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Gratitude
Posted on March 19, 2016 by David M Willis
Hooray!  The Dumbing of Age Book 5 Kickstarter reached $50k, meaning everybody who pledges for a paper book (versus a PDF) will get a free Amber magnet.  That's pretty sweet.  And once we get to $55k, there'll be pledge levels for new Joyce and Billie magnets!

334 thoughts on “Gratitude”

  1. Dara

    Aaaaaand he gets it.

    1. Guy5

      Yes he gets that he needs to be her new sidekick “Amaziboy” so he can be by her side always and keep her safe. That’s what Sal is trying to tell him right?

      1. DarkoNeko

        Yes.

        1. Clif

          Not seeing him “get it”. Not happy though.

        2. TheNinthShader

          Wait, Ana isn’t first?

        3. Bicycle Bill

          Ana hasn’t even posted yet today (3:50 AM).  I hope nothing has happened to her.

        4. Tan

          No! You fools! You foolish fools! JenSueAna will wind up with another new name if we go down this road, and we fast approach critical nomenclature! Quickly now, everybody act nonchalant about the gnawing worry for someone you’ve never met based on the promptness of their commentary on an interwebs funnypages.

        5. Chrissy

          Once I quit an online game I was addicted to cold turkey, I still feel guilty that people probably thought I died.

        6. Clif

          Part of you did.

        7. Clif

          However, Tan, I will admit to anxiously awaiting the introduction of Miss Anthrop P. and Masmer Durer.

        8. Bagfaceman

          How do we know she isn’t gen/sue/ana

      2. Dara

        So that’d make Walky her Jimmy Olsen?

    2. timemonkey

      Does he? Or is he about to snap at Sal and try to pretend being accomidating will help?

      1. Dara

        Nah, he’s all sad. He gets it. He doesn’t want to, tho’.

        1. Clif

          You may be right or you may be projecting something that’s not there. That what Amazigirl does is dangerous is not new information to him. That she was recently close to death is. But will he consider Sal an unbiased source of information. He’s never finished the initial conversation with Amber.

    3. jpic89

      That is not the face of a person who gets it. That is the face of a person who is about to Dan things up.

      1. Spencer

        Well, I don’t think so. He’s being told point blank by someone in the know that he is hurting someone he loves, and as we’ve seen before, that’s something that forces Danny to try and help.

        Like, unless he, I dunno, decides to become a vigilante himself, or organizes an intervention and brings Sal with him, I don’t think he has the capacity to make things worse.

      2. thebombzen

        Why does everyone hate on Danny so much? He might be my favorite DoA character.

        1. Freezer

          Because when faced with choices that will either be painful, but better for all involved in the long run or maintain the status quo (one he knows won’t last), he chooses “status quo” every time (His relationship with Dorothy, his relationship with Amber/Amazigirl, his own bisexuality). He’d rather ride things out until things fall apart, than face reality and be proactive.

  2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

    “Stop enabling ‘er” What does that mean in concrete terms

    1. gkheyf

      hopefully not an end to roof cookies

      1. Dara

        Christ no not an end to roof cookies!

      2. Dara

        or as we call them “roofies”

        1. Shiro

          Rape isn’t funny.

        2. biffzinker

          Hopefully Dara was combining the ikes from cookies with roof and didn’t intend for the date rape drug. Might of worked better with a k stuck in between, roofkies?

        3. Clif

          It was a pun. It wasn’t a good pun, but a good pun is an oxymoron.

        4. WaytoomanyUIDs

          And there are puns so bad they make the word a less funny place. That was one of the latter.

        5. Clif

          Even the inevitability of death, whatever you may do, is funny. Appreciating the joke, however, takes considerable effort.

        6. Dara

          oh shit is that one of those words that changed?

          (roofies just used to mean stimulants)

        7. Dara

          see below, sometimes i have archaic words still hanging around and this is one of those times. :/

        8. Disloyal Subject

          Everything is funny, with distance and time. The ability to laugh at horror steals its teeth and loosens it’s jaws. Laughter is a very powerful thing, and sometimes, it’s the only weapon available.

        9. Disloyal Subject

          It bothers me a lot more than it probably should that I left an errant apostrophe in there.

        10. Dara

          Yeah, but like, I’ll laugh at my own sexual abuse history? But I don’t drop those land mines on other people on purpose. :/

        11. DarkoNeko

          just… no.

        12. Dara

          yeah sorry “roofie” just used to mean stimulant. :/

        13. Dara

          (As in illegal stimulant, as in speed or upper. Due to Reasons I Will Not Discuss, I have recurring problems with confusion stemming from obsolete vocabulary and now I feel bad because WOW that’s a land mine I did not mean to drop.)

        14. CheredisTyping

          Are they time-travelly reasons?

        15. TheNinthShader

          Are these reasons… sexual in nature?

        16. Clif

          Um.

        17. Dara

          wow it hasn’t meant that in a long time

          sometimes my vocabulary acquisition is really out of date. :/

        18. Emperor Norton II

          OK, so I don’t know how Willis deals with this kind of situation in the commentary field, but I don’t think it will hurt to politely tell him in an email that you made a big mistake, and ask if he’d be willing to delete that mistake and the responses to it (including f.ex. this message, which I am of course totally fine with). At worst, he’ll equally politely say no, I guess.

    2. Dallas

      Prevent her from creating another Toedad incident. From potentially either killing herself or killing someone else.

      I mean, I’m a clown, but at least I don’t ruin everything for normal people.

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        Concrete terms. Not vague hand waves.

        *Specific* things he should stop doing or start doing.

        1. Wolf

          *Waves Hand*

        2. Dallas

          Then I’d say get different interference in her life than doing her laundry when she’s running to mask up. When she’s about to do something dangerous, stop her. Talk? Get professional help?

          Somehow, I don’t think any of these are effective. I think Amber and Sal need to meet face to face. Have Danny steal her mask and costume when she’s not looking, so she has nowhere to really run.

        3. Leorale

          Or, when she’s not in super-panic-mode, when she’s feeling pretty stable, make a plan with her about what to do when she is triggered, how she will go get safe or blow off steam in a manner that is less harmful to herself/others. (For example, can she mask up and hang out on a rooftop, that’s a fine coping strategy, and she even gets cookies. And/or, punching bags. Track and field. Snuggling. Whatever works.)

          Then, if Danny’s around when she’s starting to lose herself into rage or panic, he can remind her of her good plan that she made, and help make it easier to do the positive coping skill that she is creating/practicing.

          This is my armchair theory for what I’d hope to we could do if I was Amber’s therapist. Danny, Sal, and Amber are not therapists and have no way of thinking this up.

        4. Cerberus

          Yup, creating new coping strategies and action plans for stress is pretty much what I do with my in-crisis students and would be the best way to support, but not enable Amber.

          Also if it’s as DID as it looks to me, finding ways to get the alters communicating and respecting each other’s strengths rather than trying to turn Amazi-girl into a righteous paragon who must never fail and “Amber” into a miserable rage creature who must be locked up for her own good.

        5. Bagge

          One good thing for Amber to do would be to stop doing superheroics. Fine, be Amaziegirl, do cool parkour stunts, make a youtube channel… but don’t beat people up in parking lots. Collect money for charity if she wants to be a hero, but stay away from the mostly dangerous stuff.

          That would reduce the need for secrecy, it would reduce the risk for trouble with the justice and would reduce the risk for truck-related death. It would take A LOT of strain away from Danny and their relationship and not necessarily disturb the balance between Amber and Amaziegirl.

          Only trouble is the Blaine-voice who says that she is worthless unless she stands up to punks with knives

        6. trlkly

          And would mean that people on campus would be raped.

          This is what I don’t understand about those of you who want Amazi-girl to stop fighting crime. You’re saying you want all the things she stopped, including rape, to keep happening.

          If the campus wasn’t such a shitty place, there wouldn’t be a need for Amazi-girl. If the police presence actually did anything to keep the campus safe, then there wouldn’t need to be a superhero.

          What you guys are doing is the equivalent of telling Batman not to be Batman, because Batman is screwed up. Instead of learning how to control himself, you want him just to stop.

        7. thejeff

          Let’s not go overboard. It’s not actually clear she’s stopped rapes, though the one creepy guy following the girl was quite likely heading there.
          She’s overwhelmingly dealt with much pettier crimes, which happen on any campus or town. It’s not at clear that the campus is a particularly shitty place or that the police aren’t effective. Their presence isn’t overwhelming enough to stop all petty crime, but then it isn’t anywhere.
          I say that, even though I think Amazi-Girl is generally a good thing, for others if not for Amber and I would like to stick around even when and if Amber reaches some kind of healthier state.

          As an aside, rapes will happen on campus and there’s not much Amazi-Girl can do about it. The vast majority of rape cases aren’t things she’d happen across and stop on patrol, but closer to druggings like Joyces, or happen after the pair has willingly gone behind closed doors. In neither case are either the police or AG likely to stop it in progress. The best chance is investigation and prosecution after the fact and while the police may not be very good at that, AG doesn’t even have a chance.

        8. Xelgaex

          The only reason Batman doesn’t need to stop is that his entire universe is set up to justify his existence. The superhero genre would fall apart under its own weight if not for the constant reinforcement given by plot lines involving the inept and/or corrupt authorities being unable to handle the threats that can only be handled by uniquely qualified heroes.

          But Amazi-girl isn’t a billionaire martial arts detective genius in a town run by the mob and threatened by mad scientists. She’s a girl on a normal college campus who has a deeply unhealthy coping mechanism. And yes in a reality based universe like DoA, the cops can’t stop all crimes from happening, but that doesn’t mean there’s a need for a costumed vigilante working through her issues with her fists.

          And looking back at her actions, a lot of what she seems to do is stop vandalism and confront people who are drinking. Danny definitely would have gotten a beating, but aside from that it’s not really clear how much good she does. She is arguably the reason The guy she kneed in face for being a creepy asshole might have gone on to do something worse absent her involvement, but situations like that are basically the reason why U of I has emergency phones. And her involvement in the Toedad situation was a pretty mixed bag.

          Also it’s not like this is a choice between Amazi-girl and nothing. If Amber wanted to contribute to a safer campus she could do something like joining the student patrol. She could do her nightly rounds with official backing and institutional support. The only “downsides” would be that she would be accountable for her actions and couldn’t employ violence as a first resort.

        9. Xelgaex

          *Edit* “…arguably the reason Ryan got away. The guy..”

        10. Xelgaex

          Oops. I also got my U of I’s mixed up. The program I linked to is from Illinois not Indiana.

        11. Bagge

          This. If stopping crime was the only issue a student patrol would be much better for everyone involved. It would be fun to see her and Dorothy go rounds!

          In that example with the creep following a girl, the situation was disarmed the moment Amaziegirl showed up. The girl would have been just as saved by a Student Patrol as a super hero. Amaziegirl didn’t need to hit him but she did it anyway.

        12. Spencer

          I dunno, I feel like that sequence was meant to be an “Amazi-Girl is awesome and cathartic” thing, since that mini-arc had Amazi-Girl stop that guy, stop another guy from breaking into a car, and rescue a cat from a tree.

          I ain’t gonna be mad at someone for kneeing a rapist in the face.

      2. thejeff

        Let’s get one thing straight here. Amber didn’t create the Toedad incident. Toedad created the Toedad incident. He kidnapped Becky at gunpoint. It’s even hard to argue she escalated it. He did again, by going up to attempted murder (while letting go of the wheel of the car he was driving).

        More importantly for Amber’s general mental health discussion, she didn’t just escalate to this. It wasn’t a natural progression of her problems. It was a specific situation that came up. She didn’t create it. She didn’t seek it out. She even tried to flag down the cops.
        There’s no reason to think she’s going to create another situation like that. Or even get involved in one. Unless one of her friends is caught up in another shooting/kidnapping/other random violent crime and she happens to be on the scene and the cops aren’t.
        Again, this wasn’t some natural progression of her illness, with the next likely to be even more extreme, this was in response to an outside event.

    3. Leorale

      Perhaps, stop doing anything that encourages her stunts or makes it easier to go be Amazi-Girl.

      (I don’t agree that quitting cold turkey would be a workable plan, but Sal doesn’t know their whole deal.)

      Currently, Danny’s model is “you fight the bad guys, and I take care of you when you’re done.” That’s enabling her to go fight as much as possible.

      1. Leorale

        A small but perfect example: doing her laundry, so that she can run away and mask up.

