SFP

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  • Zaku

    I have several questions

    • Insanenoodlyguy

      Best guess:

      When Patrick pulled her in, he basically got her “riding” the telepathic mindstreams. Alison is right now a low level telepathic, at least until she “falls”. Like, she’s riding a tk bike right now Patrick steadied for her, and maybe if she falls off she can’t do it again on her own, but she can do it till she falls. I’m stretching the metaphor a bit here.

    • Jordan Hiller

      Yes.

      I have no answers.

    • scottfree

      My guess, since we haven’t seen any of Alison’s neighbors wandering in and out of Patrick’s citadel, is that he’s focused his psychic sense so that the pedestal with little holograms of people are minds that Patrick is able to perceive, That tower and little window into the world is how Patrick interacts with everyone else, and when Alison dove into the image of Feral she left Patrick’s mind and entered Feral’s. The Sentinel, Menace, and Anima all flinch and try to shield themselves crossing the barrier between the green (Patrick’s subconscious) and the pink (Feral’s subconscious) because they absolutely do not want to expose themselves to another unstructured mind.

  • Gotham

    When suddenly, Clevin comes back because he forgot his keys there and is the most confused of them all.

    (Oh lord, Feral’s mental state is going to go to war with Patrick’s with Alison bleeding out right in the middle, this is going to get funky!)

    • Scholiast

      I suspect Patrick will be less than successful in a showdown of mental willpower with Feral.

      • Blub Blub

        yes after feral did her organ donation thing I’m quite certain she has a really strong will.

        • Insanenoodlyguy

          Plus pratical invulnerabiity. Fuck her brain up? That’s okay, she’s got more brain!

          • Weatherheight

            You’re confusing her physical brain with her psychic structure. While they may be related, they are not congruent.

            On the plus side, wearing Tara’s down by psychosomatic injury is almost certainly a lost cause. 😀

          • Insanenoodlyguy

            Telepathic attacks appear to be actually causing brain hemmorages in Allison. But Feral can bleed all day. So while she’d be no less vulnerable to a psychic attack, I’m guessing she could take a lot more of them

          • Weatherheight

            Oh, assuredly, the physical damage isn’t an issue for Tara.
            But what a telepath can do to your psyche isn’t necessarily a physical thing. 😀

      • Weatherheight

        I don’t.
        Tara’s power requires no act of will, it just is, 24/7.
        Her dealing with pain over a long haul, however, may give her a tactical advantage, but it’s unclear to what degree her ability accommodates how she experiences pain (self-reporting is always a little dodgy).
        Add in Patrick’s situation of literally years of experience in mind tricks and years of learning how to tamp down all the voices in his head…?
        Patrick is most definitely not a slouch in the will department.

        I expect something unexpected and an exploitation of a vulnerability of Patrick’s, but I confess I don’t know what that will be. I suspect Alison’s and Tara’s empathy and acceptance will be involved.

        • There’s a difference between dealing with pain, and dealing with pain you can choose to walk away from. Also between dealing with acute pain, and dealing with chronic pain – I’ve got a lot of experience dealing with chronic pain, but if I stub my toe (acute pain) I’m still going to swear and curse and jump up and down!

          We know Tara deals well with acute pain, we’ve seen her walking around and talking coherently with a sword through her brain, or in the immediate aftermath of a major fracture. People undergoing chronic pain can be functional at levels of pain that people with experience of only acute pain believe is impossible (BTDT), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t debiiltating and doesn’t hurt like blazes, My interpretation of Tara is that she deals with all pain in a way that’s more consistent with chronic pain.

          TL/DR:.there is an act of will involved in her power, because she chooses not to walk away from situations where she will experience extremes of pain.

          • Eve

            I have chronic pain and know what you mean, but what is BTDT?

          • Been There, Done That. My career came to a grinding stop when management refused to believe the level of pain I was working through, even when in possession of a report from my consultant saying ‘frankly I don’t understand how he’s managing to work at all’ – turned out I was hitting 8-9 on a 0-10 pain scale on a daily basis. I did ultimately get them to admit I was right, but some managers really don’t like being proved wrong…

    • Lostman

      To night they are going higher then high.

