Wow. I’ll bet Max doesn’t even see the irony.

This balanced breakfast brought to you by Big Beau’s – where it’s never to early to treat your body like a septic tank.

Please don’t drink alcohol, Allison.

…what was she doing? Who was it? What happened? What is motivating our protagonist?? I really, really want to know.

This story arc is amazing, keep it up!

And we still don’t know what it is that Allison made Max do!

How are we supposed to pontificate about morality and micromanage Allison from another Universe if we don’t know what she is doing?

Next time I’m on the States I have to find one of this strange liquors

Very smart! To not show us what’s going on just yet. And I like that we get to see Max’s reaction. Yeah, he’s a pissed off little brat whose ego is bruised and he’s annoyed. He’s not shattered, not suffering from the PTSD of a violent rape, not destroyed emotionally. Just the same egocentric prick he was before except he just got pushed around a little. He’ll live! He’ll yell at the gardeners a little and be just fine. Allison is far more destroyed. That looks about right.
We don’t know yet, but I bet she did exactly what she had to and it was worth the cost. Like adults sometimes have to choose to do.

Some guy did an anaylsis of the chapter so far on their blog: http://thewebcomicsreview.tumblr.com/post/151370386290/thealphapenguin-said-to-thewebcomicsreviewhave

It’s pretty good imo

I really want to see what the Big Reveal is, the suspense is killing me. Also i just realised the double meaning behind calling the chapters “issues”. That’s really clever, I’m mentally kicking myself for missing that lmao

Someone looks haunted. Good.

And that’s a somewhat ominous breakfast of champions.

*Alison looks at the television*
“Breaking news. Today a biodynamic healer in a hospital managed to cure everyone in a 5 mile radius of any illness. The individual had no explanation for this sudden increase in power and, while glad, reported to be incredibly anxious for losing all control over their power.
With recent reports of more and more biodynamics finding their powers to grow greater and now, seemingly for one indivdual, even out of control, the world leaders have decided to enact a special program after an emergency meeting.
Every registered biodynamic will be asked to report to their local authorities and put themselves into quaratine until theirs and our safety can be guaranteed.
Biodynamics with violent or possibly damaging powers not reporting themselves will be regarded as indivduals that are endangering others and will face prosecustion and arrest.
Now back to Jim with the weather.”

Wow… just wow. So, Alison has made the transition from angst-y millennial college trying to do good in the world, to d-bag school yard bully. “Your lunch money is mine whenever I want it.” At the end of this day, the “Hero” is not. And at the end the Strong Female Antagonist is going to soothe her bruised psyche with beef and bourbon. Can she even get drunk? Isn’t it a common trope that super types metabolize alcohol too fast to get a buzz?
Also, has she ever had a boyfriend/lover? Based on her self-indulgent and rather fascistic use of her power in this instance, I feel sorry for him when the inevitable breakup happens.

At least Alison’s honest. I still have serious concerns about this storyline that I hope get addressed, but at least she’s honest.

I did a longer post last time but:

We kill bad guys to do good. Strong-arming a pick for a few hours to do good and save lives is way less bad

So we don’t even get to see who Max boosted? Y’all are teases!

Also, I wonder if Alison meant what she said about coming back and doing whatever she wants whenever she feels like, or if that was just a thinly veiled threat. She certainly didn’t overtly threaten Max to stay quiet, though if she did that, he’d probably go tell everyone. At least in this case, mister “doesn’t want to stuck his neck out” might stay quiet. Either that, or we’ll see if the gov’t really has developed countermeasures beyond “evacuate the planet”.

the making of a supervillain?

Also I really need a burger joint/liquor store.

Breaking both her “no coercing people with your super strength” and her “no drinking as a safety measure” rules on the same day. Nice.

Oh great more bad decisions 🙁

I may have missed this in the previous comments, but doesn’t it seem like Alison would have been more successful if she had blackmailed him with exposure rather than physically assaulting him?

“You can do the right thing, anonymously, or I’ll publish your super power anyway.”

I’m not saying this would put her in a significantly better position ethically, but I think Max would have gone through with it with a lot less resistance.

The comfort food and alcohol helps reassure me that Allison knew *exactly* how horrible that was. It says that she felt she *had* to.

