I too would like to think Carla has designed some elaborate (yet highly portable) Rube Goldberg machine to deal with this contingency. Ideally the end result would be involve a cream pie to the face of everyone involved in the fight.
Shen Hibiki
AND Carla. Just so she doesn’t stop being the center of attention.
I’m actually hoping they don’t get stopped. I’m more worried Ethan will get the balls to stop them, but I hope he’ll have the presence of mind to realize this will heal them more than it’ll hurt them, because it’ll let them see how petty this thing is. Mostly it’ll let Amber see how petty it is.
thejeff
It’ll help Amber realize how much of an evil monster she is, which is not at all what she needs.
thereaverofdarkness
But she’s not an evil monster. She thinks she’s broken over a fairly minor event that happened years ago–one which has been dwarfed by many events she’s encountered since then. I think her real trauma is her father and, while she is more or less aware of this, I feel like she hasn’t fully embraced the fact that he truly is the source of it. Him, his attitude, his behavior, and not his genetics. She doesn’t have the monster within, she has the monster without, and who she really needs to take down is Blaine.
thejeff
Of course she’s not an evil monster. But she thinks she is.
Fighting Sal will either be a righteous triumph over evil, redeeming her previous failure to protect Ethan, which will just lock her further into her mythology. (Not likely to happen. Ethan won’t play along.)
Or it’ll be her becoming the monster attacking the innocent, again reinforcing another part.
There’s no healing in a fight.
Seriously. “Fist to Fist?” I know thinking is a foreign concept to Sal, but you think of today of all days, no matter what, she would make an effort to try not to default to being a neanderthal.
And nobody bring up any ‘spur of the moment’ crap. We’ve been seeing that she’s been drilling in her head to deescalate things no matter what today. If her default is this bad even on such a day, maybe March should witness this.
I don’t know, I’m under the impression that the one who escalated things here is Amber, not Sal. Like, sure, Sal said those words and that’s what triggered this fight but Amber dropped into a fighting stance almost immediately (before Sal even said anything), acting like Sal was going to hurt Ethan. In any case, I wouldn’t call either of these girls unthinking neanderthals… That’s kind of harsh.
It’s not clear which first moved from posturing to actually throwing a punch, but Sal’s the first one to move from airing of grievances to something that could credibly be considered a threat, and neither of them was making a move to deescalate before that.
Deepbluediver
In this case I think it takes two to escalate- they’ve both got some serious baggage and we’d only be arguing over who’s garbage-fire is worse.
Lenks
I think it’s really easy to criticize how people with trauma react to triggers but brains and psyches are weird things that we might not ever fully understand the mechanics of and they only get weirder when you go through the kind of shit these two have been through. Sal was hoping to make amends with a person she hurt, she wasn’t planning on running into the girl who skewered her hand and that sort of trigger can throw caution and plans to the wind. People with mental illness or who are otherwise mentally unwell don’t PLAN to have episodes, its the whole point of a trigger.
I’d also be really careful about suggesting that a black person (especially one with derogatory racial stereotypes at the forefront of her story) is incapable of thought and primitive. It’s… not the best thing to imply, whether intentional or not.
There’s a buncha people who could wander in and try to break this up:
Ethan obviously, he’s right there.
Walky
Joyce wouldn’t want her friends to be fighting with each other
Ditto for Dorothy – she wouldn’t want it to distract from study time either. xD
Joe – well, he might be more upset that two girls are having a fight that he wasn’t there to see (and is not about him). xD
Danny – he’d try to protect his ex-girlfriend, but let’s face it, he’d just go and Danny it all up instead. xDDD
Ethan just picks them both up by their collars and holds them at arm’s length away from each other. As they just keep punching the air and shouting “Lemme at ’em! Lemme at ’em!”
“Dammit, hostage, how are yer so strong?” “WHO DO YOU THINK TRAINED AMAZI-GIRL? Also, Mike comes at me with a baseball bat most mornings. …also i carry several crates of transformers everywhere i go…”
He’s gonna step right in!….Literally, and get two fists, one for each side of his face.
lightsabermario
And then, when the smoke clears, the sheer power of their attacks will have somehow turned Ethan to stone. Witnessing what their destructive battling has done, they will be moved to tears and remorse. Then, all of their tears will magically come together and revive Ethan to life, and everyone will celebrate and learn valuable lessons (until Amber decides to wipe everyone’s memories).
