Alice Grove MCDT - May 2015

[BenRG]

Well yeah, but my question is this. Is being lawful evil somehow "better" than being chaotic evil?

Not better, not worse but rather different methodologies and world-views. A Lawful will create and follow elaborate structures to achieve their ends. A Chaotic will just whoop it up and smash everything that gets in his or her way.

Also wait, how is Batman not good?

It depends on your preferred version of Batman. My version of him in my head is someone who wants to prevent evil from ever winning and is quite able to use ethically dubious means to do so. He'd never hurt the innocent but he'd use means that would not meet the approval of a paladin to achieve the outcomes he wants.

"Win if you can, lose if you must; always cheat."

Or...

"Seven billion lives hanging in the balance? I'd lie, cheat, steal and use every underhand and unethical means necessary. The losers can fight over the 'good conduct' medal."

[mikmaxs]

Would you argue that beyond being an unsympathetic character she's a badly portrayed one?

It really depends on what Jeph is trying to portray. My issue is that I don't know what he's trying to do, nine months in. If he was clearly trying to create an ambiguous character it'd be one thing, but the intent isn't very clear. If I'm supposed to like her I can't because she's a jerk, if I'm supposed to empathize with her I can't because we don't know anything about her, if I'm supposed to dislike her then she should have started some kind of character growth by now, and if I'm supposed to be intrigued by her then we should be getting information more clearly or quickly 'cause at the current pace I really don't care.

I can't say she's *badly* characterized because she's barely been characterized at all.

[Method of Madness]

It depends on your preferred version of Batman. My version of him in my head is someone who wants to prevent evil from ever winning and is quite able to use ethically dubious means to do so. He'd never hurt the innocent but he'd use means that would not meet the approval of a paladin to achieve the outcomes he wants.

"Win if you can, lose if you must; always cheat."

Or...

"Seven billion lives hanging in the balance? I'd lie, cheat, steal and use every underhand and unethical means necessary. The losers can fight over the 'good conduct' medal."

Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding it, but that description sounds far more chaotic good than lawful neutral.

[osaka]

I was about to say that Method. Although I believe that the first one is definitely Chaotic Neutral (if taken at face value) while the second one is Chaotic Good.

[Storel]

Yeah, I wouldn't say Batman is always lawful in the strictest sense. He breaks a lot of society's laws in his pursuit of criminals: he taps phones and hacks computers without a court order, he breaks into buildings without a search warrant to find evidence, and so on. You have to wonder how a lot of the criminals he arrests ever get convicted.

But he never plants false evidence, or lies on the stand to falsely convict anyone. Basically, he only breaks the laws that get in the way of bringing criminals to justice, and all the people he goes after are ones who've broken what he considers the important laws -- the laws against hurting innocent people. So you can argue that he obeys a different set of laws, but he's still lawful under those laws. I certainly wouldn't call him chaotic -- everything he does is pretty highly structured.

And since everything he does is for the purpose of fighting evil, I suppose you could even argue that he's Lawful Good, but not in the sense of the typical paladin who won't break any laws. That may be a limitation of the people who play those paladins, or the DMs who enforce their interpretation of Lawful Good behavior, however. Then again, you could also argue that a man who decides which laws he'll follow and which laws he won't is more Neutral than Lawful. I could see Batman as Neutral Good.

I dunno. I haven't played D&D in so long, I have no real idea how the categories are "supposed" to work these days...

[FunkyTuba]

My issue is that I don't know what he's trying to do, nine months in. If he was clearly trying to create an ambiguous character it'd be one thing, but the intent isn't very clear. If I'm supposed to like her I can't because she's a jerk, if I'm supposed to empathize with her I can't because we don't know anything about her, if I'm supposed to dislike her then she should have started some kind of character growth by now, and if I'm supposed to be intrigued by her then we should be getting information more clearly or quickly 'cause at the current pace I really don't care.

I can't say she's *badly* characterized because she's barely been characterized at all.

9 months IRL (not that long really)
66 comics (not that many)
a few months in-comic (a fleeting instance to Alice, now that we know her longevity and timescale)
give Jeph a chance to tell the story his way (or wait until he's done and you can buy the book and read it all at once)

[mikmaxs]

9 months IRL (not that long really)
66 comics (not that many)
a few months in-comic (a fleeting instance to Alice, now that we know her longevity and timescale)
give Jeph a chance to tell the story his way (or wait until he's done and you can buy the book and read it all at once)

You write a story with your limitations in mind. If you're only going to give two comics a week, that's fine, but you have to make sure you're economizing heavily to pull that off. Nine months may not be a vast amount of time and 66 comics isn't an immense book's worth of pages, but it's still a huge amount of time and a plentiful number of comics for basic things like setting up characters and conflict.

I've mentioned this before, too, but the story doesn't really read well as a comic book either. (Next to contemporaries of the genre.) If you read it like that, the setup-setup-punchline format present undercuts any type of flowing storytelling and the implied space between almost every comic doesn't work as well if things are arranged back-to-back. Arguing that it's supposed to be read all at once doesn't help.

[Method of Madness]

Who cares how it's "supposed" to be read? Read it however you want.

[pwhodges]

And if it doesn't work for you, don't read it at all.

[FunkyTuba]

You write a story with your limitations in mind.[...]

I don't mean to put words in his mouth, but it appears that Jeph is not interested in constraining himself to whatever limitations you seem to have in mind for him.

At the same time, such investment in the storyline and being impatient to see what's in store is itself a pretty high compliment.

[mikmaxs]

 

You write a story with your limitations in mind.[...]

I don't mean to put words in his mouth, but it appears that Jeph is not interested in constraining himself to whatever limitations you seem to have in mind for him.

At the same time, such investment in the storyline and being impatient to see what's in store is itself a pretty high compliment.

The limitations I'm referring to are his choice of format as a webcomic with a bi-weekly update schedule. I'm not making up any limitations, I'm just pointing out the obvious ones that already exists: Jeph chose to constrain himself to these limitations when he started writing Alice Grove. You could argue that he's just dealing with the limitations in a different way than I'd prefer, but from my perspective he's simply not dealing with a lot of the problems at all. (Namely, the way that the update schedule and limited scope harms the pacing.)

And yeah, I still think Jeph's work is very good. If nothing else, the art is pretty nice and as long as I'm checking up on QC, the Alice Grove button is right there for the clicking. I do think it's worth reading, or else I wouldn't bother talking about the issues. I'd just stop reading.

[Schmee]

New comic! And the Praeses are... trees? Which store the memories of the Spaceborne in their... sap?
I'm not sure how much of that was a metaphor.
Edit: Damn, wrong thread.

[Kugai]

Meh


It happens