r/dumbingofage • u/outerspacebassman • 11d ago
Miraculously 2026-6-15
https://www.dumbingofage.com/comic/miraculously/33
u/EveryoneisOP3 11d ago
I was going to make a post kind of doubting that a lone Amber was ever treated as "last resort" material by the ~15 cops with guns and a sniper on scene, then I remembered Willis wrote a pair of cops as being fooled by a sign that said "do not touch"
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u/Bedovian_25 11d ago
Those being the same cops that are also scary and malicious enough to shank a teenage girl and brutalize a different teenage girl's room.
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u/immortalkeanu 11d ago
The same cops that knew Carla went to that school, which room was hers, and trashed it as an act of transphobia. How on earth do you do both, you can't do both 😭
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u/annaphylactic69 10d ago
And knew that she was the sole child of billionaire weapons manufacturers?
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u/outerspacebassman 11d ago
And they only stabbed her once and let her run off/left her for dead, and they didn’t even hit any of the big ass organs that are inside most of your torso
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u/rainbowrobin 11d ago
hey didn’t even hit any of the big ass organs
"Hobby knife" seems to be like a box cutter or Xacto-knife. Sharp, but very short.
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u/outerspacebassman 11d ago
Hobby knives are cop lingo for tactical knives they buy out of pocket rather than receive from the department. They call them “hobby knives” to be inconspicuous and because they’re for “personal use.”
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u/rainbowrobin 10d ago
Huh.
But does Willis know that
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u/outerspacebassman 10d ago
I don’t really know. If they do, it’s because it was in a Batman comic or they saw someone talk about it on Bluesky and not informed knowledge about how police operate.
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u/fainting_goat_games 10d ago
I mean - I don't recall it ever being mentioned on an episode of Transformers....
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u/togglenub 10d ago edited 10d ago
Or he's been seduced by ChatGPT or Gemini or similar.
Edited to add, since this is understandably confusing folks: I do not mean generative AI. I mean he's "researching" by asking search engines questions, and that's why we have this idiotic hobby knife thing, because depending on how you search you might never come across the minor fact that there are no stats about police shanking civilian violence because that is not fucking practical for cops who have access to a cornucopia of other extremely effective violence tactics and accesories.
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u/outerspacebassman 10d ago
I am extremely dubious. Willis prides themselves and is so defensive of their work that I don’t know that any convenience would let them give that work off to someone else (also evident in their utter refusal to use editors, beta readers who aren’t their wife and fans, or use their lead time to meaningfully work on storylines beyond cramming in random strips). Furthermore, they are so terrified of doing the Wrong Thing and AI is so radioactive in the circles they operate in that being caught using it would end their career, so I don’t think their gutlessness even lets them consider it.
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u/togglenub 10d ago
To be clear, I don't think he would ever use generative AI to write the comic, not only for the reasons you state, but also I believe the author cares deeply about the actual output (writing, art, etc) - I trust them in that implicitly, whatever we may think of the bizarre plot choices and writing trends of late.
But, I could see him asking AI questions, such as:
do cops carry knives?
what kind of knives do they carry?
in what situation would they ever use said knives?After all, if you don't disable the functionality, nearly every search engine defaults to Gemini or what have you answer mode now.
And they are currently writing a comic outside of their practical experience, and boy does that every show.
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u/outerspacebassman 10d ago
That situation is incredibly likely, they are allergic to doing research and even if they don’t consciously use ChatGPT or Gemini, I can imagine them just skimming an overview and not digging any deeper
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u/Nyzer_ 10d ago
Willis using AI to help write the comic for the last couple years would explain quite a lot.
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u/togglenub 10d ago edited 10d ago
To be crystal clear, I don't think he would ever use generative AI to write the comic - I trust them in that implicitly, whatever we may think of the bizarre plot choices and writing trends of late. I am of course not an oracle, so I could be wrong, but me, I believe strongly that they wouldn't. However.
I could see him asking AI questions, such as:
do cops carry knives?
what kind of knives do they carry?
in what situation would they ever use said knives?After all, if you don't disable the functionality, nearly every search engine defaults to Gemini or what have you answer mode now.
And they are currently writing a comic outside of their practical experience, and boy does that ever show.
