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Nuns with Guns posted:That makes logical sense as a twist when they eventually have to explain it. I just don't get how they decided which powers were too good when they left dudes around that could still create high levels of energy, mass control people, or solve almost any crime because they can read minds. Besides "social experiment" or some other bullshit out, that is. I also don't get why they're more important to find now when there's no evidence that they've done anything since then that threatens the world instead of finding obvious ways a metahuman could use the most simple superpowers to drastically improve the world. I'm going with the leftover guys aren't capable of creating climate/planet wrecking levels of energy, the mass mind control being limited to a single city (if that's the guy you were talking about), and mind reading not being substantially destructive. Everyone that was scary is dead, so they had some other mind-power guy wipe their memories of the event and the conspiracy evaporated. Patrick only cared originally because it took tools away from him while demonstrating how unimportant he is. Alison cares because
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Nov 8, 2017 20:30
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As a passing familiarity with crime and politics in any era should show you, mind readers would be Public Enemy Number One. sFP very half-assedly tried to set this up with Patrick (that's why he's unregistered) but it never really got touched anywhere else. Any known telepaths would be quietly killed by the Vladimir Putins and Whitey Bolgers of the world. Beyond that a guy who can mind control a huge city would probably warrant cruise missile strikes or even a nuke, especially if he has any range or can permanently alter his victims.
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Nov 8, 2017 20:46
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Atmus posted:I'm going with the leftover guys aren't capable of creating climate/planet wrecking levels of energy, the mass mind control being limited to a single city (if that's the guy you were talking about), and mind reading not being substantially destructive. Everyone that was scary is dead, so they had some other mind-power guy wipe their memories of the event and the conspiracy evaporated. I get the justification in removing anyone with powers that could trigger an instant apocalypse, but it seems like even a bunch of the middle tier powers could cause extreme chaos if they were misused. Maybe. It's hard to tell when so few of the superhumans have explained their powers and we're just speculating on some faceless organization with unknown scope, motives, and resources. At this point they could just as likely be made up or nanomachines. Flesh Forge posted:As a passing familiarity with crime and politics in any era should show you, mind readers would be Public Enemy Number One. sFP very half-assedly tried to set this up with Patrick (that's why he's unregistered) but it never really got touched anywhere else. Any known telepaths would be quietly killed by the Vladimir Putins and Whitey Bolgers of the world. Beyond that a guy who can mind control a huge city would probably warrant cruise missile strikes or even a nuke, especially if he has any range or can permanently alter his victims. A telepath would be a high priority to kill but also highly desirable to have on your side. It'd be an interesting thing to explore in a better story.
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Nov 8, 2017 21:31
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Flesh Forge posted:As a passing familiarity with crime and politics in any era should show you, mind readers would be Public Enemy Number One. sFP very half-assedly tried to set this up with Patrick (that's why he's unregistered) but it never really got touched anywhere else. Any known telepaths would be quietly killed by the Vladimir Putins and Whitey Bolgers of the world. Beyond that a guy who can mind control a huge city would probably warrant cruise missile strikes or even a nuke, especially if he has any range or can permanently alter his victims. They're not literal sci-fi psychics but highly talented speechwriters and community leaders with the power to direct the masses to their whims are extremely highly prized by tyrants of all stripes, and typically receive gentler treatment than their common followers even from their enemies. There isn't really anything at all in the SFP setting that's not, underneath all the special effects, just a slightly exaggerated version of reality, and its ostensible point is to convey a message about real-world politcs and not about superheroes. Patrick's good at telling people what they want to hear, but not because he's smart and attentive and has a system for cold-reading peoples' motives like the many normal people who are good at that, but because of some easier-to-write poo poo about mindreading but he "can't read his own mind" more to the point, it's not at all clear that someone who "talks to diseases" or whatever is world-alteringly powerful, nor that anyone had them killed for being so. Patrick found a dossier that described some now-dead children somewhere or other, and if he had more to go on than that he sure didn't need it to convince Allison that the world is flawed because of evil jewish lizard freemasons working to undermine civilization from within. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Nov 8, 2017 |
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Nov 8, 2017 22:04
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The simplest explanation is that a time traveler is killing future supervillains who'd managed to end the world while they were kids. e: It's also potentially less stupid than whatever the real explanation will be. super sweet best pal fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Nov 9, 2017 |
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Nov 9, 2017 02:05
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super sweet best pal posted:The simplest explanation is that a time traveler is killing future supervillains who'd managed to end the world while they were kids. This universe probably has a like a dozen Chuck Goodrich's running around in it.