        1. Clif

          Yes, masking up and assuming a role where she is much less likely to let herself react in a violent manner, thereby reducing stress.

        2. Leorale

          Right, and if he knew that she was going to chill on a rooftop, laundry would’ve been supporting her positive new coping skill. But he and Sal didn’t know that she was gonna go chill out on a rooftop (which is an excellent new coping choice). They probably thought she was going to go do her more familiar masked coping activities, like car chases and beating people up (which are dangerous/harmful coping choices), so Sal is saying don’t make it easier for Amber to do that.

    4. Rosicrucian

      Stop treating the Amazi-girl thing as something cool and recognize that it’s pretty messed up and going to get her killed sooner or later.

      1. Clif

        Or recognize that without Amazigirl as an outlet, Amber is going to let herself abuse and damage someone other than her father sooner or later.

        1. Needfuldoer

          She’s already started to slip down that route with Danny.

        2. Spencer

          Insofar as almost swearing at someone and bursting into tears over it because you recognize that it’s abusive is slipping down that route.

          It wasn’t okay, but Amber can make mistakes without it being proof that she’s about to Blaine it up. People get angry sometimes.

        3. thejeff

          Not according to her she can’t. That’s why she’s not dating Danny. Only the perfect Amazi-Girl can do that.

        4. Freezer

          EXACTLY.

        5. Needfuldoer

          Abuse – apologize – forgive – abuse is a classic cycle.

          Amber caught herself early this time. She’s more like her father than she’s willing to accept, and if she’s unwilling to admit it to herself she’s not going to get the help she actually needs.

        6. thejeff

          Yeah, but that cycle has a huge element of manipulation in it that we haven’t seen with Amber. Her reaction isn’t “apologize to get them to forgive”, but run away and push them away. She didn’t accept his forgiveness, she left and came back as Amazi-Girl, who of course has her anger completely under control. (Since she’s pushed that onto “Amber”.)

          I think she’s completely aware of how much “Amber” is like her father and it terrifies her. She’s just using Amazi-Girl and pushing people away from “Amber” as a solution. Since she can’t be weak enough to need therapy. (Thanks Blaine.)

        7. Spencer

          This. Amber is not grooming Danny into her victim, intentionally or otherwise.

          Hell, she was the one who told Danny, over his own objections, that Amber’s actions were unacceptable and he should never be okay with verbal abuse.

        8. kelticat

          Amber recognized that Danny is much like her Mother and thanks to Mike she realized that she is a lot like her father.
          Now she just has to get help for her anger issues.

    5. Fwip

      If you want to look at it from Sal’s point of view? Vocally – however gently – inform Amber that Danny is not okay with her costumed crusading. Tell her how he feels about it and, if that drives a rift between them, so be it; her being alive and safe may be worth that price. Amber needs people to tell her that what she’s doing isn’t just unsafe for her but for people around her too, and can’t be too coddled on that point.

      If you want to look at it from Amber’s point of view? Emotionally blackmailing her out of doing something that lets her help people and feel confident. If he respects her, he should understand that she is willing to risk her life for this and either accept that he loves someone who is willing to put their life at risk for others or move on. He can argue with her about her methods – about whether she takes unacceptable risks with the lives of others through carelessness – but that’s not what got this topic brought up.

    6. Historyman68

      Stop watching it! Noah Wylie is gone!

    7. Baf

      Well, there’s one main thing he’s doing to enable her at the moment: he’s keeping the secret of her identity.

      I mean, someone who lies to the world in order to protect someone else from the consequences of their unhealthy behavior is pretty much the textbook definition of enabler. If he were to out her, it makes it a lot more difficult for her to keep acting as Amazi-Girl. Especially if, as a result, she winds up getting the psychiatric care she so sorely needs.

      Amber would, of course, hate him for it. Just as an alcoholic hates the person who takes the booze away.

      1. Spencer

        I mean, he kind of has to keep it a secret, otherwise Amber goes to prison.

        1. Baf

          Going to prison might be preferable to getting killed. It all comes down to your estimation of their likelihood.

          Personally, I’d rate prison relatively unlikely for her, because she’s got an iron-clad insanity plea. Danny doesn’t seem to realize that, though. He’s still treating Amber like she’s a great deal less messed-up than she is.

        2. Spencer

          I can categorically state that Amber is not going to die or go to prison, for the same reason I could say that Becky wasn’t actually going to die or be lost forever in “To Those Who’d Ground Me”, or why I can say that Billie and Ruth’s storyline isn’t going to end in alcoholic suicide; if the characters are gone it fundamentally alters the tone of the series, and we lose that character permanently.

        3. FireSTK

          …you know Willis isn’t afraid to kill a character.

        4. Historyman68

          From what I understand, insanity pleas are never iron-clad.

  3. Kei

    Looks like Danny and Amber are going to have a big fight soon.

    1. Doctor_Who

      It can only end in tears.

      1. -Sentinel-

        I wish it would end in another Slipshine.

        1. Opus the Poet

          Oh it will, just not the characters you expect. Joe and Mary in “The Most Epic of Hatefucks The Return”.

    2. timemonkey

      It’s kind of inevitable no matter what he does. If he tries to stop her she’ll react badly, if he keeps on going as normal he’ll keep stumbling over her triggers because he doesn’t understand her problems.

  4. Shadic

    It’s nice to see this side of Sal.

    1. Leorale

      Yeah, Sal is awesome.

      1. saltchocolate

        ^ This.

    2. -Sentinel-

      I agree. I used to be a bit lukewarm about the DoA version of Sal because she never seemed to give a shit about anything (unlike the original Walkyverse Sal), but I may have misjudged her.

      1. Kei

        Sal has probably felt a lot of pressure to keep her feelings under control and out of sight since her emotional blowup with robbing the convenience store. Doesn’t mean they aren’t there, and that the years of being the “lesser” child of her family didn’t make her more sensitive to other people’s hurts as opposed to less.

  5. Mr. Random

    Aaaaaaaand. Heartbreak.

    1. Schpoonman

      Right? For all the shit Sal and Amazigirl have given each other (okay, for all the shit Amazigirl has given Sal), seeing Sal take the high road here is… I was gonna say “admirable,” but it’s far more than that. It’s astounding.

      1. Doctor_Who

        Next day, Sal reads a headline saying “Amazi-Girl Quits”.

        “BWAHAHA! Now Ah’ll RULE tha’ Walmart parking lot uncontested! All accordin’ to plan!”

        1. Leorale

          FOOOOOOLS!

        2. WaytoomanyUIDs

          I read that as Mark Hamill’s Joker putting on a Southern accent.

      2. trlkly

        In what world is Sal taking the high road? She’s manipulating a friend into stopping her. Not into talking to her about dealing with the couple of times she’s been dangerous, and helping her deal, but actively trying to stop her, all the while admitting that she did good.

        There’s no high road here. There’s just Willis putting the mental health of one girl above everyone on campus. It’s fucking ablism.

        1. thejeff

          Stop. Sal isn’t Willis.
          Sal’s responding from her perspective and not as the One Word of Truth. (Though some commenters are taking her as that and then going farther.)
          Sal’s seen AG nearly die trying to do good and admits that. She’s also seen her harass Sal and her friends, trying to provoke them into a fight for little reason. That’s pretty much all Sal knows and it’s not really a pretty picture.

        2. JQuire

          Eeeexcept that AG has done nothing except refuse to listen to Sal when she trues to talk sense to her? And Sal recognizes Danny is in a position to both see sense and actually effect change?

          I kind of wonder if you know what manipulation actually looks like.

        3. Bryy

          You do realize everyone in thiscomic is fictional, right?

        4. not someone else

          If one woman’s fucked up and largely self-harming coping mechanisms are really the only thing standing between the campus and a crimewave, there is a much, much bigger problem that the comic has yet to address or mention.

        5. Spencer

          The way I view is that the only reason we have any focus on criminal activity in the series is to give Amazi-Girl stuff to do. If Amber stops, then crime, as a story concept that the series will address through Amber, also stops.

        6. thejeff

          Which doesn’t mean that Amazi-Girl’s activities on campus aren’t a good thing. She does deal with (mostly) petty crime. That we’ll stop seeing it if Amazi-Girl goes away doesn’t mean it goes away.
          It goes both ways of course: Us seeing her run into crimes doesn’t mean there aren’t police or they’re horribly incompetent, just that there is crime and she finds and stops some of it.
          Nor is this by itself a claim that her presence is purely a good thing, just that it does have its upside, which shouldn’t be ignored when focusing on the bad side.

        7. Historyman68

          This is all theoretical. We don’t know crime will stop if A-G stops. If we take Batman comics as a model, it’s possible that crime will grow out of control without A-G around, or that someone will step up to take her place.

          Guessing at what will *probably* happen, and then what it’ll say about the author when this thing that hasn’t happened, happens, is ridiculous.

  6. Stephen R. Bierce

    *plays some Elton John from the equipment out of a truck outside, all of it marked with defaced Property of Muzak stickers*

    1. Dallas

      Here’s $5,000,000. go get your muzak fixed.

      1. Stephen R. Bierce

        Don’t worry, my bro-in-law is a stereo and public address techie.

        1. Dallas

          Good. As of right now, Wolf has a crack team of assassins in the process of taking Jacket down.

        2. Wolf

          Yeah, If you count a theoretical physicist, Amazi-Girl, me, some egotistical loser, and a Japanese cleaning lady as a crack team of assassins.

        3. Deanatay

          They’re cracked, all right.

      2. Dara

        why not enjoy some house instead

      3. Deanatay

        You DON’T want to know where that money came from.

  7. Mr. Mendo

    “Must…ignore…logical argument!”

    1. inqntrol

      “Activating puppy eyes.”

      1. Doctor_Who

        “Spine not found. Abort, Retry, Fail?”

    2. Fwip

      This ain’t a logical argument, it’s an emotional one.

      1. Clif

        Yep.

  8. Bom Tombadil

    Aaand there it is.

  9. Opus the Poet

    Between what Walky is saying in the previous strip, and what Sal is this strip, there is a possibility that AG will just kind of fade away.

    1. impish

      Doubt it tbh. Like, I agree with what Sal’s saying here in theory but… I don’t see Amber/AG actually LISTENING to him if he does try to bring it up.

  10. JessWitt

    No words Danny. Your face says it all.

  11. shadowcell

    i keep thinking this is taking place in front of a gigantic american flag for some reason so it’s like sal is all “DANNY AMERICA NEEDS YOU TO STOP ENABLING AMBER’S DESTRUCTIVE COPING MECHANISMS”

    anyway danny america needs you to stop enabling amber’s destructive coping mechanisms

    1. Carolyn

      The flag background fades in on that last panel. Somewhere off in the distance, we hear the cry of a bald eagle.

    2. DarkoNeko

      I’d go for one of the Nordic Cross flags.

      1. shadowcell

        DANNY SCANDINAVIA ALSO NEEDS YOU TO STOP ENABLING AMBER’S DESTRUCTIVE COPING MECHANISMS

  12. Vangeln

    Worst laundry date ever.

    1. Doctor_Who

      https://youtu.be/hXQ1bYbswlk?t=7.

    2. TheGrammarLegionary

      Two words: Ninja Assassin.

      Can’t honestly say I recommend the movie, but it wasn’t really BAD, either. Very gory, and physics kinda lost control over most of what happened, but if you’re looking for a terrible laundry date, that’s your movie.

  13. JessWitt

    What will you do, Boy Wonderbread?

    1. Vagabond J

      Become a superhero yourself? Dumbest solution in the book, but it’s still a solution.

      1. JessWitt

        It’s the dumb-best solution.

        1. Wolf

          *Hijinks Ensue*

        2. cesium133

          No, that’s a different comic.

      2. Silly Name

        “I’m Wonderbread” doesn’t sounds as good as “I’m Batman”, IMO

  14. Wolf

    Dumbing of Triangle: DAY 3

    http://imgur.com/iy09CiS

    1. Doctor_Who

      It’s weird how making everyone smile like Joyce, the most innocent character in the comic, makes them all look like they are plotting something terrible.

      1. Disloyal Subject

        I dunno, Joyce has done her fair share of plotting.

        1. Bagge

          Mostly to get Sarah and Jacob together, but still.

    2. inqntrol

      Too much Illuminati, and damn, those…smiles..so disturbing.

    3. DarkoNeko

      …that…why would you

    4. Briny

      You are a hero. I will enable this.

      1. Clif

        He is sick. I will applaud.

    5. CheredisTyping

      The last panel is my favorite on this one.

