Dumbing of Age

She could go to a therapist now that things have spiraled so out of control that she no longer has any control of her body.

My knowledge of Dissociative Identity Disorder is painfully limited but unless pop culture has lied to me the whole "blanking out while your alternate personality merrily skips about doing shit without your knowledge" thing seems way more serious than makeouts with Walky.

Like, just talk to someone at least. Acknowledge that this is a gravely serious problem. She didn't even question hallucinating Mike, for god's sake.

Edited by RodimusMinor on Mar 15th 2020 at 2:53:54 PM

Blaine has subjected her to years of conditioning, specifically to not seek aid from a therapist. Remember, he didn't get her therapy after what happened with Sal, he got her self-defense classes. Kinda hard to break mental conditioning straight out of Pavlov.

I think that's what we're aiming for (at the very least it makes the most sense to me: that Amber has been so warped by Blaine the idea of seeking out therapy is genuinely alien to her), but the calm acceptance everyone has for her constant weird behavior, outbursts, and the entirety of the Amazi-Girl situation just strains a lot to me.

Amber just explained to Dina that she's going to pull an all-nighter so her alternate personality doesn't go out to beat people up and all she has to say is "weird flex but okay."

Honestly, expecting a normal response from Dina may be expecting too much.

I wonder if it's simply a matter of There Are No Therapists in the Dumbverse.

Edited by sgamer82 on Mar 15th 2020 at 1:47:41 PM

Not likely. Dorothy has been seen leaving her therapist at least once.

It's time for a flashback

Also Willis wrote a content warning for this current storyline.

Are we in for an Amazi-Girl origin story? Or at least the moment the AG personality came into play?

I for one am intrigued for anything that helps contextualize Amber's psychosis.

....the James Roberts number?

113 was the number of the first issue of the UK Transformers comic picked up by author James Roberts. When he wound up writing Transformers comics himself, he stuck 113 in pretty much anywhere he could.

Have a Flashback Mike. All the Mike snark with zero of the Mike doucheyness. Flashback Mike, the healthier Mike that you need.

I forget. Mike displaying actual human compassion for other people was a farce he put up, right? That's how he explained it to Blaine?

That's how he explained it to Blaine.

This is too relatable

You can actually see that Mike hasn't fulling transitioned into the douchebag he would later become. He still has some concern for Amber outside of manipulation, same for Ethan, and while he does hesitate, he does call Ethan a friend openly. Considering they made a point to say Blaine was out of their lives but they don't look that much older, I can only assume this was a few months at best after the incident at the convenience store, meaning Mike has only really just started his transition into douchebag supreme, since he truly first began a few days before the convenience store incident, where he blackmailed Blaine into giving Amber and Ethan a ride.

Hm... call me crazy, but I have a feeling that that fourth panel is foreshadowing something down the line...

Nothing good will come of this.

Well shit. I guess we're finally gonna learn what happened to Mike. Either that, or Amazi-Girl has finally gone too far.

I'm very worried about the lizard being left. Since it probably is. I never had anyone prank pull a fire alarm outside of high school, it was not 4am but it was the middle of winter and the kids in PE would be out with only their gym strip and you weren't allowed to go inside during exams, the person who did it was allowed to turn themselves in without letting their out for blood fellow students know. Though we did have technical malfunctioning with a fire alarm one year and it kept going off in the middle of the night it was annoying at first we assumed people were making popcorn but no, faulty wiring.

Then you're lucky, because prank fire alarms were super common at my college. As well as real fire alarms caused by someone burning their dinner, which were immediately brought under control but still required the entire building be evacuated. It's especially bad in the bigger dorms, because out of a few hundred students someone is going to be making themselves dinner at midnight, so you might get a fire alarm every other night.

I definitely remember burning dinner at midnight happening. It wasn't that big of a dorm though so not enough selection of foolish 18 year olds thankfully.

Some evening somebody put a ramen cup in the microwave long enough that what was left when we figured out where the smoke was coming from was a puck of charcoal.

early bird ignores the geese

Hm... whatever's about to happen, Ruth and Carla are bound to be smack in the center of it.

My Blaine senses are tingling.

Amidst that comedy I really liked the implication that Amazi-Girl was the actualization of Blaine's perfect daughter. That Amber had created her own worst nightmare through Amazi-Girl.