Endtown by Aaron Neathery for October 10, 2011

This is what I’d envisioned. Flask is very outcome focused.

On a more pleasant note, Aaron has put more character sketches up at the Underground. Go and show your appreciation to them. Tell Jenner there that you like him, too. He’ll like that.

There is merit to each It’s subjective And the sides on this killing are stark But it’s Flask who would teach, Introspective And she’s seeming a little less dark We were not too surprised Holly went wild And accused Flask in heart-rending scream But has she realized That the sand-child Won’t get “better”? A “cure” seems a dream Does that mean it should die? Undecided… Just how good was that link to its mind? What if “had a good cry” Had provided Flask with ammo to kill it? Unkind! We knew Sandy, upset When the “teddy” Had been taken, and wanted it back, Might be only that— Was Flask too ready For the killing? I’ll cut her some slack =|====/ Level Head Vote for Endtown 2.0 And for Doc Rat, too The Endtown Forum

Flask is carrying some dreadful loss from the past. I can see that much.

Remember how Flask reacted when Pete called her blackie….she was the one that made the doctor put Pete’s brain in the robot…I agree that Holly is being a Hypocrite… but the role of the Doctor is to re leave suffering not to prolong it or just treat it’s symptoms as the drug companies have made them do…. you all know that doctor’s push drugs because they are forced to by……Ok I degrees…..

This is a conversation I wish I didn’t have to keep having, because there’s no resolution and each side will be unconvinced. Until they have to face the situation in real life and have their own personal circumstances, which are NEVER the same for everyone.

In my experience, Holly is right. I’ve been in dire circumstances where there seemed to be no hope, and things do somehow get better. If I or my family were to have taken Flask’s route, people we love would not have survived.

My brother was on his death’s bed and we were making funeral and donation arrangements. He was considered brain-dead. Then he got better. You’d think he wasn’t ill at all now. I think he heard us tell him how much we loved him while he was"unconscious", and he willed himself better. If we had given up on him, he might have given up on us.

My grandmother was in the hospital dying with her organs failing and I went to visit her. She had had hopes for me but I had disappointed her before when I had to withdraw from college due to some bad decisions. No one had told her how my life had gotten better, and I told her. She gave me a look of anger and determination when she learned how people were keeping things from her, and SHE got better, to spite them.

I’ve been in terrible financial situations and got out of them. I’ve been in terrible medical and physical situations, where I nearly died, and got out of them. Things get better, when you can’t imagine how they could, in ways you can’t imagine.

I can’t stop others from deciding to end a person’s suffering, or their own, through terminal means. That’s their decision and free will. But I can tell them how it doesn’t have to be that way and hope they’ll be convinced otherwise.

I also know that by ending someone else’s suffering without their consent, you’re taking that decision away from them. I’m not sure that the monster child gave consent. Some people may be glad someone else makes the hard decisions for them, but I would be very upset, and I have a note in my wallet stating that under no circumstance do I want to be left to die. Things get better, but I’m lazy and I don’t want to have to do everything by myself.

This may be a comic about not-real situations, the emotions in them, as we see from the discussions above, are all too real – which is why it resonates in us. This is why we love this comic, it makes us feel. :)

I agree with flask she stopped the suffering, maybe a cure was coming maybe not that does not seem to be something anyone is looking for anymore.

…"We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won’t allow them to write “f@ck” on their airplanes because it’s obscene!"….

Well said Flask. Bleeding hearts who just prolong the suffering of people and also make money off it, ie. look at the situation in east Africa, could take a lesson.

I have to wonder…when the vine-child was wrapping itself around Flask’s arm – was it asking for release from its life? Maybe that is why Flask did what she did? Just wondering…

“What the Hell, Hero?” can work both ways, clearly.

Another wiffed conclusion from geedub

Sadly, Flask has a point….Does anyone watch Animal Planet? There’s this show I like to watch, called “Animal Cops”. They show how officers and veterinarians do everything they can to rescue animals from bad situations, some worse than others..Not every animal they try to help ends up with a new home. There have been many cases where a tough decision must be made whether or not to “humanely euthanize” the animal in question, because the animal’s condition is too severe..Perhaps that’s how Flask felt when she made her decision. I have never seen a vet smile after euthanizing an animal.