    6. Tan

      You’re doing God’s work, friend.

    7. Sunny

      Somehow, those triangle smiles really bring out the growing despair seen in Danny’s eyebrows. I heartily approve.

  15. Vagabond J

    I have to say I like how Danny and Amazi-Girl are both having talks from the Walkertwins (They’re twins, right?) that progress in the “Amazi-Girl vs. Amber” plot at the same time. Will they meet sometime and talk together?

  16. Uniqueantique

    And that’s it in a nut shell. Way to nail it Sal, about time someone told him straight up. He does care, he just dosnt’ know how to stop enabling her because I’m not sure he’s ‘aware’ enough to realize that was what he is doing.

    1. timemonkey

      Danny’s not aware enough to realise how big a problem Amber has. Sal understand it, she’s been through similar breakdowns with different outlets and knows they end in self destruction.

  17. chris73

    Hey Sal you want people to listen then maybe try not insulting them

    1. Briny

      Excellent point.

    2. timemonkey

      It’s not an insult it’s a nickname, one that seems to be affectionate so far.

      1. chris73

        Dannys so passive you could kick him in the nuts and he’d probably apologize and considering what Dannys said about his upbringing he probably does think its affectionate

        But really its not, its a put down

        1. timemonkey

          You’ve decided it’s a put down, there’s no indication of malice in the way she’s used it.

        2. trlkly

          Malice has no relevance in whether something is a put down. It’s still a comment about how the guy is white.

          It can be an affectionate put down, but it’s still a put down.

        3. Sunny

          This has been mentioned in previous comments of previous comics, but I’ll just chime in and say that “wonderbread” is probably more of a comment on Danny’s personality than his skin colour.

        4. chris73

          Wonder Bread, as I’m led to believe is also bland, inoffensive and lacking in anything good for you

          I still say its a put down even if its nothing to do with his skin colour

  18. Cat

    It’s okay, Danny. I hate when reality ensues, too

  19. Just Me

    The one thing Sal doesn’t understand is that Amber needs Amazi-girl. I think Sal thinks Amazi-girl is just someone playing Superhero for the thrill of it.

    Amber needs an outlet for her emotions, a way to deal with her anxiety. Granted it’s not the most normal way to do it, but still.

    Sal makes it sound so simple, but it’s not. Question is, does Danny understand this? Or is he going to try to make Amber go Cold Turkey without offering her another option?

    Enabling her? Or supporting her?

    1. Vagabond J

      Didn’t she play a lot of videogames at the beginning of the comic?

      1. Kamino Neko

        A ridiculous amount. While she already had her Amazi-Girl coping mechanism. Replacing AG with more games would be only a moderate increase in healthiness if it even worked, and only because it would be less likely to cause physical injury.

        1. Spencer

          Is there any truth to the idea that taking up some kind of physical activity, like boxing, would further agitate the issue? I’ve heard both sides, that it’s a good way to deal with anger, or that it makes it worse because you start associating anger with pleasure.

        2. thejeff

          I think she’s got a physical activity.

          Replacing patrolling the campus as Amazi-Girl with going back to formal martial arts classes would certainly be an improvement.
          OTOH, it was doing martial arts instead of therapy that led her here.

    2. Athedia

      Amber thinks she needs Amazi-girl, but Sal is right. Amber is just causing mass destruction in her wake and constantly almost dying. Consequences be damned. And that is not a coping mechanism, that is self destructive behavior.

      Less extreme example is using a common BAD coping technique for anxiety, avoidance. Instead of facing and completing the object of our anxiety, people like me tend to shoot ourselves in the foot and try to avoid it. It ALWAYS backfires and leads to more self destructive behavior. But if you ask me, I will always justify it to myself.

      1. caesaria82

        I feel this. I’m an avid avoider. I’d avoid my head if it wasn’t attached. (you see, because it’s the part which is affected by my mental issues that make me unhappy, so I’d rather avoid it and turn it off, but boy, that seems hard ;p).

    3. Kris

      Or she could do what regular people do and get psychiatric help. Start resolving some of those anger issues and repressed trauma. Find an outlet that doesn’t endanger her life and more importantly the lives of others.

      1. Mandy

        THIS. She doesn’t “need” to be Amazi-Girl, she needs some fucking HELP. Before she kills someone.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Dr. Corrine’s halfway across the country in a different comic, though…

        2. Disloyal Subject

          At this point Dr. Yamada probably has more applicable experience, but she’s in a whole different multiverse.

    4. caesaria82

      Amber could surely find a different outlet somehow. A healthy one. But this would require that she actually realizes that she has a problem (I mean, she realizes it, but she hasn’t vocalized it to anybody yet) and actually *wants* to get help, wants to get better.

      She doesn’t *need* Amazi-Girl in a way that I, in my depression, don’t *need* to lie in bed and not get up for three days in a row. But it’s what we do. We can only break out of that if we confront our problems and get help. And from experience I can only tell Amber that getting help is awesome and makes your life so much better and healthier, so I believe in you, girl 😉

      1. Disloyal Subject

        Unfortunately, I don’t think she can hear you.
        I’d hope that someone in-universe with similar experienes tells her something similar, but unless one of the background characters gets fleshed out and brought into the foreground I think it’s just Sal – who Amber would obviously have a hard time listening to – or Leslie, who’s unlikely to find out about Amber’s problems even if they run across each other. Best-case scenario, Leslie’s giving Becky advice and they see Amazi-girl having a breakdown; Becky vouches for Leslie’s trustworthiness, and Amber gets some damn therapy.
        Of course, that puts an uncomfortable amount of responsibility on Leslie, including the dilemma of whether or not to report Amber for vigilantism (I’m not sure how Indiana laws work for such things), but I think she’d rather have the power to help than freedom from it.

      2. Kamino Neko

        Amber knows she has problems, but I don’t think she realizes Amazi-Girl is actually an unhealthy coping mechanism.

        1. Spencer

          Yeah, as far as Amber’s concerned, Amazi-Girl is her therapy. She dumps her anger into an alternate persona and punches dudes she can justify as deserving it, so this way Amber won’t hurt the people she cares about.

          She needs to find an alternative coping mechanism that allows her to harmlessly deal with her anger.

        2. Just Me

          Fair enough, but finding that alternate coping mechanism isn’t so easy.

          And hiding in her room, afraid to come out, is not a healthy alternative either.

        3. Kamino Neko

          Both of these are true. Which makes the whole situation incredibly bad for her.

          Her current coping mechanism is mentally and physically unhealthy. Anything else she could possibly think of would be at least as bad mentally, and might not be significantly better physically.

          Nobody she knows is qualified to help her develop a healthy coping mechanism.

          About the only person willing to tell her that the one she has is dangerous (at least among the people who can know how incredibly off the rails she’s gotten) is the one person she cannot possibly hear that from.

          And to make things worse, even if Sal convinces Danny to talk to Amber, and he tries to talk her into finding an actual healthy way to deal…that’ll really require talking to a therapist. And she’s been conditioned to think of getting therapy as ‘weak’ – weaker even than she can allow docile little Amber to be.

    5. timemonkey

      I think Sal gets that Amazi-Girl is a coping method for Amber and her issues. But it’s not a healthy or sustainable coping method. Amber is losing stability as time goes on and becoming increasingly violent and reckless and it’s only a matter of time before somebody pays for that, be it her or someone innocent.

    6. Cerberus

      It’s a tricky situation.

      Either she’s DID and so putting away the costume for good is asking for some nasty disassociations and saying goodbye to the last of her integration.

      Or she’s got a mess of other things and Amazi-girl is currently her ONE coping strategy for it all. Which… yeah, not ideal and better not doing that, but taking away someone’s unhealthy coping strategy without replacing it with another one tends to go really badly, leading to much worse coping strategies or consequences.

      And that’s an easy mistake for people to make when supporting people who are doing absolutely awful things to themselves to help them cope with a brutal reality or situation. Cause, without addressing the root cause or building new behaviors that won’t make them feel powerless and out of control without their coping strategy, then hardline denial tends to end in tragedy.

      It’s why the treatment protocol for things like PTSD and substance abuse are favoring the creation of safer coping strategies rather than just yelling at people to give up the coping strategies they have:
      https://books.google.com/books/about/Seeking_Safety.html?id=bgdsQgAACAAJ&hl=en

      1. ischemgeek

        Personal experience talking: I used to have some self-destructive coping strategies (talking stuff like walking on bridge railings, climbing 5-story cliffs with neither training nor safety equipment nor anyone who knew where I was and what I was doing, that sort of thing), and some self-injurious ones. I was completely unable to give the bad ones up until I had new ones in place.

        Unfortunately, and this is also personal experience talking: Many therapists (especially ones with a behaviorist bent) get so obsessed over removing the bad coping skills they don’t see the purpose they serve, and wind up messing you up more because if you suddenly have no coping skills to fall back on, things go to hell in a handbasket in a hurry.

        1. Cerberus

          Yup. It happens at our school a bunch too. Some kid will be doing something harmful to themselves to cope with stuff and some of the teachers or the admin staff will decide to just stop that unhealthy behavior. They are then shocked when the student doesn’t just decide to shape themselves up and get better but instead turns to something way more dangerous to cope with everything and not having their coping mechanism.

          It’s… frustrating.

    7. Jed!

      Most forms of emotional coping don’t involve and potentially endanger other people. Like Sal points out in the first panel, Amazigirl’s actions are potentially dangerous. She needs to find something that doesn’t risk other peoples’ well being. Not to mention that Amber has some hangups about her and Amazigirl being the same person, which has led her to treat Danny kind of poorly.

      And frankly, from Sal’s point of view, it makes sense for her to be skeptical of Amazigirl’s intentions. The Toedad incident made her see Amazigirl in a better light, but remember: their first encounter was Amazigirl picking a fight with her in a parking lot for drinking. As opposed to on campus, where a bunch of other students would be drinking (it’s college, there are always a few every night). In particular, a white girl targeting a black girl on a predominantly white campus for something plenty of college students do, immediately calling for violence when they were being peaceful and trying to avoid a fight, and even deliberately trying to provoke Sal. As the readers, we know Amber’s beef with Sal is because of their past, and not racial discrimination, but Sal doesn’t know that.

      Frankly, from Sal’s perspective, Amazigirl looks like a whacker- a wannabe police academy reject, white suburb dweller who dreams of confronting one of those lawbreaking minorities intruding on her city and being a hero. Hell, Sal might have dealt with those kinds of people before, considering how much the whole abuse of the law to target specific people thing bothers her. Taking the whole unpleasant first meeting into consideration, Sal’s giving Amazigirl a lot of slack.

      1. Cerberus

        Oh yeah, definitely this. Until Becky’s rescue, Sal’s experiences of Amazi-girl have been of what has looked like an incredibly racist white girl who has sought any excuse to beat up on a black girl and views it as a good thing that life is harder for her because she’s black.

        Afterwards? Well, to Sal, Amazi-girl probably still feels like a George Zimmerman waiting to happen, albeit one who actually has saved at least one person she knows of (even though she had to be there to stop her from dying in the process). And who she recognizes some of her old bad habits in.

        So her pleading her, from her perspective, is not just to save Amazi-girl, but to save whatever hypothetical black person Amazi-girl goes off on in the future.

        Note, that all this is what Sal would naturally conclude from the evidence she has encountered rather than a genuine risk (probably).

        1. Kamino Neko

          About the only thing hypothetical Sal is wrong on, though, is that Amber’s motivations include racism, and that the inevitable innocent person who’s going to get hurt is going to be black.

          If she continues, she’s going to get somebody killed or even more severely injured than Ross was. It’s unavoidable. Either allowing her to treat Amazi-Girl as a valid outlet for violence will encourage her to escalate, and it’ll go too far, or she’ll try to repeat the whole Becky Rescue thing, and roll a 1, instead of a 20, and someone – or someones, possibly including herself – are going to end up dead.

        2. thejeff

          I definitely agree on the racism part. It’s quite possible and understandable Sal sees that, but I really don’t see it anywhere in Amber’s motivations.