Kris
Is this the ending to the first Pokemon movie?…It is isn’t it?
cookie1995
Yes it is
TheHorseCouncil
Vigilantes aren’t supposed to fight…. not like this.
TheHorseCouncil
Said nurse Joy-ce
thejeff
But super-heroes are.
Fight each other, then team up to beat the real bad guy. How many comics follow that plot?
Nah Sal will battle valiantly for 10 strips but Amber will have the clear advantage ultimately leading to her victory. Afterwards Danny will show up and fight to stop Amber from killing Sal leading Amber to announce that she’s only been using 15% of her full power. At this point Danny will reveal his hat weighs 100 pounds…
Unless she’s developed a third persona, instead of merely further dissociation of the two that already existed, it is Amber. She specifically denies being Amazi-girl, and has blush stickers. And Amber is the only one tagged, but it’s possible the theoretical third persona might ALSO go by Amber.
Questionor
Seems to be a third entity, red background amber.
Needfuldoer
“Other Amber”, we have to be consistent when multiple characters have the same name.
thejeff
Remember that Amber thinks she’s a monster
Alanari
It’s just what people with untreated ptsd caused by a single incident feel. This moment defined everything, overshadowed everything, made you the way you are. Molded you. And made everything as worse as it could possibly get. Made you into something less than a human, a broken creature who will break everything you touch.
Or so you feel until you learn that all this can be overcome. But amber hasn’t learned that yet.
To be fair, Amber isn’t saying that Sal made her, she’s saying she’s the ‘thing’ that was made that night at the gas station, that’s the event that she connects all of her troubles with.
To be fair, in this instance she is the “Thing” that her father made her into. When he chastised Amber at the gas station during Sal’s arrest, all that pent up rage, frustration and the desire to lash out became the catalyst for Amber’s schism. Sal was not responsible for this at all. She was just an outlet, not the causation. Amber has been under the influence of her father for so long that she has unfortunately lost the ability to see the forest from the trees. And Blaine (the abusive father) had basically written his daughter off (The pacifist prodigy) for years. So when he lashed out at her, he was probably thinking this would just wind up as another day at the office. He probably didn’t expect her to snap the way she did. Then again even after the incident, all he did was provoke Amber. Misery does love company after all.
Chris (the other one)
This, right here, is what I think as well. Well done synopsis. ‘Amber’ keeps blaming Sal, when Sal didn’t make her, Blaine did.
Just because this personality goes by her legal name doesn’t mean she’s the “original”, that there was an oroginal single personality, or that if there was it’s still effectively in there at all…
Kris
Also “the thing created that night in a gas station convenience store” is a very cumbersome tag.
You know, in fairness – she never says Sal made her, just that that night in the convenience store did. Sal may have been the catalyst, but it was her bongo father that actually provoked it.
362 thoughts on “Speaking terms”
Ana Chronistic
more like fist to face, face to fist tho?
Aeron
Cheek to cheek.
chris2315
Face to foot style! How you like it?
hotsauce
Pay him no mind. We deliberately trained him badly. As a joke.
FacelessDeviant
I bleed, making me the victor!
Undrave
Fist to FAAAAAAAAAACE!
Neeks
Femurs to face. You know, mix it up a little.
Walky_Talky
A$$ to mouth. You know. Mix it up a little.
Ana Chronistic
What goes from one to the other there is pretty mixed up already
Unusually Angry Hippie
….How are they suddenly outside?
Yumi
m8, when did you think they were inside?
Unusually Angry Hippie
Whoops, my bad,they were in front of the building, the angle just flipped for drama trees.
Yumi
These trees came here to see a fight.
Cheshrin
So uh…
Odds on Walky stumbling in on all this?
tim gueguen
I’m hoping Carla appears, and stops their fight with some device of her own design.
Darkoneko
A bucket of water would do
Tawdry Quirks
I too would like to think Carla has designed some elaborate (yet highly portable) Rube Goldberg machine to deal with this contingency. Ideally the end result would be involve a cream pie to the face of everyone involved in the fight.