  • Lostman

    Oh dear, we’re in Feral mind maze mind now. I think she may have gone broke something.

    • Tsapki

      I really hope we are indeed in Feral’s mind.

      • Lostman

        Oh dear, the whole neghiorhood is in for one wild night.

  • AbacusWizard

    Dream-Feral has just become the cutest thing in the whole strip.

    • zarawesome

      owo

      • elilla

        My thoughts exactly.

      • Nightsbridge

        what’s this?

        • Daniel Demski

          I think it’s similar to :3. I.e., a cat face.

        • Merle

          Not sure if continuing reference or legitimate question…

          • Nightsbridge

            uwu

    • Jeremy

      Absolutely – and her inner landscape is beautiful!

      If it comes down to Alison and Feral’s inner psyche against Patrick in a psychic fight, I’ll definitely bet on Feral and Alison – Patrick is more experienced, but Alison and Feral have some tremendous inner strength.

      Just look at the amount of pain Feral can cope with…that would be devastating for anyone else…

      • Weatherheight

        And I have a feeling Feral will fight dirty if she has to.
        Or feels like it.

        • Jeremy

          Feral also might be able to connect with Patrick. Patrick has suffered a lot of mental and psychological pain and Feral has suffered a lot of physical pain – and it’s implied that she’s had a tough life herself.

          Not that Feral will hesitate to kick Patrick’s mental behind if he threatens Alison.

    • 3-I

      Let’s be honest, Feral was ALWAYS the cutest thing in the strip.

      • JeffH

        Feral, with Skip a close second…

    • Weatherheight

      Well, I’ll let that slide since Amanda isn’t in there yet…

      But yeah, that’s kind of adorable.

    • Merle

      If she comes out of this with the new superpower to spontaneously switch between human and cat-girl, I will count this as among the best of all possible worlds.

    • Now, if she can just explain which side makes you taller…

    • Jordan Hiller

      As if Feral wasn’t already the cutest thing in the strip.

  • Ray Radlein

    I’ve never found the color reproduction in Component Video to be that good, myself

    • Tylikcat

      Eh, people always get used to oversaturated color.

  • Incendax

    Awkwardly, this means she’s going to have to deal with the subconscious sexual attraction of ANOTHER friend in the same night. Hah.

    • Dean

      Feral is completely conscious of her attraction to Allison, though.

      • Incendax

        Are you saying she is completely in control of all aspects of her dream state?

        • Callinectes

          Like Feral finding out what Alison did to her.

          • Shjade

            Oooooh, shit, that could be a thing. 😡

          • Merle

            I thought that Feral knew that?

          • Callinectes

            She has no idea why her powers changed. She certainly doesn’t know that Alison made someone else do it to her without consent from either of them.

    • Eve Morris

      Nah, I don’t think it’s a big deal. Tara fancied Alison when she met her, hit on her, Alison turned her down, they both got over it and now both have good partners.

      • Incendax

        That’s definitely a possibility. But if doesn’t work that way for lots of people.

  • AdamBombTV

    “My best friend is trapped inside the mind of a psychopath and is gushing blood from her nose… What a perfect time to have a nap.”

    • GreatWyrmGold

      …I don’t think it was intentional. Note the word choice; “passed the f*k out” rarely implies an intentional nap.

  • Rolf Soldaat

    Haha, Alison thinks she’d go to heaven, that’s cute.

    • Potentially, Alison think’s Feral’s brainscape is heaven.

      This is going to throw a cat amongst the relationship pigeons.

    • GreatWyrmGold

      I mean, by most interpretations of Christian theology, you just need to believe in Jesus to go to heaven, because the big man upstairs really needs validation or whatever. Other interpretations of that theology require different but generally stricter requirements, such as being one of the predestined elect or being without sin, but the belief thing seems to be the dominant viewpoint.
      That’s one of many things that people tend to ignore because it clashes with their image of God as being someone worthy of respect instead of pity.

      • Tylikcat

        Eh, a) I’m not Christian* b) I think folk religion is always equally valid.

        * ‘course, I have trouble taking afterlife stories seriously, but hey, I think they do perfectly well being good stories.

