SFP

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  • Robbie X Pierce

    Oh man the shippers are gonna love this one. 🙂

  • Gotham

    Ouch, that’s some righteous self-depreciation right here. Alison /is/ Patrick’s best and only friend.

    • zellgato

      …and that is the problem.
      I think Patrick actually thinks of her as a friend and can’t handle it.
      and more so.. can’t handle the fact that alison does not actually think of him as a friend. (or really anything). She has a bundle of weird emotions but emotions are.. not really readable in that intangible kind of way. As near as I can tell anyway.

      • Pol Subanajouy

        That’s pretty telling. When someone is so used to being on their own, any foreign presence, no matter how well meaning is alien and therefore a possible threat.

        • zellgato

          Yup.. I’ve sabotaged something interesting because of that.
          So I can really see how aspects of his brain would be all “SELF PRESERVATION TOTAL BURN”

          • Pol Subanajouy

            I’ve been there too. All too human. 🙁

    • GreatWyrmGold

      For most of the time Alison and Patrick have known each other, Alison has been trying to beat Patrick up and send him to jail. I think it’s fair to say that her friend credentials are a bit weaker than Feral’s.

      • Gotham

        Well, Feral’s vigilantism had got to clash with Alison’s misplaced values for a long while at first, filling up some amount of enmity, and that was before Alison’s fierce rejection of Feral’s sexual approach—which would have killed anyone not immortal—

        So, y’know. Alison doesn’t make for the best first times in general

        • cphoenix

          And then there was the friend who got his leg slashed by a villain who wanted to distract her. Not quite as much her fault, but still…

  • zellgato

    Feral makes this story for me.

  • MaxArt

    Man. I just can’t imagine growing up and living without friends.
    It’s not like I’ve many of them, but none? I say I’d turn psychotic too.

    And add that mother to the mix…

    • Not quite none, he had the dog.

      And look what happened to that….

      • MaxArt

        Don’t reming me, it’s been a punch in the stomach to read that 😞

  • Thomas S

    I do like the way Alison and Feral have a solid independent personality that is fixed in this movable feast of Patrick’s mindscape. Imagine how confused we would be with a number of Ferals popping into this mindscape, or that a succession of Alison’s might be about to appear to confuse things. I can imagine it being interesting but not moving the plot anywhere helpful.

    Very pleased we don’t have to deal with Freudian/Jungian archetypes, all that Ego, Id and (even worse) parental shame. Hang on, Gurwara (dang, still cannot remember how to spell his name) looks a bit like a fancy version of one of those old style mindworkers …

    And just because I like this page a lot, I am going to remind you of it all and post it here.
    https://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-5/page-113/

  • Frank

    So that rip in the fabric of their minds looks enticing.

    A mind that’s involuntarily composited from every other mind it touches, and a mind that is fiercely independent and self-defensive.

    That’s gonna be interesting.

  • Natsumeg

    I like how there’s a parallel going on here with how feral tried to make a pass on Alison, but that didn’t really make things weird for long and now they’re really good friends. And Alison had a crush on Patrick. So by that logic, they’re also going to become good friends and everything is going to work out ok, right? RIGHT?

  • Olivier Faure

    How common are telepaths, exactly? Because if the answer isn’t “more than you’d think”, Feral is probably going to figure out Patrick’s identity pretty fast, given the hints Allison’s dropping.

    • GreatWyrmGold

      I suspect that she already has, and just doesn’t want to bring it up. Especially since Alison’s acknowledged the big problem associated with it.

  • Panel Four: Couple of our cats have that expression and pose down to a science.

  • Magma Sam

    I really enjoy the way Feral’s acting and speaking, it truly conveys the whole “Seriously I am NOT OKAY being left in the dark here can you PLEASE?” attitude that she’s ‘barely’ been able to restrain during this entire scene.

  • Walter

    Feral, voice of sanity.

  • Giacomo Bandini

    ………..and a direct reference to their friendship. I’m calling it (again), by the end of this arc these r m two wont be friends any longer.

  • Weatherheight

    In his clumsy, flailing, utterly inadequate way, Patrick is trying figure out this friendship thing in this story arc. He’s making bollocks of it, but he’s trying.

    Alison is trying to be a friend to him, but it’s really hard to be a friend when the other person hasn’t the first clue how to be a friend back. I have a friend who uses the phrase “only so many spoons” a lot; that’s what Alison is running into here, I feel. Alison (and very often my friend) only has just so much in the way of “friendship resources” and Alison (and my friend) has a habit of taking on what is probably more than she can reasonably handle.

