Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE

Alice Grove MCDT - December 2014

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Kugai:
It is 'The Village' a few centuries on.

ReindeerFlotilla:

--- Quote from: BenRG on 23 Dec 2014, 14:33 ---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.

--- End quote ---

I'm not really trying to conjecture on what is or isn't supposed to be possible, or even on what Alice thinks is possible or not. The emphasis is in the original. That's how Alice said it.

What I am saying is that Alice is aware that something should have prevented Ardent getting in, and and so is Ardent. The point being that it shows Alice is familiar with the Outside. A case in point being her reluctance to think of Ardent as "Alien." She knows he's human (for whatever values of human apply in this universe). She's unsurprised that a human might be short, blue, pointy, with a tail. She has reason to believe that a human would not be from space (either people didn't live in space the last time she checked, or something prevents humans from transitioning between surface and orbit).

But mostly, she is supremely confident that she can deal with whatever might come in from outside. That suggests either a lot of experience with the Outside, or a thorough knowledge of what the Outside is capable of.

I recall some discussion of Alice's somewhat harsh response to Ardent being... repressive. But let's consider the facts as we know them now. Whatever she is, Alice is enormously powerful. She's also direct. She solves threats with her fists. There's a bit of the Doctor in her. Big sis attacked her town, but Alice was going to let that slide. Just like the 2005+ Doctor, what was done before Alice arrived is past. Not ignored, but she offered one chance.

One.

After that, she was was going to beat the girl to death, or at least to grievous injury (Blackened eyes, a broken nose, lacerations in the mouth--or internal bleeding in the GI or air way--between her first evil smile and Ardent's intervention, Alice knocked a tooth out of LEJ's mouth...or into it).

I don't know that the speculation about Alice's history is relevant, but the implications from it--that she has reason for not beating everything around her to a fine paste--applies to her "repressive" attitude. For whatever reason (she doesn't usually enjoy violence? Ardent hadn't risen to the level of threat required?) she had not flattened him. But her reactions to him are colored by the fact that what she is doing to his sister was how she would handle him if he crossed the line.

As of now, I suspect that this is not a side of herself she likes. Mostly because of the look she gave Jack when he asked if she would handle it in the event that Ardent became trouble. In retrospect, that look suggests a bit of "Yes, I will use the worst parts of me to protect your taking-it-for-granted ass." Basically, her whole attitude towards that situation reads a lot less like being a jerk and a lot more like "Don't make me angry, Mr. McGee. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

Probably too much speculation there. The main point: Alice's actions, from the moment she appeared and immediately fell off a windmill, strongly suggest she is highly familiar with the Outside.

ysth:
Certainly she is familiar with the outside.  But I don't get the impression that she knows anything about wherever Ardent's from.

ReindeerFlotilla:
In fiction terms, one might expect her to. Realistically speaking, what do you know about Ruzayevka? Probably as much as I do, which is nothing. I pointed at a map and picked the closet thing. But what do you know about Russia?  I pointed at a map of Russia to make the point.

Alice may not know anything about the subculture Ardent comes from, but I'm betting she is familiar with the large culture it fits in. I suspect the villagers are as well, at a remove. There's a reason Jack expects her to protect them from things they don't understand. Maybe it's just that she said she would, but I suspect it's because they've seen her do this kind of thing before.

Maybe not so closely. Maybe with less explosion.

"You're with me. That means you're none of their business." Either Alice rules with an iron fist, not exactly ruled out by the scenes we've seen, or she has a habit of dealing with stuff, and the people know it's safer to let her handle it. It seems likely, if it's the latter, that stuff has include things from Outside.

Jack boy, you're a fast runner. Go get the witch." It's all folklore and nothing has ever happened around the village--Or enough people have encountered oddities from outside that it is generally known to each village that the first thing you do is call Alice, whether you've seen something or not.

"Did you do any research on our culture before you came?" Alice seems to expect outsiders to have information on what it's like in the village.  I would certainly expect the same to be true of most places in Russia, regarding where I live. I wouldn't assume most Russians have done any research, but I would expect the information to be available.

I don't know that Alice does know a lot about Ardent's home or not. That she only guessed "nanotech" suggests she's not playing with an information advantage (And also that there are other ways to achieve sinister upright flight and explosions). But she's familiar with places that use nanotech in that manner and do body modification, in the same way that I am familiar with Russia but ignorant of Ruzayevka.

Alice is the (self?) appointed manager of her "Grove," and it seems like "beating things that threaten it into bloody pulp" is part of the job description. I'm guessing that falls under the label "Guardian."

Method of Madness:

--- Quote from: Kugai on 23 Dec 2014, 14:56 ---It is 'The Village' a few centuries on.

--- End quote ---
Ugh, I fucking hope not.

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