Well, I’m glad it reassures you because, to me, that makes it worse. To me, what it says is that she knows, deep down in the places where you don’t talk about at parties, that she was wrong. She knows she was wrong, and now she’s drinking to dull the pain of committing an act of evil in service of the “greater good.”

Once she succeeds, the heel turn will be complete.

Al looks very tired. And something else. I don’t know if I would call it “resignation” but there is some kind of heavy negative emotion being suppressed there.

Is there anyone else here who really hopes that Alison has something really terrible happen to her as a direct result of what she did or what she made Max do? Because she just admitted that this was not just 4 hours of his time – it was a lifetime of uncertain potential slavery where she could kill him any time she wanted if he did not, forever in the future, do what she wants. And Max is taking this unreasonably well now. He never even said something like ‘Gurwara was right. You are a tyrant.’ Which, for someone as mind-bogglingly self-absorbed and dumb as Alison is seeming to be in the Max arc, probably hasnt even occurred in her invulnerable little head.

Nah I’m not frustrated at all at this. Not a bit. 🙂

Honestly all the defense I used to have about Alison doing bad things, which broke with this arc, I’d have for Max now.

If Max hired assassins who were ordered to kill each person in Alison’s family and a list of her friends if she every comes near her or if any harm ever comes to Max from ANYTHING (the same minute that she approaches him, with it all behind a screen of anonymity in case Patrick was there to just read his mind and find out who the assassins are, a real Batman vs Superman moment), I’d be like … ‘Well, he’s been backed up against the wall by a superhuman godlike figure threatening to take any sense of autonomy away. Anything goes in his mind at this point. I can’t really blame him for his sense of moral good and evil going out the window now that he’s in an eternal sense of ‘She can do this to me whenver she wants and no one can stop me – I need some way, Any way, to defend myself from her.’

Continuing to obfuscate the recipient and the possible effects is a good choice. I’m hoping it stays that way; that the story continues to evade who got the boost and the possible effects and all the minor details like whether Alison is actually right in her belief that this will save lives, because what really matters is the choice she made.

I had a bit of a think on this and I believe I know why I have a problem with this scene.

Now, the arc isn’t over yet, so this could all be rectified, but I think the delay between doing it right now and later will lessen the effect.

To put it simply, the situation went too soft on Alison and Max.

Alison is the easy one. Now though she had to comprimise some of her morals, the deck was stacked in her favor. Max is unlikable, he is priviliged, he exploits his workers, he belittles her friend’s sacrifice, and his reasons for refusing to help (at least, the ones presented) only served to make him seem spiteful.
Allison herself is tired, frustrated, desparing, basically she’s at a low point. And she wants to do something good, which she apparently needs Max for, but he refuses.
All of these things are there to lessen the blow of her crimes against Max. They are all things we and she can use to excuse her. How it is just a matter of circumstances that “pushed” her to do it, or how Max “pushed” her to do this.
If even one of these things were different, it would paint Allison’s action in a severly harsher light.

As for Max, he both broke too fast under Allison’s torture and yet at the same time weirdly didn’t.
Let me explain. Max, after initially refusing, quickly crumbles as soon as Allison starts hurting him. Despite it being very clear that his freedom is extremely important to him. But, this isn’t bad per sé. Maybe he just has a low pain tolerance.
But it once again stacks the deck in Allison’s favor. She only has to hurt him “slightly” to make him comply. What if she had to break his arm? What if he still didn’t want to help after that? Allison’s character is given a free pass to that question. She isn’t forced enough into answering the question of how far she is willing to go. It is just shy of really solidly and meaningfully establishing her new morality.

Now afterwards, Max is strangely being presented as not having been broken at all. He is not raging, his face isn’t pale, his hands aren’t shaking. He seems more annoyed than anything else. He doesn’t really act like a man who has just been kidnapped and hurt until he did something. But freedom is extremely important to him, how can he have such a subdued reaction to this all? How can he only look mildly annoyed?

Maybe he is putting up a front. Maybe he watched out of his window as Allison dissapeared before breaking down or showing emotion. But we didn’t get to see that side of Max. We just went straight to McDonalds. Max is still somehow fine, despite this being incredibly unlikely. Once again, the deck is in Allison’s favor.

Allison has her talk with Max where she admits what she has done is only justified through her strenght, but the whole thing is presented in such a “light” way that it feels distant and theoretical instead of what should have been a very emotional and human moment for the both of them.

