Not only am I not saying that it would be okay if he had let it hit him, I’m actively condemning the notion that he allowed it to happen as part of some machiavellean scheme. That’s literally the sort of thinking of the sort of misogynistic neckbeard who cries himself to sleep because “bitches” won’t have sex with him because “nice guys finish last.” Seriously, this page (and even other replies to Tylikcat’s original comment) are replete with people suggesting that he deliberately chose to be hit as part of some conspiracy to make her look like the bad guy. Including YOUR post just now. “Is he a mastermind who is pulling strings for a later, nefarious purpose?”

Imagine that argument being used in court with the genders reversed. A big goomba named Alphonso on the witness stand pointing angrily at his girlfriend Patricia. “She MADE me throw that mug at her, your honor! She’s a conniving witch! She’s trying to make me look bad so she can get more money when she divorces me! You should be locking her up! This is a travesty, I’m the good guy here!”

And on the sidelines, at least one goomba is nodding their heads and muttering, “That’s just like dem broads, all right. Always trying to play the victim card, setting you up… not saying he wasn’t wrong to hit her, but why’d she push him into throwing that mug?”

No, I read it through in detail. And accusing me of skimming your post doesn’t quite hold water when my previous response was pointing out that you had implied the opposite of my actual statements. And “pontificating on what happened” is a good idea, if you’re pondering Alison’s penchant for casual violence and her serious need to learn better methods of dealing with others. Not so much if you’re pondering whether or not Patrick deliberately goaded her into throwing a ceramic mug at him.

I have been pondering the fact that people have been rushing to suggest exactly that. Because that sort of thing is called “rationalization.” When someone tries to twist things and come up with alternative theories to reaffirm their established beliefs, and then insist that theory be credited as valid. We have seen nothing about Patrick to imply that he would ever allow himself to be physically harmed as part of a scheme (for one thing, he doesn’t have the courage for a physical confrontation like that).

Also, the fact that you feel like I make no attempt to understand the viewpoints of others is about as accurate as your feeling that I skimmed your post: specifically, both are equally untrue. In fact, the reason why people have been rushing to upvote your posts but not my own is because I’m doing exactly that. I’m pointing out that Alison’s view of her world is not the only one, that the people she has harmed physically and otherwise have their viewpoints in which she is a violently aggressive self-righteous bully who sees herself as above the law (and that those other viewpoints are actually a bit more valid than her own). And there have been a number of people commenting on these pages who have rushed to dismiss those other characters because everything Alison does is morally correct and justifiable and wonderful. Even when the comic itself has now canonically established that her “morally correct and righteous actions” were neither moral, nor righteous, and are going to result in severe consequences. They don’t like that people like me are refusing to jump on the “Alison is good and everyone she doesn’t like is bad” bandwagon… which is why I continue to post. As long as they know not everyone shares their viewpoint, they can’t rest easy… and that amuses me. ^.^

He is a “mastermind” in the same sense that Alison is an expert fighter – they’ve both got powers that give them an edge at what they’re doing, but they’re both still a couple of kids who got thrown into the meat grinder.

How do I know he’s not a true chessmaster and not just a chump that David Xanatos would cover with mustard and eat for lunch? Because he’s having trouble with Paladin. He said it himself: “If you can access all of a person’s thoughts, hopes, and fears, and still can’t get them to do what you want, that says more about you than it does about them.” He can and should have popped in on her a few times, discretely been just a person in the background, skimming her thoughts… then had his lawyers offer her a deal or two, give her what she wants and get her to comply with his own objectives. Instead he’s made an enemy out of the person who built the robots that were the backbone of his military forces. Not to mention that he pissed off Alison – a true manipulative mastermind would have happily seduced her, made her sigh blissfully at the thought of him, and then… gotten her to do whatever he wanted.

He’s not that cunning, and he’s not that evil. He’s like Alison – a dumb KID who thought he knew everything when he was an adolescent developing superpowers, and now thinks he knows everything as a twenty year old who still can’t legally drink.

(Which is a recurring theme that the comic has pointed out: Cleaver’s the same age. They’re all just… kids, that have been chewed up and spit out by the system they’re all trying to change)

“I don’t know if you know this, but adults don’t know what they’re doing either. ”

Oh, I’m well aware of that. The big difference is that adults have been around long enough to KNOW we don’t know what we’re doing, instead of rushing to push buttons and do something just to be doing something. But having spent a few years commanding a terrorist group/resistance movement and then trying to rebuild his financial empire does not make Patrick a machiavellian mastermind anymore than spending a few years as a child soldier and then bullying weaker targets makes Alison a martial artist.

