SFP

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  • Jason Ling

    And they granted his request and they all became a family again! Also the dog was never really dead! Yay!!!

    This is gonna end well…

    • AdamBombTV

      I would like to subscribe to this reality… Do they go out for ice cream too?

      • Aresius

        No, they’re all lactose intolerant. We need a bit of drama

        • bryan rasmussen

          I think it’s yes, but they’re all lactose intolerant – and Patrick knew! hmm, I guess there should be something else like peanut allergy and it’s peanut ice cream that they find out too late while Patrick is standing there – think well of me hahhah

        • Pol Subanajouy

          Oh no, truly the darkest timeline.

      • NotPatrick

        Heh. Saw this comment just after watching the ice cream scene in Legion.

  • Patrick’s mom: “Yeah, that’s gonna be a no from me, dog.”

  • D’yiuwana Tegadring

    I’d like to see the parents who tried to kill a child because he was a nuisance dare say HE’S the evil one.

    • Eve

      Unfortunately that sounds all too likely to me. Parents who murder their children for being disabled, for instance.

      • Tylikcat

        Certainly, there are plenty of cases where such parents garner plenty of public support, though “evil” as such isn’t usually their argument.

        There have been cases of death during attempted exorcism, as well.

    • Tylikcat

      Come to think of it, if I could just share some of my mother’s monologues about me… (I don’t know if she was trying to kill me. It was a pretty inept poisoning attempt, but that would be in keeping with, well, her. A lot of endangerment and denial of medical care, anyway…)

      • NotPatrick

        Every time you talk about your childhood in this comment section, it reminds me of Jared from Silicon Valley. Constant little aspects of some grand and horrifying story being floated bit by bit out into the world.

        • Tylikcat

          TBH, it’s a little weird from this side? (I don’t know the Jared reference.) I don’t think of myself as having had a tragic childhood – if anything, I think of myself as having had a complicated childhood (because there were a lot of things I liked about it, and a lot of things I benefited from in it). I suppose the civil thing would be to be more discreet, but I just can’t be bothered.

          But yeah, I’ll start writing about something, and then partway in, it will occur to me that oh, yeah, having one’s parent attempt GBH isn’t really an abstract concept or anything. (Though, I don’t really know WTF was going with the poisoning.)

          • Mack Stingray

            Every now and then, I mention some event from my childhood that seems ordinary to me, the room goes quiet and everybody’s staring at me like I grew a second head.

            Though if it were a competition, you would win.

            Last time, it was a conversation about heating oil and space heaters, and I volunteered how wonderful and useful electric heaters were when living in the campground. Sudden quiet, and a sense of several chatroom members staring at me. So I tried to contextualize it, make it normal to them like it was to me. It was only during that summer, I said, and it was a lot of fun because I was about six, and mum was just trying to find an apartment we could afford. It wasn’t so bad, and the apartment was warm and dry, just had a horrendous roach problem. It was the best place we found since the homeless shelter closed down…

            I gave up at that point.

          • Tylikcat

            It’s so very much not a competition. Mostly, my childhood pretty much worked for me, y’know? I mean, it didn’t grow me into the standard model (if such exists) but that was pretty much already off the list. I’m pretty happy with who I am. (My sister has a lot of comments about the emotional consequences of being the kid who was respected but not loved – but then, she was the one who was loved by not respected and a) neither of those are going to turn out well and b) our parents sucked at love, and respect and fear tended to get mixed up a lot, so, yeah, there are reasons we got out.)

            I think part of the reason I post so freely here* is that in my day to day life, I do try somewhat hard to walk a line between not traumatizing the folks I interact with, and at the same time, not disappearing beneath pretense. And it’s always the stupidest stuff that people freak out about. (A bit back, a member of the zendo flipped out at a comment I made about how I try to learn languages during a discussion on learning languages, and lectured the whole group on how people like me are categorically incomprehensible to the rest of humanity. Gah. She caught me flat footed – and it was darkly fascinating to see where she was going with it, as she’s a retired professor of gifted education and current counselor. But if she does that again I’m shutting her down really hard.) I both try to handle my research students gently, but also figure that I’m doing them a service by exposing them to a broader world than they have yet experiences – but I mostly mean things like hacking, wider cultural groups, incestuous geek referral networks and that sort of thing.