It makes it almost unreal what has happened. Max his reasons and personality were presented in the most unlikable light while Allison’s reasons were presented as noble with a mere dark edge to them. Allison doesn’t have to go far enough to really show what she was willing to do to accomplish her goals, robbing her of a more impactful character growth. And in the end it makes Max seem fine while all that we know of his character indicate that he should not be.

I’m withholding judgment on Alison until what she did is revealed. As far as Max and Objectivism goes, I’ve always been deeply suspicious of the Objectivist restriction on violence. For one thing, I don’t think the Maxes of the world would respect that restriction if they had the power to ignore it (e.g. not “terrified of violence and scared shitless of going to jail”). For another, I don’t see a lot of daylight between threatening someone with violence if they don’t do what you say, versus threatening someone with loss of essential livelihood if they don’t do what you say.

yes yes yes

“And for myself, my favorite schemes were the ones that flew under the radar until it was too late for anyone to do anything about them”.

— Patrick http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-3/page-43-2/

Especially when they weren’t his gardeners, but people hired for his father by his fathers’ assistants. In other words, he defended his dad’s payment scheme, while she abducted, threatened, and tortured him.

I’m so pissed at Alison right now. And I STILL don’t like Max. Freedom isn’t just for good people, though…

In any case, I really really can’t wait for Alison to feel the ramifications of what she’s done. I don’t think she’s going to get out of this without a serious amount of guilt. She deserves it. I hope it hurts – I really, really hope it hurts.

The next time she stops someone from robbing someone, from abusing someone, from hurting someone JUST BECAUSE THEY COULD…

I hope she breaks down crying.

Couldn’t Max just report Alison to his mother? The same politically-connected and powerfully influencing mother who kept her son from any consequences from the public-at-large of being biodynamic? Who apparently has the ability to order around people who would be responsible for not only monitoring but enforcing laws over biodynamic individuals?

Max is only in chains for as long as Alison is in the room looking directly at him.

The ends don’t always justify the means. Especially when the means force you, bit by bit, to surrender your sense of ethics and morals. A “slippery slope” doesn’t get its name because for being easy to climb back up, and Alison is in a very unique position where no one can check her intent against her actions if she doesn’t want them to. She’s potentially (probably? definitely?) the only one on Earth who can stop herself.

So the question is: how far is Alison willing to travel down that slope in order to achieve what she sees as a world that doesn’t need to be saved anymore?