To be honest, when I hear “Patrick allowed himself to be hit as part of a fiendishly clever scheme,” it makes me think of the 1990s… and the Superpredators. Who looked like adolescent black males – but they weren’t kids, they weren’t even teenagers, they were vicious SUPER predators who needed to be tried as adults and then locked up in for-profit prisons to make the streets safe again! It’s amazing how much more “adult” someone gets when you want to blame the victim.

Wow. A very, very, very long post about ambiguity and how all the interpretations are valid, and how I’m rejecting the positions of others… I’ll respond to that with a few points of my own.

1: yes, I did in fact read your comment in its entirety. I read very quickly (an exceptional processing speed with textual information, a quirk of my own neurological makeup), and beyond that – your comments do deserve to be fully considered before responding. Just because I disagree doesn’t mean I’m rejecting them – and I’m not going after people who are open to alternatives, I’ve been going after the people who have rushed to defend Alison’s behavior and to condemn her victims. I’m talking about the people who, if you look at comments on previous pages, openly refer to Max as the worst character in the comic, even when people point out that others have committed far worse crimes. Other characters like… Patrick, to name one.

2: If you look at some of my other comments on this page, I actually do acknowledge the possibility that Patrick chose to let himself be hit out of a sense of self-loathing and misery and confusion, the way a battered spouse might “allow” themselves to be hit rather than try to defend against the anticipated assault. What I’m categorically rejecting is the “blame the victim” crap that has repeatedly been expressed in these comments time and again. They were much worse with Max, but even with Patrick there’s still a sense of “they were asking for it – of course it was still wrong to do it, but they were asking for it” about these arguments.

3: It is disingenuous to say that “we know nothing about Patrick because what we’ve seen in canon is questionable and there might be other things going on offscreen.” That’s just claiming the right to create concepts and ideas that only exist as an idle fantasy and then argue them as if they were valid and “alternative facts.” If it hasn’t been shown in the comic, it cannot be seriously considered as evidence.

4: Patrick didn’t create a supervillain group using mind reading and manipulation. He created a supervillain group using mind reading and EMPATHY. He openly stated as much – and the loyalty of his allies (whom he only begrudgingly acknowledges could have been considered “henchmen” on account of how they deferred to his leadership) corroborates his claims. Cleaver certainly never said anything negative about Patrick during Alison’s visits – and she would have had plenty of time to confirm that Patrick was telling the truth about keeping a full medical team on staff to help Cleaver with his chronic conditions. It’s only logical to assume that he was telling the truth – until such time as the comic establishes that he was lying about anything. But as far as we know, he has been completely and totally honest about everything, from the moment Alison first crashed through his window only to be told that Mayhem was quitting. Until his track record of honest statements and truthful information can be seriously questioned, then it only makes sense to assume that he has been telling the truth even about things that contradict certain… theories.

I’m confused… not by your latest post, but by the previous one. It’s awaiting moderation now. I’m not certain why it would be considered potentially inflammatory (at least, more so than comments that drip of misandrist rationalization of anything the protagonist does). That’s… odd. Just letting you know that someone flagged it or something. All I know is that it wasn’t me – I’ve seen genuinely offensive posts, including ones I’m about to mention, your posts have been extremely courteous in comparison.

And it’s not that I’m reading these through “victim blaming goggles,” it’s that I’ve read numerous comments by others on previous pages where they blame the victim – to the point that they have openly condoned torture when it’s performed by the protagonist for a good cause (i.e. a cause they personally support, and therefore that makes it totally different). And minimized such actions as “a mere arm twist,” and even used incredibly offensive and insulting terminology such as “fee-fees,” which is apparently slang for “the feelings of someone I feel I can justify dehumanizing and demeaning.” (In other words, remember those biodynamics at the convention who were in tears at some points? Imagine pointing at them and laughing and sneering at anyone expecting you to care about their “fee-fees.”) And here I’m seeing more of the same – the insinuation that Patrick allowed himself to be hit with a mug as part of some scheme. It makes me think of the Simpsons episode when Bart dated Reverend Lovejoy’s daughter, and we got this memorable quote: “I guess it’s obvious what’s happened here. Bart Simpson has somehow managed to sneak his bedroom into my house.” Pause while everyone stares at him. “Well, come on! Use your imaginations!”

As for Patrick and his lies… I have not seen any. At no point have I seen him explicitly lie about a thing. I have seen her confront him with information that he did not disclose to her in advance, at which point he confirmed that the information was correct and then explained why (in the case of the retaking of Templar industries, his motive was to control Paladin’s riskier experiments. Not saying he was justified, not saying he wasn’t stupid for not trying to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution with Paladin, just pointing out that he did have justification in his own mind). But at no point did I ever see him knowingly give her false information. And not telling her everything is not the same thing as lying, especially when she was already vaguely aware that he was rebuilding his financial empire AND using lethal measures to wrest control away from the usurpers.