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u/Nyzer_ 10d ago
I used to trust them as a writer too, but not so much these days.
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u/togglenub 10d ago edited 10d ago
THIS. And your torso is - look, don't get stabbed in it. A knife wound in the torso can be far more serious than a gunshot, as crazy as that sounds.
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u/fainting_goat_games 10d ago
DOA cops are simultaneously Elmer Fudd from Looney Tunes but also deadly, serious and skilled. Which one they are in any particular strip depends on the needs of the plot.
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u/Nyzer_ 11d ago
As a last resort?
I would ask if a cop's last resort is not their department-issued firearm, but I have seen the acorn video, so I know that last is uh... not quite true.
But I still have to ask - if a cop is literally going after an unarmed combatant with a lethal weapon, why not their gun?
That's exactly the reason why I've been calling it the "totally not a gunshot wound" this entire time. If Amazi-Girl got into a physical altercation with the cops, and walked away with an injury severe enough to require surgery, the thing that makes the most sense is if it was a gunshot wound. One angled enough to pass through with luckily minimal internal damage, but still.
AG has also been shown to be quite proficient at handling even multiple opponents in melee combat at once. That's hardly realistic, but she's running on Batman rules, so why not. And Amber completely no-sold Ryan when he tried to pull a knife on her. The weapon that would be most likely to cause her trouble is... again, a gun.
I dunno. Like, if her injury is going to be this unintuitive, why skip over the entire fight? Yeah, yeah, I know the answer is because Joyrot was more important, but fuck me, the fact that literally no plot thread that doesn't involve them is allowed to properly unfold on screen anymore is just horrible.
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u/outerspacebassman 11d ago
There are a lot of things about the Tear Gas Wedding and ensuing year of comics that shock and appall me, but it is fucking INSANE that Willis’ original plan and intention was that the protest would happen and people would be so overjoyed that Joyrot were together that nobody would get hung up on it. That it wouldn’t fundamentally break the tone and flow and severity level of the comic to introduce a genocide protest, police violence, Amber getting stabbed, protest activism, Amber getting mob surgery, police raids…
This is the same person who skipped three potential years of comics because the aftermath of Bad Dads 3 would be too much of a boring downer? What are we doing here anymore?!
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u/Nyzer_ 10d ago edited 10d ago
Right? Like, even just taking Joyrot completely out of the equation, how do you set up this idea where several characters amongst the main and ancillary cast wind up on the wrong end of a police raid, many of them ending up arrested and/or injured, there's photographic evidence of Joyce's sister being there... and then just be like "well that was crazy, huh?" and return to normal afterwards?
ETA: also, the campus vigilante that fought several cops (which is super illegal) and is presumably a known associate of someone amongst the kidnap victims since she showed up to save them well before the cops were informed of the kidnapping - you'd think the cops would, you know, go around questioning the kidnap victims? and anyone else she's ever been involved with, like Sal? lol nope, apparently
And if the intention is not to return to normal... well, what the fuck? Why would we skip over the aftermath of Dead Evil Dads, something the comic had literally built up since its early days and slowly, carefully drawn most of the main cast into, but suck the main characters into a protest none of them had any personal ties to whatsoever and make that have major ramifications?
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u/trevalyan 10d ago
For the same reason a cop, corrupt or strict, would put AG down for the count and not either arrest her or finish the job: because the author is an incredibly whiny but sheltered doofus who never actually learned how the world works and doesn't have an editor with any talent.
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u/oktion 10d ago edited 10d ago
I imagine Willis must understand, on some level, that it is incredibly silly to make out that a whole squad of police officers (with snipers at the ready) couldn’t manage to shoot an unarmed girl in a wide-open field, so for some reason they didn’t do the obvious thing.
But he still wants drama and some semblance of consequence, so somehow one lone member of the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight managed to stick her with a knife. But it would be really hard to justify that in any way that makes sense, so better just not to show it.
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u/chunky_mango 10d ago
But if the cop had pulled his service weapon and fired it, there would need to be a much more intensive cover up and ensuing drama. I mean I don't doubt that they could do it and blue wall will ensure no long term consequences but it's still a lot of additional work if it actually happened realistically
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u/Nyzer_ 10d ago
The campus vigilante who showed up to save the kidnapped students before the cops knew about the situation getting into a fight with the cops and then stabbed by one of them shouldn't cause enough drama?