    Tara is serving as a very good example of what a friend should be and is a stark contrast to Patrick in Alison’s life. The question is how will she react to the whole “I had Menace, I let him go, I’ve continued to let him remain free, I kept this from everyone, and oh, by the way, I sort of used a resource he offered me to help you without actually asking you if using that resource was cool with you so now you’re dragged into it in this weird way oh and I really don’t know if what I did is really safe” scenario.

    I’m expecting Tara is going to be a bit pissed, but I also feel she’ll see past the problems and work toward solutions.

    • R Lex Eaton

      Owning up to your mistakes and learning from them. Alison really is the kind of friend Patrick needed back then, if not right now. Maybe there’s hope for him yet if he’ll ever bring himself to abandon his sunken cost.

      You know… I think that might be how I’d like this to turn out. Even if the knowledge of this sinister cabal is lost, if Patrick can become a better person, then I’d call it a success. They’ll find another way to track these people down.

      In any case, that flash of green above their heads might herald another battle.

      TEAM UP TIME~!

      • friendlymosquito

        I wanna say the green thing is just the portal back to Pat’s mind. It feels a bit too soon for their conversation to be interrrupted

    • “I had Menace, I let him go, I’ve continued to let him remain free,”

      OTOH, “I let him remain free, but only after he agreed to not be Menace any more”. This is actually better than a lot of US foreign policy, where agreeing to not be Menace in US territory would be fine. And Feral doesn’t exactly have unbloodied hands in this, she’s only free because of a plea deal.

      • Lucy Merriman

        Oh man, er, somebody remind me: what was Feral’s deal originally? She was a minor villain or something?

        • Feral was a vigilante: good intentions, wrong side of the law – which is exactly what Patrick was, except he didn’t mind getting his hands dirtier.

          • Insanenoodlyguy

            No, Patrick showed up with an evil monologue on TV. He was absolutely a villain. His intentions might be arguably decent but his methodology prevents him from any category of alignment above anti-villain.

          • Patrick’s also dealing with the upbringing we’ve just seen, and made that monologue while in his mid to late teens. It’s possible to compare his methodology to a lot of stuff that was done by the Cold-War era CIA ‘in defence of the Free World’. Desperate times, desperate measures….

            It’s also been fairly strongly hinted that he had to resort to criminal means to survive after escaping from his mother, which will have pre-disposed him to certain methods of operation, particularly when he’d seen the forces of authority outright torture him as a small child. And we shouldn’t forget that he turned his back on the worst of those methods in his deal with Alison.

            One man’s terrorist is another’s resistance fighter.

          • Insanenoodlyguy

            Nothing you said makes him any less a villian. Everybody is the hero of their own story. A guy who has killer robots, employs men with sword hands to hurt people, and names himself “Menace” is not going to be the hero in that many others.

          • Names are fairly meaningless – the ‘Ulster Defence Force’ was a major sectarian terrorist group with a habit of executing civilians for no better reason than their being Catholic. Menace sounds menacing, but was it self-referential? Was Patrick always seen as a menace just for being able to read minds?

          • Weatherheight

            Interesting – I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but yeah, Tara’s group was on the side of the angels but their methods were sketchy.
            Patrick’s ends were (apparently) not-un-beneficial for society, but his methods were out-and-out brutal.
            Tara and Patrick have a kind of symmetry, don’t they?
            Cool.

          • And bear in mind that Tara was dealing with local threats, while Patrick’s target, the Conspiracy, is potentially worldwide, maybe even world-threatening, so he was naturally forced into secrecy and extreme methods.

          • Doesn’t that depend on what your definition of “vigilante” is? I mean, Feral was an antihero sort. But Menace chose to be a villain. Yes, an understandable villain like Magneto or the movie version of Killmonger. One who can have a redemption arc. But definitely a villain.

            There were other ways to fight the conspiracy other than becoming a terrorist. Menace killed people, or, at least, had them killed. Yes, Alison’s hands aren’t clean, either, but there is a moral difference between collateral damage and deliberately targeting people. Neither is a good thing, but there is a difference.

            I have great sympathy for Patrick, believe he had a point, believe him to be redeemable, and certainly hope that this arc ends with him as a redeemed hero. But there still is a difference between someone who goes around shooting murderers and someone who goes around destabilizing governments and fighting wars of aggression. And I think it’s more than just a difference of scale.

