Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE

Alice Grove MCDLT - April 2017

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Sorflakne:
Well that was an interesting development...was Church unknowingly hardwired to be a Praeses guardian?

Samik:
If Pate is the King and Church is the Queen, now Alice, Sedna, and Gavia are the Rook, Bishop, and Knight.

(click to show/hide)Gavia is easily worth more than a pawn in this case due to her range and the squishiness of the King.

BenRG:

--- Quote from: pwhodges on 03 Apr 2017, 13:22 ---I'm afraid I'm starting to get the impression that Jeph is getting fed up with having to fit in writing Alice Grove alongside QC, and so is hurrying to reach an end.  This would help explain the lack of clarity in showing the details of what's happening in the last few strips.
--- End quote ---

Jeph is trying to give the immediacy of an action movie set-piece in sequential art format. I don't think he's doing too badly. Nothing has happened without explanation that cannot be explained at a later date if necessary. What matters right now is that the whole main cast are EV and that Alice has taken the opportunity to take down Church, if she can.

FWIW, I'm thinking that the Praeses will teleport them all onto the Habitat after Alice and Church have been struggling for a few minutes. For now, at least, I think that they're observing and fine-tuning their plans.


--- Quote from: Samik on 03 Apr 2017, 23:02 ---For whatever reason, Church's prime directive is to protect Pate.
--- End quote ---

Actually, I think that's misreading Church. For whatever reason, he's chosen to work with Pate.

However, I do think what they do is going to ultimately be moot. This is the Praeses turf and, quite frankly, they have the numbers and firepower to decide who lives and dies at this point. If they have indeed manipulated events to get Pate up here, then no-one is killing them without their permission.

A small perverse otter:
I don't know whether I think that Alice even needs to be Church-class at this point. The Praeses *are*, and so all Alice has to do is get them involved, and then she can move on to her next task, whatever that might be.

Samik:

--- Quote from: BenRG on 04 Apr 2017, 02:41 ---
--- Quote from: Samik on 03 Apr 2017, 23:02 ---For whatever reason, Church's prime directive is to protect Pate.
--- End quote ---

Actually, I think that's misreading Church. For whatever reason, he's chosen to work with Pate.
--- End quote ---
Well, I don't agree, but I don't think it really matters. I wasn't intending to be that specific. Whether he's been programmed/coerced, or is acting by conscious choice because he needs Pate for something, the result is the same: protecting Pate is priority #1, and nothing else presently comes close. I think that his actions immediately after Gavia's attack strongly support this.

We know that Church is a lot faster than Alice and Sedna. I'm not going to assume that Gavia's attack "surprised" him to such an extent that he's slower to assess and react than Alice - everything we've seen has indicated that he's the far superior specimen, so I think we have to give him the benefit of the doubt that he's reacting as he means to. My read would be that he adopted his defensive posture around Pate because he made the same assessment brasca and I made, and saw it as his only option for defending Pate against three attack vectors simultaneously. (No matter how fast he is, he can't be in three places at once.)

If he was able to value Pate's survival as anything less than 100% priority, then I think the ideal course would have been to neutralize Gavia and her ranged attack before the others could react, then take his chances in a 2-on-1. But, that would require abandoning Pate for a small window. Basically, his priority flow-chart forced him to sit tight while outnumbered and outgunned, instead of taking initiative and trying to improve the odds. I think that's pretty revealing.


- Now, this read depends on them having the ability to move in vacuum. If Alice just pushed off a large piece of debris to get to Church, or something, then you can't really read anything into his actions/inactions immediately after the breach.

- Also, Church has to be thinking ahead, about how exactly he's going to get Pate back into a pressurized environment. Depending how how he assesses the likelihood of intervention by the Praeses or a third party, eliminating any or all of Gavia/Ardent/Alice/Sedna actually might not seem so ideal.

We've been primed to see the "good guys" as the underdogs, because of how powerful Church has been established to be. But, man is he in a tough situation here, in terms of his own personal objectives.

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