SFP

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  • Preacher John

    A quid says Patrick went back as an adult, and had both his parents murdered – that’s the memory behind that door!

    • Mnemnosyne

      Perhaps…unless he had already locked away his memories of who his mother was, and therefore didn’t remember who she was in order to do that. I considered that to be a possibility when Alison was enraged at her. Patrick seems likely to have already taken care of her…unless he, by the time he had the resources, could not remember her because he had locked those memories away behind his barrier.

      • M. Alan Thomas II

        The personality fragments don’t appear to know what each other are up to, except by general reputation. I find it quite believable that everything out here “beyond the barrier” is unknown to those generally in control of conscious Patrick.

        • Thomas S

          They must know the shape of what’s behind the door just not the raw force of that which is behind the door.

      • Tylikcat

        There’s also an intermediate solution, where he’s maybe not entirely unaware that he had a mother, but knows better than to pursue the subject. There’s a map, and over in the blank region it says “here be dragons”.

  • Dean

    It’s where he keeps his memories of 1990s sitcoms.

  • M. Alan Thomas II

    Chekhov’s door. How long before it goes off?

    • Glotos

      Nah, Schrodinger’s door. He’s both alive and dead in there. Kinda freaks him out.

    • 3-I

      If a door is hanging on the mantelpiece…

      • Nathanaël François

        That would be either Escher’s or Dali’s door, then.

  • Shjade

    “That’s Gurwara’s room.”

    “Oh. … Wait, WHA-”

    “Alison, please, we do not have time for one of your outbursts right now.”

    • tygertyger

      Dangit, Shjade, I was drinking!

  • Amethyst

    That’s beyond our borders. You must never go there.

  • Tsapki

    Still real curious as to what in the heck Graveyard’s anomaly is….

  • Dylan

    Well now we GOTTA go through that.

    • 3-I

      Fuck you, Chekhov’s Door!

  • Hiram

    We do not go through that door. It’s easier to walk around it.

  • Ray Radlein

    “We don’t go Behind the Green Door. This is a family comic.”

    • Zac Caslar

      Laughed-coughed my way through a bite of burrito, fine sir.

      Well struck!

    • RobNiner ♫

      …I Learnt Something Today.

      • Weatherheight

        Don’t click that second link you found in Google…
        Don’t do it…

    • zellgato

      ?? Confuzzled due to lack of contextual reference points.

      • Gotham

        You can always W3Catalog it.

        —Now /that’s/ lacking in contextual reference points—

        • zellgato

          I can’t say I know what W3Catalog is. Though it is a keyword I can reference easier than a quote that didn’t turn up anything in a search bar.
          Guess I shall go figure out what the 3 W’s are later.

          Unless this is a strange reference to “googling” anyway

          • kepod

            For others: W3Catalog was a very early search engine. Yes, this is a strange reference to “go look it up on the internet.” (I had to look it up, too.)

          • zellgato

            Oh.. I should have known that haha. I guess I brain dumped all the extra stuff after writing about information retrieval systems and search engines vs catalogs. Boy that is one fail for a fledgling librarian there.

      • Insanenoodlyguy

        “Behind the Green Door” is a renowned vintage porn from it’s Golden Age

  • Olivier Faure

    “It leads to Ravenholm. We don’t go there anymore.”

  • critically_damped

    Methinks we are going through the door.

  • Gotham

    Normal barriers Big barrier Fifth elusive member of the Patrick Brain Patrol Team What the hell was Gurwara doing here The Component The Conspiracy Whatever the hell happened to Patrick’s parents AND NOW A RANDOM ASS DOOR JUST FOR THE HECK OF IT

    With so many balls in the air this is not a juggler’s act anymore this is a work accident waiting to happen

  • Zac Caslar

    Nice little bit of Kylo Ren imagery with younger Patrick and his helmet.

    • Zorae42

      Oh gross. How dare you compare him to that entitled fuckboy manchild.

      • Darkfeather21

        Can you… Not?

      • Zac Caslar

        *cheekily twiddles mustache*

        You will discover, sirrah, that I dare a great deal!

        • Teka the Budgie

          Wow Kylo has some hate on here.
          Like, how dare you insinuate both characters hold helmets associated with villainous behavior.

          • Zorae42

            Well, one is a child who was failed by the system and decided to do villainous things to try and fix it. And ultimately realized what he was doing was futile and attempted to atone.

            The other is…. an entitled fuckboy manchild? That has no problem with committing genocide on a massive scale and has literally zero remorse for the things he’s done.

            So I just find it a bit gross comparing them based off of such a shallow detail 😛

          • Teka the Budgie

            But it is a shallow comparison??

            Is Kylo Ren’s yuckiness somehow going to infect Patrick from a different fictional universe because both characters held fancy headgear?

        • Zorae42

          *clutches pearls and gasps*

          Well I say

  • Weatherheight

    Well, I guess that counts as minions.
    Well played, Brennan and Molly.

    But I still want to know their stories too…
    And I suppose those stories are behind that door…
    “What’s that secret you’re keepin’?”