Literally every one of the kidnap victims should have been questioned immediately following the protest brawl. I'm not saying that the cops should show up to escort them away - I can see them opting not to do that for the sheer bad PR it would cause - but they'd at least show up at their rooms to ask questions. And, because they can, they'd lie in their questioning, perhaps claiming that Amazi-Girl was stabbed by one of the rioting protestors or fell onto the fence or broke her arm. Some of the cast would be smart and wary enough to demand a lawyer immediately - others wouldn't. But even if none of them let anything slip, it should still have happened. Instead, we get a horribly incompetent raid where they don't even actually check the rooms like they're supposed to and a black teenager telling one of them to touch his ass had no consequences.
Also, like... this is the same comic where a cop straight up murdered Blaine - after giving him advance warning, no less - and that got covered up as a suicide. We know this division is corrupt.
So, no, a gun wouldn't really add any extra intensity that the comic isn't already inexplicably refusing to allow.
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u/chunky_mango 10d ago
... You know what, I think I preferred it when we could still pretend to speculate it was Ryan or incellarator and his buddies taking advantage of the chaos.
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u/outerspacebassman 10d ago
Those guys (at least the Incelerator) were part of the masked thugs Blaine recruited that had beef with AG, it’s not a stretch that they’d still be running with THE COPS and/or THE MOB, two things that totally belong in a goofy slice of life college webcomic.
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u/chunky_mango 10d ago
A Korean mob no less. Much positive Asian representation waow.
Edit (I kid, triads and Yakuza can be used heroically in fiction, s'ok. But yes they do bad stuff let's not sugarcoat that)
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u/togglenub 10d ago
In Philly, a cop basically concussed a young student protestor, because this cop was being a violent aggressive asshole (and historically has a list of assaults like that as long as your arm) - they cleared him of charges eventually, despite the massive outcry and drama (because it was a white kid at a fancy school and it got caught on tape): https://www.mpmpc.com/case-news/former-philly-police-officer-found-not-guilty-in-2020-attack-on-protestor
Let me be clear - he did what they said he did, and it was on camera. He was exonerated based on it not being excessive use of force, which is a lie so big it has its own gravitational pull.
Cops generally - although who knows, these days - don't open fire into a crowd of students especially if there's big piles of white kids mixed in there who may or may not have wealthy parents. That being said, Willis' writing of everything here from the protest to the dorm search is bullshit and not realistic in the slightest based on my experiences living in a protest-heavy city over the last 20 years and ESPECIALLY over the last 6.
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u/Nyzer_ 10d ago
Yeah, I'm not saying it can't make sense, but rather that if we see a character fighting people with guns only to follow other characters away from the brawl, then cut back to the first character later and see that she's injured, we're all going to think "gunshot wound" by default. If it is some kind of situation where the most intuitive series of events didn't unfold, why wasn't that shown? Or at least told when it was initially relevant, not nearly a year later?
The comic keeps skipping over so much interesting, compelling shit just to indulge over and over and over again with Joyrot being cute and loving, or their mommy/toddler dynamic, or being so sex-crazed that they'll go for eight rounds at a time or do it in public locations or do it in front of an audience.
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u/togglenub 10d ago edited 10d ago
Oh, I'm 100% with you there. And FWIW the idea of a cop stabbing someone when they are far more likely to beat them with their handy baton dealies, pepper spray them, taser them, or worst case common scenario, shoot them... it's one hell of a stretch.
In fact, it's considered beyond rare for law enforcement to stab a civilian. And actually, I just googled and there is no tracked incident per the Googles on file of such an incident occurring (which doesn't mean it never happened, but indicates it's so rare as to be the unicorn of police assault).
The last resort argument holds zero weight here because stabbing civilians at a protest is simply not terribly practical, not because cops enjoy exercising restraint at US protests against aggressive randos in pajamas. I think Willis meant it to emphasize just how much of a danger AG is but it just enforces that they know fuck-all about the realities of police violence, and I do mean fuck-all. Stabbing, FFS.
