Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE
Alice Grove MCDT - December 2014
ysth:
Is it a character flaw if it is not their business?
From the stated injuries, I get the impression the fireballs were more show than force. If they'd really been dangerous, I'd expect at least some actual burns. On the flip side, LEJ certainly didn't expect Alice to still be standing there, so you'd have to say she was only surprised that Alice didn't run away, which doesn't seem completely plausible.
ReindeerFlotilla:
--- Quote from: ysth on 30 Dec 2014, 13:43 ---Is it a character flaw if it is not their business?
--- End quote ---
I guess that depends on whether you believe in the divine right of kings or self-determination.
Less politically speaking--their business or not, the way Alice says it is kinda rude.
BenRG:
Yes, Alice can be rude, abrupt and apparently has a vicious streak a mile wide that can sneak out under stress. This makes her an interesting character. It all feeds into my idea that she's a violent ex-con whose parole involves protecting this little Bubble World.
--- Quote from: ysth on 30 Dec 2014, 13:43 ---Is it a character flaw if it is not their business?
--- End quote ---
Is it a character flaw if the whole situation has left Alice spooked and upset (allowing her supposedly long-buried former murderous self out to play)? I'd snap too if I'd lost my cool and only a random intervention stopped me from doing something horrible and something for which even I couldn't forgive myself.
ReindeerFlotilla:
I never said Alice shouldn't have flaws.
Like I said, we don't know anything about Alice's character yet. We don't know the shape of the why behind what she does. Since a lot of webcomic dialogue is aimed at the punchline, you can't take any one statement as representative of the character.
Don't get me wrong. It's fun to think about what the odd bit of information might mean. Definitely nothing wrong there.
The first "none of [their] business" was a punch line. This time it's--at least--thematic. It definitely means something. ysth could be totally right. The answer to Doc's question could be Alice Grove's Secret of Salem. A fact so disturbing that knowing it drives most people mad. And there's no real way to know who can handle it and who can't. In that case, it really would be none of their business.
That would be kind of interesting, or maybe super interesting. A mystery is cool. It is hard to say with Alice Grove because we already have more questions than answers (we always have more questions than answers, but sometimes we know enough about a story that we don't think the unanswered questions are pressing, so we welcome a new mystery). It seems fairly common for people to be drawn in by the sense that the new questions are guiding them toward the answers to the first questions.
In Alice Grove, the first question is "who (what) is Alice?" (Okay, the FIRST questions are "who is this guy, and why is he running?" but we know the answers to that.) A character flaw is a pointer toward the answer to that first question. Hindsight may show that "keeps people in the dark/kinda rude" are not the first flaws we saw in Alice. It's hard to tell what aspects of her personality we've seen, because Ardent is annoying from a certain point of view. (I notice that some people did take issue with Alice's reaction to Ardent, but most did not seem to. So, whether he annoyed you or not--he did not annoy me, you can see how he annoyed Alice from something like her perspective.)
It's possible that her behavior to this point has been indicative of who she is, thus making "kinda rude" nothing new (She has been kinda rude to Ardent, but she also seemed to think he was a con man). It's also possible that Kinda rude is not a flaw of this character, but some other flaw brings a little rude out in times like this. Or, it really could be better for all involved if they don't know what Alice knows: That they live in a world that has walls, and they need women with super powers to guard those walls. Who's going to do that? You?
You, Lt. Weinburg? She has a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what she knows. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And her existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want her on that wall, you need her on that wall...
Err... Excuse me. I was someone else for a moment there.
MrNumbers:
"Forgive me, but only one of us here has taken the Hippocratic Oath."
"Yes, which means only one of us is equipped to deal with what must come next."
"I'm glad you agree."
"I meant me, Doctor."
"... oh, dear."
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