Through ♪ violence ♫
(Imagine the same kind of pyrotechnics and sound effects than in the famous “history of japan” YouTube video)

Actually, this raises a major plot hole.

If Feral’s regenerating so fast now, how can they even open her chest cavity and keep it open in order to actually work on her? She’d just heal up around the doctor’s hands/equipment!

Feral is the sweetest, most loyal, selfless, caring, compassionate and super-nice friend someone could be ever blessed to have. Thanks to Brennan and Molly for blessing us with such great character, I’d love a spin-off centered around Feral, really.

No, no, violence and torture is the only way. I once thought like you, wrongheadedly about freedom of choice and speech and ridiculous notions like that (well at least freedom of speech when it’s not for the approved speaking points) but now I see, because of the lack of negative consequences, that forcing others against their will is good if you think something good will come of it and the god of the universe will comply with your wishes, and you just have to make sure it’s to someone you don’t like. This is a valuable lesson that we all must learn unless we want violence inflicted on us as well.

Well she is regenerating her organs at a rate of 7-8 a minute right? So she has two kidneys that means roughly 15 a minute. Thats a little less than half of what you figure for supply, and that still brings us right to the logistics side of things. They just cant shuttle that many organs to where they are needed. Theoretically they could, but it would involve basically building an entire industry around feral. Like buying another thousand or so transport vehicles, entire wings of surgical suites for doctors to implant the new organ into the needed patients, housing for the hundreds of doctors that would need to be hired to do it, as well as the thousands of random assorted medical personnel. Probably setup a small airport nearby the bring in the new patients along with large hotels for people to stay in while the patient is recovering. Or just to wait their turn.

If she really wants to push it, she could also travel country to country and do her 40 hours a month THERE as well. That would allow her to supply the world more or less and do it WAAAY more effectively than she could pre max. Also, she could see the world. A lot.

She’s a universal donor. The only thing she can’t donate are her eyes, and that’s just because the recipients might be targeted by homophobic or dynaphobic groups. 😉

Also, *groan* I’m in punnn

“A perfect outcome, assuming it lasts.”

It’ll last forever and be perfect.

“did Alison know this would be the outcome of Max’s enhancement?”

Yes, she knew everything perfectly and there was never any risk or problem at all and everyone of us who saw a flaw in this plan were just being stupid dummy heads.

“If so, how?”

Because Alison knows everything and Dr Rosenblum knows everything and is able to tell what will happen to an untested power being used on another power hypothetically with total accuracy and that doesn’t seem Mary Sue-ish or contrived at all. Not even a little bit.

“Will Feral insist on knowing how this came to pass? If so, how will she react?”

She will not insist on knowing, and in the unlikely event that she does, she will be fine with it because everything worked out perfectly and everyone will be happy forever. The end.

“Is Alison feeling guilty about her choice, now that she’s had time to reflect on it?”
She feels guilty but vindicated because she’s perfect and because she feel sorta bad about what she had to do we must feel sympathy for her now. Start feeling sympathy NOW.

“Her hanging head seems to suggest she might.”

It is the hanging head of relief and forethought of who she will need to hurt next in order to solve other world problems forever in a way which is perfect, obviously.

“Are there any other biodynamics she intends to force Max to enhance (if not now, it seems likely to come up again later – this is exactly the sort of act that leads one down a slippery slope).”

Probably there will be, and Alison will have to force him to do it again through violence because Max is a stupid libertarian or randite who believes in personal choice because he wants to see other people die, like all of his ilk does. Also he’s a rich white male. But this is no slippery slope.

Alternatively, he will see the error of his ways and willingly do what Alison tells him.

Alternatively to the alternatively, he will be come a supervillain so we know that he is as evil as he is libertarian.

Good point about teleporters/speedsters, but they may already be taking those things into account when they say 40 hours a month is as much as they can handle.

I think you’re underestimating infrastructure issues.

The problem is it isn’t simply a case of yanking the organ out of Feral’s chest, though I suspect that’s exactly what they’re doing:

Team A rips out Feral’s complete viscera and runs to operating room A while Team B slides into place behind them to grab the heart and lungs and run for operating room B while the viscera regenerate.

Team A1 dissects out a kidney, Team A2 dissects out the other kidney, Team A3 grabs the liver, Team A4 the pancreas, Team A5 the ascending colon and so on.