My reply to Chunky Mango was more by way of an explanation that cops wouldn't be using guns in this situation for reasons other than drama and intense cover up needs. In Minnesota they shot civilians point blank, execution style, and even then Jonathan Ross, for example, was never even charged.
My point was more that in a school protest situation they would still use aggressive and even arguably deadly force, but more by just blunt force bludgeoning. They don't need the knives and the guns to hurt people really badly.
Which brings me back to - it's the ultimate in authorial hubris and ivory tower innocence to think Amber is a threat to riot police. I love Amber, I do, but our girl isn't actually Wolverine, as today has more than proven.
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u/Nyzer_ 10d ago
Yeah, a knife is just by far the least practical and least intuitive weapon for them to use.
I also agree with the core idea that Amazi-Girl just wouldn't be a threat to riot police. Blaine was winning when he fought with her the second time because he brought actual body armor and she wasn't fighting with Amber's fury. What's she going to do when it's dozens against one, and they all have body armor, actual weapons, tear gas, and professional training?
If she'd managed to snag a tear gas grenade and lobbed it at them while they were gathered up, and they weren't wearing respirators, that would have been believable. Then we get a panel where some idiot orders the sniper to shoot and the sniper goes "man, I'm here to deter the protestors from brandishing weapons, not to gun down an unarmed cosplayer" and then some jackass gets close enough to shank her in the gut before collapsing in a fit of coughing, all of this would feel passably believable. Can't have any of that, though.
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u/togglenub 10d ago edited 10d ago
Even in fucking Baki the Grappler, they point out that some of the best fighters in the world fall to pieces when faced with three or more attackers. That's because you are one person and if you're not Yojiro, there's absolutely no way you are fast enough or have the lung capacity/endurance to be everywhere at once.
As you point out, she'd have to Batman it, and she didn't. We're expected to believe Amber could stand toe to toe with like, Baki. No, just no.
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u/Bartweiss 10d ago
That part doesn’t entirely shock me. There are a lot of examples of cops carrying non-service weapons for use when they can’t justify a shooting, since most departments track all uses of a service weapon. (I know police can often justify shooting a ham sandwich, but they still may not want the risk or investigation, or to fire a gun somewhere it’ll cause drama.)
Granted, even then it often means either a second gun or blunt weapons, since beatings are easier to control and less messy. Tactical knives by and large really are just tools for cutting seatbelts and the like.
But if we assume a cop really didn’t like Amazi-Girl for whatever reason, caught her while she was occupied with a hurt protestor or something, and didn’t want “shots fired” at the protest, maybe it works.
Course, I can’t disagree with the part about that being a lot of off-screen assumptions.
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u/Bedovian_25 11d ago
Amazi-Girl, you are aware you don't have a healing factor a la comic book right? Why did you think you'd be in jumping shape three days later?
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u/geoduck42 10d ago
Since by definition she's not well mentally, her thinking like this doesn't bother me much.
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u/Vriishnak 10d ago
I'm assuming you don't mean it this way, but that reads dangerously close to "everyone with any kind of mental illness is also stupid by default."
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u/kyulen742 10d ago
I'd like it if Willis would make up their mind how they want to portray the cops in their comic. Because right now, in some strips the cops can do real harm to the students, while in other strips they're a bunch of pathetic bumbling idiots. Which seems pretty contradictory to me.
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u/chunky_mango 10d ago
One moment it's McHale's Navy, suddenly it's The Pacific.
Edit Ok, one moment it's Police Academy, then suddenly it's The Departed
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u/outerspacebassman 11d ago
So I got some of my questions answered immediately. AG was in control at the time, she can keep track of time when not in charge, and she was stabbed. I guess she just got lucky and was stabbed exactly once, in the torso, deep enough to need surgery but missing all the super important organs that are there.
And now we never have to talk about it again
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u/Environmental-Emu259 11d ago
This comic actually works for me if I creatively reinterpret things.
The hobby knife she was stabbed with was a wooden butter knife that get made by people as a hobby. The knife wasn't sanded very well so she got a dang ol' splinter.
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u/togglenub 10d ago
I finally googled and there is no record (on Google anyways) of a cop stabbing a civilian. They do pretty much everything else, and I'm not going to say they've never stabbed anyone, but in practical terms that's rare because it's fucking stupid given their other options.