Shen Hibiki
AND Carla. Just so she doesn’t stop being the center of attention.
thereaverofdarkness
I’m actually hoping they don’t get stopped. I’m more worried Ethan will get the balls to stop them, but I hope he’ll have the presence of mind to realize this will heal them more than it’ll hurt them, because it’ll let them see how petty this thing is. Mostly it’ll let Amber see how petty it is.
thejeff
It’ll help Amber realize how much of an evil monster she is, which is not at all what she needs.
thereaverofdarkness
But she’s not an evil monster. She thinks she’s broken over a fairly minor event that happened years ago–one which has been dwarfed by many events she’s encountered since then. I think her real trauma is her father and, while she is more or less aware of this, I feel like she hasn’t fully embraced the fact that he truly is the source of it. Him, his attitude, his behavior, and not his genetics. She doesn’t have the monster within, she has the monster without, and who she really needs to take down is Blaine.
thejeff
Of course she’s not an evil monster. But she thinks she is.
Fighting Sal will either be a righteous triumph over evil, redeeming her previous failure to protect Ethan, which will just lock her further into her mythology. (Not likely to happen. Ethan won’t play along.)
Or it’ll be her becoming the monster attacking the innocent, again reinforcing another part.
There’s no healing in a fight.
Talking to Sal on the other hand …
Chronos
Betting on Marcy, honestly.
Cronomatt
Seriously. “Fist to Fist?” I know thinking is a foreign concept to Sal, but you think of today of all days, no matter what, she would make an effort to try not to default to being a neanderthal.
And nobody bring up any ‘spur of the moment’ crap. We’ve been seeing that she’s been drilling in her head to deescalate things no matter what today. If her default is this bad even on such a day, maybe March should witness this.
Deadjolras
I don’t know, I’m under the impression that the one who escalated things here is Amber, not Sal. Like, sure, Sal said those words and that’s what triggered this fight but Amber dropped into a fighting stance almost immediately (before Sal even said anything), acting like Sal was going to hurt Ethan. In any case, I wouldn’t call either of these girls unthinking neanderthals… That’s kind of harsh.
Kamino Neko
It’s not clear which first moved from posturing to actually throwing a punch, but Sal’s the first one to move from airing of grievances to something that could credibly be considered a threat, and neither of them was making a move to deescalate before that.
Deepbluediver
In this case I think it takes two to escalate- they’ve both got some serious baggage and we’d only be arguing over who’s garbage-fire is worse.
Lenks
I think it’s really easy to criticize how people with trauma react to triggers but brains and psyches are weird things that we might not ever fully understand the mechanics of and they only get weirder when you go through the kind of shit these two have been through. Sal was hoping to make amends with a person she hurt, she wasn’t planning on running into the girl who skewered her hand and that sort of trigger can throw caution and plans to the wind. People with mental illness or who are otherwise mentally unwell don’t PLAN to have episodes, its the whole point of a trigger.
I’d also be really careful about suggesting that a black person (especially one with derogatory racial stereotypes at the forefront of her story) is incapable of thought and primitive. It’s… not the best thing to imply, whether intentional or not.
Stellar
Yeah, I figure M+M stroll become as well.
Yet_One_More_Idiot
There’s a buncha people who could wander in and try to break this up:
Ethan obviously, he’s right there.
Walky
Joyce wouldn’t want her friends to be fighting with each other
Ditto for Dorothy – she wouldn’t want it to distract from study time either. xD
Joe – well, he might be more upset that two girls are having a fight that he wasn’t there to see (and is not about him). xD
Danny – he’d try to protect his ex-girlfriend, but let’s face it, he’d just go and Danny it all up instead. xDDD
Claire
Prediction: Amber will be victorious but Walky will stumble across his new gf having beaten up his sister and will not be happy about it.
AnvilPro
Ethan just picks them both up by their collars and holds them at arm’s length away from each other. As they just keep punching the air and shouting “Lemme at ’em! Lemme at ’em!”
Jay
I mean uh…he’s totally tall enough haha
Doctor_Who
It would be amazing if Ethan is secretly really good at dealing with violent fights because he’s pulled people apart brawling over toys before.
jeffepp
This needs to happen. Stat!
AshKetchup
I know Ethan is well-built, but I don’t think he’s physically prepared for this.
Reltzik
I don’t think he’s mentally prepared for this.
Keulen
I’m definitely hoping Ethan does something like that.
