t he?
de Combys
I’m so teased right now T__T
Tacos
There is no cure for Butts Disease.
Plasma Mongoose
Only a treatment; ANAL LUBE!
gkheyf
And more cowbell
Stephen R. Bierce
*keeps the Muzak in karaoke mode and hands the menu and microphone to the next one in line*
modulusshift
heheh, this should be good. 🙂
m-m
*taps mic* This thing on? *”Any man of mine” by shania twain starts on the karaoke machine*
“Any man of mine… better walk the liiiiinnne”
de Combys
If you guys spoke French you’d understand that the only right song atm is this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYmWLakvgIY
Hope the clip’s message is clear enough XD
de Combys
Quick translation of the main lyrics : “Are you made for him, are you made for me”
Ntrovert60
Very nice. There is probably something by Edith Piaf that would be appropriately heart-rending as well…
Fridge_Logik
Rough translation:
Gabriel , I expect ,
A little feeling,
That your soul jumps into the water,
My body ocean .
Zephyr , the wind,
You lie like a child,
And you’re running around up there ,
Once your sky splits .
Are you done for him ,
Are you made me me?
I do not expect that In sign from you .
If you harm him,
I miss you,
So be it , but tell me … tell me
Oh oh oh…
Gabriel , my king ,
My angel in whom I believe ,
If love comes from above ,
Will you make a choice !
Zephyr , you lie ,
Fever in the blood,
I pray that again
You come back to me in time.
Are you done for him ,
Are you for me?
I expect a sign from you .
If you harm him,
I miss you,
So be it , but tell me … tell me
Oh oh oh…
Gabriel
Grabiel , expects ,
In more than one sense ,
A pleasure burning her skin,
The two wings forward!
Are you done for him ,
Are you for me?
Tan
Close to perfect, or perfect when it’s close?
(answer: Yes)
Lapin
This is actually really pathetic.
Viktoria
This is what happens when an abuse survivor gets out and gets close to someone who isn’t terrible. Danny’s got no clue how to deal with someone who doesn’t spend their time convincing him he’s a useless shit.
(No, Amber didn’t, but she was too much of a mess in other ways to undo what his parents did)
Cerberus
Nonsense, Danny’s overflowing with self-esteem and totally believes that he’s worthy of awesome partners that don’t belittle him. And this is clearly because of all the wonderful support his family have given him, never treating him like he’s just ancillary baggage to whatever “great girl” who he manages to “tie down”.
Just all the self-esteem.
thejeff
It would have been interesting to see a little more of his and Dorothy’s relationship. I can’t see her spending her time convincing him he’s a useless shit. Granted they were younger and he was still with his parents everyday, but I’m sure she tried to help too.
Shadlyn Wolfe
Ah, but Dorothy is an overachiever. Which means while she would doubtless tell Danny he’s wonderful and worthy of love, she would also encourage him to live up to his potential and set a near-impossible-for-him example of what that means.
Combined with the denigration of others, Dorothy – through no fault of her own – would probably be “proof” that he’s just not as good as other people.
trlkly
Appreciate the disclaimer.
Though, even as an Amber defender, I would say that the way she broke up with him can count as making him feel like shit, like he was the one doing something wrong.
trlkly
(in case you don’t know, I’m an Amber defended in the form of “she has a mental disorder and is not a horrible person” camp, not the “Amber didn’t do anything wrong” camp.)
Don’t either of them know about Amber’s mental illness? I assumed Ethan did.
Circeus
I don’t know if they realize how problematic it is. I’m pretty sure they just assume it’s a persona that gives her extra freedom, not an actual near-split personality. It doesn’t help that Danny (as I remember) doesn’t have much knowledge of the background, so OBVIOUSLY couldn’t predict that Sal could be a trigger (and Ethan has never interacted with Sal at all).
Dragon_Nataku
Serial killers also have a mental illness. It’s called antisocial personality disorder. That doesn’t mean that they should be given a free pass when they go around murdering people.
Speaking as someone who has borderline personality disorder, which is characterised as an extreme instability in interpersonal relationships, I can either sit back and be like “well it doesn’t matter if I hurt people with my behaviour cause I have a mental illness” or I can do what I actually do, which is recognise the symptoms and stop myself before I go around hurting people.
trlkly
Doesn’t make it okay to treat you like a horrible person. That’s bigotry, and I do not stand for it.
Dragon_Nataku
There’s a difference between treating people like a horrible person just for having a mental illness, and treating people like a horrible person because they do horrible things regardless of their reason for doing so. It is never OK to hurt your loved ones.
ischemgeek
Hi yes this.
… when I went to Uni, because I wasn’t being bullied and abused by people around me, I spent a lot of my time marveling at how nice everyone seemed and on the other hand also waiting for the other shoe to drop because I knew my dad could seem that nice but he wasn’t really so I was waiting for people to drop their masks, but it never happened.
Cue a bunch of really strange conversations I had with people where I was basically fishing for harsh criticism because I didn’t trust that they didn’t have it and apologizing excessively.
Eventually someone told me to quit apologizing for existing and that I’m not the monster I think I am, and that the only time I get annoying is when I’m trying to convince others of how horrible I am. Not exactly the most tactful way to put it, but it actually made me re-evaluate my base assumption of what I as a person was worth.
Hopefully Danny has someone to say something similar to him.
Cheshrin
“Stop treating me with respect and consideration, god damn it! Who do you think you are, some sort of saint?”
(GDI someone get these children some self-esteem.)
Dave
Pretty sure Ethan can’t be a saint, but he is a mensch.
Doctor_Who
He’s not a saint, but he IS the second Eaton.
timemonkey
HEY! We all agreed never to talk about that crap again!
Adam Black
I spent an hour and cant find it
JetstreamGW
I believe the actual statement is “I have enough issues, please stop making me think about my sexual confusion as well.”
nothri
aw.
Endy
that’s a tall order
Dara
all he wants is a tall drink of water
Paul
A tiny glass of water! Now I can’t get that My Little Pony episode out of my head.
Endy
i like the cut of your jib
Doctor_Who
Ethan is the male Princess Clara from Drawn Together.
“I’m just another beautiful virgin with great pecs and a super-tight ass that continuously vibrates and tastes like wild berries.”
Pagannerd
I have seen no evidence that he’s a giant racist, so maybe not. Also, isn’t Ethan Jewish? That seems like a deal breaker for Clara-hood.
Kingmabel
Seeing Danny finally come to terms with Amber’s bullshit is kinda sad, but heartwarming at the same time.
Now if only Amber can do the same…
Mr. Mendo
Passionate yet awkward admittance of attraction in five and counting! 😉
de Combys
If Ethan didn’t see his pants tighten he’s either made of ice or amazingly oblivious.
DarkoNeko
…I hadn’t.
Paul
Ethan makes us all look bad. He probably got his mother a Mother’s Day gift, too.
JessWitt
And his mother is just awful ugh.
Paul
That’s what I’m saying, the guy is as we all wish we could be. He just needs a bit more confidence.
Orion Fury
Probably got it weeks in advance of it, too.
DarkoNeko
A subtle way to remind everyone here to hurry out and get a gift~
nb : argh I keep doing tab+enter, and with the new form setup it erase my nick instead of submitting. uuurgh.
Leorale