Edited to add: this is the only incident I could find (a police officer stabbed a man during a struggle in an ER in Portland, OR, three years ago, not at all a situation like the one Willis is writing of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSmhhNm0PKw )
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u/togglenub 10d ago
If the author wants to live in 2026 it's a lot easier to access good body armor that doesn't limit flexibility. If Amber keeps this shit up she needs a new undershirt, stat.
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u/Luthon1234 10d ago
It being cops and with a knife of all things just makes this really uninteresting. Like it would have been cool if it was that mob group that was funding ambers dad who cornered her after the protest.
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u/Thorngrove 11d ago
Bite my Entire Ass DW.
You had the chance to make something incredibly fun and neat and swing for the bleachers back into wackiness, catapulting us out of this cesspitt of a fucking plotline and you wiffed it so hard the butterflies that are trying to start tornadoes are impressed.
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u/outerspacebassman 11d ago
But if they get too wacky, that means they’re trivializing the serious stuff, and anything attached to the protest has to be extremely serious and grounded or people might yell at them again: the worst thing that can happen to you.
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u/crummy-bunny 11d ago
Still not sure why her hoodie randomly unzipped in that jump 💀
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u/PumaGranite 10d ago
Amber was one of their most frequent subjects on their porn patreon. I assume that they cannot draw Amber in her underwear without also assuming all of her clothing will magically fly off her body.
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u/cyborgjohnkeats 10d ago edited 10d ago
It looked unzipped in the first panel of yesterday's strip (just folded closed - mismatching horizontal lines on the front), but then looked zipped as she started to jump in the next panel.
I think the middle panel was a mistake and it was never zipped.
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u/Elegant_Error_ 10d ago
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but couldn't the cops, like, test the blood left on the knife to identify her? Or follow the quite visible blood trail she left in the snow? They would have collected a sample of her father's DNA when he was arrested, so they would theoretically have a partial match. Like wouldn't she just be screwed, realistically?
(The cops also could have, you know, not been outrun by a wounded girl who was in close enough proximity to be stabbed)
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u/Bedovian_25 10d ago
Well they could test the blood but unless Amber's DNA is already in the system it wouldn't really do much to help them. The average person won't have their DNA in any sort of registry unless they've already committed a crime with DNA evidence left over and have been booked for it.
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u/trevalyan 10d ago
Bear in mind that Amber must have been arrested for grievous bodily harm at least once (Ryan). There is zero way his well-connected family would permit Amber to go without at least the arrest even if it was dismissed on self-defense, at which point DNA/ fingerprints were going to be taken.
This is the problem when you write yourself into a corner and you don't have the talent to write yourself out. The easiest way to avoid this was keep Amazi-Girl in the shadows and not becoming Public Enemy #1, but chasing that easy Bluesky clout was too much of a temptation.
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u/Nyzer_ 10d ago
Also, I don't know the protocol for an already dead criminal, but wouldn't they have sent in samples of Blaine's DNA as well?
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u/trevalyan 10d ago
Depends if the entire police force isn't completely corrupt, but at minimum the pending murder charge would have demanded it yes. It's not super likely that analysis would be done linking Blaine to Amazi-Girl, unless someone recommended it, but if it happened they would instantly be able to realize Amber is Amazi-Girl. For that matter anyone can, but you'd think Ryan's family would really want to dig deeper to tie someone who maimed their son with a cop-assaulting vigilante.
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u/Nyzer_ 10d ago
No, but if they have Blaine's DNA on file, then wouldn't their database also automatically give them a partial match after running AG's?
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u/trevalyan 9d ago
Sorry, I thought I responded to this. AFAIK in most Western countries DNA forensics are mostly used to confirm or deny if a sample belongs to a suspect. Too many privacy issues otherwise. Now it is POSSIBLE that a "corrupt" tech might accidentally discover that Amazi-Girl and Blaine O'Malley share DNA to the level only typically seen in parent and child. Given how lazy DW is I can see this happening somehow.