            Don’t get me wrong — I do like both of them.

          • ‘Vigilante’ – someone who exacts their idea of justice outside of the law. That’s clearly applicable to both Patrick and Tara.

            If the only way to stop a threat is to commit a crime, then does that make you a villain? Or a victim of circumstances? If the only way to stop a world-threatening force is to become a kingpin of crime, then does that make you a villain? Or the victim of an ethical dilemma?

            Words like ‘villain’ are loaded with binary judgements: good/bad, right/wrong, but life is shades of grey. Comics aren’t always good at portraying the
            shades of grey, but that’s not something that we can say of SFP.

          • Lucy Merriman

            Thanks!

  • AustinC123

    But for real, how many of Feral’s friends died fighting Menace

  • Gotham

    “You’re a good friend, Feral. The best friend.”

    Somehow, somewhere, Lisa keys Feral’s motorcycle.
    But then she replaces (and improves!) the part immediately

    • Tylikcat

      Hey, I think Tara has been super clear exactly what she feels for Lisa. I’m not going to say friendship has no part of it, but their’s is not a relationship that’s going to suffer from Tara being mealy mouthed and not clear about what she’s feeling.

      • Gotham

        What I was intending to play up was Lisa’s jealousy at Feral being called “the best friend” (implied, Alison’s)
        And botched, evidently, as I often do

  • JohnTomato

    The background flora just -popped- into existence. Must be using Grade A fertilizer.

  • NotPatrick

    It seems a bit unfair to call Patrick a ‘bad guy’. He’s like, at least 3 bad guys, and 2 bad ladies (assuming Sentinal is no. 5).

  • Grayson Towler

    Nice to see Alison facing a challenge that puts her own life in danger. It doesn’t happen very often, so seeing her waver in her resolve is good stuff.

    But I’m wondering… if Alison can borrow Patrick’s telepathy to enter Feral’s mind, what’s stopping Patrick from following her?

    • R Lex Eaton

      Maybe not much. Notice the green flash in the last panel?

      • Bruce Munro

        That green thingy has been hanging around since she first popped into this little garden.

  • And panel 2’s where Alison’s self-doubt kicks in and tries to derail everything. Yes, Menace was a bad guy, and yes, Child!Patrick has just tried to kill her, but she’s just been shown part of the reason Patrick became Menace, and why Child!Patrick might be so aggresively defensive. And she’s just had clear evidence that Patrick is coming apart mentally turn up on her doorstep in desperate need of a shower and medical care.

    Just because someone’s psychotic isn’t a reason to stop caring about them, it’s a reason to keep caring and see they get the care they need. It’s not even that Alison needs to get a clue, she’s just been handed a huge one on a plate.

    I don’t think anyone’s discussed the tears yet. They’re there in this page and the previous one. This is a side of Alison we haven’t really seen yet, the part than can be hurt because her friend just tried to kill her. Mega-Girl’s invulnerability apparently doesn’t extend to Alison’s heart, at least not in the emotional sense. But at the same time she isn’t thinking about why Patrick might be so vulnerable to her learning about her that a facet of him is compelled to lash out. Feral is probably better placed than she is to explain to her what she’s seen, and the significance, but it really wants Lisa (or Gurwara).

  • Bruce Munro

    If Patrick is a psychotic, he’s a self-made one, but not really intentionally. He’s performed multiple crude surgeries on his own mind, because he felt at the time (rightly or not) he needed them to survive and remain sane. And right now he can’t repair himself, because to remove any of the partitions and barriers he’s put up over the years threatens him at the most basic level – that of pure survival.

    Just my 2 cents.

  • Kaunisenkeli

    I keep wondering if Allison actually got out of Patrick’s mind or not. Is this some kind of layered state? Maybe trying to figure out just how much Allison know? Or am I just naturally distrustful of dream/mindscape states in stories these days?

    • Pom

      I feel the same- since Patrick is a mind reader and can go into others minds- would this be a secondhand memory? Does this mean he can project himself into others thoughts now? Can Patrick follow them?

  • eliza

    I DON’T SEE THIS ENDING WELL FOR FERAL AND I’M VERY UPSET ABOUT THAT

  • Soqoma

    Woah. Does dream-feral stutter?

    • I read that more as sing-song cajoling than stuttering.

  • Jimmyjims

    Logging into Disqus to say how beautiful the last two page’s colour palettes have been, also just generally impressed by the deft visual-tone shift in setting and lighting. *Chef kiss* MOIS!