Flask could have fried Petey’s brain… but she didn’t. She got Mallard to save him… then went out and had a good, good puke…..

Yet another intriguing direction taken…

Wow, that’s a nasty case of hubris. There’s still something very off here though. Why would the child be so crazy to get the teddy bear back if she expected Flask to disintegrate her? None of this seems to completely fit the simple explanations.

STOP!

Go back and look at Flask’s expressions before and during her shooting the child. She obviously was not happy with having to take that action. Lots of grief and pain there.

Okay, now come forward to today. She has put on a mask. She’s the hard-nosed commander that has to force her unwilling troops to do a job that has little chance of success.

She isn’t the type of person to try and explain to Holly or anyone else why she did what she did, and she’s certainly not going to tell anyone about any communication she had with the mutant she killed.

But everyone reading this strip knew that she was feeling anguish over the action.

Holly isn’t a bleeding heart – she’s hoping for a cure – something that would have allowed the child to be something other than a mutated mess. She’s the sort of person who will keep a dying relative for ever just because a cure might come along, even over the dying person’s own wishes. Doesn’t make her right or wrong, just means she has a emotional attachment that’s too strong to sever.

AND THAT MAKES HER HUMAN

Holly sees some of Flask’s words as true. Wally will have to go from holding her back from attacking Flask, to comforting her. Because, whether it was right or wrong…Holly will mourn.

Great drawing today, Aaron! The change in Holly’s face from panels1 to 3 was awesome.

KUTGW,

Noreen

This reminds me of a scene in the fifth Star Trek movie that I heard about. In it, there was a man that brought back memories, and experienced them with the person who owned the memories. “Let me feel your pain” is what I think he said. One person was suffering from something similar that’s being talked about here. Holly is hoping for a cure, and this person(guy number 2, the one suffering from the memory)‘s dad suffered from an extremely awful sickness, and was very close to death. The dad even wished to die at one point, but was kept on life-support. Eventually, the dad was taken off of life-support and died, but a cure for the disease was found two weeks later. And so the son of this dad suffered from the guilt of the situation, as if he was somehow held responsible for what happened. Was it really the son’s fault? He had no idea that the cure was coming, and his dad was suffering, so he let his dad go.Holly probably suffers in a similar way. She thinks that something might still have been done to relieve the suffering, while Flask sees no hope, and let’s the suffering go by force, unfortunately. The difference between optimism and pessimism, and its effects on compassion.And I’m rambling, not really sure of what stance I’m taking. I could not kill the child. I could not stand it’s suffering if I knew the depths of its suffering. In light of this, I still could not kill the child, even if it asked me to do so. But I am not Flask, and have not lived her life. How can I judge her actions, then? I have no idea what she has been through.It’s a good thing that I’m never going to be a vet.

This is really no different than the situation with Wally, Allie, Leo and the Mutt. No one said much when Leo fried the Mutt, and at the time it wasn’t suffering at all. In fact, it was happy. The problem was, it was also working for the “wrong” side, and would have turned on the Endtowners the second it was told to. The only thing that’s changed here is that we’ve been told that “Sandy” is a child and that it doesn’t like being a mutant. We have no idea who the Mutt was prior to the brainwipe, but we could see that it wasn’t suffering. Why was it ok to shoot the happy Mutt, and not ok for unhappy Sandy? If Lou or Allie were here, they’d have pulled the trigger on Sandy too. And they would have looked just as tortured doing it as Flask did.

After going back and re-reading the previous strip, Holly also is living in a fantasy world..Instead of seeing a mutated monster in agony, she is seeing a little human child..But it isn’t a little human child any more, and might not even have many co-herant thoughtss beyond “that’s mine!” (about the teddy bear), “I hurt”, and “feed”.

Yes, Flask, those of us with a conscience will call you a monster. We’ve seen you vaporize your underlings even as they begged for mercy, for a minor infraction of your paranoid internal security. Now we saw you murder a child for the sake of personal expediency…. and that’s all “mercy killing” ever is.

Didn’t a Cylon express a similar view?