            * and various other places. There’s definitely a different dynamic in places where people mostly know me really well (no small number for the last thirty years or more!) and where I’m mostly just a rando who wandered in, and while I post freely around my friends, and a great deal more intimately, it’s different.

        • Tylikcat

          *decides to look up the Jared reference*

          Holy crap. *cracks up*

          • NotPatrick

            Yea, Jared is definitely one of the high-points of the show. Zach Wood’s cheerful deadpan is extraordinary.

          • Tylikcat

            You have officially amused the heck out of my sister. I thought she was going to hurt herself.

          • NotPatrick

            I’d highly recommend at least the first season if you find the time. Silicon Valley is definitely one of the best comedies on television currently. Also, while I’m recommending things, Legion is spectacular.

          • Tylikcat

            My sister said the same (amidst the laughs, gasps and the “OMG, you are totally Jared!”s – so much for sororal reassurance). If I ever start to watch shows, I’ll consider it (and there is one project that maybe I could finish better watching shows, since I had to stop spinning during department seminars?)

    • They’d get a lot of support in this. After all, and not to start an entirely other ethical argument while we’re in the middle of all these other ones, would you kill baby Hitler?

      How about baby Menace?

      • Mitchell Lord

        …No, and no. Because, when Hitler was a baby, he wasn’t ‘fixed’ as evil. Even if he was a sociopath…there are suprrisingly workable ways to handle such things. Such as a career in law. Or working as a manager of an HMO. Or architectural design.

        There’s also the issue that the attempt to kill Menace…was likely what CAUSED his supervillainy. Or at least contributed. It’s not a binary “Kill Baby Hitler”, versus “Allow HItler to destroy the world.”

        KIDNAP Baby Hitler and raise him? Maybe. (THis conundrum was a plot point in Babylon 5).

        Now…kill Hitler right before he entered politics? Outside of time stream “Wnat of a nail” shit? Definitely. Without remorse.

        • Gand

          Yes, it’s not a binary situation but… Would you take the chance?

        • Still, you can see that some percentage of the population would support Patrick’s parents in their attempt.

          • Nico Campa

            Only from the point of pure hindsight. If they had not tried to kill him, he likely would not have become Menace. They were not acting to try to prevent something horrible from occurring, but simply acting out of selfishness.
            That is the difference between a discussion of their attempt to kill Patrick and any hypothetical to travel back and kill Hitler. They made him into that monster through their own monstrous act.

        • (Follow-on question — if you were born in Germany in, um, 1915 or whatever, and happened to know Hitler at that point — would you have murdered him? I mean, I assume not, because you wouldn’t have any way of knowing. And then, going down the rabbit hole of ethics so hypothetical that they can have no bearing on the real world — if someone DID kill Hitler, just because they got in a bar fight or something, would that person have done a good thing and be given credit for their actions? … okay, I’m now way outside my depth…)

        • Magma Sam

          One thing I always think about whenever I hear about all this *go back in time and kill baby hitler* stuff is the fact that there were several groups vying for control of Germany. It was in a pretty horrid state at the time, and wasn’t being given any leeway.

          What I think is the most likely result of killing hitler prematurely is some other dude rallying the germans to war and power. Probably somebody better equipped for the job, who wouldn’t try to blitz Russia while already fighting a war on the other side.

        • BruceGee1962

          How come there aren’t any stories of someone going back to 1914 and killing Gavrilo Princip? That would be likely to eliminate the circumstances that gave rise to Hitler.