      • pidgey

        Can we not do the casual-disrespect-via-deliberate-misunderstanding thing? We certainly don’t demand that everyone understand scientific principles in order to be allowed to believe them; the same ought to hold true for other ways of looking at the world. If you want to argue a particular case about a particular belief, I don’t see a problem with that, but find someone to do it with who can put up a real fight, instead of a straw man you invented yourself.

        • GreatWyrmGold

          I could rattle off a dozen different Bible verses to prove my point, but I just did that, so instead I’ll point to Pascal’s Wager and all of the people telling nonbelievers that they’ll go to Hell if they don’t convert.
          It’s not a strawman, it’s just a position not held by your pastor.

      • Weatherheight

        In most Christian traditions, Yeshua is the Grace and the Forgiveness of the Eternal made manifest and embodied. The grace and forgiveness is a constant, it’s the acceptance of that grace that is incumbent on the believer, and it must be chosen and accepted daily. Grace is always there, but most of us feel like we have to punish ourselves because the idea of expiation of sin is such a big part of the Old Testament. Interestingly, if one cleaves to this wider idea, Yeshua as a person becomes symbolic as well as literal, opening a door for all people of good conscience to become better and achieve a higher consciousness.

        Which is easier for most folks – forgiving oneself when they know they’ve done something horrible and can’t deny it but nevertheless they regret it, or forgiving another when that person has done something horrible and that person clearly regrets it?

        It’s a bit more complicated than the oversimplification we get taught in the Church, because most folks can’t grab ahold of that ten-ton-marshmallow. And it makes it tough for people who think more deeply on these things, because oversimplification is nearly always misrepresentation.

        • Eve

          No Jews and very few Christians call Jesus “Yeshua”. It’s only used by the Messianic cult.

          • GreatWyrmGold

            …Didn’t Christianity start as a Messianic cult?
            I’m just splitting hairs here, but you really need to work on your precision.

          • Weatherheight

            It’s also the best literal translation of his name from the Greek. Jesus is from the Anglicization from the Latin from the Greek.
            On the other hand, if anyone would know, it’s Eve.

        • GreatWyrmGold

          Like much theology, that’s all fancy window dressing that doesn’t change the core point. Whether it’s just belief or whether it’s acceptance of divine forgiveness that non-believers don’t think is legitimate, it’s still open only to believers and doesn’t particularly care about acts. Whatever the mechanics behind this fact, those are still true. That’s the problem, and that’s why most laypeople overlook that part of doctrine. Any doctrine which sends Hitler* to heaven and Gandhi to hell is worth overlooking.

          * http://kachetiendg.blogspot.com/2016/05/hitler-was-christian.html
          And to clarify, I’m not trying to say that all Christians are like Hitler in any way, just that Hitler was like all Christians in some ways. Not in the ways that most people think of when Hitler is compared to something, but definitely in some ways.

          • Weatherheight

            The fact that it doesn’t work for you is cool with me. H*ck, it shows you’re thinking carefully about these things, which is more than most Christians tend to do. And I applaud that.

            I’m not sure your analogy works, though. Hitler would have to admit his error, and he never would, based on the evidence of his life. If there is a hell, Hitler chose it, not heaven, because to get there, Hitler would have to admit he was wrong. And I can’t see that happening.

            Ghandi, on the other hand, would have been keenly aware of his shortcomings, based on the evidence of his life, and would understand the need for forgiveness. He offered grace and compassion. I don’t belive in a God that would reject that, regardless of the religious trappings. If there is a God, if there is an afterlife, Ghandi’s is a good one.

            What is good, is good, and brings us closer to wholeness.
            What is evil is evil, and pushes us away from wholeness.
            The trick is discerning that, and that’s where the trouble lies.
            And words just make it harder, cause practically none of us can agree on any of the words I just used.

            The Church has a lot to answer for – keep holding our collective toes to the fire. It’s what we deserve.