    • Tylikcat

      Isn’t this always the way? I mean, I am absolutely enjoyed this ride – but what is going on with Amanda? And how is the wedding planning going? What’s up with Hector? How is Vanessa doing?

  • Masala Nilsson

    YES PLEASE WE GO THROUGH THAT

  • Flesh Forge

    The cankles are outta control dude

  • tygertyger

    “We do not go through that.”

    Hmm. I wonder if that’s where the mind-clone of Mom is kept.

    • Kirt Dankmyer

      Oooh, that’s the best theory so far.

  • Gotham
  • GreatWyrmGold

    “What could possibly be worse than what we’ve already seen?”
    “I…might have written some Harry Potter fanfiction when I was 11. It’s really bad.”

  • JohnTomato

    Not locked, not barred. Very much an invitation.

  • Something I’m finding really interesting at the moment – the probability that this fragment of Patrick is in fact the true memory keeper. The Record Keeper preseves, curates, renovates and recalls, but Child Patrick actually remembers.

    • The Record Keeper mans the front desk, but Child!Patrick knows what’s really in the stacks.

      • (Every time I type Child!Patrick, my brain wants to turn it into ‘Childe Patrick to the Dark Tower Came’)

        • The film was a great disappointment. The Stephen King series was flawed but very provocative and enjoyable. The poem is sublime 🙂

  • Walter

    “How is it possible that we can’t catch Guwara?”
    “I can’t understand it. Its like he can just skip between parts of my mind! Anyway, let’s walk carefully through this labyrinthine structure crisscrossed with doors that nobody ever goes through.”

    • My mind just when down a rabbit hole starting with the idea of Gurwara as just an ephemeral passing thought:

      Patrick wasn’t a projective telepath (or rather, says he wasn’t), Gurwara potentially is, because someone certainly messed with that professor’s brain.

      Patrick is now developing projective abilities, just as other biodynamics are being similarly overclocked.

      If Gurwara is a projective telepath, with an ability verging on mind control/perception control, then we can’t be sure anyone has ever actually met him. The classroom sessions and the duckpond sessions could have been planted in people’s minds.

      Patrick has partititioned his brain, walled off entire sections, and there are multiple personalities loose within it.

      Gurwara could theoretically be an emergent personality existing solely within Patrick’s brain – Patrick has effectively rootkitted himself and there is no guarantee he is aware of all the processes running on his meatware.

      (Elaborating further on this, Gurwara’s memories might solely be the set of memories the emergent personality happened to latch onto, or emerged from – there might be a real Gurwara out there who has never met Alison, but did once pass through Patrick’s perceptions – and Gurwara’s brand of think about your own ethhical motivations might be the ideal self-iterating seed to produce an emergent personality – the classic security flaw of data slipping over into code space).

      • Walter

        I ‘think’ Guwara has to be ‘real’, in the sense of having a physical body, because my notion of Patrick is that his extra minds don’t have their own extra powers.

        That said, I could easily see him having encountered Patrick once, long ago, (say, while doing Conspiracy stuff), and a version of him just getting ‘stuck’ in Patrick’s mind, hard at work ever since.

        • Ah, but this is a power Patrick now appears to have,so he may simply have been the first of the avatars to recognise the possibility.

      • Tylikcat

        So how well set up is Patrick’s brain for virtualization? *whistles innocently*

  • Lostman

    So wait, Templar exist before Patrick? What did they do?

    Also imagine what Patrick achieved if he had a much more concrete ideology, and goals outside of “super-villain”. Patrick could took a nice piece of the United States, or gotten control of the whole country if he wanted too.

    • Urthman

      I took that to mean, “Templar was up and running, publicly traded, and I had a controlling stake.”

    • zellgato

      Paladin was probably a tech gathering generalized force. It was just adapted to handle the current stuff.
      That and likely he only thinks it all occured at once. It probably just reached a point where it leaked from “cryptids and weirdo’s in the news” to “its legit”

  • Pol Subanajouy

    Well that was loudly declared to be “Chekov’s Door.”

    • Lostman

      It like Chekov’s big red button.

      • Weatherheight

        Chekov’s jolly – green – candy-like button…

        What’s behind the door? That’s just it! We don’t know! Maaaaybe something bad … maaaaybe something good! I guess we’ll never know! ‘Cause YOU’RE going to guard it, Alison! You won’t open it, will you, Alison?

        Imagine what we could discover at the MERE OPENING of a SINGLE DOOR! The beeyootiful shiny door! The jolly candy-like door! Will she hold out, folks? CAN she hold out?

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHy8kW632dE

        • llennhoff

          You aren’t going to open the door, right Alison? That would be bad!
          Uh … I am Groot?

  • Philip Bourque

    Next page, they go through that door.

  • Vespayik

    I’ve finally realized that Patrick is essentially in an angst coma right now, a la Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender except Patrick hasn’t done anything right in his life.