          • Dean

            Gavrilo Princip’s death probably wouldn’t have changed anything – there were half a dozen or so conspirators lying in wait on the streets of Sarajevo that day, and it was only dumb luck that the Archduke’s car even passed him. Also, saving Franz Ferdinand probably wouldn’t have prevented war in the long run.

        • Ray Radlein

          If you really want to Kill Hitler, why not do it during World War I? Easy enough to toss one more body on that pile and lord knows there were plenty of times when it could have happened then.

      • NotPatrick

        It’s unclear, but I don’t think we’re in Hitler territory with Menace. I imagine his death toll is probably more comparable to Julius Caesar or Napoleon.

        • Graeme Sutton

          Earlier on Patrick said that his entire death toll was less than Nagasaki, so we’re talking <50,000 deaths. Napoleon was probably 1-2 Million. Caesar's direct death toll was probably in the low-mid hundred thousands between his conquest of Gaul and the Roman Civil war, with the highball estimate being around a million. Higher if you count the ultimate fallout from the civil war he started that didn't really resolve until decades after his death. http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-5/page-105/

        • Graeme Sutton

          Actually now that I’ve checked statistics Napoleon was probably more like 3.5-4 million. By comparison Hitler probably killed at least 20 million if you only count crimes against humanity. If you include all the deaths from the European theater of WW2 on his conscience you’re in the 50 million range.

      • Dirka

        Ian, please do not take the following personally. I have an intense dislike for the premise of “would/should you kill baby Hitler?” I’ve encountered it in serious academic writing more than enough. So the following is not directed at you, I just try to pour some vitriol on this particular intellectual weed wherever I encounter it.

        That being said, “kill baby Hitler” is such a stupid premise. It sounds intriguing at first, and has the emotional gutpunch of a solid ethical dilemma.

        But if you go into the particulars, it just breaks down more and more.

        Where did you get your info? Proper paradoxical change-your-own-past time travel? And that’s the best application you come up with for that tech? Maybe you’re a precog. Ok, good job on that one. But again: what about the endless realm of possibilities for making the world a better place? if you got the information elsewhere, you open the entire can of worms that is the death sentence. You can never take back the murder of a person. Which margin of error would you accept for what probability/extent of averted suffering? What do you believe and why do you believe it?

        Next is the simplistic view of history, which I believe has already been addressed. Kill one person and fix the whole clusterfuck that was fascism/nazism/WW II? Sounds legit. Horror on a historical scale does not happen because of one person. It happens because we as humans collectively still suck. Are there pivotal moments and people in history? Sure, but they are only ever the fulcrum upon which move the massively larger levers of collective human need, greed and ignorance.

        And why does it always have to be murder? Surely an ethical ponderer of ethical questions would rather try to shape young Adolf’s life in such a way that he doesn’t become a genocidal maniac? Maybe settle down, have 2,5 kids, be kinda happy but mildly disappointed like everyone else?

        It’s just such a lazy, convoluted, harebrained premise, I cannot take it seriously.

        Give me the trolley problem any day.

        Rant over, Dirka out.

        • Yes, my only argument here was that there exist enough people who DO take the comment seriously that Patrick’s parents could get significant sympathy if it became known that they’d tried to kill him.

          • Dirka

            Fair ’nuff.

    • CakeNsteak

      You see it all the time with people aborting children because they would interfere with their freedom while claiming it as a virtue. The one thing these people could claim is that had their super villain son died while he was younger it would have prevented many deaths. Not my stance but It’s definitely one his mother would probably take.

  • trev006

    Aw man. That poor guy. No wonder he locked this one away.

    Menace may have been an impossibly cocksure supervillain, but Order and Calm look a lot better than other options in the last twenty years. It is surprising his father hates him. I suspect Dad hates Dad most of all, and didn’t specifically want Pat dead, but then I’m not a telepath. And a concerned parent would have tried harder to find him.

    Of course this will not be the end. I choose to believe affectionate hugs were had, then helicopter rides. Patrick’s mom only got the one-way option, but eh. Everyone’s a critic.

