Strong Female Protagonist II

[Vinyadan]

For those talking about how long it takes to operate, [...] If she is serious about staying under the knife as much as possible, they would have to build a town sized hospital around her. Bring in hundreds of surgeons, thousands of assorted other medical personnel, build entire blocks full of nothing but surgical suites and recovery areas. Probably build a town for all the medical personnel to live in, a hotel complex for patients families and those waiting their turn, a small airport to constantly shuttle in patients from around the world and back. The only real chokepoint is implanting the new organs into people and waiting for them to recover enough to be sent home. By the time they finish giving one person their new kidney, feral has already donated enough organs for another thousand or so patients.

So, in practice, they need to build Disneyworld. With surgeons. I had it in mind done in the opposite direction (having cars and airplanes to carry the organs away instead of having people come in) but this would probably be better. The only question would be "who's paying for this?", sending out organs can be done and then it's a foreign business, bringing in people, especially in America, would cause all sorts of budget problems, especially if payment is demanded to come in from countries where surgeons gain a lot less than in the USA (the Gambia comes to mind), because they would have to cover for the stellar American wage.

My only problem with your description of operating is that the organ must be harvested in a way that doesn't damage it. I just took a look at a video of an operation harvesting the heart, after the body was opened (and the person was dead, I guess, so they had no reason to be more cautious than with Feral), it took about 4 minutes, but the video was actually made at high speed, so I guess somewhere around 6 and 10 minutes, possibly 20 depending on method?

[AmberVael]

I read it as she can regenerate one organ in about 1 minute, looking back at the phrasing you might just be right

However sticking to kidneys (easy to find solid numbers) that would mean she removes the waiting line completly in less then six months.

Especially considering you did'nt take the 2 kidneys into account. So she regenerates 8 hearts per minute, but 16 kidneys...

So it's not 230,400, it's 460,800. Or is it something that I have missed?

Nah, you didn't miss anything. I was just calculating for any given organ rather than "how many kidneys can Feral produce." Which is why I said "organ" instead of "kidney."

[Maryring]

Honestly, the more this comic progresses, the more I feel that it's got very little idea of what it's doing or what it's saying. I mean, the cast page itself is so... actively trying to push specific and thus very telling character interpretations. Specifically the interpretation that "thinking and ethics is hard. You do the most good by doing harm to people you think are bad".

[Dragonus45]

Honestly, the more this comic progresses, the more I feel that it's got very little idea of what it's doing or what it's saying. I mean, the cast page itself is so... actively trying to push specific and thus very telling character interpretations. Specifically the interpretation that "thinking and ethics is hard. You do the most good by doing harm to people you think are bad".

Yeaaaaa, I was very off put my Moonshadow's bio. Like, final straw, bridge to far, are they really that crazy, probably done with the comic off put.

[RCgothic]

I was half expecting to hear Ali broke the process.

"Sorry Feral, you now heal faster than we can operate. We can't harvest any organs now."

[Vinyadan]

Now that I think about it, there's no way that Feral can cover the world's needs. There are infants and toddlers who need transplants and can't wait until adulthood, you just can't fit her stuff in them.

EDIT: I checked my ignorance. Livers and kidneys and I guess other organs can be fitted from adult donors to child recipients, while it seems that hearts need to be the right size. About this, the relative simplicity of the heart compared to a liver or a kidney makes me hope that we will soon be able to produce artificial child-sized hearts.

[Traab]

Now that I think about it, there's no way that Feral can cover the world's needs. There are infants and toddlers who need transplants and can't wait until adulthood, you just can't fit her stuff in them.

EDIT: I checked my ignorance. Livers and kidneys and I guess other organs can be fitted from adult donors to child recipients, while it seems that hearts need to be the right size. About this, the relative simplicity of the heart compared to a liver or a kidney makes me hope that we will soon be able to produce artificial child-sized hearts.