          As for things getting worse, that’s possible. Her condition is certainly getting worse. She definitely needs help, but that’s for her own mental state. I’d say it’s far more likely that she’d lose control as “Amber” than that Amazi-Girl will get out of control. That’s the trend we’ve seen in the comic.
          As for another Becky Rescue thing, that’s not really under her control. If Willis decides to have another over the top action sequence, Amazi-Girl will certainly be involved. That’s what she’s there for. 🙂
          Even in world, she’s not searching out major crimes to get foil. She’s not listening to police band radio to find robberies in progress or car chases or anything like that. She’s shown no signs of it. If she gets involved in another serious event, it’ll be because one of our major characters gets involved in something and needs help.
          And if so, it’ll be there for narrative reasons and it’ll play out for narrative reasons, which won’t include anybody (possibly excluding the villain of the piece) dying or being seriously injured, for all the same reasons no one died in the happy fun gun times incident. In other words, it’ll play out like a superhero or an action movie scene, not like real life or like a tragedy.
          Because this is fiction.
          Your unavoidable things are completely avoidable. Because that’s not the kind of story this is.
          Yes, Amber’s issues are getting worse. Yes, they’re going to need to be dealt with. They’re probably going to get worse before they get better. That’s almost certainly going to involve both a reconciliation with Sal and another confrontation with Blaine. It may involve Amber giving up Amazi-Girl completely or it may not – if it does, I suspect it’ll be long delayed.
          It’s not going to involve Amazi-Girl killing people or screwing up completely and getting people killed. Even if that’s what would be likely in reality.

  20. Pat

    …which of these characters is supposed to be saying the alt text to the other one? I’m really not sure.

    1. Clif

      I think it’s Willis channeling Billie and talking to us. But as something actually said it would be kind of appropriate either way.

    2. Milli

      Danny to Sal. Sal says she can’t be there to save Amber all the time, Danny says he will pay her ($2) to be there all the time.

      1. Clif

        Or alternately Sal says she can’t be there to save Amber all the time and then offers Danny $2.00 to do it in her stead. Your way is funnier tho.

      2. Pat

        Sal says she can’t always be there to save Amazi-Girl.
        She also says she wants Danny to stop, and therefore save, Amazi-Girl.

        It works both ways.

  21. Reltzik

    Having SO much trouble deciphering the Danny faces.

    1. Briny

      1) stunned. 2) Sad, but also angry (presumably at Sal, for bringing this up, and possibly for calling him “Wonderbread” every two fucking seconds- sorry, that was me.) 3) “You’re right of course. It’s sad, but true (and it’s overcoming my anger from #2.)

    2. brumagem

      What you’ve never had the divine pleasure of hearing someone prove all the things you believe about someone you admire is complete honky and you are probably helping that person destroy their own life?

      Danny admires Amazi-girl for her bravery and selflessness

      Sal posits that Amazi-girl may be those things, but with insane disregard for her own safety or that of others, and that Danny has directly encouraged her.

      Danny is sad, to put it simply.

      1. Reltzik

        Oh I’ve had that pleasure.

        I just didn’t have it in front of a mirror.

  22. caesaria82

    Is he crying? Are those tears in his eyes? I imagine it’s tears of frustration because he obviously knows it’s not gonna be as easy as Sal makes it sound, but he cares so much about Amber.
    I think in the beginning it was all cool to him that he was dating a vigilante, but he’s realizing more and more what kind of danger she is in. He’s not in an easy position.

    Danny gets a lot of shit for Danning things up, but in this I really feel for him, because he doesn’t fully know it yet, but he’s actually dating someone with severe mental issues. I mean, it’s also gonna be super hard for him to try and talk to Amber about this, because she probably ain’t gonna listen. But after everything he’s now heard from Sal, I think if he’s a decent person he’s at least going to *try* to talk to Amber.

    Sigh. It’s an impossible situation he’s in and I don’t envy him.

    1. Cerberus

      Yeah, and it’s not just dating someone with severe mental illness, but someone with severe mental illness who doesn’t really want to talk too directly about the mental illness and who is engaging in behaviors that are worsening the mental illness.

      Even for someone with a background of dating people with mental illnesses, this would be a tough situation and he’s going in with absolutely no background or clue. He’s basically flailing around in the dark and hoping that somehow he’ll bump into the right thing to do before tipping the kerosene all over the sparking wire.

      Add the fact that his tendency to awkward it up when he’s nervous and his next conversation with Amber is very likely to be a train wreck.

      1. timemonkey

        Honestly, I think he’s more likely to snap at Sal than actually try and talk Amber out of this.

        1. caesaria82

          This is also a possibility and if you’re right, I’m gonna be very, very sad.

        2. Cerberus

          I’m viewing this more as a both/and situation… though maybe not on the snapping at Sal part. I think if she was more antagonistic and less sympathetic and pleading, he would find it easier to yell at her and I think in Panel 4 he’s close to feeling like he can yell at her, but by Panel 6, he doesn’t seem to have that in him.

        3. timemonkey

          He does seem to be leaning in the direction of your interpretation. But he’s being told things he doesn’t want to hear, including that he’s been making things worse. Denial can be powerful.

        4. Cerberus

          Very true.

      2. caesaria82

        Right? I fear for his convo with Amber, too. It’s gonna be Danny’s awkwardness meeting Amber avoidance and it’s gonna be terrible. Whenever it happens. Maybe if we’re lucky in about 2 years of our outside-the-comic time^^

        Oh god, this is so gonna be terrible for such a long time still.

        1. Leorale

          “So, this girl named Sal told me more about that car chase. We think you should stop being Amazi-Girl, so hand over your mask, please?”

  23. Shiro

    I like how the white space looks like empty speech bubbles around Danny.

  24. Fwip

    “Hello, Pot! I’m Kettle!”

    1. timemonkey

      Sal doesn’t enable Amber.

      And as was pointed out already, and repeatedly, the similarity between Amber and Sal is WHY Sal knows what she’s talking about.

      1. Fwip

        Self-awareness about your hypocrisy doesn’t make you less of a hypocrite. Sal has complained regularly about feeling misunderstood and how others have tried to control her life as a part of why she reacts badly, and now she’s telling someone else to “stop enabling”? And if she thinks it’s easy to turn away from self-destructive behaviours, why hasn’t she overcome hers?

        If it’s so dangerous to be involved in a high-speed car chase with a man with a gun, why on Earth does Sal give herself a pass for doing the exact same thing – carrying Joyce towards said man with a gun, where she managed to get a lucky swing on him – and call Amber out for it?

        Like… Sal isn’t wrong here, Amber’s behaviours are dangerous and, more importantly, put others in danger, but hypocrisy is hypocrisy, y’know?

        1. Untes

          Since when does being a hypocrite mean something relevant in this instance?
          Literally, the only thing it does is score brownie points for the self-righteous.

        2. Fwip

          Generally, hypocrisy has an effect of weakening the power of the speaker’s words. If you tell someone to do something, but refuse to do it yourself, either you believe something exempts you from it or you don’t really believe the thing you’re calling for.

        3. bluejohnnyd

          “Yeah, so when the pot calls the kettle black, the kettle’s still fuckin’ black.”

        4. Fwip

          “If it’s so awful, why haven’t you cleaned yourself up yet?”

        5. trlkly

          Nope. Not at all. If you don’t do something for yourself, then you don’t actually believe it.

          The thing none of you guys seem to notice is that Sal has had a problem with Amazi-girl since she tried to attack her. She’s not the voice of reason, and I will be fucking pissed if Willis acts like she is.

          Because it would mean he went to all this research to care about homophobia, but doesn’t give a shit about ableism.

        6. shadowcell

          that’s right, the person who’s saying “maybe you shouldn’t go jumping off moving vehicles and daring death to catch you” is not the voice of reason. that is where we are at.

        7. HonorHunter

          Sal never said it was easy to turn away from self-destructive behavior, she just said that it could prove fatal if nobody steps in. Besides, Sal hasn’t really done much in terms of self-destructive behavior in this comic. She’s only been in the one fight with Malaya (She chose not to fight when Amazi-Girl tried to fight with her) and we’ve only seen her plastered once. As far as drinking, tattoos, and smoking, that stuff is not that uncommon at college or just in general, and she it seems like she does all that stuff in moderation. Sure, she’s got some issues, but no more than most people.

          And Sal joined the chase because she realized that Amazi-Girl was probably going to get someone killed in the very near future. There’s a difference between going out of your way to be in dangerous situations and realizing that a dangerous situation could become worse without immediate action.

          I wouldn’t really say she’s being a hypocrite at all. Sal has learned from her past all those years ago and actively tries to keep herself in check.

        8. Fwip

          I’m pretty sure she used her motorbike to drive someone straight into the middle of the same scene she just said Amber shouldn’t have gone near. If it’s self-destructive for one, it’s self-destructive for the other. Also, a far less life-threatening offense, but I’m pretty sure boinking your TA is sufficient to get you both expelled and blacklisted.

          As far as Sal’s reasoning, I don’t see how she can exactly excuse herself because somehow her driving into a dangerous situation is okay, but Amber’s isn’t. In both circumstances, they are people without any sort of civil authority putting themselves in a dangerous situation where their presence could easily get someone hurt. As an off example, if Sal hadn’t noticed the caltrops and spun out, odds are pretty good Joyce could’ve ended up street pizza.

          In the end, the situation worked out alright for them both, but the blunt truth is that they both made a decision to try and help other people – and succeeded in doing so – that could have also very easily gotten people hurt, themselves included. Each of them felt confident in their abilities but doesn’t trust other people with the same burden.

          Hence, pot, kettle.

        9. CJ

          Sal does take risks – and did so when going after toedad. And yes, both did go after Toedad in great part because they felt that no one else was there to do so. Sal wouldn’t have, if Amazi-Girl hadn’t already.
          Why would that make it hipocrisy to point out that Amazi-Girls behaviour is self-destructive and dangerous?
          Also, where is she being arrogant (last time I looked, taking the high road meant that)?
          It’s like saying someone who occasionally drinks alcohol should not say that someone getting drunk daily is behaving self-destructively. It’s a totally valid observation and arrogance does not come into it.
          Pretending it was easy to stop would be a different thing, but that’s not what she is doing.

        10. Fwip

          When they take the exact same behaviours for the exact same reasons, saying someone else’s behaviours and reasons are wrong because they did it first is little more than childish.

          Also, I didn’t use the word arrogant, but if you read that into it, I think that says something.

        11. thejeff

          And Amazi-Girl joined the chase because someone was being kidnapped right now. She even tried to flag down the police on the way. Painting this as Amazi-Girl being crazy and escalating the situation purely out of her self-destructive issues while Sal was just doing the reasonable thing and trying to keep Amazi-Girl from killing people is twisted.
          I mean, what was Sal going to do if she’d caught up with Ross & Becky at any point other than the exact moment she did? Stop Amazi-Girl and insure Ross gets away? Somehow magically stop Ross without escalating or risking anyone, even herself?
          And of course without calling the cops, because of her own issues with authority.
          Honestly, even Sal seems to realize this more than some commenters here.

        12. Spencer

          Which I think is Sal’s point. It was an insane situation beyond either hers or Amazi-Girl’s control, and Amazi-Girl made it more dangerous by intervening the way she did. I mean, she threw caltrops on the road.

          Sal isn’t shitting on Amazi-Girl for helping. She recognizes that she did save Becky, and has also previously stated that she thinks cops are useless. Her remarks seem more directed at the risk Amazi-Girl brings on herself, that what she’s doing is dangerous and will get her killed, while also recognizing that her actions can be a danger to other people (like herself, when Amazi-Girl decided that underaged drinking was grounds for picking a fight).

        13. thejeff

          It would be interesting to see Sal bring that incident up. That might shake Danny’s perspective more than anything else.

        14. Spencer

          I don’t think Sal’s allowed to get mad at people for beating up Malaya :V

        15. thejeff

          Of course she is.

          That’s her job.

  25. Palamdrone

    Next week, it is revealed that Sal is a super villain, and getting rid of Amazigirl is part of her master plan to conquer the world, just to get back at her mother for never paying attention to her.

    1. inqntrol

      “Hey mom as proof that I desire your attention I conquered the whole world!” I swear I saw a movie with a villain like that(who wants to conquer the world only for attention), but I can’t remember the name of it.

      1. kelticat

        I remember a Lois and Clark Adventures of Superman episode like that. Where the villain tried to conquer the world for Mother’s Day.

      2. tim gueguen

        Despicable Me.

  26. carnitas

    As usual, Sal gets to lecture or look cool, rather than have any real consequences.

    1. Milli

      Consequences for what? What did she do that she’s getting away with?

      1. Clif

        I believe carnitas is saying she is ineffectual rather than saying she is getting away from something. He’s saying there are no consequences of note resulting from her actions.

        Or so I think.

