GIMP Version: 2.8.2
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: Win7
GIMP Experience: Advanced Level

---

So, I'm writing up another installment in my B&W conversion tutorial, and I wanted to talk about color decomposition. I decomposed an image to RGB channels, and CMY channels as well.

The strange thing I am not sure of is that, for example, the Red channel and the Cyan channel seem to be the same (just inverted in Cyan).

Now, I'm not sure if this is what I should be seeing...

Is this normal? Am I an idiot for not grokking something I should have earlier?

It looks like Red = Cyan (inverted), Green = Magenta (inverted), and Blue = Yellow (inverted). Are they dipolar opposites in the color model for real?

Yes, that is perfectly normal.
The CMY color model is just the negative of the RGB color model, so
C = 255-R
M = 255-G
Y = 255-B

Thank you for clearing that up!