    • Mike Elsner

      I suspect his father’s mental state was more fear and shame than straight up hate. But he probably thinks his son is a monster, so that would qualify as hate. He’s definitely a weak and cowardly man.

      The mother seems to be feeling straight up hatred.

      • David Brown

        I swear this is my family minus the super powers.

  • Dean

    “…in your final moments.”

    • David Brown

      This! Please this.

  • Gotham

    His father too? This comes as a surprise.

    Also, “great United States”? Chill out with the patriotism firstly in general and secondly, toward the county you’re treasoning Pat

    • Professor Harmless

      Treason would require him to betray it to a foreign power. He’s a self declared sovereign entity that has declared war on the U.S.A.

      • Weatherheight

        Certainly sedition.
        Treason, possibly – most of the definitions of “treason” I’ve checked include the attempt to overthrow the “rightful” current government as one of the definitions.
        (legal definitions may be more restrictive, however).

      • Gotham

        So like, Civil War wasn’t treason as defined by the US constitution?
        …I’m pretty sure it was

    • Aresius

      1) ‘Oh my god he’s turned into a monster, just like the bitch I married!’
      2) Breaking the US…or improving them? Keep in mind that some time (months? years?) after he’d call his own nation ‘bloodthirsty’

    • Jovial Contrarian

      Pity for your poor telepathic son who had less-than-excellent childhood does not exclude disgust at the fact that he became Magneto.

      • NotPatrick

        Hey, unlike Magneto, at least Patrick probably understands how freaking magnets work. Christ, it’s like, just take a freaking physics class Mr. Eisenhardt! Or have you been too busy lying to us all these years, when your power apparently just seems to be freaking ferrokinesis?!

      • Zorae42

        Woah there. Patrick wants to run things because he thinks he can do it better. He’s not striving for genocide.

        • Beroli

          Magneto’s all over the map morally speaking. Generally “genocidal” when he lands in the hands of an author who’s annoyed that, in the previous author’s tenure, people didn’t get that he was a villain.

    • Rolf Soldaat

      I automatically assumed the “Great United States” line was sarcasm when I read it.

      • Grason Cheydleur

        I definitely read this line as sarcasm. After all, Patrick did try to dismantle the government. I don’t think there’s actually much love lost between him and the USA.

    • Noone

      Well, he did murder all those innocent people.

  • Professor Harmless

    I just wanted to say that this particular page really moved me. The tragedy and the pain are portrayed vey well here.

    • ampg

      I agree. I also appreciate how often I can be surprised by plot developments that still manage not to betray the characters involved.

  • bryan rasmussen

    I’m really swinging back to this is just Patrick’s trick to keep from getting exposed by Allison.

  • Franklin J Gomes

    Allison: “Soooo, how far you…”

    Patrick: “I can read your mind for any part of the globe”

    Allison: ” Well, for the N time this day, I don’t know if that is lovely or creepy”

    • NotPatrick

      Patrick: I conducted an experiment with a teleporter a while ago. You’ll be relieved to know that while I can *technically* still read some of your thoughts while on the surface of Mars, on the moons of Jupiter I get nothing.

  • Mike Elsner

    Just noticed: Patrick seems to have a darker skin tone than his parents. When his mother was blacked out before, I figured she’d have a darker skin tone.

    I had figured that he was Latinx, Middle Eastern or biracial.

    Was he adopted?

    • Brendon White

      Considering he was homeless for a long time, he probably just got a tan from being outside.

  • Richard, Probably
    • M. Alan Thomas II

      He just built them a lovely lair in Antarctica.

      • Weatherheight

        With an oversized lynx that’s actually a biodynamic boy who drew a real pisser of an anomaly.

        • NotPatrick

          …and then he goes from Dr. Manhattan trying to be Ozymandias to Ozymandias trying to be Dr. Manhattan.

      • I mean, it doesn’t have heat. Or walls. Or…

        Okay, fine, he’s just dropping them at the south pole to freeze.