      2. Skizz

        You mean apart from listing real world consequences of an incident that included her making a literally physically impossible save that would have cause the deaths of several people im the real world?

        1. Clif

          Well, yeah. I would consider saving Amazigirl’s life a fairly significant consequence. I was interpreting carnitas, not agreeing with him – if there is any confusion.

    2. Tom T.

      Exactly. Sal lectures and risks nothing, while Danny gets set up to be the bad guy no matter what he does, either for being too passive and enabling, or too aggressive and controlling. Wait for it.

  27. Someone

    The scary thing is, Danny is probably keeping Amber fairly calm (relatively) I don’t want to know what would happen if she was on her own.

  28. Someone

    guys I discovered something.

    The youth pastor that Willis posted to tumblr has brown hair and green eyes

    http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/141278503007/youth-pastor-powers#notes

    Who do we know who has brown hair of that exact shade….Mary

    Who do we know who has green eyes…Ruth

    What if the Youth Pastor is Ruth’s real father, and she and Mary are sisters!

    1. Leorale

      He also looks a little bit like Ryan. Or Harry Potter.

    2. Disloyal Subject

      Wow, Carla looks great with her hair down.

    3. Willoughby Chase

      My first thought was “trendy vicar”

  29. Pan

    Their called caltrops btw

    1. Pan

      *They’re

  30. Tomas

    Poor Sal. She’s gonna feel like such a shit when she finds out.

    Don’t let let her find out, Willis!

  31. Rick Robin P. Cagnaan

    Straight interpretation: Sal says, “She put caltrops on the road, and then damaged the car windshield; that probably scared off a truck driver. Then she saved Becky. I can’t see her get killed… Really, I can’t. If you care for her at all, then you need to tell her that’s enough.”

  32. Meredian221b

    I like her, but I can’t take Sal’s self-righteousness right now. She has physically assaulted Malaya because Malaya annoyed her, she breaks any and every rule, she has banged her TA twice, she uses her looks and the fact that her looks intimidate people at every opportunity. Yes, Amber probably went too far during the chase. Yes, Amber definitely needs therapy. But Sal self-righteously wagging her finger at the one person that Amazi-Girl actually trusts just … doesn’t sit well with me, and this has nothing to do with the fact that Sal robbed that store and in many ways helped create Amazi-Girl. I fully acknowledge that coming from just about anyone else, I wouldn’t have too much of a problem with this talk, but I can’t stomach this coming from Sal.

    1. Incomitatus

      I don’t know, Sal sort of causes problems for the target of Sal. I think her point isn’t just that Amazi-Girl puts herself in danger, it’s also that Amazi-Girl is recklessly unaware of collateral damage.

      Sal’s a directed threat; Amazi-Girl is a loose cannon.

      1. Clif

        And a directed threat is so much better.

      2. thejeff

        Amber’s a loose cannon. Amazi-Girl is directed.

  33. Resulli

    This is a side of Sal I wish we’d see more often.

  34. Bicycle Bill

    Speaking as a cyclist, there is enough other “little metal tire-buster things” on the roads that three or four caltrops are nothing more than the proverbial drop in the bucket.  Especially when you look at them; true caltrops are four-pronged tetrahedral devices that will always have one prong pointing up and are meant for use against poorly-shod persons, not vehicles.  These were rounded and (other than the one that because of the requirements of the plot ended up in Toe-dad’s tire) more than likely rolled off to the side of the road where they are no longer a hazard to anyone …. except us cyclists who are forced by the people driving the gas-guzzlers to ride there.

  35. Shiori Tsumi

    I really love seeing this side of Sal. She sees all too much of herself in ‘Amazi-Girl’ and it upsets her deeply. She knows about self-destructive tendencies all too well, and she’s trying-in her own way- to get other people to not make the same mistakes she did. Because Amber and Sal’s problems more or less started with the same sort of source-they felt inadequate just as themselves, which drove them to continue to be more and more until it blew up in their faces.

    Currently, Amber hasn’t come QUITE to the ends Sal did before, but Sal recognizes the warning signs. And Amber’s taken on super heroism, an entire other persona. And if littering the road with caltrops, breaking windshields, and scaring half the road is only a warm-up, I can’t imagine what her penultimate breaking point is going to look like. Danny may not like it, but Amber needs to be stopped before she kills herself.

    ‘Stop enablin’ ‘er’, as in, stop telling her that all the destruction is WORTH IT. Stop telling her the risks she’s taking are necessary. Yes, congratulate her on helping people, but point out what she’s doing is DANGEROUS, can not only hurt her but all the people around her. Even just “I’m glad you saved her, but that was stupid as shit, you know.” would be a good step in the right direction. This is the problem that always gets brought up with Batman-yes, he catches the criminals, but he virtually always beats them up and causes untold amounts of property damage in the process and the media questions-is it worth it? I’m sure Danny gets it, even if he doesn’t like it, but he needs to ask that about Amazi-Girl. IS. IT. WORTH IT? When you weigh everything out…..probably not.

    1. fogel

      Not to disagree myself, but didn’t Dina give AMBER a big hug for saving Becky?

      1. Spencer

        She did.

        It’s like, Amber did save Becky. Everyone acknowledge that. Dina knows it. Sal knows it. Becky knows it. Joyce knows it. Dorothy knows it. Everyone knows that Amber rescued Becky and they’re thankful to her for it, but Amber still could have died and gotten other people killed. She did something good, but at what cost?

        1. Kamino Neko

          No cost. Amber is a perfectly healthy angel, and Sal is an evil hypocrite. Everybody knows this.

        2. Spencer

          ikr why is sal such a jerk

          she rides her motorcycle a bit fast thats definitely the same as prowling around campus finding people to beat up

        3. trlkly

          Quite making up strawmen. Yeah, I just used that word, and I’m using it correctly. No one has said she is an angel. It’s a made up position by you. It’s a dishonest way of arguing.

          No one thinks Amber is healthy. We’re just upset at you people who want to get rid of Amazi-girl altogether, instead of just stopping her more reckless issues. We just want her to learn to deescalate, not stop altogether.

          Yes, she’s ill. Yes, she needs to get better. But a campus where all this crap is happening and the police are nowhere to be seen needs someone to be watching them.

          Yes, Sal doens’t know about the rest of her stuff. But we do. So stop acting like Sal is being reasonable, when she doesn’t have all the information.

        4. Kamino Neko

          It’s not a strawman, it’s hardly even an exaggeration.

          Look at this post ‘police are nowhere’, people ‘need [a broken girl who puts on costumes to pick fights with people] to be watching them’.

          Amazi-Girl cannot deescalate – that is literally the reason she exists. To allow Amber to escalate while still being docile as Amber.

          The police come when they’re called. Unlike broken teenagers, they do not wander around looking for misdemeanors so that they can beat people up with a ‘good conscience’.

        5. thejeff

          Well, the police do patrol. They shouldn’t be looking for people to beat up, though sometimes I wonder.
          They do go around looking for crimes in progress and often by their mere active presence reducing such crimes.

        6. Dave

          Amazi-Girl disagrees with you over why Amazi-Girl exists.

          Before anything else, Amazi-Girl is an outlet for violent urges. She literally would not exist if Amber didn’t have them. And while the source of those violent urges is certainly tragic, they don’t make them any more healthy of a coping mechanism than, say, turning to alcohol to cope with depression.

          Deescalating this behavior would be stopping it entirely, as Amazi-Girl only exists so that Amber can beat the tar out of people that she arbitrarily decides “deserves” it. Violence against so-called “bad” people is still violence.

        7. Clif

          Neither Joyce nor Becky know that Amber saved Becky. Sal may suspect it but doesn’t know it. Knowledge is referentially opaque so even though Amber = Amazigirl you can’t just go substituting them in what people know.

          If no-one got killed then the cost is zero and some drama. It’s the projection of probable cost/benefit into the future where things get wonky and subject to interpretation.

        8. Spencer

          I meant that Amber saved Becky, and that they know that Amazi-Girl saved Becky. I wasn’t referring to them actually knowing Amber was Amazi-Girl.

  36. Tenzhi

    What I got from this comic:

    Hey, cool, Sal finally grudgingly admits that Amazi-Girl was actually doing something worthwhile.

    1. Cerberus

      That is an important moment. With the Becky incident, she’s seen Amazi-girl nearly die, but she’s also seen her do something undeniably good. Not harassment in a parking lot, not antagonization in the treeline, but something genuinely heroic and deserving of genuine praise.

      I think it’s why Sal leads with a lot of compassion here.

      1. Clif

        Furthermore it is an important trend carrying us towards that inevitable moment where Sal becomes Amazigirl’s sidekick and lover.

        Oh wait. Wrong comic.

  37. Decepticon357

    I guess Sal doesn’t realize that this IS a comic, so she’ll be fine. =D

  38. Bagge

    Danny can only do so much…

    but SAL can do even less. She almost saw Amaziegirl DIE. She knows first hand what that kind of self destructive tendencies can do to a person. She knows how stubborn you can be, and she also know that for whatever reason Amaziegirl will never listen to hear. She must feel extremely powerless.

    But she knows there is one person who might get Amaziegirl to listen, and as luck has it it is one of the few people Sal actually has a relation to. Danny is Sal’s best bet to do something.

  39. Dariu55

    “Just be her Alfred, dammit!”

  40. BenRG

    Interesting. Tell me, Sal, how does he ‘enable’ her and how is he supposed to stop it.

    1. Eric

      She isn’t concerned about actually helping, quite the contrary in fact. I think Sal is trying to isolate AG, which will make AG’s problem much worse.

      Why? No idea, maybe she’s just a bongo. Sal clearly has an issue with AG.

      It is possible she does think she is ‘helping’, taking a combination of Doctor Phil and a single first year Psych class and throwing around a word like ‘enabling’ to make herself sound good, and thinking she knows what the hell she’s talking about.

      Either it’s malicious, or stupid. Neither is good.

      1. nightsbridge

        Yeah, and she’s not saying this because she’s been in the same place that amazi-girl is, and knows it’s a bad place and knows the way Danny is treating this isn’t helping.

        Oh wait, that’s explicitly what’s happening.

        1. trlkly

          Except that she hasn’t. She never was someone who fought for good. She was someone who robbed stores. She was just acting out–she didn’t channel into it into helping people.

          I know she thinks it’s the same thing, but it’s not. She was never an avenging angel. She was just a common hooligan.

          She knows PART of why Amber is the way she is. Not all. And, as far as she wants Danny to stop Amazi-Girl altogether, she is wrong.

          The goal should be to keep Amazi-girl, but have her tone down what she does. Have her deescalate instead of escalating.

          Or, I guess, you can have people assaulting people and raping people.

        2. Kamino Neko

          It is exactly the same fucking thing.

          Amber doesn’t fight for good. She fights, because she’s got violent urges to burn off and she thinks beating up underage drinkers and sign-stealers is a ‘good’ way to do it.

          Because she is exactly the opposite of healthy.

          She is just like every other person who takes the law into their own hands – dangerous, and it’s only a matter of time before she doesn’t get lucky when doing things that should get multiple people killed, like throwing caltrops under the tires of a moving vehicle.

        3. Petra

          Amazi-Girl is also explicitly not doing this to help people, she’s doing it to punish herself and to channel her violent urges into hurting people who ‘deserve’ it. You talk about the police not showing up in the comic, but that’s because NOBODY CALLS THEM, and the one instance they’re called, Toedad is already driving away with Becky.

          Nobody fucking hates Amber for being mentally ill. But Amazi-girl isn’t a healthy coping mechanism at ALL. She doesn’t need to de-escalate, she needs to stop being Amazi-girl until she can deal with her own issues to the point that maybe she can start again.

          BTW, Amber doesn’t have DID. She dissociates and she’s got identity disturbances, but they don’t present the same way it does in DID.

      2. Spencer

        I mean, Sal is having this conversation, literally, because she’s grateful to Amazi-Girl for saving Becky and because Danny is missing some crucial facts and still thinks Amazi-Girl is cool and awesome.

        And like nightsbridge said, Sal has been there. Sal knows what it means to do dumb, violent shit in the name of proving a point. That’s why she sympathizes with Amazi-Girl and she’s making an effort to help instead of just waiting for her to get her head blown clean off in a car accident.

  41. Eric

    So little miss “Everyone look at me, I’m soooooooo coooool!” Who’s going to stop you before you get yourself killed?

    While I agree that Amber is out of her damned mind and needs help, Sal is not the one to be giving advice to anyone.