Each team packages the organ for transport.

Each team hands it to a waiting courier, who either motorcycles it to the hospital where the recipient is waiting (note that point), or hops on a plane to fly them there.

The waiting transplant team (note that point) then takes a substantial number of hours to implant the organ.

Let’s say for simplicity we get 10 transplantable organs at each pass (more on this in a moment). At 8 repeats a minute I don’t think the surgical teams can actually keep up with Feral, but that’s potentially 4800 transplantable organs an hour. That’s potentially more than there are transplant surgery teams on the planet, and over 40 hours it certainly will be. And those teams don’t just do transplants (more etc).

Given Feral’s sheer survivability, we may also be looking at a step-change in how long the organ remains viable outside the body, which has profound effects, allowing at least partial stockpiling.

Getting to all those ‘more laters’ etc. What this is going to do is completely change the logistics of transplant surgery. It goes from being a scarcity economy to being a post-surplus economy (Max will howl in despair). Doctors no longer need to be governed by who they can get a match for, transplants have become routine surgery that can be carried out in accordance with medical need. And it’s no longer “you must be able at all times to get to the hospital within one hour”, but “How does three weeks on Tuesday suit?”

But it actually still is a scarcity economy in another sense, the critical infrastructure item is now transplant teams, not transplantable organs. We’re still faced with limited numbers of transplant teams who probably also have general thoracic surgery practises that they can’t simply abandon, together with an incredible number of surgeons needed at the Feral end.

The simplest, most flexible, most economic approach may be to say to the transplant surgeons, “we’d like you to set aside several days a week just for transplants” (ultimately this is likely to mean them giving up their general surgery, but it gives their hospitals time to replace that aspect and even then they can’t spend all their time in theatre, they need to handle pre-op and post-op). Then once a week, the harvesting teams descend on Tara, spend 8-10 hours ripping out every organ they can grab, and the rest of the week dissecting them out into implantable form at relative leisure and shipping them out to the transplant teams – “Order up! Beth Israel needs 4 hearts, 6 kidneys and a liver to go!”.

At the recipient end the transplant teams are waiting with their patients ready and operating theatres prepped. Organs arrive and the first wave of patients and surgeons hit the theatres, while the next team starts pre-surgical prep on their patient.

There’s one more thing opened up by this. Tara is a perfect universal donor, that means experimental procedures like face and hand transplants become much more feasible, and we can start to look at the viability of transplants for issues where it is not currently practical, such as the gut and severe Crohns Disease, or the spine. The sky’s the limit, but we need the doctors for it.

We would need access to a parallel universe where Max did not augment Feral.

Otherwise how would we know that Max wasn’t doomed already no matter what Allison forced him to do? The information about his powers was already out there.

I mean, suppose Allison didn’t force him and then he died anyway. She would feel like an idiot for not insisting that he augment Feral ASAP.

Kind of a stupid question, but if the doctors decapitated Feral, would she grow a new head or a new body? Or would she just die?

If she grows a new body, they could use that for a sort of (dis)assembly-line, where Feral torsos are shipped to other operating rooms and operated on in parallel.

No one can force me to give blood. No one. No law on the books permits anyone to strap me to a table, stick a needle in my arm, and withdraw my blood without my express consent.

If the President or the Pope or my own mother or father are dying, and are in desperate need of a blood transfusion, no one can legally compel me to give blood. That is a right to bodily autonomy that I enjoy.

It doesn’t matter what the outcome is. It doesn’t matter how many lives it saves, or who they are. If Max wants to make that decision, to contribute his own power to Tara’s cause, then that’s his decision. If he makes the decision to *not* help, then forcing him to comply through violence and pain is an ethically and morally wrong act. Ethics and morality do not look at the ends. They look at the means.

Allison is in the wrong here. Yes, Tara is happy. Yes, more people are saved. That’s beside the point. Allison has assaulted someone – technically two people – and forced at least one of them to perform a biological act that they did not want to do. That does not make this situation good or happy. Or, rather, it *should* not make this a good or happy situation. But so far this comic seems pretty content to lodge itself firmly in a certain spectrum of storytelling where Allison can do no wrong.