Archive diver, and this is a perfect place and comic to put my overall impression out there. Firstly…awesome comic that does a great job `realistically’ portraying superheroes in modern society.
That said, the underlying themes of responsibility and authority are very well done. Unlike many, I’ve never found Alison to be particularly sympathetic…she’s essentially the most powerful and least effective whiney baby ever. She’s an egotistical, arrogant hypocrite and has been since the beginning, and this arc is finally shining a spotlight on it.
The first major `plot’ involved her at a 99% protest rally, where a `friend’ of hers assaults another on the other side of the line. Alison sees nothing wrong with that violent instigation beyond “Don’t hide behind my powers!” If it’s okay for her friend to assault someone, would Alison stand by while a cop or bystander assaulted her friend? I think not…thus revealing her hypocrisy.
Max is a good example of this, and I suspect the authors brought him in for just this reason. Where does Alison stand on free will? The argument about the illegal landscapers, as well as her axiology class, bring this to the forefront. Alison wants everyone else to do what she thinks is `right’, without considering the possibility those that disagree *also* think they are right. Why is Alison more `right’ than Max?
In any discussion of `humankind’, you have to differentiate between what’s best for the race, and for the individual. Alison is apparently focused on what’s `best’ for the race as a whole, and ignores the individuals that make up that race.
People, meanwhile, are concerned with Self first, then the race…because without all the other Selfs out there, there *is* no race. I am more concerned with my Self (which includes those in my immediate circle…family, friends, etc) than I am a group of Lithuanian transgender militant Christians. They, likewise, are more concerned with *their* Self than my trials and tribulations.
Alison thinks there has to be One Great Truth, completely discounting the opinions, beliefs, and knowledge of every other person on the planet that doesn’t agree with her.
Another superhero comic I’m fond of…Grrlpower…sums it up quite nicely in a `telecast’ where a (possibly superpowered…Lex Luthor as opposed to Superman) businessman states that greed is the governing impulse to humanity. Everyone *wants* something…food, shelter, security, money, more Twinkies, affordable healthcare, whatever. They’ll do what they can to get it…for some, that means working a crap job for crap wages, for others it means whining until someone else *gives* them what they want.
Alison’s axiology class, where she stated emphatically, “This isn’t fair!” is a concise summation of her character. Life is *not* fair. It never will be, never can be. Life is chaos, her orderly vision of the world inconveniently impacted by the wishes, desires, and actions of 7 billion other individuals just as certain of their inherent `rightness’ as she is.
Why is someone’s `trigger’ more important than clear communication between dozens or hundreds or more of other individuals? Because it’s `fair’ to the triggered person? Is it `fair’ to those other people now unable to freely communicate? Why is this one person’s convenience or well-being more important than any other person’s? Alison is ready to harm a hundred people that don’t agree with her, for the sake of the one person who does.
Alison perfectly exemplifies what the wise sages Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry meant when they warned, “Meet the new boss…same as the old boss…”
Human history is a tapestry of people doing stupid things and wanting stupid things, and human society has been in a never-ending struggle to provide a framework limiting the repercussions of stupidity on the race as a whole. Take homosexuality, for example…whether you’re for it or against it or just don’t care…it’s an evolutionary dead-end. Biologically, the race depends on heterosexuality…for now, until mechano-wombs become universally available. Any individual realizes this, so the society developed by those individuals think, “Hm. Okay, so…kill the homosexuals!” or imprison them or make them social outcasts, whatever. Compared to the survival of the race as a whole, the damage to one small segment of the population is a good trade-off. A lot of people in that society don’t care because they aren’t homosexual and it doesn’t affect them. Some people realize that homosexuals are people, too, and should be able to live and love how they want. Some people believe homosexuals contribute nothing to the gene pool of humanity, so who cares?
Now, out of those three segments of people, how do you…or anyone…determine which is `right’? In the cosmic, non-individual sense of the term. Alison can’t , because if she holds *one* person’s view…hers…as cosmically `right’, she has to impose that view on every person that doesn’t agree. Which is what she so adamantly opposes in others.
I’d advise her to listen to Dr Denis Leary: “Life sucks. Get a friggen helmet!”…and season it with my correlation: help where you can, hurt where you have to.
In closing…I love this comic.

Right. Both the rabbit and the hawk care only about keeping their own stomachs filled and not getting killed – or dying of hunger – in the process.

(May have something of a soft spot for predators, these days, while still feeling for prey.)

Loranna

And yet two years later, here you still are.

Wow, so we’re not supposed to be critical or negative about something that we like, and maybe used to love? We’re not supposed to say anything, unless it’s to co-sign whatever’s going on? And, if we become dissatisfied, the only option is to slink away quietly?

What paragraph is that located at in the Terms of Service? Oh, wait…

Did Alison really have valid excuses for threatening to murder a crowd of protesters who no longer posed a threat to anyone? I don’t think “being really upset” counts. Certainly not for as much as “intending to save many lives.” If you’re as powerful as Alison is, I think you have a moral responsibility not to succumb to your emotions and endanger people for no good reason.

I’m also really, really not getting the “unabashed” vibe from Alison here. Far from it.

I still don’t understand why “she was really upset at the moment” should be considered a better justification than “a crapload of people will die if she doesn’t do the thing.” I see the first as a dangerous failure to regulate her emotions while surrounded by squishy normals, which is a thing someone as powerful as she is needs to reliably do.

And she has implied that Professor Cohen’s husband was not the only person she killed accidentally/negligently during her superheroing career–“I’ve saved the world seven times and super-accuracy is not one of my powers,” or whatever the actual quote was. It doesn’t seem like the thing with Max is the first time she’s prioritized the many over the few.

I interpreted her justification as her being too mentally exhausted to bother justifying herself to him. It wasn’t the real answer, it was the “shut up go away yes I’m terrible” answer.

Hm. I actually went and reread the section that was making me think he
was of the opinion that having power or influence made you superior, to support the argument, and
it appears I misremembered it. It’s more “you can choose anything, if
you’re worse off, you didn’t chose to improve”

Okay, I’m sick of your “rape analogy” nonsense.

We are forced all the time , under threat of imprisonment (and the threat of physical violence that goes along with that) to do stuff we don’t want to because it serves the common good. Do you really believe everyone pays taxes out of their own civic mindedness?

