Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE

Alice Grove MCDT - December 2014

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Neko_Ali:
Burning to death. Vivisection. I could think of others, but it would mean being more graphic than I care to be.

Ardent has already established a few strips ago that where he comes from people choose how they look and it's common for people to look very different from each other. So the fact that LEJ and Ardent look completely different shouldn't be at all surprising.

Alice's comments are kind of telling here.. I didn't think so earlier, but I think people's comments about this being an execution were a lot closer to the mark than not. Alice seems very possessive of the town and the people in it. And has no problem using excessive force to maintain her will. Her comments today aren't someone who's out of  control. I've been in that position she's in after losing control, where someone had to pull me off a person before beating them to death. It's not fun, and I was not thinking anything at all until two bigger kids dragged me off the guy. Alice though seems to be very much aware of what she was doing, and given the last comic was enjoying it to much.

Skewbrow:
Hmm. What if the Splodey Lady is Ardent's LITTLE sister? An adult would (should) have known that scaring inhabitants of a primitive planet is not kosher, and if an overseer/protector is present, not safe either. A spoiled/bored teenager on the other hand ... Anyway, it feels like this is her first contact with a primitive society running a scarcity-based economy. May be she missed that class in school?

I'm not saying that Alice was in best behavior in the previous strip. ArdentSis had it coming, but Alice could (should) have put a teenager (if she is a little sister) under control a bit less violently - irrespective of the fact that she was treating the primitives like pet rats. Yes, Alice was taking those explosions personally. Not an unnatural reaction at that display of racism, but cool it now, please.

ysth:
Big Sis looks like an adult to me.

I don't see any signs that Alice has any familiarity with the Vicissitudes' culture.  There may be some kind of Guardian thing going on here, but I bet not the way people here are thinking of it.  Let's see what Jeph shows us.

ReindeerFlotilla:
I don't see any evidence that Alice is unaware of the outside culture(s).

"Assuming you're telling the truth--that you came here FROM SPACE as a TOURIST--which isn't supposed to be POSSIBLE--"

If one were to travel back in time, and have some random farmer from 1790 tell one this, I think one's initial reaction would be smug. You'd know that your little trip was possible, and having the primitive tell you it wasn't would underscore their ignorance.

But what if you knew it wasn't supposed to be possible? Because of timey whimey, wibbly-wobbly...stuff. Something you were sure no primitive could be aware of? Then your reaction might be less smug and more, "How do you know that?"

It's possible to read Ardent's question as a challenge: How do you know that your assumption is correct. But I think, putting it together with "I made it!" that Ardent is fully aware of some wibbly wobbly stuff that should have prevented him from getting in. He's wondering how this freaking kill-joy called Alice could possibly know.

I wouldn't be surprised is his "making it" has seriously disrupted that stuff, allowing "big" sis in (I'm not assuming sis is older that Ardent. I'm assuming she's more violent).

Alice is aware of the technology of the outside culture(s), and she's not afraid of it. I guess that could go either way--she could be too ignorant to know that she should be afraid of weaponized nanotechnology--but her confidence, and accuracy of prediction suggests she has a lot of experience with it.

Alice doesn't have to be from Outside to know what she knows, but I think it's a fair bet that she has been in contact with the outside enough to have a working idea of what it is like and what she is dealing with.

BenRG:
@ReindeerFlotilla,

Maybe it isn't the 'from space' thing that was so impossible. It was the 'come here as a tourist" thing that was so impossible. Maybe this little family's particular subgroup of post-humans have worked out long-range teleportation to get around the preserve's defences that were meant to keep them 100% isolated and interdicted. Additionally, in Alice's (admittedly cynical) world-view, of all the things for which to use this technology, coming to rubber-neck at the primitives isn't one that immediately occurs to her.

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