    • Kifre

      IIt’s been said before but I’ll say it again: She dead.

      • Edgedy

        I think he cares for his father, and I think what’s going to happen is that the mother is going to say something which makes him go to kill her and the father takes the hit instead.

        • palmvos

          at which point Patrick will apply the evil overlord list.. and kill his mom anyway. then he will engage in teen angst and drama over his dead dad.

  • Weatherheight

    “I’d prefer that your last thoughts not be bitter ones.”

    OR…

    “I’ve tried my best to make you proud. I just don’t see how I ever can.”

    • Olivier Faure

      No, it’s mentioned at least when Allison sees Rat.

      (it seems a little weird to me; Rat and Cleaver seem like they’d fit as your average street corner drug dealer / enforcer, not as the lieutenants of a guy trying to take over an industrialized country)

      • Tylikcat

        Mm, but the formation of the group was at least equally, and maybe more driven by people who needed a place.

      • Tsapki

        Eh, with Cleaver, this was probably the only guy who could go toe to toe with Mega Girl and expect to come back relatively intact. If being able to take a punch from Superman doesn’t get you a seat at the Legion of Doom, what does?

        • Eric Meyer

          Not to mention that he can actually hurt her, and that his trauma probably resonated with Pat pretty deeply.

        • Olivier Faure

          Ok for Cleaver.

          But my point was more “It’s weird the Legion of Doom’s leadership is made exclusively of one mastermind, with a bunch of “drug dealer” and “enforcer” types as his lieutenants. Where are the accountants, intel guys, lawyers, engineers, military strategists, etc?”

          • Hiram

            Intellectual legwork doesn’t mean much to a mind reader. His intel guys are your guys. His lawyers are your lawyers. He built an army using Lisa’s robotics and he’s rich enough to just buy or bribe his way through any broader human resource shortage.

          • Olivier Faure

            That’s not really how logistics work, but whatever. The story isn’t about logitstics anyway, that’s why it never explains what was Patrick’s goal and how he intended to achieve it (beyond a vague “take over everything”).

          • Graeme Sutton

            We still don’t know what Graveyard did. It’s possible that the members of his organization he was personally closest to were the muscle types that he used as bodyguards.

      • Weatherheight

        Thanks – it felt like new information but it didn’t feel like new information, if you know what I mean.
        Also, what the h*ck is Graveyard up to lately, anyway?

      • bryan rasmussen

        maybe Patrick’s first attempt to take over the country/world was still somewhat inept, he had knowledge and the people skills but not the wisdom to work completely in shadows.

  • Olivier Faure

    … you know, it would have been nice of Patrick to send a heads-up about this to Allison. “I’m probably going to keep hearing you no matter how far away you are.” Although, considering how creepy that would be, maybe it’s better that he kept Allison in the dark?

    • NotPatrick

      Well, it makes one thing a bit less creepy. Given Patrick’s previously implied range, I assumed his range for projection would be similar, so on all the nights where she had those weird nightmares I assumed he would have had to have been just wandering around weirdly outside the apartment building. Stalking randomly nearby for a couple weeks would have been a bit more creepy than projecting images from the comfort of wherever-he-was-currently-being-a-mess.

    • Dwight Williams

      Implied therein: “Whether either of us wants me to ‘hear’ you or not.”

    • Natsumeg

      This makes me think that what happened with Patrick showing up at beginning of the chapter is the repeat of what happened with his parents here. But he couldn’t possibly do whatever he did back then, which made him into even more of a mess.

  • Callinectes

    Isn’t this the reason he tried to kill Allison?

    • Hiram

      Could be, but then why did he try so hard to make her hate him in he first place?

      • Cori J.

        Even people who aren’t telepathic push people they care about away because they’re too afraid of being vulnerable. Patrick might have been unconsciously hoping that her hatred of him would be preferable to her longing and ongoing resentment of him. Perhaps he could have erased part of her, compartmentalized better, if she didn’t love him anymore.