My point through all of this has been that Patrick is like Alison – a flawed and thoroughly fleshed out character, someone who is not perfect, someone who has made a lot of mistakes and done a lot of things to regret and repent, but who acted according to their own personal ideology of how to make the world a better place. He’s not a fiendishly manipulative and cleverly cruel imp; if he were, Alison would not have built up a friendship and budding romance over five years after their mutual retirements.

I know what you mean about the annoyance – my previous comment was the second one typed up; Disqus crapped out on me. Normally I Control-A then Control-C the post before sending it, just in case that happens. It might be because of the sheer LENGTH of the comments, hitting some trigger to guard against trolling (I’ve seen forums in the past that had a problem with people copy/pasting people’s entire posts with a insulting little reply at the bottom, just to be extra troll-ish)? I don’t know.

Anyway, the victim blaming… I’m not talking about the people who claimed that what Alison did was “regrettable but necessary.” I’m talking about the ones who sneered about “freaking fee-fees.” I’m talking about the ones who called him evil and horrible because he “was willing to murder millions of people just to spite Alison.” I’m talking about the ones who kept restating the primitive and dangerous attitude of “Any cause I personally believe in is worth any price, especially prices paid by others, and if you refuse to help then you are not just mistaken but EVIL and deserve to be stripped of resources and tortured because you are EVIL for not sharing my beliefs!” The ones who couldn’t even reply with a reiteration of said attitude without adding personal insults in their responses, because it was so important to emphasize “you are stupid and evil for disagreeing with me and therefore do not deserve respect, only mockery and contempt.”

I’ve reread issue three a few times while arguing. And… no, not telling her where he was going was not “lying,” unless she had established herself as his probation officer, keeping an eye on the former supervillain. Which would have been a fairly sensible act on her part – and one she most clearly did not take. They were just friends, and you don’t have to share everything with someone. My question to you now is: Can you provide an example of Patrick making a specific statement in which he presented facts that were later canonically confirmed as being false? Not a lie of omission, not a “Bush lied, men died” example of him restating incorrect information that he himself believed to be true, but an actual example of him saying “I know this information is untrue, but I’m claiming that it is true in order to deceive you?”

Okay… the “trapped in a conference call” is either a joking euphemism or a “white lie,” and was issued in response to her description of being “locked in mortal combat with the most annoying person in the world.” I do not think that Alison was lying there either – she might not have been in a fight to the death, and her description of the guy is opinionated at best, but she wasn’t exactly trying to hide what she was doing. She was doing her own thing and wanted to meet up with him. He did the same.

The claim for a better way… no, it’s pretty reasonable to assume that what he was talking about was “a better way to achieve justice for what has just happened here.” Patrick was clearly every bit as pissed about what had just happened as Alison – that bastard terrorist waltzed into a surgery room and murdered a bunch of very intelligent and decent people in an attempted assassination of a penitent retired vigilante who was trying to do some good and make up for her crimes. Alison had just killed the hitman and was ready to commit mass murder of the entire crowd… Patrick offered her a better way. But Alison does NOT ascribe to the “no killing” rule of gold and silver age comic books; she’s killed innocent bystanders (and regrets it), so she has no problems with capital punishment. Her rejection of Moonshadow’s murder-spree was less because “killing is wrong” and more because Moonshadow was clearly not actually doing anything useful – and wasn’t really trying to, either; Mary was simply attempting to justify her actions like any other serial killer.

In any case… the latter example is a “lie of ommission,” in that he didn’t immediately state “I’m going to track down and murder these people you wanted to murder publicly, which will cause far less problems and be more effective than your own intended methods.” The former isn’t even a lie, more of a silly joke in response to one sent by his friend. Alison is most definitely a very truthful person, and I do not think she was lying there. Neither was Patrick. You still have yet to provide an example of Patrick advancing a blatant falsehood as truth. And unless you can provide an actual example of him declaring “this information is truth” when he knows it to be false, then his integrity stands. And, by extension, his other statements should be assumed to be truthful as well.

(Kind of like with Lucy from the first book in the “Chronicles of Narnia” series. Where the professor points out that just because they don’t want to believe her statements, doesn’t mean that she’s lying – not if she’s always been the truthful one when compared to her brother)

That sounds like a great deal of nitpicking over how one might possibly construe that his words might possibly have been less than honest. Which goes back to my original point: that Patrick has yet to have been caught in an actual lie, and therefore it is reasonable and fair to assume that he is honest about all his statements until proven otherwise.

Not saying he hasn’t done some pretty horrible stuff, mind. Just that one thing he hasn’t done is lie.