Rape serves no common good. Full stop.

“He/She made me do something I didn’t want to!!1!” is not automatically analogous to rape. And it is obscenely easy to make the argument that “torture is bad” without a rape analogy. You should try it.

I don’t understand the argument that, if the hand of God doesn’t reach down to smack Alison on the face for this, then what she did is canonically morally right. People in stories can do bad things and escape punishment for them. Stories reflect real life, and in real life people don’t always get punished.

It’s up to us to decide whether a person or character’s actions are right; we shouldn’t need the universe to spoonfeed the answer to us by dealing out a karmic backhand. If you think Alison was wrong to coerce Max no matter what, then it shouldn’t make any difference whether she receives an external punishment for it.

Some of the best things in life are bad for you.

“Do what I say or I will punch you.”

If one hadn’t been reading this comic, wouldn’t that sound like the same thing an abusive husband would say to his abused wife?

The rape analogy does not hold up in this case. It’s more the health insurance analogy: “Your money or your life!” In that case, buying 15 minutes worth of health insurance is not a huge burden. Alison will always be a better person than Max, because she carefully weighs everything she does, whereas Max is simply selfish in the name of freedom. Sometimes Alison decides that the guilt and shame she will inevitably feel over compromising one of her beliefs is worth the goal she’s trying to accomplish. This is something all human beings do. Example: I believe that it’s bad to lie, but if I don’t lie, someone else will be horribly injured. In this case, you tell the lie.

Oh I’m in total agreement that Molly and Brennan’s story structure is phenomenal. I’ve had to read some of the archive over and over, more than once, and then say ‘AH HA! THIS IS WHERE THIS MORAL DILEMMA IS CALLING BACK TO! IT MADE NO SENSE AT THE TIME AND NOW IT DOES!’

They’re clearly taking a really long-view of the story. It’s quite amazing, really. I’ve only seen a few other comics do something like that – Goblins, OOTS, Grrlpower, Freefall, and SFP seem to be the best at it.

Although probably the epitome of it was 1/0 by Tailsteak.

Did you seriously just blame the victim?

I’m pretty sure that was intentional.
And wouldn’t that make a depressing plot twist.
Good eye.

You can accept a choice you made without being smug about it. I think it’s a leap to say that unless she’s utterly disgusted with herself she must feel “righteous.” Does she look to you like a person who’s feeling righteous?

I never said in my comment that it was legit, or not fucked up.

So we have someone that chose to try to be a benevolent dictator. Unlike a lot of people here, I’m fine with that in concept. There are a lot of advantages to such a system.

However, such a system requires a competent dictator if it is going to work, and this plan will likely show us whether she is competent enough. Regardless, she needs to quickly surround herself with competent people who are willing to give advice and are trustworthy. They don’t even need to approve of the dictator thing.

What are you talking about? Someone might do something that they consider morally wrong while still thinking it’s necessary.

Besides, what does “it doesn’t matter what you tried to accomplish” even mean? Remember what she said to Cleaver about feeling powerless with all the suffering in the world and her frustration? Think about all the shit she’s been through since then. If she’s finally found a way to stop a bunch of it and all it costs is her self-respect then that might be a good deal.

You might as well argue that women are getting offended by clearly non-offensive things, and therefore we need to teach *women* to not get offended when sent dick pics. Insisting that men are the ones that should always bend to make women comfortable is what might be described as “benevolent sexism”.

So there are two possibilities –

1. The difference is biological. In this case, both men and women should be taught about the differences, and how those differences should influence their behavior around the other gender

2. The difference is a social construct. In this case, it should be decided whether it is better to react happily or unhappily when receiving explicit images(since apparently we can train men and women to react differently to it), and both genders should be taught to follow that optimal reaction and behave with the assumption that people will have that reaction.

Notice the thing that stays the same in both situations – BOTH genders are taught this. Teaching only men the distinction just causes its own problems.

…Whose neck did she break?

I’m taking nothing by faith. I’m simply refusing to make assumptions there’s no evidence for. We don’t know how much Alison knows about how Max’s power works, so I’m neither going to say “she definitely knows all about it” or “she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

A similar increase in the abundance of available organs could probably be achieved just by making organ donation opt-out instead of opt-in, so no, probably not. Condemning someone to a lifetime of ceaseless torture is orders of magnitude worse than inconveniencing someone for four hours and causing them momentary pain, so it requires a much worse alternative to justify it.