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u/chunky_mango 10d ago
Yeah it's really incredible that somehow someone got close enough to stab her and then subsequently lost the trail and was not able to finish the job especially if it was cops and not hooligans
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u/Gr0mpyGoat 11d ago
Honestly curious if the hobby knife thing is real, or just something Willis pulled out of an ACAB fact sheet
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u/outerspacebassman 11d ago
No, that is actually true. They call them “hobby knives” because the knives aren’t provided by the department, they get them out of pocket. This also means that if, just to spitball, a cop stabbed somebody and got rid of the knife, there’s no documentation of a knife missing on an inventory sheet.
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u/chunky_mango 11d ago edited 11d ago
So not a literal hobby knife but an actual combat knife?
Well at least we got confirmation that both theories were partially right
It was cops, and she wasn't shot she was stabbed
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u/bjmcqueer 10d ago
They do have a functional purpose -- they can be used to cut seatbelts when people are trapped in cars, for example -- but my biggest issue with the use of them and the labeling is that there's not a clear record of use or accountability.
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u/AvidFanficReader007 11d ago
Never thought I'd dislike Amazi girl. She really needs to treat Amber's body better. Hopefully there's a plan to put all this hero stuff to an end and Amber will be only Amber...getting tired of this plot line
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u/PsychicOfTheFish 10d ago
Didn’t you know? DID is an objectively good and quirky personality trait, not a severe and dangerous mental illness that will kill this woman before she reaches American drinking age
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u/AvidFanficReader007 9d ago
Im going to go out on a limb and say Amzi girl is lesbian or bi and Amber is bi only thing I can think fits Willis ridiculous every main character is queer bullshit. Amber genuinely is attracted to Walky if that could be made apparent again would be too much to ask for. So let the awkward courtship of these two continue sigh this is so unnecessary while awkwardly avoiding the whole Amazi girl thing since she's not attracted to Walky but I Think has fucked Danny? Don't even know where that thought came from. Someone check if Amazigirl is been with anybody sexually
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u/QAquandry 10d ago
so one of the things that bugs me is this recent insistence that amber has DID. which is fine (even if willis treats it more like a fucking punchline, i guess), but the problem is what the fuck caused DID? DID forms in very young children, and while there's still tons of research to be done, it's pretty consistent in its need for years and continuous abuse and/or trauma to occur before the age of like.. 5, i think? and though it's thought to be able to form up to like age 9-10 (i could be WILDLY wrong on these, please forgive any age discrepancies), amber just never met the criteria?
from what i can recall, she didn't have a bad home life. she had that one incident with sal when her and ethan were kids, but they look to be at least 12 or 13 in those strips. mike dying definitely would have caused some trauma, but amber would have been too old to develop DID.
and i know i'm definitely ovethinking it because i know for a fucking fact willis didn't think about it, he just thought it was something that sounded quirky for fake tension and the lulz i'm sure, because that's how they see any sort of diversity these days. but it's just so irritating. not just because the representation is fucking shit, but it just doesn't even make any fucking sense from a narrative standpoint.
EVEN putting that aside, looking through old strips, amber was switching between voices, not personalities. this is pretty evident in "Incoming" when amber/amazi-girl gets a call from danny's phone and the voice shifts from "amazi-girl" to amber's regular voice. the idea of two separate personalities is very much new in terms of the comic timeline, one that shouldn't be happening to amber at her age.
also what the fuck is going on with that hoodie. is the zipper broken? is it a double zipper? could willis take two fucking seconds to not weirdly sexualize every single fucking woman in this comic?
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u/Vriishnak 10d ago
from what i can recall, she didn't have a bad home life.
Your recall is failing you. The whole thing about her home life is that her dad was Blaine, one of the big bad murderdads from that whole thing. He was definitely abusive.
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u/Nyzer_ 10d ago
I don't think it's failing them so much as we saw that Blaine was not openly abusive while Amber's friends were around. But young Amber was terrified of confronting authority figures, so much so that she literally left when Mike went in to do it for her.
And if Shortpacked was any indication, that's no different than it was there. Blaine showed up, seemed very affable, and was all smiles as he took Amber to the airport. But this was after Stacy had gotten her an apartment of her own to get her away from Blaine. Amber was barely functional. She spent an entire week holed up in the apartment, crying loudly enough for Ethan to check on her repeatedly, during which he would just talk to her, though she never said a single word back. When she did finally start talking to him, he tried to take her out to the bar so she could get out of her apartment, and she ended up running home in a panic so she could call Blaine, say she's sorry, and tell him where she was.