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Nov 9, 2017 02:09
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super sweet best pal posted:The simplest explanation is that a time traveler is killing future supervillains who'd managed to end the world while they were kids. It'd be interesting, and Dr. Jerkshoes fits the bill, but they won't do that.
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Nov 9, 2017 14:16
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Well this latest page was weird and I gotta say, this is a radical departure from the entire genre this comic was in previously. I mean, inasmuch as the comic still has a functional story. This setting inside Patrick is a totally different deal than anything we've dealt with before and has nothing to do with the basic thesis of the comic. It's purely self-absorbed in a way that SFP's earlier sections weren't: There, drama and personal issues were treated as basically obstacles to doing effective good in the world, and the theme was overcoming them or being sabotaged by them. This entire section is totally unrelated to the real world, to real psychology, or even to the conflicts in the comic. It's the All Patrick Show forever, now.
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Nov 11, 2017 03:55
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Yeah I couldn't even think of anything to say about this page. Just boring minutia about this representation of Patrick's mind that's wholly unconnected to anything else.
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Nov 11, 2017 04:58
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Even the writer is so bored of the plot that he's getting lost in an alternative fantasy setting.
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Nov 11, 2017 06:10
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Zerilan posted:Yeah I couldn't even think of anything to say about this page. Just boring minutia about this representation of Patrick's mind that's wholly unconnected to anything else. The hell of it is, this is going to come up later, because I'm positive the author grasps narrative structure well enough to put Chekhov's gun up on the mantle like this, then have it fire at the climax. So this whole mental structure is presumably going to be important to making sense of this chapter, and it's going to get more elaborate and developed and it's all going to be so self-involved. I wonder if we'll meet the other Allisons. The mind-copies he made of her every time he was near her. Does he just keep one and update it? Or does he have a literal timeline of meathead superman-wannabes clunking around his mind punching things at random and indirectly maintaining the status quo?
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Nov 11, 2017 06:15
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"Pure rationality. Logic in service to itself." sounds like it was ripped from LessWrong or some other dark enlightenment type.
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Nov 11, 2017 06:39
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Zerilan posted:"Pure rationality. Logic in service to itself." sounds like it was ripped from LessWrong or some other dark enlightenment type.
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Nov 11, 2017 08:26
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The problem is that while we've got some bits and pieces, it's still too early to make any solid guesses about where this is all going.
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Nov 11, 2017 08:42
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Emrikol posted:The problem is that while we've got some bits and pieces, it's still too early to make any solid guesses about where this is all going. The toilet. Because it's bad. Like poop.
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Nov 11, 2017 11:11
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super sweet best pal posted:The simplest explanation is that a time traveler is killing future supervillains who'd managed to end the world while they were kids. Maybe it's evil professor? Who maybe has some kind of time-shunting powers. Nah, that would make too much sense.
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Nov 11, 2017 15:53
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It will be old rich people most likely. I mean, the writer wears his politics on his sleeve in this comic, i don't see it stopping. Really it has started to grind down in funny right now, at least with Clevin there was absurdity.
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Nov 11, 2017 16:02
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Axe-man posted:It will be old rich people most likely. I mean, the writer wears his politics on his sleeve in this comic, i don't see it stopping. Really it has started to grind down in funny right now, at least with Clevin there was absurdity. It's going to be President Grump, in that case. I imagine he'll have been the first ever super power or something and it'll have turned him into an orange The Thing-like mutant.
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Nov 12, 2017 02:46
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wtf
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Nov 12, 2017 15:50
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The writer got their extremely loose understanding of psychology mixed up w/ their vague understanding of programming.
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Nov 12, 2017 15:54
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Mr. Squishy posted:The writer got their extremely loose understanding of psychology mixed up w/ their vague understanding of programming. Sounds like the lesswrong comparison is apt!
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Nov 12, 2017 20:52
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You forgot to edit it to "Clevin" in panel 4.
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Nov 13, 2017 02:23
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This is dumb and bad, but it's all made up psychology mumbo jumbo and magic so it's not like I can point out anything that's not immediately obvious. But even after all these months I still can't wrap my head around how Allison knew she could go into Patrick's head like this. He's always been shown as a passive telepath, to the audience and to Allison. Which I thought was kind of neat. Manipulating anyone but only to do things they already wanted to do is a twist on the mind controlling puppet master type you don't see very often. I can buy that he's projecting thoughts as an evolution of his power, but all the equipment is still inside his own brain. Why would Allison ever think that by laying down next to him and closing her eyes she'd be mentally transported to his mind and able to interact with him consciously. I mean I know the answer, it's because the author wanted to do a mindscape arc, and this is the simplest way to make it happen, but it's so drat lazy and uncreative.