  • TheZorginator1

    Well I suppose this answers the question “why does he look so bad now but looks really well groomed when Allison meets him.” Your life kind of sucks when getting rid of your parents makes you a happier and more well-adjusted person.

    • And yet, I have at least a few friends for whom that is absolutely true.

      Admittedly, “getting rid of” didn’t involve murder in their cases.

      I think.

      • Tylikcat

        I’m pretty disturbed when people make generalization that assume that parental relationships are almost always loving and positive – because a lot are, but so many aren’t, and it’s just another way to alienate people who already have to deal with crappy parents. (This isn’t particularly personal – my parents can’t do much to me, except mess with my younger sibs, and I generally feel like I won wrt them. But I’m pretty far out on the hard hearted bitch scale.)

  • Ellie

    Oh shit, so everytime Alison was comparing him to one of her new boyfriends to him, he could hear her….

    • bryan rasmussen

      so this is why he didn’t like uhm, kid with glasses whose name I’ve forgotten now for reals.

      • Arthur Frayn

        Klevin.

  • palmvos

    I predict before the summer’s out (our time) Alison will ask Patrick, how far away can you read my thoughts? (assuming they both survive this trip down memory lane.)
    also this puts the check in a whole new light…
    and that phrase… thinking of you…. the creepiness factor is now somewhere around 11.

  • OOOoooh thisisn’tgoingtoendwell.

  • Tylikcat

    This puts a different spin on “I’m with you, always.”

    • Natsumeg

      ^^^^

      Oh yeah, that creates a whole new perspective, makes me afraid for Patrick that the memory in the beginning of the chapter is of his mother throwing one last spiteful dig at him just to hurt him.

  • Walter

    Patrick is, unfortunately, his mother’s son. I don’t think they make it out of this scene.

  • ophidimancer

    Oh, Patrick …

  • Okay, that’s unexpectedly disturbing.

  • HanoverFist

    All I’m saying is that Al had better get him a new puppy at the end of all this.

  • demosthenese10

    Son: we don’t think about you at all. You are what the professionals call “cray cray”.

  • Lika Boss

    i thought that was going to end with him killing them,, maybe it still will. But itś pretty interesting to consider the length of his telepathy. What a cool concept

  • 12th

    “THINKING OF YOU”

  • MedinaSidonia

    Damn. There is something about this that resonates so strongly. I’m sure the fight I got into with my sister on Easter has nothing to do with it.

    Seriously, though, this is a great example of what I always say about science fiction: at it’s heart, it’s a way of saying things about the human condition that can’t be said otherwise–or rather, they *can* be said, but if you say them in a conventional manner, peoples’ preconceptions prevent them from getting the message. Through fantastical allegory, science fiction allows us to say the same things in a way that does an end-run around those preconceptions. Like the episode of classic Star Trek with the people with the split white-and-black faces, or the episode of DS9 about the purported “Butcher of Gallitep”, they present an opportunity for the audience to have an emotional reaction they might not otherwise have because of their jadedness, and through that emotional reaction connect back to the real subject.

  • Pol Subanajouy

    Saddest part for me?

    He know it’s a futile request.

  • Natsumeg

    Welp. That last panel was heartbreaking

  • Skudplastr

    Oh my gosh! Is he gonna commit….
    Patrickcide? 😀

  • Well. That broke me. It’s bad enough to cut abusive family out of your life and know they’ll never love and accept you. To have to HEAR how much they loathe you…

    I don’t think a comic panel has ever given me such a sudden, visceral urge to vomit from feeling.

    • palmvos

      i’d really rather not come up with a better version of hell on earth than that.

  • Patrick_GETS_me

    Anyone else connect that Patrick looks disheveled and scraggly under his Menace helmet because he can hear his parents’ negative thoughts about him everywhere he goes, and also looks disheveled and scraggly in real life now because he can hear Alison’s negative thoughts about him wherever he goes? Maybe the reason he’s falling apart isn’t because of the internal struggles of his five selves, maybe it’s because he’s so haunted by Alison’s disapproval and can’t ever escape hearing it?