Im pretty sure it was meant more as a generality than as a precise statement of fact. After all, she wont be able to help the people in china who got into a car crash and need a new heart in the next hour or they die either. The one thing about this that comes to mind is, I really hope doctors and researchers use this time wisely. We have no idea how long feral will live, or be willing to continue coming in for a monthly 40 hour marathon of agony, so the docs had better put more effort into finding long term solutions for organ transplant needs. Maybe study her healing factor and see if they can replicate it for fast cloning a persons own organs? I dunno, they have to do something.

[Morquard]

Now that I think about it, there's no way that Feral can cover the world's needs. There are infants and toddlers who need transplants and can't wait until adulthood, you just can't fit her stuff in them.

EDIT: I checked my ignorance. Livers and kidneys and I guess other organs can be fitted from adult donors to child recipients, while it seems that hearts need to be the right size. About this, the relative simplicity of the heart compared to a liver or a kidney makes me hope that we will soon be able to produce artificial child-sized hearts.

Well the fact if she now heals faster or not doesn't change that at all. She couldn't donate a heart to a toddler before either. So that sentence should be more seen "Everyone who can benefit from your donation, now will".

I mean someone losing an arm won't benefit either, or someone with a cold. You wouldn't count them either, so you can't count the toddles.

[Vinyadan]

I now envision a world where everything is cured by transplant. Caught a cold? Nose transplant! Broke your arm? Arm transplant! Stuttering? Tongue transplant!

But arm transplants are now a thing, although I get what you mean.

[137beth]

Well, now we get Feral's initial reaction, though she still doesn't know how Allison did it.

[Traab]

Ok, new theory time. Allison knows the boost is temporary. Thats why she is so depressed every time the rest of the room isnt looking at her. I think she knows she will be going back to max at some point for another booster. She wont let feral be locked up in hell if she can prevent it. At first I was thinking she had convinced the docs to go along with the plan but there are too many ways that would fall apart. Now im thinking that at best she is hoping this month of freedom will be enough to either convince feral to do something else to help instead, or to space out her kidnapping of max. Which, btw, I dont foresee ending well a second time. If I were max, I would have hidden recorders on me at all times now. And the next time she kidnaps him she will see her face on all sorts of news reports about her kidnapping, assault, etc etc etc.

[Kantaki]

I hope Alison looks this depressed because Tara’s happiness makes her consider what she did to achieve this.

Because if she doesn't worry at least a bit about the path she took with her little stunt I'm starting to worry what her next step will be.

[Traab]

I hope Alison looks this depressed because Tara’s happiness makes her consider what she did to achieve this.

Because if she doesn't worry at least a bit about the path she took with her little stunt I'm starting to worry what her next step will be.

She may also look like that because she knows she has to confess to feral what she did and she has no idea how badly she will take it.

[JeenLeen]

Ok, new theory time. Allison knows the boost is temporary. Thats why she is so depressed every time the rest of the room isnt looking at her. I think she knows she will be going back to max at some point for another booster. She wont let feral be locked up in hell if she can prevent it. At first I was thinking she had convinced the docs to go along with the plan but there are too many ways that would fall apart. Now im thinking that at best she is hoping this month of freedom will be enough to either convince feral to do something else to help instead, or to space out her kidnapping of max. Which, btw, I dont foresee ending well a second time. If I were max, I would have hidden recorders on me at all times now. And the next time she kidnaps him she will see her face on all sorts of news reports about her kidnapping, assault, etc etc etc.

Do we know it's temporary? (It's possible I just missed the statement in the comic.)

I thought Max's power was that he had to be close to someone for them to get the boost, but we see from Feral that proximity is only needed for the initial boosting.

Anyhow, even if Max has recorders--and Al doesn't think to search him (which she probably wouldn't, honestly)--I don't see evidence really mattering. He can tell his senator mom with or without evidence, and she'd believe him. The masses don't seem to care what Al does, and probably would either think the good (organs for all) outweighs the bad (she kidnapped a guy) AND/OR be too afraid to do anything about it.

[Traab]

Do we know it's temporary? (It's possible I just missed the statement in the comic.)

I thought Max's power was that he had to be close to someone for them to get the boost, but we see from Feral that proximity is only needed for the initial boosting.