Jerry
I was scrolling down just to see if anyone else was thinking the same thing.
i’m not dissapointed! ^^
Lumus
“Dammit, hostage, how are yer so strong?” “WHO DO YOU THINK TRAINED AMAZI-GIRL? Also, Mike comes at me with a baseball bat most mornings. …also i carry several crates of transformers everywhere i go…”
Deanatay
… All right, but if Amber starts yelling, “I’mma SPLAT ‘er! SPLAT ‘er!”, I’m leaving.
purblebirb
Ready…
FIGHT!
Jay
Man. I wanna see this gone through but I KNOW Ethan is tots gonna step in
Kris
He’s gonna step right in!….Literally, and get two fists, one for each side of his face.
lightsabermario
And then, when the smoke clears, the sheer power of their attacks will have somehow turned Ethan to stone. Witnessing what their destructive battling has done, they will be moved to tears and remorse. Then, all of their tears will magically come together and revive Ethan to life, and everyone will celebrate and learn valuable lessons (until Amber decides to wipe everyone’s memories).
Kris
Is this the ending to the first Pokemon movie?…It is isn’t it?
cookie1995
Yes it is
TheHorseCouncil
Vigilantes aren’t supposed to fight…. not like this.
TheHorseCouncil
Said nurse Joy-ce
thejeff
But super-heroes are.
Fight each other, then team up to beat the real bad guy. How many comics follow that plot?
Some1
Nah Sal will battle valiantly for 10 strips but Amber will have the clear advantage ultimately leading to her victory. Afterwards Danny will show up and fight to stop Amber from killing Sal leading Amber to announce that she’s only been using 15% of her full power. At this point Danny will reveal his hat weighs 100 pounds…
fire_daws
Sal = Goku
Amber = Vegeta
Danny = Krillin
Kris
……Really Amber?! She didn’t make you. She barely makes friends.
MatthewTheLucky
This ain’t Amber either.
Kris
I’m not sure I understand? How is it not Amber?
Reltzik
Tags and cheek color say it’s Amber.
Kamino Neko
Unless she’s developed a third persona, instead of merely further dissociation of the two that already existed, it is Amber. She specifically denies being Amazi-girl, and has blush stickers. And Amber is the only one tagged, but it’s possible the theoretical third persona might ALSO go by Amber.
Questionor
Seems to be a third entity, red background amber.
Needfuldoer
“Other Amber”, we have to be consistent when multiple characters have the same name.
thejeff
Remember that Amber thinks she’s a monster
Alanari
It’s just what people with untreated ptsd caused by a single incident feel. This moment defined everything, overshadowed everything, made you the way you are. Molded you. And made everything as worse as it could possibly get. Made you into something less than a human, a broken creature who will break everything you touch.
Or so you feel until you learn that all this can be overcome. But amber hasn’t learned that yet.
Larkle
To be fair, Amber isn’t saying that Sal made her, she’s saying she’s the ‘thing’ that was made that night at the gas station, that’s the event that she connects all of her troubles with.
Darkoneko
TL;DR she think she’s Batman
Robert
To be fair, in this instance she is the “Thing” that her father made her into. When he chastised Amber at the gas station during Sal’s arrest, all that pent up rage, frustration and the desire to lash out became the catalyst for Amber’s schism. Sal was not responsible for this at all. She was just an outlet, not the causation. Amber has been under the influence of her father for so long that she has unfortunately lost the ability to see the forest from the trees. And Blaine (the abusive father) had basically written his daughter off (The pacifist prodigy) for years. So when he lashed out at her, he was probably thinking this would just wind up as another day at the office. He probably didn’t expect her to snap the way she did. Then again even after the incident, all he did was provoke Amber. Misery does love company after all.
Chris (the other one)
This, right here, is what I think as well. Well done synopsis. ‘Amber’ keeps blaming Sal, when Sal didn’t make her, Blaine did.
not someone else
Just because this personality goes by her legal name doesn’t mean she’s the “original”, that there was an oroginal single personality, or that if there was it’s still effectively in there at all…
Kris
Also “the thing created that night in a gas station convenience store” is a very cumbersome tag.
Stu
You know, in fairness – she never says Sal made her, just that that night in the convenience store did. Sal may have been the catalyst, but it was her bongo father that actually provoked it.
Stu
And wow, I need to read all the comments first, because that point was made in this very sub-thread already.
Danielle
please be a cut away tomorrow
shadowcell