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Nov 13, 2017 17:18
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Galvanik posted:This is dumb and bad, but it's all made up psychology mumbo jumbo and magic so it's not like I can point out anything that's not immediately obvious. If it were better written, I'd guess that the twist is that Allison is not mentally transported to his mind. His telepathy just created an Allison clone; while Allison herself is not aware of anything that is happening. The foreshadowing for that would have been the aside mention of Patrick's mindcity being full of "strangers who rode the same train" or however it was phrased. But we're not going to get that twist, because physical Allison had a Dominic Deegan-style psychic nosebleed when mental Allison was punched by The Sentinel; so they really are linked. It's all very stupid.
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Nov 13, 2017 18:31
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Ugh you're right, the nosebleed does totally prevent the only interesting implication from coming to fruition, this comic is so bad.
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Nov 13, 2017 21:50
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That would have been hilarious and good.
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Nov 13, 2017 23:05
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super sweet best pal posted:You forgot to edit it to "Clevin" in panel 4. thank you, but i do not give a gently caress
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Nov 14, 2017 00:10
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Flesh Forge posted:That would have been hilarious and good. It really would have! And it would have meant that Allison Clone will have to deal with the fact that she can't actually get that conspiracy knowledge out of Patrick to Allison unless she 'fixes' him internally. Which could lead to nothing but a coma and eternal internal war. Then, presumably, a slow zoom out of Patrick's pupil to the external world, where he's just the comatose guy on Allison's bed that ruined her passive-aggressive relationship.
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Nov 14, 2017 01:14
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Hell, I would have gone further, then zoom out again, entire comic series is allison in a coma. All the power fantasy gone, patrick was such a game changing character cause it was a reflection of her horrific situation. Then end the comic and like do something original.
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Nov 14, 2017 01:39
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This page is a good portrayal of two people who can't stand one another and are eager to part ways, but have to work together and sustain politeness. I'm not joking, that's an actual compliment.
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Nov 14, 2017 16:04
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I'm still bewildered that artist and writer alike went for the most boring possible depiction of a character's mind world. Like the most out-there it got was tetris sewer water. This is dumb and I hate it.
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Nov 15, 2017 00:46
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Nuebot posted:I'm still bewildered that artist and writer alike went for the most boring possible depiction of a character's mind world. Like the most out-there it got was tetris sewer water. This is dumb and I hate it. I stand by my contention that there is no finer form of science fiction than complete simpletons trying to describe what the inside of their mind looks like they're ahead of the curve just in not having the whole thing be either an office or a videogame metaphor
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Nov 15, 2017 03:37
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Well, at least it shows you how shallow the story is, just a small little city thats his mind. Blank and bland, and populated by I don't know i stopped giving a poo poo halfway through this sentence.
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Nov 15, 2017 06:00
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The only people in this gigantic city that we've been shown is ... Fem Patrick and Big Dumb Allison. At her introduction Fem Patrick waves her hand and we go to the next scene. At Big Dumb Allison's introduction Fem Patrick waves her hand again and we go to the next scene. Riveting!
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Nov 16, 2017 00:31
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We've also seen green Darth Vader and his robots.
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Nov 16, 2017 01:01
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It's a visual metaphor for menacetron's solipsistic worldview, the only hints of characters we've seen other than him or a representation of Allison that serves him are vague silhouettes in Windows. This establishes how he views the real world.
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Nov 16, 2017 06:09
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They're going to unmask ego Vader and it will be clevin
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Nov 16, 2017 06:10
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Buschmaki posted:It's a visual metaphor for menacetron's solipsistic worldview, the only hints of characters we've seen other than him or a representation of Allison that serves him are vague silhouettes in Windows. This establishes how he views the real world. That'd be fine and maybe even good, but Fem Patrick was explicitly talking about all the whole high fidelity copies of other people's minds that populate his city brain?
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Nov 16, 2017 06:27
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Kind of hoping Allison sees what Patrick saw when reading Clevin's mind.
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Nov 16, 2017 06:40
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super sweet best pal posted:Kind of hoping Allison sees what Patrick saw when reading Clevin's mind. A sea of clevin. Clevin as far as your eyes can behold. Beautiful stalks of clevin blowing in the gentle clevin. Clevin trees bearing ripe, juicy clevin just in time for the clevin. A little slice of clevin, forever under the setting clevin.
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Nov 16, 2017 06:43
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