          • GreatWyrmGold

            As with many things, I’m not sure where God can fit into this kind of thing. The presence of a God complicates so many more things than it simplifies.
            Let’s start with Gandhi. All the Christian thinkers I’ve heard of have emphasized the importance of believing in God and Jesus and whatnot, which makes me think that you need to do a bit more than realize when you’ve f*ked up to get to heaven; you need to admit it to the right god. That’s one of the big problems I have with “mainstream” Christian teachings, right behind the objective morality angle. If you disagree with that, great! Same with if you disagree with Jesus saying you should stick to Old Testament law or that the Bible is utterly useless as a historical record. Neither of those really changes my critique of common Christian beliefs. (Maybe it’s not as bad wherever you live, but I’ve heard too many fundies preaching to dismiss this sort of thing as not a major part of Christianity.)
            Speaking of objective morality, Hitler’s argument brings up a couple of other wrinkles. The big one is that whole judgement thing. The argument seems to be that Hitler did some things God didn’t like, and didn’t realize they were wrong*, so he’s damned. This makes sense for people like Hitler, but…well, this is one of those places where God simplifies things, but not in a good way. It’s easy to figure out right and wrong; just ask God! But there are plenty of problems which come up, and it shouldn’t take more than a quick glance at Leviticus to see where they might be. Over the past 2,000 years (and a few millennia before that, if you count Jews), God’s law has shifted quite a bit, but by standard doctrine, God has not. So, presumably, even most Christians throughout history have been following the wrong set of rules. The only solution to this would be the idea that God’s will is malleable, which either makes everything worse or puts us in exactly the same position as we were without God, except with this sky-grandpa hanging on as an extra step in the process.
            I admit that I haven’t tried hard since high school or so, but I can’t think of any way to fit an Abrahamic-esque deity or other supreme being into a system of morality without something getting horribly skewed…especially if that deity is part of a belief system that’s existed for millennia, doing its damnedest to resist changing.

            *Which brings up its own kettle of worms, a bit like the whole “what if they don’t hear of Jesus,” though in my opinion less potent. Though part of that is probably just because I’m an atheist and don’t value religious belief that much to begin with.

      • “Believe in Jesus” is a huge simplification – the entire point is that Jesus freely offers forgiveness for and cleansing of sin, a gift which needs only to be accepted for the recipient to be welcomed into the Kingdom of God and made right with God. So “being without sin” is in no way a different interpretation of Christian faith and theology, or a stricter theological requirement. It’s simply a slightly more accurate summarisation. Certainly neither is incorrect, in that to accept Jesus’ offer of salvation one needs to be open to a living relationship with Jesus (and thus by necessity experience, and by default then believe in, his existence), and the salvation on offer is requisite mainly because without that ritual cleansing it’s impossible to be entirely without sin and thus unmarred. They are, however, incomplete understandings of a much larger concept.

        Of course, the donkey got there before me – but there’s something charmingly, metaphorically appropriate about that .. 😉

        • Weatherheight

          ::blushes::
          ::trots into the Jerusalem Cafe with Debbie Jackson on his back::
          ::giggles hysterically::

          • Perhaps that’s going a bit too far. I’m not sure I’m comfortable claiming metaphorical similarity x.x

      • It’s the life lived that’s important, not the belief (cf infants). Which isn’t to say there’s not a whole lot of Christians get that backwards,

        We don’t actually know what Alison’s religious upbringing was like, or even if she is Christian. She could quite feasibly be a secular Jew, for instance.

        • GreatWyrmGold

          Mark 16:16; John 3:18 and 36; Acts 16:30-1; Romans 1:16-7, 3:28, 4:13, 5:1, and 10:9; Galatians 2:16 and 3:11-2; Ephesians 2:8-9.
          Also, it’s kind of the core conceit behind Pascal’s Wager. And all those people telling nonbelievers that they’ll go to Hell if they don’t convert.

          • Pointless quoting Scripture at me, I’m much more interested in the ethics and logic of belief. If we believe infants, whether baptised or not, aren’t condemned to Hell, then clearly salvation does not depend on belief. Equally I’m not prepared to believe someone is condemned to Hell just because they never met a Christian. Both cases are totally incompatible with the concept of a merciful god. Ultimately that means I’m thoroughly in the multiple routes to the divine camp and have no time for those who insist only Christians will be saved.

          • GreatWyrmGold

            Christian theology clearly treats babies differently than adults (see Limbo), which makes sense whether you’re judging them on works or acts.
            And like I said repeatedly, most laymen are perfectly willing to ignore the nastier parts of their religion. That doesn’t change the party line about the importance of belief, nor the prevailing belief for most of Christianity’s history. Which was my point.