I feel that it was not Alison’s decision to make. She did not have the right to make that decision herself, other people should have been involved.
now, it is really hard to tolerate the naked display of power that Max tried to do. If Alison had chosen to go public instead he would have serious problems, and made modern libertarians look even worse than they already do..
perhaps Max, Patrick, or the reporter that is muckraking on Alison should send Alison a copy of:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GPSLHI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
might help her understand a few things.

(2 kidneys * 12 months * 40 hours * 60 minutes * 9 regenerations per minute) / (17,815 kidney transplants in the US / 4% of people live in the US) = 1.16, a number close enough to 1 that it makes me suspect the numbers in the comic were chosen based on a similar calculation.

Of course, as you say, this ignores waiting lists; but it also ignores the fact that most countries have worse healthcare than the US. I think this would actually justify the “many times over” comment.

518,400 kidneys a year is enough that it can absorb every one of the almost 10,000 people on the US kidney waiting list without trouble. I can’t find figures for how many people are on waiting lists worldwide – but only about 80,000 people actually receive kidney transplants worldwide every year. It’s likely the bottleneck would be improving global medical care enough, in this scenario.

Based on the context, it appears the doctor is saying that Feral previously regenerated her heart 8-10 times a day, but now regenerates it 8-10 times a minute.

“And this is bad for the story.”

I rather think it’s the conscious intent of the story!

No, that is a hanging head of relief that she did the right thing, I say!

Also my powers of sarcasm are apparently not that good.

No, this will be perfect forever! Also everyone on Earth will get a free puppy. Even the ones who are allergic, because Feral’s organ donation will make them no longer allergic. And Alison’s father will be cured of cancer. And so will Cleaver. Also Brad will get back a non-bat face. And whatshername with the gaseous body will get back a body. Everyone will be happy forever because of Alison’s one punch solution and surely nothing will backfire at all.

Wow, jeez. That is kind of a huge assumption. I think it’s much more likely that the authors got their facts wrong. If Allison’s plan was to just lie to Feral she didn’t even need to bother getting Max in the first place because Feral’s body is already capable of producing organs as fast as they can harvest. She could have just lied, done whatever it is you think she did to get the doctor to go along, and the result would have been the same. I’m not doubting the logistical facts presented. The math here doesn’t add up to me either, but I think it’s less “Allison suddenly became a psychopath for no reason” and more “The authors aren’t doctors and don’t work for UNOS.”

What could she possibly offer him to try & convince him? She has few resources while Max has many. She appealed to his empathy in part because that’s what motivates her & in part because SHE HAD NOTHING TO OFFER HIM. What do you get the man who has everything when you want him to do you a favor?
I’m not saying what she did was right (I completely believe it wasn’t) but it’s very understandable from most people’s point of view.

They’re using a shovel. She regenerates so fast they no longer need to be careful if they waste a few organs. Paladin can probably get in on this action by inventing a robot which will do the work for the surgeons. And if Templar tries to take the robot away, Alison can just beat them all up or kill them, or threaten to kill them, or break their arms as long as it doesn’t take more than 15 minutes or four hours, which others have told me it the necessary amount of time under which violent means is acceptable to achieve ones ends. Then everything will be fine. Forever.

This is a bit of a side note, but this has been bothering me for a while.
Feral’s surgery pain.
Now we know drugs and such don’t last as her body metabolizes them too fast.
Yet, they can keep her chest cavity open for long periods of work without her regen forcing it shut.
So one possibility is they are constantly cutting at the edges as they try to regen, keeping it open.
Alternatively, the two sides might not regen until brought back into place and then they reknit.
In either of these scenarios, I still think they could have done something along the lines of using a drug to block the initial pain and while its still working either severing her spine at the base of the neck or drilling a hole in the skull to allow a device to be inserted to either keep the spinal nerve cells from reattaching or performing a continuous mini-lobotomy to the main pain centers. Even after the drugs wear off, by this point the device is in there doing its thing to mitigate the overall pain.
Granted zero feeling is not much better than torturous pain, but still if she was in there doing her part, did the docs really look at all possible solutions to make it a bit better for her, or did they just say hey she said she can live with the pain and drugs wont work so lets get cutting….
I know the ongoing torture of surgery makes Feral’s contribution that much more noble, but given her physiology, it seems there should have been options on this.