    Sal has this entire “rebel without a cause” horseshit (more like without a clue) which is also likely to leave a trail of devestation behind her – sounds like she has huge Mommy issues if a few pages back is any indication.

    No Sal, you have too much glass in your house to be throwing stones.

    1. iforgetwhatiputhere

      Actually Sal jumped in, saved the crazy girl and jumped back out without waiting for anyone to notice or screwing things up… I don’t know how you go from the fact she obviously has some issues (who hasn’t?) to saying that she can’t advise the idiot who almost got killed or the other idiot who thinks it’s “totally cooool”…

    2. timemonkey

      Sal already did her self destructive attention seeking behaviour, that’s what robbing the stores were. Her current behaviour hurts nobody, not even her.

    3. dethtoll

      She rides a motorcycle and is out at night a lot. Real self-destructive thrillseeker, that.

  42. Spencer

    Enabling is a term I have some strong feelings about, as I often see it used against people trapped in abusive relationships or homes, blaming them for their abuser’s actions because, jeez, if you’d just get out of there and stop enabling them, they’d heal.

    Sadly, Danny really is enabling Amber here. Because he doesn’t get that Amazi-Girl is unhealthy, he encourages it and looks at her through his lens of superhero fantasy romance, until now unintentionally encouraging Amber that she needed to be Amazi-Girl. He’s so out of depth here that he probably thinks Amazi-Girl will actually heal Amber of her trauma one day, because all he has for reference are a bunch of comic books.

    This is the reality check Danny needed, and hopefully it’s what motivates him to start supporting Amber in constructive and healthy ways. Between seeing her breakdown at her dad, her separating her identities, and now the fact that she absolutely would have died, I think he has enough to get jogged out of his superhero fantasy romance completely, and to start supporting Amber the way she actually needs.

  43. ischemgeek

    Folks who are all “Sal is being such a hypocrite,” I gotta ask if you’re reading the same comic as me.

    I don’t see Sal being a hypocrite at all. I see Sal as giving advice based in life experience. She’s able to recognize Amber’s dangerous self destruction as what it is and not make excuses because she’s been there. Just like I can recognize years before (non-asthmatic) doctors do when a kid in one of the programs I volunteer with has asthma. I have lived with moderate to severe asthma for 28 years, I know what it looks like. So I recognize it when I see it.

    Sal, likewise, has lived with her own self-destructive angry impulses for years – probably most of her life from what we’ve seen of her backstory. She recognizes self-destructive anger when she sees it.

    She is coping. She has learned to deal. She is (usually) able to restrain her impulse to punch first and talk it over later. She doesn’t hold people up at knifepoint anymore. Is she perfect? No, but she’s made huge strides since the day she got stabbed in the hand.

    Compare to Amber who is in the middle of her own anger-fueled downward spiral. Sal knows where this ends, because she walked that road. She doesn’t want Amber to have to see it to the end, so she’s trying to intervene in the best way she knows how.

    Let’s say I’m walking through a campground and I manage to clothesline myself on someone’s camping equipment (maybe an actual clothesline just for giggles). Is it hypocrisy for me to warn someone else, “Hey, don’t go that way, there’s a clothesline there and it hurts if you walk into it.”?

    1. thejeff

      No, but if you get yourself involved in a car chase and risk your life and others’ lives to pull off a physics bending maneuver to rescue someone and then criticize someone for getting involved in a car chase and risking their own and others’ lives, bending the laws of physics to rescue someone, then you’ve got a slight hypocrisy issue.

    2. Tilty

      It depends, are you STILL running into clotheslines and wrecking camping equipment?

      Sal isn’t speaking from experience as someone who has made huge strides in maturation, which is why people see her as hypocritical. She is still wreckless. She still puts herself and others at risk. She still acts on the impulse to fight, despite the fact that she usually ends up losing! Hell, at the start of this very arc, she was talking about jumping stairs on her motorcycle. That is dangerous. Illegal. Puts herself and others at risk. She could literally run someone over if they came jogging out and she didn’t see them. She could hit the ground wrong and end up under her bike.

      I am not saying this is to the same scale or for the same purpose as Amazigirl’s heroism, but she’s not the balanced person looking to protect someone else. This could all be read as, in part, a projection of her own insecurities and behaviors.

      1. Eric

        What Tilty said.

  44. GreyDefender

    Does anyone else miss Ana Chronistic?

  45. Dr. Love Monkey

    Does he actually care for her? Honestly he seems mostly concerned with having a “cooler’ or “better” girlfriend than Dorothy

  46. Liliet

    …I actually did not expect Sal to be this… sympathetic? Generous? Caring?

    Like, she’s not talking about how Amazi-girl puts others in danger. She’s saying “I can’t be there to save her life every time”. It’s… really not a line of thought I’d expect her brain to jump to.
    Especially with how Amazi-girl has treated her, and she doesn’t even know why… has she come to regard this attitude towards her as normal??? This is terrifyingly sad to think about.

    And no, I don’t think this is ‘the reality check that Danny needs’ in any sort of way. Telling him that Amazi-girl tried to pick a fight with her over a bullshit reason and didn’t even thank her for saving her life, that might have been.
    But this? This is the normal part of the superhero mythos. They RISK THEIR LIVES, yes, that’s the point. That why they are superHEROES. Sal is very much playing into the narrative here, whether she realizes it or not.

    It won’t cure Danny of idealizing Amazi-girl. What it can do, however, is get him to step up and be more active in caring about her. Asking more questions, giving more suggestions, becoming her slightly less self-destructive amazi-sidekick (just in case she needs someone to say “this plan is fucking stupid” or “that black girl actually hasn’t done anything criminal literally everyone drinks on campus what’s your problem with her”)

    …Seriously, I still can’t believe that Sal is framing this as Amazi-girl still being the good guy. She even acknowledges the road full of caltrops, but instead of focusing on how it could have killed someone she says that AMAZI-GIRL was one step away from being roadkill.

    It’s… interesting.

    1. Silly Name

      The key word there is “mythos”. This isn’t a superhero comic, so Amazi-Girl doesn’t have plot immunity. At the end of the issue/arc, the status quo isn’t restored.
      This is why Sal is worried, and why Danny SHOULD be worried: because the superhero tropes don’t apply here, and Amazi-Girl risks getting herself killed every time she tries to stop a crime. One of these days, she’ll find herself in a deadly situation with nobody to rescue her.

      Meanwhile, Danny, albeit in a naive and innocent way, has been reinforcing Amber’s belief that she CAN be a superhero, and that therefore she won’t risk dying. He has been telling her Amazi-Girl is cool and awesome and amazing, that what she is doing is good and right, thus making her a bit more likely to do risky stuff.

      Amazi-Girl isn’t a superhero: she’s an abused girl’s attempt at coping with her trauma, and it has been failing. It has become more unhealthy than the trauma itself, because Amber has become dependent on Amazi-Girl: rather than facing problems, she puts on the mask and escapes. That’s not healthy.

      1. thejeff

        It’s not a super-hero comic, but it’s not reality either. There’s pretty good evidence that in world, the superhero tropes do apply to Amazi-Girl. No one recognizes her through her thin disguise. She pulls off ridiculous feats of agility with thin excuses. She casually wins fights with multiple larger opponents. The laws of physics bend in superhero directions throughout the whole car chase, to the point of letting Sal make the impossible catch at the end. (See, even Sal gets to play with superhero, or at least action movie, tropes.)
        Sure, it’s possible Willis will decide “Nope, not this time. This time she slides down the wire in the rain to land on the truck, misjudges it and is street pizza.” But it’s not likely.
        Amazi-Girl is a superhero in world. A low-level kind of superhero certainly, but one nonetheless. She’s not just a crazy girl dressing up in a costume.
        She is also an abused girl’s attempt at coping with her trauma and that attempt is failing. It’s very definitely unhealthy and this storyline is at least setting up a crisis where she’s going to have to come to terms with it somehow.
        But for me at least, the story is less compelling if she isn’t a superhero. If Amazi-Girl is just crazy and dangerous to herself and others, then she just needs to be stopped. I like there being tension between Amazi-Girl doing good and saving people and still being mentally unhealthy for Amber.

        1. Kamino Neko

          Nonsense.

          See this?

          This scene?

          This is the narrative saying ‘that whole thing where Amber saved the day, even though it could totally have ended up with 4 people, including herself, dead? That was dumb luck, not evidence that she’s really the hero she wants people to think she is.’

        2. Spencer

          Well, I do think thejeff has a point. Amazi-Girl sequences are skewed towards the fantasy. She’s able to take on multiple huge dudes at once, she parkours like mad, she does all this without taking a scratch, and the entire car chase was filled with (deliberate) physics breaking, with Sal doing a midair motorcycle rescue.

          Which, that doesn’t diminish what Sal is saying, but I don’t think the point is “Amazi-Girl is dumb” because we have gotten a lot of sequences where Amazi-Girl is unilaterally a positive, and I think the focus is on the danger Amber presents herself, because we have had Becky, Dina, and now Sal treat her as heroic for saving Becky.

          I dunno, I just really don’t think that chapter was meant to be “man isn’t Amazi-Girl stupid why does she ruin everything.”

        3. thejeff

          Were there supposed to be links there? Because if you mean the current strip and that Sal of all people is supposed to be speaking the unbiased narrative truth in direct contrast to what we’ve seen presented directly in the comic itself, that’s the nonsense.
          The car chase and Ross’s own complete disregard for common sense and danger took her beyond her own abilities, but she’s shown again and again that she’s capable of extraordinary feats. Even before the chase, if she was relying on “dumb luck”, she’d likely be dead or more likely just beaten up or fallen embarassingly flat on her face trying to jump on a roof or something. Even in the car chase, though it ultimately pushed her past her limits and she made some questionable decisions, she went well beyond normal person limits just getting as far as she did. Nor did the narrative present it as “dumb luck”, but as preparation and determination. Even Sal showing up in the nick of time to rescue her as she stopped the car wasn’t really dumb luck, but the time-honored action movie trope of the cavalry arriving at the last moment.
          She acts like a superhero. She does extraordinary things like a superhero. The narrative shows her routinely pulling off nigh-impossible feats. Looking at that and saying “All these superhero trope things this superhero is doing don’t mean she’s actually functioning like a superhero. It’s just dumb luck.”
          If you’ve got dumb luck on your side to that level, that’s a superpower on it’s own. 🙂
          But Willis hasn’t actually hinted at that and he’s not a bad enough writer to be doing it unintentionally.

        4. Silly Name

          But even in the aftermath of the physics-defying car chase, Amazi-Girl’s “immunity to real life” started cracking: she got injured, was panicking at the sight of Sal… the mask was breaking down. It has been breaking down ever since she first realized who Sal was.

          Notice how we are seeing less of her superheroing? How, in this instance, Amber put on the mask NOT to do superhero stuff, but to escape from her problems? How Walky has mentioned that the police is looking for her?
          The illusion is failing, and sooner or later, so will the superhero tropes that have been keeping Amazi-Girl’s safe. At least, this is where I think the story will be going.

        5. Spencer

          Yep. For the first three or so years of the comic, Amazi-Girl was a fantastical and somewhat comedic concept in the series; a superhero on a college campus. Most every scene she had was played for laughs and catharsis, and stuff like Danny dating Amazi-Girl instead of Amber was kinda tongue in cheek at first, and then played for the usual drama in cape comics later on when he tries breaking off from Amber because he’s dating her in a mask.

          Since the fight with Blaine, though, Amazi-Girl has largely been a far darker character, and other than the Whiteboard Ding Dong Bandit storyline, it hasn’t really let up. Amber has gradually become more stringent about compartmentalizing her identities, she doesn’t really get up to any consequence free superhero hijinks anymore (the last time being that brief sequence at the beginning of “Three’s A Crowd” where she beat up that one creep, a guy trying to break into a car, and rescued a cat from a tree), and now we’re seeing serious, real consequence to her actions with her nearly dying while trying to be the badass hero she thinks she is, and the police are after her.

          I genuinely think that by the end of 2017 the latest, we actually see the end of Amazi-Girl.

        6. thejeff

          She doesn’t have “immunity to real life”. She has superhero tropes. Superheroes get injured. They just soldier through it. The cops being after the hero is also a common superhero thing, though I really doubt Willis is going to go anywhere serious with that.
          And if you check, it was “Amber” that panicked when she came to and saw Sal. Despite being in costume the cheek blushes (and tags) make it clear.