      • Kid Chaos

        “Wouldn’t it be weird if you died and you woke up, and you were in Heaven, just like they always told you? And everyone had wings on, and the Pearly Gates? Wouldn’t you feel stupid?” 😜
        –Steve Martin, from his “A Wild and Crazy Guy” comedy album

    • Merle

      Not every religion believes in a Hell, you know.

      • But Alison clearly believes in the potential for one – which doesn’t necessarily say she’s a believer, just that she was brought up in a society where the Abrahamic tradition is dominant,

        • Merle

          Judaism absolutely does not believe in a Christian-style eternal “Hell”.

          Not even every form of Christianity believes in a Hell, or at least not one you get stuck in eternally.

          • Perhaps not, but Judaism does have Sheol, to counterpart Shamayim/the Seven Heavens.

            My personal belief is that the traditional Hell is incompatible with Christianity.

  • So Menace, Animatrick and the Sentinel’s hand all seem to be losing resolution and running into a barrier in the second frame, which suggests Alison may have left Patrick’s brainscape, something the rift she falls through in frame three also supports, Which implies she’s now in either her brainscape, or Feral’s, and frankly I don’t think Alison has enough imagination for where they’ve ended up.

    Feral’s brainscape is unexpectedly floral, and Feral’s avatar is unexpectedly cute,

    Things got interesting.

    • Zorae42

      I don’t think this is Feral’s brainscape, I think it’s her dreamscape

      • Weatherheight

        You may be splitting hairs there, but I get the point and endorse it.

  • Tani M

    Aww… Foxy Feral! Her mindscape is lovely! And so much healthier than Patrick’s. Could be the rest cure Alison needs right now.

  • Yirtimd2
  • Darkoneko Hellsing

    Feral in wonderland

  • trippy.

  • Ladon

    Nighttime nosebleeds. Hate those. Although they usually wake you up. That is, if you aren’t trapped in a whirl of other people’s mental dreamscapes due to a damaged psychic’s damaged psyche.

    • Callinectes

      I usually wake up the moment the blood vessel tingles before rupturing.

  • Dave Van Domelen

    Curiouser and curiouser….

  • Gotham

    “So wait, why exactly did you fall unconscious? Did the intensity of shaking I, the world’s strongest human up drain you of all forces or was it a supernatural foes the identity of which we’ve yet to discover?”
    “I was tired, yo”

  • Boy am I glad to see you

  • GreatWyrmGold

    “So…are you part of a gestalt consciousness where each bit is personified as someone with their own goals and drives, or is that something that only telepaths get?”
    “Um…maybe? This is new territory for me, too.”

    • Weatherheight

      “I gotta be honest, Ali, I really don’ understand exactly what you mean there…”

      • GreatWyrmGold

        “That’s okay, neither do I.”

    • Eric Meyer

      She might still be a gestalt consciousness of Feral created in PATRICK’s mind, along with Al’s gestalt. Again, piggy-backing on the whole “She thought she’d maybe fall into the unconscious when she fell asleep, so her most recent mind-copy believes itself to be her true consciousness, noodling around in a pocket of Patrick’s brain created as an expectation of her own unique mindscape, because Psychic Memory Palaces are weird.”

      • Weatherheight

        This may be “outside the wall” yet still inside Patrick’s psychic landscape, and Tara’s just frolicking there. Cause there’s nothing else to do and no one else to talk with.

  • Walter

    The big questions is whether Menace and Anima ended up in Feral’s mind alongside Allison.

    • Aresius

      What if they can reach Allison’s vacant head and take over? D:

      • Walter

        That…would be bad.

        I don’t think Patrick can control other people though. Not unless his power has changed an incredible amount. He never could before.

        • Weatherheight

          At least, that’s what he’s told us. 😛

        • Aresius King

          Well, he never had any willing visitors to his Head City before, had he? Maybe Patrick has never tried to jump through his Component Video, since it was much simpler to hang around people and grab copies of their minds without their knowledge… Imagine Alison waking up and beating Patrick up while shouting “I told you I’d have your skull for this, Menace!” xD

  • JohnTomato

    Feral is a Fox Girl?

