SFP

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Keith

Feral, on the other hand…
- Bani
  
  uh. ….I guess Feral could help, but… :B I don’t think Alison would ask that of her.
  - Keith
    
    A few thoughts on the matter:
    1) Perhaps not, but where does that put her? If it occurs to her that what Feral has chosen to do could save her father and she doesn’t tell him, she is essentially condemning her father to die *and* blocking Feral from making the contribution she has chosen to make. Is it her place to do either?
    2) In my experience, there’s often a gulf between what a person “would do” and what a person actually does when confronted with the horror that is death by cancer.
    3) She would not necessarily even know about it. We’ve already seen that there are layers of obfuscation, so her father may simply be presented with a new therapeutic option by his physician.
    - Bani
      
      She still wouldn’t ask. It’s just general human decency that would stop her. Think about it from her standpoint–how would she ask? You can’t just ask a friend to suffer for your sake, especially when she was so insistent about Feral not doing so much harm on herself to save others. It would not only be hypocritical, but completely insensitive, and taking advantage of a friendship. It’s just not cool, from a social standpoint. I’m not saying she shouldn’t ask, I’m just saying that, knowing her character and personality type, she wouldn’t. It would be out of character. She could bring up the subject of her father’s cancer and wait for Feral herself to offer, but she’s neither that smart nor is she that manipulative.
      The best course would be the convenient option of someone else breaking the news to Feral (i.e. the sister, Patrick, or someone else) and Feral going to Alison to offer help herself.
      - Keith
        
        Back when I was in college, I had a friend who was extremely Catholic and vehemently “pro-life”. Getting an abortion was very out of character for her, but that’s exactly what she did when she found herself unexpectedly pregnant. What’s in someone’s character when things are going reasonably well is not always what’s in their character during a crisis.
        
        Cancer is f*cking horrible, and watching someone you love die from it, slowly and in nearly constant suffering, is a much huger crisis than “whoops, guess there’s something to be said for birth control after all!” I cannot imagine Alison watching her father’s excruciatingly painful deterioration, thinking that what’s being harvested from Feral could help him, and not at least agonizing over it. Frankly, if her conviction to her principals is so much stronger than her compassion for her father, I’m not sure I’d like her very much.
        
        As for how she would ask, I really don’t see where she’d have to. All Alison has to do is go to her father’s doctor and say “Doc, there have been some major breakthroughs in medicine as a result of the bio-anomalies. Contact these researchers; they may be able to help.” Just that simple.
      - Bani
        
        Except Alison isn’t the same person as your friend. She’s fictional, for
        another thing, and she’s less prone (not immune, just less likely to exhibit) to such hypocritical trite (er, no offense to your friend) imperfections because she’s the creation of another person.
        As
        she is fictional, I believe it’s more likely that Alison would be like
        the typical fictional protagonist and seek to find a third option first
        before resorting to such methods such as causing a friend to suffer for
        her sake.
        O ____o Dude, no. That’s way too underhanded, and that’s
        even worse than going to Feral to ask her outright. If she were to refer the doctors to her, she’d /have/ to go to Feral first to ask if it’s okay. That’s just common sense, and I’ve already mentioned that Alison isn’t the type of character to ask someone to suffer for her sake. And it’s not a major
        breakthrough in medicine, it’s a huge sacrifice made from one person.
        It’s not that simple at all. If she did it underhandedly, the guilt
        would eat at her, which would put her friendship with Feral under
        strain.
        There are themes of social justice in this comic, and I think it’d be reasonable to assume that the main character would abide by her beliefs.
        I’m not saying it’s impossible for Feral to save Alison’s father, and I’d actually like for that to happen, but I would personally prefer Alison to go at it in a socially wise way that is as least manipulative as possible, in a way that would least strain their friendship.
        Anyway, I’ve said all I need to say on this topic. I’m sure that anything further would just be me repeating the same things again and again (which I have already been doing), so I’ll be taking my leave here.
      - Elaine Lee
        
        Cancer may be something Feral has no power to cure. Her power is regeneration. She can make organs for people. But when those organs are implanted in other people, those people don’t become biodynamic. The organs seem to adapt to the normal human body, not the other way around. And if Alison’s dad’s cancer has metastasized, it can’t be cured by replacing an organ, or even several organs. And if you simply flooded him with Feral’s blood, through transfusions, if it did anything at all, which is doubtful, it might make the cancer cells actually grow faster. Don’t think the blood would necessarily distinguish between cancer cells and normal ones. So, I don’t think it is in Feral’s power to cure this. Alison has no crisis of conscience.
      - LookielouE1707
        
        Actually Feral probably could cure this cancer, since it was “caught early”, which presumably means before it metastasized. Even if it has spread, removing the current pancreas as a reservoir of cancer might be beneficial. This is one of the ways in which Feral’s sacrifice is genuinely transformational; transplant is not usually a treatment for pancreatic cancer because of the need for immunosuppressive drugs, and because doctors don’t want to waste scarce pancreases on patients with such poor prognosis – but Feral changes the balance of both equations. Anyway, there’s no excuse for not at least exploring the possibility.
      - Keith
        
        Of course she isn’t; she’s whatever the writer makes her, which we don’t really decide.
        And my friend wasn’t a hypocrite; she changed and grew with life experience. She only would have been a hypocrite if she had continued her “pro-life” stance.
      - LookielouE1707
        
        Yeah, that’s not human decency at all – quite the opposite, to let anyone die, let alone one’s own father, to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy or of having imposed on a friendship is monstrous. And it’s not imposing on friendship – mutual sacrifice is the essence of friendship, the difference between it and acquaintanceship.
Bani

fuck. YOU MADE ME CRY.
Mystery girl

That one sentence broke me…