Now if torturing Feral for the rest of her life were the only way to save, say, a billion lives (to use an extreme example), then I’d say it was morally necessary.

In real life, in some places when you get your drivers license, there is a box that says something like “mark here if you want to be an organ donor”. In other places it says “mark here if you do NOT want to be an organ donor”.

Psychologists found that people have an irrational bias towards picking the default choice most of the time, such that in places where it says “mark here if you do NOT…” there are more organ donors.

Is it moral to subtly bias people’s choices via presenting the option you want them to take as the default? Is that deception? Is it manipulative? Does it matter, if it saves more lives at otherwise zero cost?

Maybe what Allison did to Max crossed the line. Maybe the line should be drawn at hunting them down and harvesting by force. Maybe the line is somewhere between what Allison did and hunting down people with healthy organs.

“Your attempt at splitting hairs doesn’t actually hold up under even the slightest bit of scrutiny.”
The type of scrutiny you are applying is absurd. Every single example you give in the following is ridiculous and illogical.

“You are forced to apply pressure to your car’s brakes by speed limit laws.”

That is not being forced to do something. That is being forced to NOT do something. Ie, not speed and endanger others lives in the process. Not to mention, that’s the government making that rule – the government who we put in power, have a set of penalties if they go over their bounds, and agree to follow the rules of.

“Business owners are forced to buy new equipment/make modifications to existing equipment by laws limiting pollution.”

Again – government – not an individual. And you will not be beaten up or killed for not doing so. You will be fined. And you agree to it implicity by being part of the society that voted in that particular government. You can, as a business owner, then vote for someone who will not force you to buy new equipment, or have more lax regulations, and you can donate money to those people’s campaigns. OR you can run for office yourself.

And again, the’re forcing you to NOT do something. Not pollute. There’s a difference. The amount of times the government actually forces people to DO something is very rare. Most laws are about forcing the people to NOT do something.

“And Max’s family’s employees are forced to work late into the night under threat of starvation and possibly deportation.”

This is possibly the dumbest comparison possible. They are not forced to work late into the night. They can quit. They can not take the job in the first place. They will just not get paid because they made an agreement to do the entirety of the work in exchange for money.

In addition, if they do quit, they can work for someone ELSE. Max is not the sole employer of illegal immigrants in the United States.

In addition (again), no one was threatening them with deportation. Why would they – Max’s family would be fined for hiring illegal immigrants then. They arent being threatened with ANYTHING. If you go to work at McDonalds, and then leave halfway through the day because Lunch Rush was too much, do you expect that they’re going to pay you for the day? Even though you’re a citizen? No. You’ve never had to hire an employee, apparently. You are going to want them to actually fulfill the contract and do the work for which you’re paying them. The only thing you can do if they don’t do the work is not pay them. You can’t beat them. You can’t threaten to kill them. You can’t chain them up and make them keep working. You’re being ridiculous.

“Then there are literally all other crimes.”

All crimes are about the government making a person NOT do something… Like, for example, You’re NOT allowed to threaten someone’s life if they don’t want to do something you want them to do. You’re NOT allowed to kidnap someone, even if for a short time. You’re NOT allowed to twist and almost break a person’s arm to force them to comply.

“Theft is non-consensual gift giving.”
No it’s not you ….. I want to call you a name but I’m not going to. I’m taking a moment to meditate before continuing this sentence.

No, theft is not ‘non-consensual gift giving’ like it’s some Orwellian newspeak. Theft is the physical removal of an object that is capable of being stolen without the consent of the owner and with the intention of depriving the owner of it permanently. It has nothing to do with gifts. The element of a gift is that it is given CONSENSUALLY. If you remove that element, it can NOT be a gift.

“What about simple assault? It’s basically non-consensual BDSM.”

No, assault (and I’m assuming you mean battery, not assault – assault would be the threat of harm, battery is the actual harm) is not non-consensual BDSM. Again, you can’t remove an essential element of a definition and then say it’s the same thing.

“Rape is more than a simple violation of consent.”