    Interesting possibilities.

    • R Lex Eaton

      Lookit those ears!

  • Pol Subanajouy

    T H E F U C K O U T

    After Patrick’s baggage, I love the simplicity that is Feral. <3

  • Christopher Dacombe

    I kind of wonder if Feral deliberately knocked herself unconscious, in order to try and help by entering Patrick’s mind too, but with her regeneration she probably isn’t capable of inflicting a serious enough injury for that to work.

    • Weatherheight

      I tend to agree…

  • me

    Feral’s a furry, this is cannon now.

  • Giacomo Bandini

    Wow. I wasn.t esoecting that.. okai, i m gonna call it. By the end of this arc, Feral is gonna discover Alison’s two biggest secret. That Patrick is really Menace, and what she did to Max to save her. I doubt theirfriendship wil survive that.

    • Weatherheight

      Assuming this is so (and now that you mention it, that would be awesooommmee! ), a huge argument seems likely. Possibly a huge fight. On the other hoof,,,
      They seem to have figured out how to be friends even though they are very different and acknowledge that difference.
      In my experience, it’s the person who assumes that I’m “just like them and agree with them on just everything” that can’t handle it when they realize that I’m my own donkey and that my experience isn’t the same as theirs.

      • Tylikcat

        I don’t know if I could make predictions about how she’s respond to either. I mean, I don’t know how invested she is in the whole Menace thing – so she’d probably be interested, but I don’t know if she’d feel betrayed. And I still don’t feel sure what her take on the Max on thing is likely to be.

        • Weatherheight

          Isn’t it wonderful, this feeling of “I have no clue where this is going – so many options!” ?

        • Tara’s spent her time on the wrong side of the law to do what’s right, so I don’t see Patrick=Menace as a major issue for her, and she may view Max as another example.

      • Eve Morris

        I’m hoping they’ll deal with it like grownups, rather than Tara flinging off in a rage.

    • I don’t see Feral having any issues with that. Remember, Feral was a vigilante, discovering Patrick=Menace also means discovering Patrick vs the Conspiracy, and that’s a decision she completely understands. I actually think she’ll have slightly more of an issue with Max, but Feral’s always been a very pragmatic force of nature, and she’s never played by other people’s rules.

  • DivisionRing

    I took this to mean they both ended up behind the green door! Similar horticultural landscape…

    • Weatherheight

      😀

  • Weatherheight

    Yeah, I think we’ve gone Full-On-Alice here…

    Klevin comes back, he gets dragged in…
    Hector drops by and he gets dragged in…
    Lisa drops by and..
    Well, you get the idea.

  • zellgato

    huh.. So did an aspect of mr mind reader.. make her pass out to give Alllison an out?
    because it isn’t like Feral can knock herself out…..

  • ColaKitteh

    Catgirl Feral. That is all.

    • With those ears? More Foxy Lady Feral 🙂

      • R Lex Eaton

        Don’t make me bust out some Jimi Hendrix here, guys. :p

  • Gotham

    By the way, let’s take a moment to consider that, at this precise instant:

    Patrick is making Alison enter Feral’s mental state by way of reading both of their minds and inputting their behavior into the combined dreamscape of Patrick and Feral and broadcasting the result to them—so that they can keep reacting to events far beyond their “real” perception horizons—in a constant feedback loop to simulate the false self-awareness of these pseudo-foreign entities that in truth are actors in a thought narrative of Patrick’s that’s escaping his full conscious control.

    The roads we take in the quest toward justifying meeting Feral’s fursona face to face

    • It’s not necessarily all Patrick, he may just be the underlying network backbone, enabling everyone connected to run a version of the same situation on their own hardware, which actually works quite well with Alison experiencing physical effects – she’s overclocked her hardware trying to keep up and is overheating.

  • SmilingCorpse

    Tactful as ever, Tara. Tactful as ever…

  • Theobservantwolf

    Oh my gosh, I love Feral’s mindscape form! This is going to be great fun!