No, there are lots of other ways for the comic to continue and to show how Alison did great stuff here with nothing at all negative. Nope. Nothing negative at all. Remember…. Max is a RICH WHITE MALE. Who’s a LIBERTARIAN. He might as well be a baby killer. Plus it was only four hours, which the guide to morality tells us is the necessary time for a violation of personal liberties to be no big deal. I think it was written in the Constitution even. Or Alison will add it into the Constitution after she makes another head hang to show how she feels bad about doing what she did, even though everything went perfectly well with nothing bad happening to anyone or anything.

Except Max. But again. Rich white libertarian male with evil looking cheekbones. Might as well be Donald Trump.

A lot of that time is spent in anesthesia (useless on Tara, or so we’ve been told), avoiding cutting through important stuff in ways that are permanently damaging (as you say, not problem with Tara), and closing correctly (again, not really an issue with Tara). In her case, surgical skill, doctor fatigue, and surgery space and choreography are going to be the limiting factors.

Once they get organized, I don’t see five minute per organ as being at all unrealistic. I haven’t spent any time doing surgery so I don’t know how much elbow room is required (maybe one surgeon on each side?).

It’s more likely that “Mohammed would come to the mountain” as they say – hence my conclusion that just building a huge medical center around and studying Tara would make more sense for all but the most seriously incapacitated patients.

Shovels man. They’re using shovels. Scoop scoop.

http://healthyinfluence.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Jay-and-Doritos.jpg

Indeed.. what about Patrick?

::gives out a half-hearted attempt at a maniacal laugh that sounds a bit like a sputtering toy airplanes and shuffles off stage left::

Based solely on the yet-limited information we have, it does seem Alison chose the lesser evil here (and potentially several orders of magnitude lesser evil).

When you go throwing stones in ponds, ripples happen – and the fish get headaches.

There are so many ways for this to go south just on practical issues, I’m likely to get hypoxia from waiting with abated breath

no, but bear in mind with Feral you can speed it up a lot. Normally you have to be very delicate with organ surgery for obvious reasons. With Feral you can basically use a scoop and clean off any extra bits off the surgery table.

I do in fact think that Hitler was destined to fail for that reason, and that the Universe never allows evil to triumph over good.

It actually is not that complicated, either. The worse a situation is, the more things struggle to change their situation. And on the other hand, the better the situation is, the more things are content with it.

So it is like entropy. Low entropy situations are unstable and must tend toward high entropy situations. Likewise, evil situations are unstable and must tend toward good situations.

And yes I am willing to apply this to concrete examples like Hitler. There is nothing impossible about him winning the war. Suppose it happened. He also had plans of completely eliminating the populations of Eastern Europe, to make “room” for more Germans. If he had started to engage on this project, it would evidently have caused discontent — and therefore instability — of the most extreme sort. And the consequences would be as they usually are in such situations, and his great empire would pass away, and things would improve, going back to a normal, stable, and good situation.

Some thoughts. First, the acrimony in the comments is pretty painful to read; understandable, but really not that enjoyable.

Second, regarding the last couple pages, I’ve finally found what is, to me, the perfect metaphor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw
(That’s my suspension bridge of disbelief, if the metaphor is too subtle…)

Third, I’m still waiting to see how Brennan proceeds from this point, but right now… it feels a bit like we may have jumped the shark.

WHEE!

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

AGAIN!!

According to the World Food Program in the United Nations, 21,000 people die each day from hunger or hunger-related causes. One person every four seconds. Most often, it is little children who die in the greatest numbers. In addition, poor nutrition causes nearly 45 percent of deaths in children under five each year – 3.1 million children every year.

Obviously, since this is about the greater good, and I have been convinced completely and utterly by the brilliant utilitarian arguments in favor of such things, as well as being shown how nothing negative came from Alison’s action, that nothing bad can come of doing something bad as long as a lot of people are helped as a result and it saves countless, countless lives, now that Feral is freed up from organ donations for operations, she should stay in her chair and have parts sliced off her to be made into food for the starving people of the world, thus also ending world hunger.

Surely there’s no flaw in this plan, right? After all, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. Easy, easy math. If Feral agrees, even better – it means no one has to strap her in the chair against her will. Since she regenerates organs so quickly, she’ll probably not even have to be on the operating table constantly still. Or maybe Alison can make Max give her another boost on top of her boost. She can break his leg or bust a few ribs to make sure he complies. I think this is a great idea. Who’s with me?