  • zophah

    They are already in a section of the mind walled off from Patrick’s other memories because they are dangerous, so what could possibly be so much more dangerous that it needs a sealed door?

    • palmvos

      lets ask more important questions…
      do we really want to know? do we need to? will it help us understand this story better?

  • Jeremy

    I love this depiction of a mindscape, and an effort to bring some sort of order to the chaos.

  • Mechwarrior

    It’s where the Zonk is.

  • MY UTTERLY RANDOM THEORY:

    Behind the door are all of his repressed memories of his twin brother, Max: http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-6/page-12-5/
    Those chiseled cheekbones! Those brown eyes Alison finds so dreamy! http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-5/page-100/

    And the fact that his horrible mother is a congresswoman: http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-6/page-133-2/
    The nose knows! http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-7/page-64-4/

    (I know it makes no sense, but if against all reason it turns out to be true I want credit.)

    • damocles6

      Oh dang, both moms do have very pointy noses.

    • Spongegirl Circleskirt

      I think you are on to something there…

  • Jovial Contrarian

    Holy SHIT what happened to Graveyard and Rat over there D:

  • Ptorq

    That’s really a very good non-answer. It’s firmly dismissive and reasonably polite, which … even given that Patrick likes and trusts Alison … is a much better attitude to take towards the flying brick/lightning bruiser than “none of your effing business, Ms Nosypants”.

  • R Lex Eaton

    “What on earth possessed you to think you could actually affect such change? That you could win a fight against something greater than all of us?”

    “Same reason you did. I figured I could take ’em.”

    • Weatherheight

      “This here beer…!”

  • Midnight one more night without sleeping
    Watching ’til that morning comes creeping
    Green Door what’s that secret your keeping?

    There’s an old piano and they play it hot behind the green door (Green door)
    Don’t know what they’re doing but they laugh a lot behind the green door (Ooh, green door)
    Wish they’d let me in so I could find out what’s behind the green door (Green door)

    Knocked once tried to tell ’em I’d been there
    Door slammed hospitality’s thin there
    Wondering just what’s going on in there

    Saw an eyeball peep in through a smoky cloud behind the green door (Green door)
    When I said Joe sent me some one laughed out loud behind the green door (Ooh, green door)
    All I want to do is join the happy crowd behind the green door (Green door)

    Yeah

    Oh,…

  • What the helmet frame made me realise was how much Menace’s helmet was about hiding Patrick’s youth, rather than Patrick’s identity.

    Never mind that everyone knew that all the biodynamics were roughly the same age, Teen!Patrick would have greater difficulty getting respect and obedience than vaguely menacingly masked Menace. (c.f. some of the stuff Tylikcat’s been writing about living independently as a teen).

    (Which raises an uncomfortable question about Feral – how much of the stuff she was theoretically sentenced and then pardoned for/sentenced to life on the operating table was committed when she was still a minor).

    • Tylikcat

      Remember, the conditions of her pardon were research for a very limited time. The eternal donor idea was hers.

    • Gotham

      All masks are about hiding.

      • Tylikcat

        And I’d say it’s both. I mean, compare and contrast with mega girl’s outfit, and her very minimal mask.

  • ColaKitteh

    Go through the door! Right now! Chaaaaaaaaaaaarge!!! *shoulders door*

  • zellgato

    Behind door number 1 isss…… His morality, locked away, crying and driven insane.
    Or full of everyone else’s sexual fantasies and insanity

  • Zerilan

    Showing past characters really shows off how bad and soft looking the art has gotten in recent months.

    • Gotham

      you spelled “amazing and soft looking” wrong don’t worry it’s just autocorrect we get it

  • A vision of a world without human structures, perhaps. But is it off limits because it’s an embarrassing memory or because it’s still his plan?

  • LlubNek

    … and yet, it is, conspicuously, there…

    • LlubNek

      or it could be something like “those are not my secrets to share”. I’m sure plenty of stuff from other minds aren`t fit for inside the barriers

  • Darkoneko Hellsing

    Go throught it ! Go throught it !

  • motorfirebox

    You know, usually when there’s a place “we don’t go” in a story, you know you’re gonna end up going there. But Patrick’s mind seems to have quite a few of them. I’m starting to wonder if we actually will, or if it’s just an indicator of just how thoroughly fuckered Patrick’s mind actually is.

  • Eric Schissel

    We can’t see it (since everything in that section of that panel is some shade of green), but the green door is surrounded by [the] yellow wallpaper…

  • Dave M

    The door is opened.
    Cue 2001 white room scene with an aged astronaut eating cream corn while wearing a 2001 space suit. The astronaut turns to us, it is Gurwara. Cue “Thus Spake Zarathustra” and end credits. 🙂

  • Hmm, I was wondering if this was a follow-the-yellow-brick-road scenario, and there’s a green curtain door.

    “Ignore the man behind the green door!”

  • David Brown

    I really don’t think Alison has the fortitude of the quizat haderach.

  • Theobservantwolf

    That’s Gurwaraholm, we don’t go there anymore.