SFP

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  • Gotham

    They can fly? They can *all* fly?! Smol Patrick too I assume, unless that’s the reason why he’s super bitter about his experience being the Red Ranger of this Sentai Team.
    Makes that maze-like run at the beginning of the journey and the guilt car trip with Patrick’s mom kind of unnecessary, wouldn’t it?

    • elilla

      Maybe it’s just dream-logic and the logistics get squishy.

    • They both come under ‘losing yourself in your memories’.

    • Packy Anderson

      Narrative necessity. Patrick is telling a story in his mind.

    • Zorae42

      I think they didn’t fly in the beginning because Menace was in that tower and they were trying to keep a low profile and not attract attention… Flying is pretty attention grabbing 😛

    • Weatherheight

      I can fly in my dreams and I can fly in my imagination. Can’t you? 😀

      If we assume that all of this is intentional, then Patrick is going to tell the story in the way that best supports his narrative. Narrative is rarely utterly true.

    • You can fly in a dream when you have need to fly in a dream to achieve your intent 😉

  • Yirtimd2

    And then she wake up and everything is fine… but after some time she understand that this is another layer of dream and wake up… in another dream and then it is another one… and another one… and another one…

    • Kid Chaos

      Now, now; this is “SFP”, not “Inception”…I think. 😵

      • Empress Ambivalence

        Nor Neil Gaiman’s Sandman volume 1.

        I think…

      • Weatherheight

        ::glances at the mug that’s been spinning for three years::
        ::shrugs and flickers an ear a few times::

  • Markus

    I’d kinda enjoy it if she gets out now, and then Pat just wakes up and is like “Hey, what’d I miss?”

    • Kronimiciad .

      I get the feeling Patrick meant for this to happen. “Ambush!”

      • demosthenese10

        “Pocket Sand!”

    • NotPatrick

      I really really hope that something like that happens. They made such a huge deal out of Patrick being unable to read his own mind, that it would be a shame to just throw that away. Plus, it makes the most sense to move the plot forward. Either a. they’re about to break out and kill Patrick in the ensuing conflict somehow, eliminating one of the most interesting characters in this comic for the sake of subpar melodrama, or b. this is considered as a kind of autonomous telepathic immune response to the presence of a foreign mind, and they just move forward with the Gurawa mystery.

      • Dave Huber

        I truly hope Alison exits back to her body. Feral could easily decide the best way to save her friend is to snap Patrick’s neck…

  • JohnTomato

    “No capes.” – Edna Mode

  • Aresius

    So no fifth Patrick in the tower, just a holoTV of the surrounding minds…Since Menace was up there at the beginning, was he in charge of Patrick’s likely charade to draw Alison into Boy’s trap?

    • Magma Sam

      My. current running theory is that the ‘sentinel’ is the fifth Patrick. It’s probably not that, but it wouldn’t be completely out of the question.

      • M. Alan Thomas II

        It could be that those are the five Patricks that the others know about and acknowledge, while there’s a hidden “Sixth Patrick” outside the walls and behind the door. . . .

        • Weatherheight

          Or the Behind the Green Door is where the Fifth Eleme.. er… the Fifth Patrick is currently being held…
          Yeah, I like that…

      • Aresius

        Lord Boy, Menace, Anima, Record Keeper and Sentinel…ok, that kinda makes sense xD

      • People kept mentioning the “Fifth Patrick” and that there were “five of us” as if they were waiting on the last one, or that the information were accurate and undeceptive to begin with! Honestly I’ve assumed it was probably the Sentinel ever since Alison followed Gurwara down Lord Boy’s particular rabbithole; but I’ve been keeping an open mind, just in case there was another trapped up here in the Tower, or behind that mysteriously unsealable door. Always good to be pleasantly surprised by extra characterisation after all! But no, seems like that’s all, folks.

      • Nikki

        I like the Sentinel premise, but also, Patrick’s body? the shifting maelstrom? There are definitely things we’ve encountered that might be the fifth

    • David Jantz

      People have been mentioning the “fifth Patrick” for a while now… how do we know there is one at all? I must have missed something, I don’t remember a fifth patrick being mentioned.

      • Zinc

        You might have missed the third panel of page 51.
        http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-7/page-51-5/

        • Weatherheight

          Well, if we have to trust any version of Patrick to be accurate/truthful, that’d be my pick…

        • David Jantz

          Got it, thanks for the link 🙂

    • JeffH

      I really like how the surrounding minds includes so many people — an interesting insight into his powers. Patrick can, to a certain extent, “see through walls” by being able to read minds of folks within the radius of his powers.

      That’s something I hadn’t thought of before for telepaths, but it kind of makes sense — there’s no reason to expect that walls would stop whatever physical effects allow mind reading.

  • zarawesome

    The tiny, blurry area in Patrick’s mind corresponding to the actual real world in the present.

  • Ladon

    Yeah, she may not have a giant flying brick, but she knows when to get the hell out of dodge.