          It’s quite possible we’ll see the end of Amazi-Girl. Amber’s mental problems need to be dealt with and reach some kind of resolution. That story has been building up for a long time. I’m about 95% sure it’s not going to involve Amazi-Girl losing the protection of superhero tropes and getting hurt trying to do superhero things or getting other people hurt with unneeded escalation. I’m 99% sure she’s not going to become an anger driver villain who needs to be put down, like some people seem to think.
          She might well stop being Amazi-Girl as part of her healing process, but as long as she’s doing it, that part will keep being that kind of story.

  47. Lan

    He’s going to build her a robot isn’t he.

  48. Saaaam

    Bit hard to take advice seriously when you’re called wonderbread

  49. Griffin

    angry crying is so much fun.

  50. HiiroArana79

    An Amber robot would rock!

  51. jaimehlers

    Amber doesn’t need to stop being a superhero; she needs to stop taking stupidly crazy risks as one.

    1. trlkly

      THANK YOU! That’s the thing that bugs me about the comments here. The problem is not Amazi-Girl. The problem is what Sal said last time: she doesn’t know how to deescalate.

      What I don’t get is why she’s suddenly acting like Amazi-girl herself is bad, instead of sticking with her escalation comments.

      And I wish people would stop acting like Sal and Amber are the same. Sal became a common criminal. Amber is at least trying to channel her stuff into doing good. If it wasn’t for her personality split and rage, she would be doing good.

      Amazi-girl is good. She has issues. She is not evil and needs to be stopped. The issues need to be fixed.

      If, and this is a BIG IF, that means Amazi-girl disappears, maybe that can be the lesser of two evils. But hopefully that will not happen. It’s a rather tragic arc, and it means that Amber can’t actually learn to deescalate, and instead has to give up helping people.

      The best way for this story to end is for her to be out and about, doing her thing, but not escalating. Maybe even working with the police and being more of a neighborhood watch. Maybe she’ll lead a group of people doing this.

      That’s good. Getting ride of Amazi-girl, because Amber is the only person you care about? Not so good.

      1. Liz

        I agree that if Amazigirl could learn to de-escalate, that would be ideal. But I don’t think Amber/Amazigirl’s in a healthy enough place to do that right now.

    2. Kamino Neko

      So…she does, in fact, need to stop being a superhero.

      Because ‘taking stupid risks’ is 50% of what her ‘superheroism’ is, the other 50% being looking for ‘bad’ people so she can beat people up without ‘being a bad person’.

  52. trlkly

    It doesn’t bother me that Sal thinks she has all the answers. It’s perfectly in character. It bothers me that Willis seems to be writing her as if she actually is right about all this. And she’s not. She’s seen two instances of Amazi-girl. She thinks this is normally how Amazi-girl acts.

    She never saw her find the Ding-dong bandit, where she was really nice. She didn’t see her save that kitten. She didn’t see her stop a rapist. She doesn’t know that Amazi-girl has never thrown the first punch.

    There has been exactly one incident where she put other people at risk. One. And, yes, that’s one too many. And that needs to be stopped. But that doesn’t mean that Danny needs to try to stop Amber from being Amazi-girl. It means that Danny needs to try to help her see when she’s being destructive.

    Sal has insight. But she is not 100% right, and I don’t understand why so many people are acting like she is. That Danny is just stupid, and doesn’t have a point as well.

    Is it just that hatred for Danny? Or do you really not see the difference between stopping Amber’s more dangerous impulses and stopping her from being Amazi-girl?

    1. Liz

      I mean…

      I’d argue that over the course of the comic, Amazigirl has become more dangerous for Amber. Especially since her father arrived on campus.

      Amazigirl never found that rapist, did she? Joyce called her out for that. And she shouldn’t be expected to find him, she’s just a kid.

      For each Ding Dong bandit and saved kitten, there’s been a moment where Amber puts on the mask to escape from being human and imperfect.

      Amazigirl has to be perfect, has to stop crime, has to save the day. Amazigirl has to be brave even if that leads to her disregarding her personal safety. Amazigirl can’t be vulnerable or flawed. All of those things hurt Amber.

      Being a superhero is a great concept, but maybe…maybe Amazigirl needs to stop. For just a little while.

    2. Kamino Neko

      Sal is being written as if she’s right, because she fucking is.

      She is right in the real world, and she is right within the narrative of the comic.

      Vigilantism is not a good thing. Unless you’re in a superhero comic, which Amber is not. It is dangerous, to the vigilante, to the people they think they’re saving, to the bystanders when they step in, to the innocent people they invariably wrongly target, to the cops whose jobs they interfere with.

    3. Dave

      Rather than rewrite what I wrote higher up, I’m just going to leave Amazi-Girl’s own explanation as to why Amazi-Girl exists right here. It isn’t a healthy one.

      Also, Joyce and Sarah stopped the rapist. Amazi-Girl intervening allowed the rapist to escape.

    4. Petra

      Also, I think you’re being really cruel by saying ‘Sal is a common criminal who chose to act out for attention over her mommy issues while Amber is a great person who choose to be Amazi-girl to help people and not for any other reason like being able to beat the tar out of people she arbitrarily decides deserves it’, which, by the way, is explicitly what Amber/Amazi-girl has said in canon, and I’m not strawmanning what you said about Sal, those are all pulled from your comments.

      Then when people point this out, you go, ‘you’re so ableist’, but at the same time you think people shouldn’t be helping Amber get better if that involves her taking a break from Amazi-girl, because you won’t ‘put one girl’s mental health over everyone else’, which, by the way, is actually kind of ableist? Also ableist – you calling Sal’s mental health issues mommy issues and attention-seeking. She was attention seeking because she was NEGLECTED.

      Is Sal an angel? No! But neither is Amber. And in the here and now, Sal is actually doing a better job helping people than Amber is, but you can’t look past the fact she robbed a store at knife-point when she was literally 12 or 13.

      I could even expand this into how people of color are disproportionately put into situations that encourage crime, and then disproportionated arrested and charged for that crime, as police use their discretion to give white people warnings for things they arrest POC for. Once they’ve served their time, the fact that they were a criminal is used to discount what they say now, and sometimes even to prevent them from voting entirely. I won’t, because I don’t think that’s what you’re INTENDING, but it’s an interesting parallel.

      To clarify – Sal should absolutely have faced the criminal justice system for robbing a store at knifepoint. But she’s served her time.

      1. Petra

        Also, fuck it. Amber is JUST AS MUCH A CRIMINAL AS SAL IS. She just hasn’t been caught, whereas Sal served her time. Stop using ‘common criminal’ to degenerate Sal and lift up Amber.

        1. Dave

          I continue to wonder if Amber ever suffered any legal blowback for stabbing something through the hand who was already in police custody.

        2. Spencer

          Well for starters, Amber is much more of a criminal than Sal, who, really, doesn’t deserve to be labelled as a criminal anymore, because Amber breaks a lot of laws every night, while Sal committed a crime when she was a child and paid for it.

          I do think, though, that a lot of Amber’s activities have been filtered through superhero fantasy. You know, nobody’s gonna get mad at her for kicking the shit out of Beef and his bros because they were ganging up on Danny, or stopping that one creeper dude and that guy who was about to smash a car window and the myriad of purse snatchers and the bike thief. I don’t think the intent behind seeing these moments, moments that are played for triumph and catharsis are meant to be indicative that Amber is a violent thug who needs to be taken down when she fights dudes who are as characterized as the mooks from Final Fight. They don’t really matter. They’re just rough approximations of jerks and it’s fun to see them get punched in the face. Heck, Willis himself has stated that Amazi-Girl’s inclusion in the series was because he likes drawing fun action sequences, and I feel that is filtered through, at least the earlier, Amazi-Girl stories.

          And I do think something important about how we’re meant to perceive Amber is that, whenever she does something outside of that superhero fantasy, when she picks a fight with an established character who exists beyond being Thug McNeerdowell, it never works in her favour. Her beating down her dad was played for horror a lot more than it was triumph, and she was an ineffectual clown against Sal and her friends, begging them to come back and fight her and getting a knee in the gut for her troubles.

    5. Mav

      On Sal I think she is right about it in that it needs to stop, but I think expecting Danny to do it far fetched. That being said, to be fair neither of them know how bad Amber is stuck in her head.

      Sal is coming from a place where she knows where this kind of thing can lead. That’s not hypocritical, she’s coming from that place because she’s been down that road and matured and come back from it. And also, Sal is not the cause of Amber’s problems, Blaine is, and I’m not interested in Amber scapegoating Sal for that anymore. I don’t care that since she in a bad place, she “needs to”. For me, Sal to Amber is more like a symbol of all the assholes (including Blaine) who have victimized and will victimize her, and in her mind she can’t be weak anymore.

      Related to that, there was a conversation about the racial component of this that I thought was interesting. Someone else here said that Sal probably sees Amazigirl as being partly racially motivated. I remember that strip, and the one a few days ago where Walky made the joke about her being racist, but I could easily see how a white person saying to a lanky, short, unassuming black kid (even though, yeah, he does look like Sal) that part of he perceives him as a threat. It’s great because Walky sort of gives her perspective. I think it’s really because of the PTSD, but the important thing is no one else knows that – perspective.

      When Amber/Amazigirl made the comment about Sal’s record following her to be good, it was this interesting sort of dynamic where Sal is afraid to be anywhere near Police when something bad happens for fear of just being targeted, Amazigirl also can’t be near them because she’d also be caught, even if she doesn’t know it then, she’s kind of in the same situation lol. Amber can run circles around the PD all day if she wanted to. i remember being in a food establishment during the visit of an important public figure. There are cops flooding the mostly POC neighborhood (as in, lining the streets, standing on corners), at least 10-12 in the place I am eating in. At some point during our amicable stranger conversation, the Caucasian woman next to me says she’s never felt so safe in her life! That was her perception, but mine is different.

      The thing that bothers me the most is that Sal, who actually went down (however it went down) for her crime (with a knife wound in her hand, no less) is still being seen as a delinquent and a criminal. Let’s be clear here, she did her time and is no longer a delinquent. That is literally how the justice system works. You do the crime, you do the time, then you gtfo and never catch a reason to come back to the jail or they’ll put you under it. it bothers the crap out of me, but it also highlights the racial component because for someone like Sal to be the voice of reason, that’s “surprising” but Amber/Amazigirl’s dangerous exploits are supposed to be awesome and essential for society to function, somehow. it’s automatically believable and necessary, she must have a reason to do all the things Sal describes here (which she does have reasons, but that doesn’t make it appropriate or right), but somehow Sal being a liscenced motorcyclist and using that license, drinking just like everyone else on that campus does, is just as dangerous. She is threatening simply for being herself. One day for Sal has marked her life, while Amber/Amazigirl has people (as in characters in the story) encourage her and applaud her for her own reckless behavior.

  53. Guairdean

    Sal has a wonderfully simplistic view of Amazi-Girl. Sal thinks of Amazi-Girl as something that Amber (even though she doesn’t know its Amber specifically) does willingly. The persona change isn’t a simple choice, it’s a powerful compulsion. The PTSD flashbacks show the strssor, Amazi-Girl is the OCD like compulsion that now drives Amber. In Amber’s mind it’s: “Amber cannot fight, she is weak. Amazi-Girl cannot fail, she cannot be weak.”

    1. Dave

      Something like that can be treated, though. Coped with. At bare minimum, it shouldn’t be supported by outside forces. Having people telling you that a negative compulsion is 100% peachy keen is enabling, in much the same way that Billie and Ruth enable each other’s use of alcohol to drown out depression.

      Nowhere in this strip does Sal make an assumption as to why Amazi-Girl does what she does. She only notes that Danny is enabling self-destructive behavior. Which he is.

      1. Spencer

        Yeah, Danny absolutely means well by Amber and wants the best for her, but he is encouraging her superhero fantasy, and he really needed to hear this.

        Hopefully this means he’ll start working on some constructive means of support.

      2. Guairdean

        Yes, it’s all treatable, but not by an untrained college student and not if she doesn’t want the help. PTSD sufferers after WW2 faced that type of help. “What’s wrong with you? It’s in the past, get over it.” led to a generation of alcoholic veterans. “Enabling” is just a buzzword. There are those too blind, and in some cases so malicious, that they fail to help. But to label a loved one as an “enabler” by telling them that one more meeting, one more prayer session, or one more “tough love” intervention would have cured the sufferer is beyond irresponsible. It falls under the category of malicious. A good friend lost two sons to drugs. His wife still blames him because she’s positive that one more al-anon meeting would have cured them. She still blames herself for her prayer’s failure.