  • Eve Morris

    If any unwanted intruders have followed Alison in, countdown to those lovely vivid red flowers eating someone in 3…2…1…

  • Nightsbridge

    Thought: Yellow is Allison. Feral is red. Patrick is green. We’re going to visit Allison’s mind by the end of this.

  • Nightsbridge

    Huh.

    I think we maybe know why all those dudes in patrick’s room were sleeping.

  • Lonnie

    Shrimp. Heaven. Now.

  • Lonnie

    Anyway, let’s hop on the great story we have here and theorize.

    I believe that the reason Patrick associates “breaking down the barrier” with danger is because at one point, his barrier was not up, and during that time, he was emotionally and physically scarred and terrified. His mother was extremely abusive, and both parents obviously emotionally neglectful. Pearl or whatever her name is (I don’t care for her at all, she is horrid), his mother, treating him like nothing but an experiment and probably thinking horrible and intentional thoughts to strike fear in Patrick’s heart, and the thoughtlessness of his father (meaning of course, his father’s thinking without tact or worry about what his son might hear) became a horrific combination that sowed extreme distrust and paranoia in Patrick’s heart.

    He stopped hearing his own thoughts because he was too distressed about the ones he couldn’t help but hear around him. It’s kind of difficult to focus on what you’re doing if everyone around you is constantly whirring around and talking loudly, busily buzzing about. I don’t blame him for not being able to hear his own thoughts and notice his own feelings.

    There’s an important thing that I think happened before Patrick came back to Alison.

    I think he killed his mother in the same way she was going to kill him, or maybe even in a rawer, more emotional, and startling manner.
    We saw him broadcasting to Alison way before she even knew it was him, and one of those broadcasts was very sinister, broken like glass, with hands and knives drenched in blood and crying faces wrought with emotion. I think that was one of his most emotional memories, one that he just couldn’t suppress; him murdering the woman who made him how he was, the woman who ruined his life. I wouldn’t really blame him, either, although there’s better ways to go about that.
    Why do I think it was a murder scene, and why do I think it was his mother? In one of the broken mind shards, we see a hand pointing toward the sky, fingernails red and stark against the black and white. What are some of the only things we actually see apart from the black silhouette of Patrick’s mother? Her hands, with painted red nails, and bright red lipsticked lips.

    I believe that it’s not really Patrick who is trying to murder Alison: the entities of his mind obey the primal urges of a child who simply MUST survive. Lord Boy was the first entity (which is interesting on it’s own, because it shows that Patrick really IS trying to do what he thinks best for himself, but at the same time, it’s less thought and just action) and he was created for survival. OF COURSE he would want to destroy a foreign mind- has there ever been a mind to breach his? No! Then, consequentially, Alison is a DANGER to him and MUST be stopped at all costs.

    Lord Boy is his instinctual urge for survival personified and given rationale, and when all else seemingly fails, he’s the one to take charge of the situation, much like how we all will rely on instinct and adrenaline when in danger. There’s no time for true rational thought in those circumstances.

    On another note, why didn’t Patrick ever reciprocate Alison’s feelings, although it’s pretty safe to say he felt the same? Think of the only other “love” he’s experienced in his life. Could we say that he relates it to what his parents gave him, and then draw the conclusion that he actively avoids anything that reminds him of them because he equates it with danger?
    Remember. When his mother began taking him away to kill him, she expressed her love for him, and that she was doing this for her, his father, and for him. One can only suppose, that, in her own awful and terrifying way, she did “love” him to a point and think she was right.
    Theoretically, Patrick has never experienced real love, and he understands it as taught by his mother and shown by her actions. That is to say, he doesn’t understand love at all, and so when he and Alison screwed up and got into their fight, he felt the ghost of something beautiful leave him abruptly, and tried to do everything he could to bring it back and change his view on what real love is. Among the things he did to try and fix it, I believe, was kill his mother, or perhaps both of his parents.

    A fresh new start.

  • Walex B

    All cute and nice, but she started by running after Gurwara and ended up in the mental world of Boy Patrick. How could Gurwara be in Patrick’s mind? Where did he go after jumping into the emotion stream? Why did Alison forget about him ? Of course she was absorbed by the story of Patrick’s background, but perhaps a bit too much.
    That’s a situation that we shall see how it gets resolved…