Anyhow, even if Max has recorders--and Al doesn't think to search him (which she probably wouldn't, honestly)--I don't see evidence really mattering. He can tell his senator mom with or without evidence, and she'd believe him. The masses don't seem to care what Al does, and probably would either think the good (organs for all) outweighs the bad (she kidnapped a guy) AND/OR be too afraid to do anything about it.

Ehhh, its highly unlikely they would even consider moving against her without some rock solid evidence, but even if it just becomes news fodder and they DONT try to arrest her, her reputation is destroyed, and she probably cant go anywhere without being shunned or looked on with fear. And this isnt Hancock. She isnt the only super out there. Im sure there are others who would at least try to bring her in. And if they have cells setup to contain guys like cleaver, im sure the government has also considered what to do if allison goes rogue.

[Morquard]

Wasn't their "if Alison goes crazy"-plan to pack as many people as they can into a big spaceship and find a new planet?

[danelsan]

Since it turns out her powers are really telekinetic in nature, just poison her food.

[The Glyphstone]

I got the impression the doctor who said that was joking. I really doubt she'd actually tell Allison what the government's real anti-Allison plan was, because that would undermine any potential utility it had.

[137beth]

Do we know it's temporary? (It's possible I just missed the statement in the comic.)

We don't know it's temporary. I think what Traab meant was that they think Allison knows its temporary, since Allison learned about Max's powers through a file Patrick sent her, and we haven't gotten to read that file.

[Bilious]

it seems far more likely to me that Allison still has a strong sense of right and wrong. Notice that each time she's shown looking down it's as the doctor states how a world problem has been fixed. Allison hears that, replays how she told herself something similar as she forced Max's actions, and still can't get it to justify what she did to him.

She can enjoy Feral's excitement, that's joy in the upswing of a friend, and very likely the unconscious reason she went ahead with forcing Max. She can't take pleasure in the wider meaning of her actions though, because she knows at root that although the outcome is beneficial, and would certainly be approved according to a hedonic calculus (She might not know about this part of ethics, but she'd have had thoughts along this line), the method she used to gain that outcome was immoral. She doesn't see herself as a villain, and her own actions sit as poorly with her as might be expected. It was out of character, but depending where she goes from here it might become more in character, and I'm interested to see where the story goes to show this.

Allison is no longer considering ethics and whether people are independently motivated towards the good of the whole in a relatively dry class environment, she confronted herself with her own horrific actions, and cannot reconcile whether she thinks they were worth it or not.

[Maryring]

Sheesh. I'd say enough with the character shilling, but I suppose I won't know. At this point I'm just gonna call it quits on the comic. It's clearly not gonna be the thoughtful exploration of social issues I had hoped it'd be.

[Traab]

Doc, seriously, stop pushing, she is saying it cant be done again, and realistically, it probably cant, as boosting their power isnt going to help most of these problem biodynamics, and likely would make them worse. Poor cleaver would likely find himself instantly killed if his power got boosted for example. He would fall apart into many pieces as his cancer blades engulf him completely.

[Vinyadan]

What's up with her eyes, BTW?

[Lethologica]

What's up with her eyes, BTW?

sleep deprivation is a helluva drug

[Vinyadan]

No, I mean their colour. They have gotten much darker.

[Traab]

No, I mean their colour. They have gotten much darker.

Its possible its a style choice to emphasize her illness over her actions. Or its a sign the evil mind controlling syndicate that controls everything in secret has forced her to do this! Its like hawkeye when loki mind controlled him. Werent his eyes a different color or something?

[Vinyadan]

If her eyes turned into swirling spirals each time she is about to do something evil, it would be amazingly funny especially with Clevin around to see the metamorphosis.

[Lethologica]

No, I mean their colour. They have gotten much darker.

They've been getting progressively darker throughout the chapter, matching the increasing number of layers of bags under her eyes. So I attribute them to the same cause.

Doylian-wise, it's also a nod to Alison's increasing moral conflict/greyness, but that's not an in-universe explanation and you seem to be looking for one.

[Vinyadan]

[Psychonaut]