        1. Spencer

          Danny enables Amber by treating her superhero fantasy construct as cool and awesome. He’s otherwise been helpful and supportive to her, and now that he’s gotten a clearer view of the picture, coupled with his own experiences with Amber, he can start helping her through her biggest problem. It won’t really come down to him, of course, but he can still support her.

          Like, I do agree with you that “enabling” is used a lot to pass the buck, but it’s true in Danny’s case. It doesn’t make the whole thing his fault, though.

        2. Sam

          Danny *is* an enabler.

          He isn’t someone who is unaware of all the risks and he isn’t someone who has tried to get her to stop and failed even after multiple attempts. And absolutely no one expects him to be able to ‘cure’ her.

          He is an enabler because he *knows* the risks and has encouraged and supported her as a superhero which allows her to *continue* to be Amazi-Girl which is self-destructive for her.

    2. DarkoNeko

      The bottom point, that Amber almost killed herself on that car when trying to save Becky, is still true, tho.

      1. Charles Phipps

        Yeah and if not, Becky would have never been seen again. Amber knows the risks, even if Danny won’t accept them.

        1. Spencer

          Which Sal acknowledges. She saved Becky, and she’s grateful. So’s Dina. So’s Becky. So’s Joyce.

          It’s just, hey, she absolutely would have died if not for Sal’s intervention.

        2. FennelFox

          Actually, law enforcement would almost certainly have eventually caught up with Becky and her dad, at Becky’s house if not on the road.

        3. thejeff

          Assuming he went home.
          And the chances are good that would have ended in a murder-suicide or at least Ross dying in a hail of bullets, which Becky seemed pretty set on trying to avoid.
          Who knows though, maybe Ross would have reacted more sanely to the police than when he climbed out of the car he was driving to shoot Amazi-Girl. We all know that the cops fix everything and are so good at de-escalating crisis situations.

  54. Mav

    I don’t usually comment, but I’m sorry, I’m really not on the Amazigirl train and haven’t been for a while. I like Sal a lot as a character, and I’m not really sure why she is getting so much hate here.

    Amazigirl’s behaviour has escalated a lot through the course of the comic. Sal is right in that she could eventually cause damage to herself and collateral damage to other people if she doesn’t stop or at least learn not to, as others have said, de-escalate her the situations she’s chosen to take on.

    As for Amber, I think she needs real psychological help, that being the Amazigirl persona we’ve seen is actually making worse, not making her feel better. It’s like being on a drug, it’s short term good feeling, but in the long term it kills you inside and shortens your life expectancy. Also, her behavior is dangerous to me because it makes it clear to me that she doesn’t care for her physical integrity. On one hand, it can be seen as heroic, on the other hand, I wonder if she goes out every time she puts the mask on and actually wonders what might happen to her. For a cop, or a firefighter, that is normal. For a regular person like Amber, it’s not normal. See her discussion with Walky before. One of her problems now, to me is about the fact that she has simply unrealistic expectations of herself, and simply CAN’T see herself as regular old Amber, because regular old Amber having completely normal reactions to repeated abuse at the hands of her father is unacceptable. i’m not even sure she knows that her PTSD/anxiety/agitation – even DID (is what it’s called?) are normal reactions, because she hasn’t seen a therapist yet, and no one around her now is licensed.

    i hope she gets the help she needs, because here’s my thing – thinking that because she has been victimized (largely by her Dad, then the straw that broke the camel’s back is Sal) -someone beat her, so now she has to go beat someone else up, is not only unhealthy, it’s pretty much the same reasoning with different intentions. Hell, as another commenter aptly pointed out, she jumped up and stabbed Sal because her dad pretty much accused her for what was probably the thousandth time of being soft (and she and Ethan had just been victimized) and she lost it.

    Amber has yet to realize she is a normal person having normal reactions (psychological) to trauma, not Amazigirl. Amazigirl is a vigilante, and as a person of color, I have a million reservations with flawed people running around doling out their brand of justice (which honestly mostly comes from an egotistical place- here, Amber is trying to help, sure, but mostly she is preserving herself, her persona, the only part of herself she can actually stand. From my perspective, that’s like 90% of it to me. There are other ways to help: be a firefighter, be a cop, become a social worker/inspector and stamp out as many Blaines as you can. I’m rooting for Amber, but I’m not rooting for Amazigirl. She needs to cope, yeah, but not this way.

    1. FennelFox

      I agree with you completely. I didn’t mind AmaziGirl when she was taking away vandalized signs and cleaning them, but she’s getting really disturbing and out of control with actually no regard for the people around her; she saved Becky, great – but is she worried about making restitution for the windshield she broke and the tires of any bystanders she popped with her caltrops? Those are really expensive!

      I think the very best thing that Ethan and Danny could do for her would be talking her into speaking to a mental health professional before she gets herself or somebody else killed. And if she refuses, honestly I think it’s getting to the point where someone might have to report her to the authorities.

      1. Mav

        Yep. I hope it doesn’t get that far. It’s so tough because she sees herself as not okay as in “I’m completely damaged goods, I’m too ashamed to say anything” rather than thinking of herself like “I’m not okay, and my life doesn’t need to be this hard. Who can I reach out too?”. I don’t know about most people, but even admitting to yourself that you have a problem that is out of control is often the first step and the hardest part. I agree that she needs that talk, it’s precarious because (with support and a great therapist of course) only she can do that work of inner healing herself.

  55. Just Me

    I might be one of the few people who think that Sal is only going to make things worse for Amber, that’s she’s not helping.

    Probably one of the few who see’s Sal’s words, not caring but simply assuaging her own guilt. Or dumping on someone else’s shoulders so that she can walk away and go back to her life without a second thought.

    Maybe Sal does mean well, but talking down to Danny like he’s an idiot, instead of discussing it with him on equal terms bothers me as well.

    Placing the responsibility on Danny’s shoulders instead of offering to help is another issue I am bothered with.

    I just don’t like Sal’s attitude. She might be trying to come across all caring, but she sure as heck is not all that sympathetic.

    1. Spencer

      Sal is telling this to Danny because she knows that he cares about her, and she knows that doing dumb violent shit to prove a point is a bad thing.

      Like, they did discuss it. Danny talked about how he’s proud of her for “fighting”, because she has all this bullshit to deal with, and Sal just shuts him down point blank; she was going to die. There’s nothing else to say, and Danny knows it. That’s why he’s shutting up and starting to cry. Because he realizes that he’s not helping.

      I think Sal feels involved now too, because she’s seen Amazi-Girl at her best and her worst, and otherwise that’s something only Danny has really seen in any capacity, but otherwise she really doesn’t need to make an effort for someone who wanted to kick the shit out of her. She told the person closest to her that she’s in trouble. That’s all she really needs to do right now.

  56. Charles Phipps

    Well, Amber knows the risks and accepts them. Danny, sadly, thinks of this as a game.

    1. FennelFox

      The big problem is the one that Sal just pointed out and has pointed out before – AmaziGirl is putting a lot of other people at risk.

  57. KPSquall

    Dang, I thought Sal couldn’t be more awesome as a character. Way to prove me wrong! 😀

  58. Heather

    All these people hating on Sal make me roll my eyes. Honestly her only true ‘hateable’ moment was probably the whole Malaya saga in the entirety of the comic and she was called out on that pretty damn quickly anyway when she went too far and then backed off when she realised Marcies feelings (it still wasn’t perfect in the end to me but its really only my beef with her). Here she exhibits real concern for AG, hell under the circumstances Sal is practically trying to obtain sainthood (guess she really did go to catholic school) given the fact AG could easily come across to her as this little racist white girl on a power trip who likes to play vigilante. And she’s /still/ concerned for AG herself. And other people. She hasn’t even brung up AG’s antagonism yet- and even if she does in the future/the next strip it is not her first and most upfront concern she brings up or the first thing on her mind.

    Is she perfectly right? Not really. It’s a bad idea for it all to fall on Danny’s shoulders because he’s just a kid by himself for one thing. And Ethan support alone isn’t enough for Danny to deal with it. But Sal… she’s being more than a decent person to AG- more than decent actually.

    The only issue I could say is that she’s putting a bit much on Dan. Though I think the ‘enabling’ is more him saying how ‘amazing’ it is really at the very least.

    Sal at the very least suspects emotional issues. The need to prove herself.

    Like its pretty clear Amber has self esteem issues by the bucket load- AG is where she gets pretty much all her praise from (hell even in computing class where she greatly excels she got slammed down for ‘showing off’ which can’t even remotely help in this area considering) she even gets most of Danny’s praise (most likely), with regards AG and those actions rather than much of anything as ‘ordinary Amber’.

    Danny tries he really does, but if all the praise is for AG and her actions well…

    (Then again would Amber ever accept major praise for her ordinary actions?)

    AG needs different coping mechanisms. She needs praise in her regular life and the ability to accept such praise. This is all easier said than done and shouldn’t fall to one person. But Sal is right that something has to be done and things can’t carry on like this.

    1. Spencer

      I don’t think Sal is dumping all the responsibility on Danny, more that she’s making him aware of what almost happened to her, and disabusing him of his notion that dating Amazi-Girl is cool and awesome.

      Danny definitely was into the romantic fantasy of dating a badass superhero, but since then he’s really fallen for Amber and he’s more invested in her than he is the fantasy. Even during Freshman Family Weekend, where he was put on the spot to complement his fake girlfriend, he basically launched into a soliloquy about how she’s the most wonderful person in his life and he meant every word of it, he ditched Sal when he thought she was Amazi-Girl to chase after Amber when she was in distress, and since then he’s considered himself as dating Amber, with his “official” relationship with Amazi-Girl being a cute in-joke between the two, that he never realized actually was far more serious on Amber’s end.

      What Sal told Danny here is something he needed to hear, because he has encouraged Amber’s harmful actions without realizing it, and now he can make an effort to support her in a way she actually needs.

  59. HoneyThistle

    Ouchies. Ya know, I like Mal. She’s made enough mistakes to know there’s always more out there to make. Sometimes they look like little choices, and it’s only after you’ve traveled beyond them that they’re revealed to be ugly, poop-filled potholes, covering you in dents, bruises and manure.
    Other times they’re obvious; complete with a neon billboard, cheerfully leading you down a bigass runway that ends in an abrupt drop off the edge of Niagra freaking Falls.
    And after you’ve biffed, you gotta scrape yourself off of the street and keep going, hoping you’ve learned something from the experience.
    Mal knows this. Sure, she’s gruff, and flawed, and kind of bitter, but she knows Mistakes, and is doing her best to make sure she, and those she cares about, learns from them.
    Mal’s good people.

  60. Charles Phipps

    It’s going to be tough for Danny to accept it but Amber ISN’T REAL. She’s just a construct created by Amazi-Girl to deal with her stress and the expectations of her father to be compliant, soft, weak, and nerdy. You have to learn you’re in love with a shadow. Either love Amazi-Girl or accept you don’t love a real person at all.

    1. Lord Stoneheart

      Uh what?

      I don’t think the argument works both ways like that.

      1. Spencer

        “The voice kept calling me Amber. In my mind, that’s not what I call myself.”

        1. Lord Stoneheart

          Oh. It’s a reference I’m not catching. My bad.

        2. Spencer

          Heck if I know. I’m just not gonna skip an opportunity to reference Batman Beyond.

          Anyway, I’m pretty sure Charles’ theory isn’t actually the case, as I do think the self confident badass is something Amber forces using her alternate identity, and learning to own Amazi-Girl’s positive traits as Amber can prove vital in here healing process.

  61. Shadow12000

    Honestly, I’d say “Why not? Just be her sidekick. Isn’t that more of a thrill than leaning against walls all day?”

    Then I remembered instead of getting the job, she might just get stabbed.

  62. Jhon

    (meta) If Amber gets the help she needs, Willis will have to develop another character to do fun action scenes. (/meta)

    1. Spencer

      I feel that, at this point, Amber can’t keep being Amazi-Girl and still give us exciting action sequences, because so much time has been devoted to how being Amazi-Girl is such a fundamentally painful thing for Amber to do that it kind of sucks the fun of out of the biff pow superhero fun.

      Amazi-Girl telling Duncan to put his beer away gets a lot less whimsy if you know she only does it to keep her violent rages in check and is now developing a separate identity to deal with a lifetime of abuse.

  63. Formerly Glenn

    These are interesting strips, given how Roomies! started out.

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