God I’m happy you never worked in the DA’s office. Rape is non-consensual sexual intercourse that is committed . Even in common law, it’s the unlawful intercourse by a man against a woman by force or threat against their will. The analogy is about the mentality of the rapist and the mentality of Alison, which I repeat over and over but you seem incapable of reading. The mentality involved is using ‘by physical force, threat of injruy, or other duress’ to achieve the goal. Alison did that. She didn’t do it for sex. She did it to force Max to do something ELSE to which he repeatedly said no.

“When’s the last time a pick pocketing victim was filmed having their wallet stolen and was subsequently bullied until they committed suicide? When’s the last time a pick pocketing victim was told that they probably gave the thief their wallet and now they’re lying about it? When’s the last time pick pocketing was used systematically to subjugate an entire group of people?”

This part of your post is meaningless.

“Your analogy disregards the reality of rape by reducing it to a simple violation of consent.”

No, it doesn’t. You really don’t understand what the word analogous or analogy means, do you? I’ve explained the definition enough times but you seem content to be ignorant.

“If we were intended to read “Alison as rapist,” this would be taking place juxtaposed with Moonshadow instead of with Alison’s professor talking about tyranny.”

Actually, it does have a lot to do with what Moonshadow said. The concept of doing something bad, even if you’re doing it to an innocent person, because you think you’re doing something good in the end.

It also has to do with Gurwara, and even more on point.

If you’re using Moonshadow because she was attacking rapists or would-be rapists or suspected rapists though, then you’ve again missed the point of what analogy means, and what the word mentality means.

“Or is tyranny also analogous to rape?”

Yes, it is. Do you really not comprehend this? I think you really don’t comprehend this.

“If you believe that is the case, I would question why you seem so intent on watering down the word “rape” until it loses its meaning.”

It doesnt water down the meaning! Tell that to the victims of Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, who had entire rape rooms where he used the fact that his family was essentially the tyrants of their country as his justification.

If anything, people like YOU are watering down the meaning by making the mentality of the perpetrator meaningless and just reducing it to ‘having sex.’

Using rape sounds like puffery. It’s intentionally using an inflammatory word to add emotional weight to your argument, and that is why I object to it’s usage. I object to it as an analogy, because the two acts are not in the same field. There is a huge disparity between the two things and acting like they are similar makes no sense to me. Rape has a lot to do with sex. It is, by all legal and moral definitions, an inherently sexual act and we have other words we use for other acts involving forcing someone to do something they don’t want to do. Blackmail, coercion, torture. Take your pick. You’re a lawyer if I recall correctly and I have no doubt that you have more than the requisite vocabulary to properly define Allison’s actions without relying on an obviously emotion-based analogy. Allison’s motivation (I am going to force you to do something because I think it is the right thing to do and will help lots of people) is completely different from a rapist’s (I am going to force you to do something you don’t want to do because it will make me feel good and have no other benefit to anyone).

Also I am aware that a moral event horizon is a story telling mechanic, but I would posit that it is a weak one. That is a matter of subjectivity, but from what I can tell SFP is trying to tackle morally complicated issues without simplifying them in to the simple moral decisions and rules that we see in so much entertainment. It is doing this in a medium famous for using simple moral structures to classify ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people. Comic heroes have rules, but this comic exists to partially challenge a lot of those concepts and how they have created a group of people who think life is really that simple and how they are growing up and all having to realize that it isn’t. So a trope like a moral even horizon, while a real literary tool, is out of place here.

Basically, this comic is making a genuine attempt to be realistic in it’s portrayal of people, though it is free to be as unrealistic as it wants in terms of science. So I am holding it to that standard, which is why I said that a moral event horizon is not a real thing. Because in this world where characters are forced to make difficult choices without the benefit of knowing if that choice is ‘absolutely good’ or ‘evil’ a moral event horizon is as out of place as an unflinching walk (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnflinchingWalk) in a serious harrowing war movie about the trauma that soldiers experience.

Whoa there! Please calm down a bit. It seems like this is a bit of a hot-button issue for you. You should probably take a moment to chill a little before reading further.

I think you may be carrying some of your hostility to others over to me. Please don’t.

Like I said, when debating the moral calculus of a given situation, you HAVE to leave emotion at the door.

YOU have decided to redraw the lines of the discussion by emphasizing Alison’s mindset as being that of a rapist. I believe you are incorrect. Again. Note: this is a different discussion.