Supergenii like Lisa are perfectly at liberty to risk their necks in homebuilt giant exoskeletons they tested themselves, but the regulations around medical devices are rather tighter and you’re probably looking at several years just to get a prototype certified. In fact some of the existing surgical robots take longer to do the same procedure than a human surgeon, but have other advantages such as reduced recovery time.

Either way, Feral’s heart grows more every day.

For the record, I didn’t– I fully expect it’ll come at some point but I’m not bitter this hasn’t happened yet.
I definitely would be offended if it never happened, though.

Yay, cast page. For when you can’t remember the name of that one character XD

I was thinking more along the lines of a sapphire as big as a fist… carved into a rose.

Maybe he just discovered it recently.

You’re overlooking the third option: she didn’t actually believe it, when she said it the first time.

The reason I don’t believe that she meant it, like I said about the classroom, just look how fast she was willing to pivot to force when the rest of the class wasn’t willing to get into formation with the black stone initiative.

What I believe is, what she said to Cleaver in Issue 3, that it’s just lip service to Alison. That it’s what her parents taught her, because they’re good people, but it’s not something that she necessarily learned. I don’t think that Alison said that because she believes it, I think that she said it because she knows that it’s just some shit that she’s supposed to say, when she’s around other people, so that they aren’t horrified by her presence. Her saying it to Cleaver was just a conditioned reflex.

If anything, I think that Alison is kind of an agnostic, when it comes to the idea of believing “I don’t have the right to force others to do what I think is right, and being powerful doesn’t give me that right.” I think that she wants to believe it, because she was taught to believe it. But I don’t think (and, frankly, I’ve never thought) that, when push comes to shove, that she actually believes it.

Alison, this is your inner yuri speaking.

Kiss Feral, she looks adorable in the last panel.

No, but unless there’s some MAJOR twist, I don’t see this getting to a point where she pays a REAL price for what she did, or finds that anything negative happens as a result so her ‘save the world’ plan goes up in smoke. There seems to be a lot of Deus Ex Machina in play to make sure that her plan DOES work with no real consideration to any negative implications, in addition to the very forced trolley questions.

800,000 kidneys will feed a whole lot of people dangit.

You are saying directly to me that even considering the position I hold on this issue is “loathsome” and “fucking despicable.” You are comparing my position to that of a hypothetical genocidal racist. You are calling my moral code despicable. There is essentially no difference between that and calling me, as a person, despicable.

I do disagree strongly with your position and I think it would have been morally wrong for Alison not to ensure Feral’s augmentation. But I would never call you or your code “loathsome” or “despicable” or “awful.” I certainly wouldn’t call it loathsome to even so much as entertain the idea that Alison might have been wrong. I understand where you are coming from with your ethical system and I believe that you, like me, subscribe to the moral code you believe can create the best world.

As much as I like to poke holes at the lack of medical logic in the storyline, this part actually DOES make sense. There are people who are universal blood donors (with a few rare exceptions because of certain antibodies that cause reactions). So it’s not a stretch of logic to say that a person could be universal ORGAN donor as well.

Wouldn’t it be funny if this was all Patrick’s plan on luring the power killers out. He knew Alison would use Max’s powers on Feral and that Feral’s new regeneration rate may prove dangerous to the status quo of the world… or maybe Patrick’s just a nice guy and I’m over thinking this.

And we all called moon shadow out for murdering rapists… well I guess threatening and murder are different. Alison hasn’t gone that far… yet.

Re: ‘Is it “worth it” yet?’

Like many other people who have commented on this page so far, I also still maintain that there was a better way she could have done this. Sure, the ends may justify the means in this situation, but that doesn’t mean it was impossible to achieve those same ends with better means:

From what we know about Max, many of the audience can and have thought of ways to convince Max to help that he would have agreed to do. Alison, on the other hand, went straight from appealing to Max’s better nature (which he arguably doesn’t have) => insulting him => threatening him => injuring him and forcing him to go along.

There’s dozens of other avenues she could have gone to achieve the same result.

That doesn’t really make sense. Why would it serve the greater good to kill people who don’t become involuntary doctors? The dropouts can be useful by doing almost anything else.

Heart disease? That’s a liver.