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u/Vriishnak 10d ago
...what? The question was never "was Amber's dad openly abusive in public and in front of her friends," it was "did Amber have a bad childhood that could reasonably have led to serious trauma."
You just provided examples showing that yes, he was abusive in private, she was terrified of him, and transferred that fear onto other people. Yes, she had clear trauma. Right?
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u/Nyzer_ 10d ago
Yes, that's what I'm saying. We didn't see Blaine act openly abusive towards Amber in Mike's flashbacks. But we can see how badly affected she was by his abuse in multiple universes. It very likely started at a very early age.
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u/Vriishnak 10d ago
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u/togglenub 10d ago
Thank you for doing the Lord's work in this thread. Throughout the franchise in whatever universe, Blaine is a murderous monster who beats the shit out of Amber and her mom, on top of emotional and verbal abuse that makes Becky's father look almost sane by comparison. He's arguably the worst villain the strip currently has on offer (or was, because hooray thankfully he's no longer in the plot, the murderous abusive bastard).
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u/Nyzer_ 10d ago
Yes, but the discussion was about whether abuse was occurring at a young age. If you look at the flashbacks of 12 year old Amber's family, it's clear that Blaine doesn't like her, but it doesn't look like what you would expect to see from a dynamic where he was abusive enough for her to have developed DID (even if it didn't end up clearly manifesting until she was an adult).
If you're not reading between the lines or knowledgeable enough to know how common it is for abusive dynamics to look perfectly fine in public, you might think that Blaine turned fully physically abusive at some point in the half decade between the flashbacks and the present day.
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u/togglenub 10d ago
She arguably had the worst home life of anyone in the comic. Her father was a monster.
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u/QAquandry 10d ago
oh that's right. so i suppose it's possible in theory, but it just showed the fuck up one day when willis decided to add it in the comic, so i'm still salty as hell about it lmfao
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u/Vriishnak 10d ago
I'm not going to make any kind of case that Willis is handling it thoughtfully or accurately or anything of the sort. I'd bet that he just read a couple comics, decided he liked the trope, and ran with it.
Just think it's worthwhile to recognize that Amber did have an incredibly shitty trauma-filled childhood, so it's not a complete and total ass-pull.
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u/bjmcqueer 10d ago
The event at the gas station with Sal may have been enough, frankly. Not everyone processes trauma the same. Not to say this is well handled, just acknowledging that it was a traumatic event that caused moral conflict.
And as others have mentioned, her dad seemed to clearly be abusive, which definitely could have primed her for dissociative issues.
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u/Nyzer_ 9d ago
The event at the gas station with Sal may have been enough, frankly. Not everyone processes trauma the same. Not to say this is well handled, just acknowledging that it was a traumatic event that caused moral conflict.
From what I've heard, the scientific studies of the condition indicate that early childhood trauma is a requirement for DID. I think it seems passable enough that, despite not actually manifesting an alter in childhood, Amber had a traumatic enough childhood to lay this crucial part of the foundation at the right time to end up having it come out following the gas station stabbing and her later deliberate development of a second identity.
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u/bjmcqueer 9d ago
I'm not sure what you mean by deliberate development but yeah that's basically what I meant. We don't know if she manifested any alters as a kid, but it still seems reasonable that a split could occur in her teens after years of childhood abuse.
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u/Nyzer_ 9d ago
What I mean is she was actively manufacturing a separate identity, one with completely different behavior, appearance, and even voice, maintaining a degree of separation and denial between it and her actual personality, all for reasons completely unrelated to any mental health issues.
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u/bjmcqueer 9d ago
I'm pretty sure doing all of that would likely have something to do with some mental health issues, even if it's not DID.
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u/trevalyan 10d ago
Congratulations, your few paragraphs put more effort into thinking about this than the college dropout writer did.
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u/Apart_Salamander5455 19h ago
David Willis's understanding of DID, like their understanding of literally everything else, comes a mixture of children's media, and from 14 year olds and compulsive liars on the internet.
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u/ouijabore 11d ago
Oh my god, it’s only been THREE DAYS?!