    • Olivier Faure

      That would be a neat horrifying twist.

      “Yay! I fixed the root of your problem!”

      “Actually, the reason I was breaking down was that I kept feeling like shit because you kept bringing up the bad things I did in your mind, trying to persuade yourself to forget about me. But thanks for destroying 75% of my mental infrastructure, I guess.”

  • bryan rasmussen

    Ok there’s some stuff here –
    1. the mom is a lost cause, and Patrick knows it – why, because by definition Patrick knows when someone is a lost cause.
    2. The father might not be a lost cause, but even if he thinks well of him, well the mother will still be there.
    3. Given that father might be manipulatable with this line the question is manipulatable to what end – to think well of Patrick seems not good enough really
    a. I think the only reason to manipulate the father is hurt the mother somehow. I suppose it could be make him kill her and commit suicide. but I think it is something other than that.
    b. if not that then the only thing that really makes sense about this whole think better of me thing from Patrick is to manipulate Allison.

  • Stephanie

    I’d originally assumed that the father wasn’t aware of the murder plan, but Patrick implies that he was in on it. And Patrick would know, so I guess he was. I no longer feel bad for him.

    • I said this last time! Honestly, still on the fence, though. His father may well have been aware only after the fact – Patrick doesn’t specify whether he picked those thoughts up in advance or if he’s only been listening in to Dad’s guilt, fear and pain over it having happened afterward. Especially since it went wrong and their son is now “a psychopathic supervillain, like Claudia but worse”. But I’ve definitely backed away from pure sympathy for a while now, yes..

  • Calum Cameron

    Oh shit.
    That was somehow even worse than what I was expecting.

  • Ganurath

    Oh, so THAT’S why component is bad. Filtering his emotions reduces his range to tolerable levels.

  • Hiram

    Kinda surprising that they’d spend that much emotional energy on him. I mean, the sense of existential dread requisite of self serving ass-covering, sure. Hatred, though? Disgust? You don’t spend that much time chasing other people’s demons unless you’re running from your own, and frankly they seem more the type to ride about on their demons’ shoulders.

    • palmvos

      these have been established as Patrick’s parents even if he’s adopted he was adopted fairly young. trust me parents feelings for their kids are complex, strong, and continuous. just go threaten a child in front of their parents sometime. are there exceptions? yes. but children are a very touchy subject because of it.
      also talk to parents of grown, flown, and raising their own kids. you’ll find that most if not all grandparents still worry about their kids (who are raising their own kids) on a regular if not daily basis.
      also- dispite Patrick’s abilities the difference between receiving hatred vs disgust can be very subtle. and given the complexities of his own feelings likely easy to mistake one for the other.

      • Hiram

        I doubt threatening to kill Patrick and bury his corpse in the woods in front of his parents would elicit any response stronger than ‘Got your own shovel, have you?’

      • sagelynaive

        I don’t think him being possibly adopted plays in here. His parents, particularly his mom, have already proven they aren’t opposed to him dying. They don’t have that connection you’re describing. Parents or no, they attempted to kill him. That pretty well negated any matronly instincts you’re attributing here. They’re probably more worries about the fact he survived than about him.

    • Menace is being broadcast across news screens throughout the US at this point. His drones and servitor army are filling the skies. It’s not as if they can avoid noticing his existence.

  • Darkoneko Hellsing

    This hurts.

  • Rene Askew

    Don’t. Show. WEAKNESS to them! They know now they can HURT you just by thinking, why would they change that now?

    • Danygalw

      His dad would!

    • Olivier Faure

      Well he can always shoot them if that’s what they settle on.