Max ceased to be innocent when Allison informed him of how he could use his powers to help Feral, and he chose not to just to spite Allison. This does not mitigate the fact that what Allison did was wrong, While i applaud her actions, i must admit, its probably more because Max is a douche than anything to do with Feral, I also recognize that there where many many better ways to get what Al wanted rather than go straight to brute force, but lets face it, she’s still in her early 20’s, and she spent her whole teenage life ‘saving the day’. It’s going to take her a long time to get out from under that mindset, if she ever does.

That’s a good point, so it could have been down to bad timing.

Fair enough, this is just a different use of the word ‘message’ than I am familiar with.

So Allison is not a great sales person. Maybe she should have been nicer to Max, stroked his ego, told him he was pretty. Then, after she’d buttered him up she could have asked if he could take some time out of his busy schedule and hop on down to a hospital so he can save several thousand lives annually. You know, whenever. No pressure. If he said no she could have tried to get other people to present to him, maybe set up a power-point presentation. Then after several months of begging, after Max’s ego has been stoked enough and he feels in control again after he didn’t get something he wanted (Allison) he might deign to perform an act that I would classify as the bare minimum of human decency. Oh, every day spent waiting some people are gonna die who don’t have to. So you know, take your time developing that perfect pitch.

Also what Max said implies that he would always say no, to anyone, just because he wants to spite Allison.

“Just to watch you realize that, for once, you weren’t going to get your fucking way.”

He is emotional so maybe he is exaggerating, but still: holy crap. I don’t hold to the view that what happened to Max is justified because of what kind of a person he is. I think it’s more of a greater good scenario and Max’s morality is irrelevant. Let’s talk about his morality for a second though, since we’re on the subject of whether or not he deserved more consideration before Allison went to the violent solution.

Think of how many people Max would have allowed to die due to his inaction. About 6,000 people a year die on the transplant wait list, and then there’s the fact that Tara is undergoing constant torture. I’m gonna go ahead and say Allison probably knows the numbers, given her closeness to the situation. And now you’re Allison, and you’re listening to this guy justify allowing those people to die and Tara to suffer because he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t even think he has to justify his inaction. He thinks he’s doing her a favor by even answering he question at all. Then when he thinks he’s won he is all “well, good talk” like they’d just had a spirited discussion and would have to agree to disagree when in fact he had just calmly doomed thousands to death by his inaction.

A lot of people would have just snapped there. I’ve known people who have waited on the transplant list for years, and at least they were able to substitute dialysis. If I was faced with a situation like that, I would be furious in a way I don’t think I’ve experienced yet in my life. So when I say that Allison was remarkably calm, that is what I’m talking about because that is a staggering body count. Honestly, Max is a complete sociopath who is trying to justify his lack of any kind of empathy at all with ‘personal freedom’. So maybe Allison could have been a littler more patient with him, but she showed remarkable restraint to get as far as she did.

I think any really accurate utilitarian assessment of the “greater good” should include the degree of ethical corruption to society that would be involved in accepting the outcome of said utilitarian assessment. As complex as that would make the calculations involved, the answer would be a lot less misleading.

I don’t believe so? She made a point about having to hear the direct, personal accounts of her targets’ victims first-hand before she would actually go so far as to kill them. The closest she ever came was Furnace – and she still refrained from killing him, insisting that he answer the question even as he cried out as to what she was waiting for. She had no victim in his case but his ignorant responses to the media had given her serious cause to suspect he was covering something up.

Bit off topic for your post, but in a lot of older books I have seen people use this “G-d” spelling instead of “God”.
I always wondered, is there a reason for that? In most cases the text doesn’t seem to “take the Lord’s name in vain” or something like that.
It sometimes happens to ordinary names or places too and I always though it to be strange.
So, do you know why this happens? Genuinly curious.

This kind of stuff is why I dropped out of college.

Some of them do…

“Here how national security: you spy on people that you think may harm you, and make plans to kill them. You don’t tell them your going to kill them. The good doctor is most likely under law forbidden by to tell Alison of any plans to kill her if she went AWOL. The joke was most likely a way to shrug of the question.”

That would be a fun conversation:
“Hey doc, if I ever decide to start randomly murdering people,what’s the government’s plan to deal with me?”

“They’ll flood the air around you with nitrogen while you sleep. You’ll be dead within minutes.”