    • Weatherheight

      Well, technically Alison is a flying brick, she’s just short the giant part…

      • Ladon

        You make a strong point

        • Weatherheight

          it occurs to me I had an opportunity to say something about flipping the “b” and I totally missed it…
          I am so sorry…

  • GreatWyrmGold

    “We have to stop herbefore the mindscape gets even more abstractly trippy!”
    “We’re too late…”

  • Charles Moore

    She can’t leave!

    We don’t know whats behind that door.

    • Tim F

      We also don’t know if that’s an exit.

      BTW, when the kid said ‘it was a mistake to come here’, I was sure she was about to throw a shoe. But there’s NO SHOES in dream world. omg

      • Weatherheight

        Who cares if it’s an exit…
        I wanna know what’s behind the green door!
        ::stomps a hoof petulantly::

        Also, panel two – shoes. Only Alison is shoeless
        Alison is doing her impression of Shoeless Joe Jackson because she wasn’t wearing shoes when she entered Patrick’s Realm – she was crashed out and was barefoot when all this started.

        • palmvos

          whats behind the green door. the answer is given in an old song.. my dad refused to sing/recite that part of the song though

      • Jordan Hiller

        Who throws a shoe? Honestly!

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an0bVaTjF_Y

  • tygertyger

    All that component in the last panel… I guess Alison vanishes in a puff of illogic.

    • Eric Meyer

      Nono, Component is Emotion. She vanishes in a puff of emotion.

  • AustinC123

    Hey remember when she saw Gurwara and he ran away?
    That was odd.

    • Weatherheight

      I’m still betting that wasn’t actually Arjun, but a very flashy squirrel for Alison to chase.

      • Shjade

        I hadn’t considered that possibility. Seems plausible.

      • AustinC123

        Yeah, I think that’s very likely. I’m not sure exactly how it jives with the rest of Lord Boy’s deal, here – if he can create independent manifestations, even illusory ones, what exactly are his limits and why doesn’t he just crush her immediately? – but it’s seeming like the Occam’s razor answer to what the hell he was doing in Patrick’s mind at the very moment Alison went inside.

        • Weatherheight

          If he has the illusion interact too strongly with anything other than one of Patrick’s aspects (the only “real” things in his head), Alison gets a Saving Throw.
          Too nerdy?
          Yeah, probably too nerdy…

    • Dave Huber

      Is that Gurwara in the background of Alison’s portal back to the objective world? Perhaps the tower is Patrick’s conceptualization of an interface hub where all foreign minds are cataloged?

  • Pol Subanajouy

    So…is the Tower the focal point of Patrick’s more external senses? I was under the impression that the Tower was a still more central aspect to his psyche.

    • Insanenoodlyguy

      if it’s also controlling outgoing, then it very much is essential.

    • Weatherheight

      He just likes tall cylindrical things.

      • Tylikcat

        It’s the communications tower. *nods*

        …huh, I wonder if it’s a general analog to the thalamus.

        • Weatherheight

          Neurobiologists are so much fun. 😀

          • Tylikcat

            Hey, mediates the connection between internal experience of the mind and connection to the outside world. Really, it should look like a pair of eggs, but, Patrick.

          • Weatherheight

            We should totally get the tower and the thalamus together.
            On second thought…

          • Tylikcat
  • R Lex Eaton

    Urrgh. Allison, I like ya, but it kinda irks me how so many people play you for a sucker.

    Of course, better a sucker than a cynic. Side-eyes for you, Pat.

  • zellgato

    I rather hope that…
    This isn’t going to make one of the aspects following her.. enter her own psyche too..
    This would be one elaborate plot to infect her brain in a way that lets him control her more. and I could believe that.

    Though i still hope she wakes up in her body still “struggling” and accidently crushes his skull abit.

    • Shjade

      I doubt this. Patrick already, in a sense, lives in a corner of Alison’s head as it is. I don’t think they’d feel the need for a more literal aspect of that in the comic.

      • zellgato

        Its more that Patrick is highly about controling her in someway.. because she really has an influence on him that no one else does.
        I think

  • Tylikcat

    Nnnnrggggh! So much action!

    Gimme some exposition!

  • Whilst this looks bad, the generous part of me wonders if he’s, in his own misguided way, trying to protect her from the plotters in the conspiracy.

  • Danygalw

    ~component~

  • Keith

    So this is sleeping Patrick reading Feral’s mind. Is Alison about to wind up in Feral’s mind?

    • Dave Huber

      I suspect the image of Feral is Alison’s sensory experience from her body, offering her foreign mind a portal back home.

  • deebles

    The question is, will Alison get her mind out this way, or pull Feral’s mind in?

  • Cori J.

    body swap body swap body swap PLEASE LET IT BE A BODY SWAP

  • BiologyProf

    The colors in the 6th panel make me think the barrier just came down…

  • Patrick_GETS_me

    Does the Sentinel not count as a “Patrick” iteration? Everyone in the comics is assuming there is a fifth Patrick out there somewhere who we haven’t met yet, but I thought we had already met all five: The Boy, Anima, Menace, the Sentinel, and the Record-Keeper. Do we have confirmation that there is still a fifth somewhere?