  • masterofbones

    Wouldn’t it be funny if the mental block he had placed was the thing keeping him from feeling his mom’s thoughts? Alison’s thinking “yay I fixed him” and Patrick is curled up in a corner crying

  • Philip Bourque

    I know he has to justify himself, but does anyone else feel like this is taking longer than it should? I’m not sure what it is, but I find myself completely lacking any form of sympathy for Patrick and the only thing going through my mind at this point is “Patrick, shut up and kill them already. Get on with it.”

    • Graeme Sutton

      …
      Mom is that you?

      • Philip Bourque

        I hope not. I’d be the worst parent ever (which is why I’m not a parent), but hey, if I were, you’d have a great excuse for whatever issues you have.

  • AG

    I feel bad for the dad. I think that the mom controlled him to an extent (or he’s the soft one).

  • McFrugal

    I figured it out. THIS IS WHEN HE ERASES HER. His father changed his mind and stopped hating Menace, but she didn’t. So he fixed the problem without killing her. He cut himself off from his feelings for her, so that he couldn’t read her mind at a large distance anymore.

  • kabob

    Surely Patrick should know exactly what words he needs to say in order to convince his parents to think well of him? That was what he said in one of the earliest pages, and it makes quite a lot of sense. On the other hand, a mind reader who knows his parents completely and utterly not being able to change his parents mind, doesn’t make much sense.

    A similar thing with Allison. Patrick should know EXACTLY what it is that’s making Allison think badly of him, and while this isn’t the same as knowing how to convince her to change her mind, he should be able to see all the other times that she changed her mind about someone, what caused them, and then check all the other ‘files’ he has on people changing their minds about someone (if its less than a thousand, i will be extremely surprised) and decide on a set of actions likely to convince Allison that he is a good person, or at least someone who is likeable and not deranged.

    And why doesn’t the mindscape of a mind reader have a really convincing person as a defence? Sure, having a giant invincible giant is nice, but he should have more insidious defences as well- he could just take ideas from all the minds hes read, evaluate them using the thought processes of decision theorists, and then have a large list of easy to apply and effective mental defences.

    I could go on quite easily. Patrick really should not be having these kinds of problems, even is his main coordinating mind is a traumatised child. I’ve been in similar situations (but with a shitty father, not mother, and 9, not whatever age Patrick is here) and while my decisions were no where near as sensible as they would have been, I would still be capable of some basic logic.

    • Altain Phoeinx

      Sure, he should know those words. If there’s anything he can say to change things. These are the people he cares about the most, and it really messes with his ability to think clearly. Combine that with what’s likely hard-set ideas of who he is, moreso from his parents than Allison, and the fact that he has no idea how to be introspective, these are gonna be the hardest people in the world for him to manipulate. Probably more than if he met his match with another telepath, because of the love he has for these three.

  • Graeme Sutton

    Wait, is this why he memory holed his mom (i.e. black silhouette)? Does that work as a way to prevent him from having that connection to her?

  • David Brown

    Kill them for him when they disagree, Alison.

  • Tylikcat

    I’m wondering about the sequence here. If Alison’s act of heroism and kindness opened a door in the barrier that had previously been closed… ( http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-7/page-71-4/ )

    …is this happening after her encounter with Patrick? (i.e. She caused his to start giving a shit about his parents, and therefore this all happened?)

    Or did she initiate some sort of gradual destabilization starting way back then?

    Because this door was closed.

    • Zac Caslar

      I think this was locked beyond the vault of Mature Patrick.

      This is fantastic material, I should say. This is an amazingly clever and potent hook for connecting a character to the inescapability of their own past magnified through his biodynamic.

      This is a brutally sympathetic situation demanding an incredibly painful choice. Bravo, Brennan and Molly.

  • Dave Huber

    Patrick’s “mother” is stunned by his revelation of the extent of his power. I expect her to go for the jugular with words and thoughts so hurtful they should destroy him. Which is what he wants! That’s why the master manipulator is feigning vulnerability.

    Whether her assault triggers the “blanking” or inspires his “father” to eliminate her, I’m not sure…

  • JohnTomato

    Surprised Mom hasn’t asked “Who’s the bimbo?”