“Oh. Uh. That’s… good to know?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfvTwv5o1Qs

“It’s just my recollection–possibly wrong–that it was stated in the comic that Feral is a universal donor because of her regenerative capabilities.”

I read that as being that her regenerative capabilities have the side effect of her organs being universal donor organs in the same way 9 percent of people’s blood are universal donors. There’s nothing to suppose that the organs keep regenerating once out of the body, though. In fact, that would be sort of horrible, because that means that once damaged organs leave Feral, those organs will keep regenerating until there’s an entire new Feral, so that there would be two Ferals.

“Nope, not telling you to leave,”

Seems like you are. How about you stop doing that? Or conversely, you can leave if you don’t like reading the comments of people making valid criticisms of the topics being brought up which the creators clearly are allowing since the comic is all about deconstruction of comics and social norms and philosophical viewpoints.

“just don’t see why you’d spend your time here”

It’s called debating a point. But I think you are having trouble with that concept, like a lot of people who say stuff similar to what you just said, ANYWHERE.

“I stop seeking it out. But if reading a comic that seems to drive you nuts, and bitching about it to people that still enjoy it, is how you get your jollies, okay.”

Going to channel the spirit of Max for a moment (if only I could also channel his bank account) …. one sec.

Okay. Got him. Stop struggling Max, sweetheart! I just need your attitude for a bit! You should be used to take-charge women forcing you to do things by now!

Since you clearly are awful at telling what other people’s motivations are or what other people are thinking, or what other people’s views are of the comic (and btw, I like the comic, the artwork, and even most of the time the storyline and issues raised, and have mentioned this before, including before this arc when I was an Alison supporter and arguing on the other side), maybe you should either go somewhere else that you’d enjoy the comments more, or just not read the comments since you don’t need to read them in order to enjoy the comic. Or not read mine. Or not respond to mine.

But definitely do not tell me what to do or how to think (unless you’re also offering me a raspberry soda since I’m a sucker for those) or what my motivations are when you clearly don’t know.

Okay Max, you can go now. Go back to living in fear of Alison. Have fun!

Or do tell me what to do, and I’ll just ignore your rather rude suggestion. I don’t care much. Your entire premise though is ‘If you don’t like it, leave.’ Ignoring that I do like the comic, and I DISAGREE with the message being sent in the current story arc, as it so far exists. Can it change with a twist? Yeah. And if that happens, my opinion and posts would change as well.

Calling an “egomaniac desire” seems unfair. It’s not entirely inaccurate, but I think it’s important to remember that Alison isn’t just some random trying to reach beyond her grasp. She possesses unique abilities that, if applied in the right way (whatever that is), have the potential to effect enormous change. Wouldn’t she be selfishly squandering those abilities if she didn’t aim to use them to benefit humanity as much as possible? With great power comes great responsibility.

She has previously had an issue with trying to solve all the problems by herself, which you could certainly call a counterproductive egomaniacal impulse, but with Valkyrie it seems like she’s catching on that she’s more useful in tandem with others.

Schroedinger’s antigen?

Yes, it was in her possession, but she would still only be able to use it through the organization.

Given Max’s reactions thus far, I doubt it – it seems he has to will his power to activate and I just can’t see him risking helping out someone relatively unknown; narratively it doesn’t wash with me based on current evidence on the part of Max and who he is. On the other hand, Patrick could have been the one Max initially augmented when they were testing Max’s anomaly, which would explain some things, so you could be right.

::shrugs his shoulders in the most eloquent way a donkey can::

Patrick was already grossly powerful when his anomaly originally manifested (if the implications of the plot elements already revealed can be trusted); he was able to keep on top of several allies at onceWe already know Patrick can read an entire crowd of people in a fairly short amount of time and get their personal data and remember it (again, assuming he’s not lying about his abilities). His eidetic memory and ability to integrate the knowledge of other persons (as witnessed by his brain-trust experiment back in chapter 5 ) are also insanely powerful.

The idea of Patrick with time travel capability still gives me the collywobbles.
http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-5/page-99/

Speaking of allies – whatever happened to the lady (I assume it’s a lady) that visited Daniel with the data file? Anyone able to remember if she has a name?
http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-2/page-14-2/
http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-2/page-18-2/

And remember, Patrick is likely even more powerful than he was when his anomaly manifested – after all, Alison, Daniel, Mary, and Chris all got more powerful without augmentation by Max.