Based on my reading, a rapist, TYPICALLY, rapes for one of two reasons: the need to feel and exercise power over another, and/or the need for sexual satisfaction (I realize this is simplifying and not taking into account other causes, such as chemical imbalances, but these two reportedly are the most common).

For a rapist, the act of rape is MOST OFTEN one of taking and exercising control, if we are to believe what psychologists have to say on the subject.

That is, quite literally, “the mindset of a rapist” – at least as far as the psych books say. Rape is about controlling others for the sake of exercising that control. Rapists often feel powerless in their daily lives, work menial jobs – the act of rape is often one of asserting dominance over a world that they feel is being excessively unfair to them. They almost never express regret, often commenting that the victim ‘had it coming’. Rapists are, essentially, whiny selfish losers who take what they want to benefit only themselves without regard to the well-being of others. They are usually very short-sighted and rarely think of the future at all.

Alison’s mindset does not appear to match that, at all. She doesn’t appear to be doing what she is doing simply to establish control over Max, or for sexual gratification. She isn’t using him as an object in order to meet her own desires. Far from it.

Alison is quite literally doing what she’s doing to Max solely to benefit others. She personally gets nothing out of it except risk. There is no immediate gratification or pay-off that we see. It doesn’t fit “the mindset of a rapist” at all.

Furthermore, she is clearly not happy with herself in regard to what she has done – but, she expresses a willingness to do it again if she has to, even though doing it clearly makes her unhappy.

I tried to make this point before – that there is next to zero chance of a rape victim ever thanking their rapist for what they did, while there is a greater than 0 chance that someday, Max may himself decide that being dragged out his personal pity party was well worth it.

The reason for that? Because rape NEVER benefits anyone except the rapist. It is solely caused by selfish motivations. What Alison is doing is coming from a place of selfLESSness, and she is doing it at potentially great cost to herself, and solely to benefit others.

You keep saying that there will be no consequences.

Note that the author has very carefully set up inside the world of the story that a person that was able to hurt Alison (I.E. her equal in terms of power) is currently being held in prison.

Note that Alison was injured by her former teammate.

Also note that she has family she cares about and goals she is invested in achieving (university and her victim’s assistance deal).

Do you think she would get to keep going to university if this stuff came out? Would anyone want to work with her on the victim’s assistance thing anymore? What would happen to her family if she experiences public backlash for her actions? At the very least, it’s going to make thanksgiving dinner pretty uncomfortable with a pitchfork wielding mob right outside.

Not to mention the possibility of civil suits, including the likelihood of asset seizure/frozen bank accounts/whatever other punishment the courts come up with.

That’s aside from the fact that she’s clearly made a lot of enemies among the hero community over the years since she’s seen as the person who screwed everything up for most of them.

Would also absolutely NOT be surprised if a super-powered assassin operated in this world.

The key here is that we DON’T KNOW what Alison had Max do.

My whole point is that it is way too early to rush to judgement on this.

That’s why the Ten healers were a hypothetical – it’s a suggestion of a particular set of circumstances that might possibly shift the balance of the argument of whether what she did was right or wrong to illustrate the point that WHAT was done is extremely important.

How many lives would have to be saved before that twisted arm became “worth it”?

Then there’s also another aspect to this whole situation.

The corollary to the Spiderman “with great power comes great responsibility” argument. They recently touched on this in the Spiderman scenes in Civil War: if you have the power to stop someone from killing somebody and do not, are you not then responsible for that individual’s death?

The subversion of this line of thought is why the ending of Batman Begins is so shocking: when he utters the line “I won’t kill you – but I don’t have to save you,” it’s jarring. It rings false. We aren’t used to having our heroes say “Not my problem”. By refusing to save the man when he could have, he is just as responsible for the man’s death as if he had shot him in the head.

Now realize that Max has been withholding his power for the better part of 20 years. A power that doesn’t allow him to be a hero, but instead enhances the heroics of others. 20 years of enhanced heroics, flushed down the tubes because of basically, jealousy and fear.

How many could have been saved that weren’t?

How many people did Max kill through his inaction?

We don’t know.

A large part of why Max doesn’t use his power is because he doesn’t value it – has no idea what it could be used to achieve. The only way to prove to him the value of his power – his ability to affect the world – is to get him to use it.

It’s tragic, really – Alsion’s being slammed for her methods, but we don’t know what she actually DID yet.