No. I won’t feel bad for him. Not for all of the glued-together Looney Tune mugs in the world… I am such a sap. Why did you have to be such a jerk, Pat? ;_;

Almost certainly someone is going to catch this on their camera phone and it’ll end up on the news with a headline line “MEGA GIRL: BACK IN ACTION?”

I love how this comic always pulls at the heartstrings and make you realize how unfair society and people can me. “Why couldn’t you just duck?” almost sounds to me like “Couldn’t you see you were making me angry? Of course I was going to hit you,” leading to domestic abuse-like phrasing. Not that that it what I think this is, but great job making us think about that.

I truly hope that Alison isn’t flying straight to Mary’s address. She is not in a good place emotionally right now and really should give herself a chance to find some equilibrium before heading into such a dangerous and volatile situation.

This could so easily snowball into a tragedy. 🙁

Why couldn’t you have made the choice that implied you were still struggling against me? Still capable of fighting?
We were fighting right?! Trading blows?! You mess with my mind and I punch stuff and it’s not…

Fml, this isn’t the old days, I can fly now. Fuck this, fuck it all. Fuck!

The majority belief now seems to be that, if it was deliberate, it was to provoke her enough to bring out her telekinetic power.

That’s Patrick gluing together the Looney-Tunes mug, up in his office.

To be clear, I wasn’t accusing SFP of cultural appropriation. Patrick is using glue, not metal. He’s not making the repairs decorative.

You mean by giving her Mary’s address after refusing earlier? He had no choice in the matter. She’s made it clear that she’s not willing to take no for an answer on this. Probably not on anything else she wants from him, either.
Quite aside from being physically unstoppable, she can turn him over to the authorities at any time to face punishment for his actions as the Menace. The power balance in their relationship is skewed completely in her favor right now. Unless he can vanish or find a way to coerce her himself Patrick’s wide open to anything she demands of him.

Just now realized Alison is repeating the phrase she said the first time she tried to fly. Dr. Rosenblum is gonna have fits.

I haven’t really thought about it… but looking back, to me he looks most likely mixed race (e.g. part white, part east Asian).

Surely you jest. It was duck season!

Or maybe we’re not supposed to understand… yet. We’re walking (or flying) through the story with Alison. What she doesn’t understand, we may not either. When she figures it out, she’ll let us know.

She didn’t do it because of his past crimes. She didn’t do it because he’s a cold, calculating person (which she already knew.)

She did it because he used words on her, and she got angry.

Don’t you find it suspicious that this scene (which frankly seems a little out of place) occurs in the midst of an entire story arc revolving around issues of female abuse?

It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if somehow her actions here get brought up during her confrontation with Mary (perhaps even as an attempt at justification.)

What I’m saying that a person could have that works like a fae glamour; they use it to turn invisible, why couldn’t they use to take the image of a another person?

I thought he was South American of mixed Spanish/Native heritage.

What? Unless Mary’s invisibility (already a power upgrade) has evolved into being insubstantial, Mary’s helpless against Alison the moment she gets a solid grip. Might be hard to find and catch, but there’s nothing Mary can do to hurt her directly. Alison can just haul her off to jail, there’s no need to resort to lethal violence. Mary’s not even hard to confine – prison bars don’t need to see you to keep you inside.
Of course, Alison’s got family. I expect hostage taking will be a thing sooner or later, although Mary doesn’t strike me as a likely candidate for that trope.

Orgasms are not a choice.

Also, can the answer simply be that both of them fucked up and are abusing each other? This particular situation is neither black nor white. I’ll make a short story from a long story. I used to live with someone extremely abusive. As soon as I got too old for physical, the verbal and emotional started. Did I want to hit them? Did I want to knock their teeth down their throat? Yes, absolutely. Would they have deserved it? Yes, without question.

Would I be right in doing so?

Not at all.

Hey, I’m not saying you should feel sorry for him (it’s not as if, for an example, he manipulated any of us by bringing up our deepest childhood abuse and mocking it to our face or something.) Just that Alison should still feel regret for her action, and primarily because of the fact that she DID act out very similarly to a frustrated, abusive boyfriend (with a horrible, button-pushing witch of a girlfriend.)

I THINK I see what you’re saying, and it’s a good point. What I feel you’ve lost though is that the abuser always has agency (unless there’s an actual medical condition). Bikers aren’t a force of nature, they’re choosing to react in a certain way. Part f the dynamic for rescuing people from abusive situations is finding some way so abuser, abused, or both reclaim their agency.

Alison (and most every other physical abuser) is still in control of their body. She REALLY ought to be self aware enough by now to at least remove herself from a situation where she might hurt people. That she’s not as others have said makes her human, and highly dangerous.

Just because Alison has good intentions (and is the SFP) does not excuse her messing up Patrick’s face “’cause he had it coming”. One of the benefits of art is allowing us to discussing these nuances in safety, so kudos to Brennan and Molly for pushing these edges.

*** “Most people can, whether they believe it or not, be provoked into violence with words; it’s just human nature.”

They can, but not quickly generally, ***

Ok.

*** and most people would flee and would shove and such to escape, rather than directing their violent at others. ***

I think you and I come from very different worlds. Few people I know would flee in the face of words.

*** This would be very rare. When Fred Phelps protested funerals I don’t know of many incidents where someone attacked them physically. You’re massively exaggerating the extent of people who are violent. ***

Fred Phelps is a clear case where, should he have pushed much further, it would have warranted some sort of physical response. Fortunately for him, I don’t think he ever got in anyone’s face and yelled at them, or directed his ire specifically at the grieving spouse. True, he might have gotten quite a bit in the settlement, but with the crap HE put out, it would have likely been at the cost of serious injuries. Were he, or anyone, to push it that far, I think the consistency of the consequences might lead you to consider the possibility that *everyone* is violent to some degree, barring a rare handful of truly principled (and extraordinarily lucky) pacifists.

*** Any attack to someone’s head is potentially fatal, or can lead to brain injuries and insanity. Murder and causing insanity are very high up in my books. ***

That’s why you call smashing a table and throwing a mug at someone “reprehensible?” What adverb would you use to describe the activity of the thugs at the Waco shootout? What about starvation-driven cannibalism? Or billion-dollar fraud perpetrated on senior citizens?

*** “Does your statement apply to every soldier who has ever killed in war?”

She’s using violence to solve her personal problems, my statement doesn’t apply to people under orders to do violence. She’s more dangerous than them. ***

….

No comment.

(Edited for readibility.)