“from a storytelling perspective, what is the reason to show that Alison is unhappy”

Because it tells us something about her reaction to this situation, how her decision affected her. We see that she’s unhappy that she had to hurt someone to make this happen, and we also see that she did it anyway.

The point of that doesn’t have to be to make us feel bad for her, it’s just…showing us what she’s feeling right now, about the events of the story. It gives us a handle on where our POV character stands in relation to this situation, and narrows down the range of ways we can expect her to respond to it as it progresses, and how she might process it over time. It helps us understand her, which is not necessarily the same thing as sympathizing with her.

I don’t think I’m explaining this well, but I’m trying to say that making us aware of the full breadth of a POV character’s feelings about a situation is intrinsically important in storytelling, not just as a mechanism for influencing the audience’s opinion of the character.

“Which is why her feeling bad rings hollow to me. It feels like crocodile tears.”

I think that’s a reasonable interpretation of her body language. It’s not my interpretation, but it’s still a justifiable one to have. I think she is genuinely upset that she resorted to violence again to achieve this, or even more broadly upset that she lives in a world where violence can be a solution at all. But you could certainly also interpret her body language in this scene as her trying to convince herself she feels bad because she thinks she “should.”

“Being powerful does not make you better than everyone else. It just makes you more powerful.”

I don’t necessarily think she has violated that principle, to be honest. She didn’t coerce Max because her power makes her better than him. She coerced him because the alternative was for countless people to die painfully while waiting for transplants. Max had the power to withhold their salvation, but he’s no better than everyone else, so Alison took that power away from him.

“Please stop assuming that I’m out to get you. I promise, I’m not. I think you’re a fine, polite, thoughtful, non-hypocritical person, and you actually make interesting posts on this one particular issue which I happen to intensely disagree on with every fiber of my being to the core of my very soul.”

Thank you, I appreciate that. I have also enjoyed exchanging perspectives on this with you except for the times you were being sarcastic, and you have made some great points. If your posts seem hostile to me in the future, I’ll remind myself that you said this and that your intent isn’t hostile.

If she’s generating tons of organs, she’s definitely going to need more of those hamburgers.

The thing is that it’s basically the same thing when what’s “loathsome” is like, my core principles. That is me. I can’t help but take that personally.

Not sure if anyone linked this in, but if we are looking at numbers, this page may be important.

http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-3/page-39-2/

Feral’s heart per day rate was about 8-10.

Her lungs per day rate was 15-20

Her liver and kidneys were upwards of 30.

Well, utilitarianisme purely looks at the end results.
The normal end result of a pregnancy is a baby. So from a purely utilirianistic viewpoint, ending a pregnancy while the fetus would have turned into an actual human being is the same as preventing a human being from coming into existence.
It’s debatable wether a pure utilitarian would call this murder, since preventing existence is different from ending existence, but they could make a strong argument against abortions.
(Note: I agree that a fetus isn’t a full human and I support the right to abortion under most reasonable circumstances.)
And those doctors sure believed that they would save a whole lot of lives. One person dying to save five is a-okay under utilitariansme. In fact, this whole story line is about removing organs to save lives.

You hadn’t with me. And I can’t say I’ve read all of the discussions you had with others, which you can’t blame me for, because my do you comment a lot.

What you believe in is not utilitarianism. “Utility” is defined by its distance from individual needs, if that’s something you’re still on keeping then you’ve just described my system plus a desire for overall trend toward improvement that obviously I and every human being share. That’s… not utilitarianism.

Let’s make really sure.
You say slavery and genocide don’t increase utility, –which quite frankly depends on however you define utility hence why it’s so dangerous and irresponsible– but I’m guessing capitalism does? It definitely does wonders for life (look at me writing to a stranger at the other side of the world) and leaves exploitation in its wake, creates and perpetuates social classes, a necessary feature of its process.

No matter how much I enjoy holding the sum of humanity’s knowledge in my pocket at all times, I believe the cost of that benefit, even without having to pay it myself, is too much. According to your belief system, it’s not. According to your belief system, the gender wage gap is worth the prosperity of business it enables, for instance.

You can’t have both. You can’t say on the one hand that you stand with the advantages of these systems and on the other that you stand with relieving the people they crush. It doesn’t make any sense.