Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE
Alice Grove MCDLT - THE END...?
mikmaxs:
I think it's time to start asking the hard questions.
Like...
Why was there a wind turbine at the beginning? I don't think I've seen a single electrical implement this entire comic.
TheEvilDog:
--- Quote from: mikmaxs on 11 Jul 2017, 06:31 ---I think it's time to start asking the hard questions.
Like...
Why was there a wind turbine at the beginning? I don't think I've seen a single electrical implement this entire comic.
--- End quote ---
Probably grinding grain. Technology that lead to the Blink might not be in use anymore, but the fundamentals would still be there, a windmill grinding grain would probably still be a necessity.
Neko_Ali:
--- Quote from: retrosteve on 10 Jul 2017, 17:46 ---To quote Faye: What the ASS?
This last cartoon is seriously risking losing the plot for me. Not because of the outlandish physics, or the difficult exposition.
No, because it's all wrong. This is the ENDING. In the ending, you resolve the questions and plot complications based on the physics and rules you ALREADY set up. You don't start setting up NEW physics and rules.
Not only is it wrong from the writer/reader contract point of view, it's wrong from the 'let's just explain what we just saw' point of view. We just saw Sedna rip her own arm off and bleed out while shivving Church. And we just heard was that at least one of the participants' realities was actually a simulation, and maybe the current one too. The explanation we needed was "How did Sedna just go faster than Church and become stronger than his armor?". An explanation based on the last two things would make sense. What we got was just the opposite of that. Plus Alice using a vague "we" about the ability to violate entropy at will is just...bleah.
FIrst, nothing any of the supersoldiers has done required entropy violation (up to, perhaps, Alice's self-cleaning blood removal). So saying they can do that doesn't really answer much. But it does open up a wildcard that Alice (and whoever else is a "Maxwell's Demon") has weakly godlike abilities and always has. Meaning anything can happen and can have happened if they did it. A plot hole big enough to drive a Praeses through.
Second, it's all totally irrelevant. It doesn't really answer the relationship between Church and Sedna and Alice, or the sudden ability for Sedna to be faster, or the reason the Praeses isn't really nervous about the supersoldiers, or how Ardent and Gavia escaped from a simulation, or the Blink, or the Nightwalker, or anything. It just makes things more complicated and handwavey.
Man I could rant all night about this. However things tie up now, the whole story is suspect!
--- End quote ---
Actually, to the contrary, this revelation does explain all of their abilities to me. Up until now I haven't done a whole lot of examination of the 'why and how' of their abilities, only the observable effects. We were missing key facts as to their nature, so any speculation would inherently be faulty, and any conclusions reached would be suspect, if not wholly inaccurate.
Now however, we have the final piece we need to explain how they do what they do. And we can get some sort of handle on their strengths and weaknesses. Alice can jump high, even propel herself in space via local manipulation of gravity. She can survive falls, bullets and other attacks by altering her own density. Church can move himself at incredible speeds by warping physics. Their abilities only seem to affect themselves though. They couldn't reduce Pate to a puddle with a glance or teleport the kids back to space.
In a way, they are a bit like Green Lanterns. They have incredible, possibly unlimited power. But their power is limited by their imagination and their will. Church is the strongest outright of the three. Faster, physically stronger, more durable... Yet he was taken out by Sedna, the weakest of the three. Because she thought tactically, unlike Alice who was just using brute force. Sedna knew she wouldn't be able to take Church on head on, instead she bided her time, saved her energy and threw it all into one strike. She was able to speed herself up even faster than Church, pulling off her own arm to forge a weapon and putting everything into it to take him out, then collapse afterwards.
Rather than offering up more questions, for me this explains a lot of the things they did earlier on that I filed away into the 'awaiting explanation' box. Much the same as the revelation that the spaceborn colonies were not colonies the way we thought, and the colonists don't have physical bodies typically. They are all part of the Praeses... Possibly this was originally supposed to be an intersystem colonizing attempt? But it explains why Alice was so sure none of the Spaceborne could just telport down to Earth without the praesis knowing. They don't have bodies unless the praeses create them. Gavia expected the Praeses to just hear them because they've always been an omnipresent fact of their lives, because they live within them.
Really, Jeph is closing up the explanations of all the hows... what's left now are the whos, the whys and the what comes next. How did Ardent and Gavia get sent to Earth? Who did it, and who gave Ardent his upgrade powers? What is the reason any and all of this happened, who is running this and for what reason? And what will happen now that the truth is out? What will be the final fate of the others up here... Will the survivors have a way to make it back to Earth? Will the kids have to go with them since they're now contaminated and the Praeses won't take them back? What's the status of Church and Sedna? Alive? Dead? In a coma and regenerating? How thinly will Pate be spread over the walls when Alice is done with him? Important questions yet to be answered.
Neko_Ali:
--- Quote from: TheEvilDog on 11 Jul 2017, 06:45 ---
--- Quote from: mikmaxs on 11 Jul 2017, 06:31 ---I think it's time to start asking the hard questions.
Like...
Why was there a wind turbine at the beginning? I don't think I've seen a single electrical implement this entire comic.
--- End quote ---
Probably grinding grain. Technology that lead to the Blink might not be in use anymore, but the fundamentals would still be there, a windmill grinding grain would probably still be a necessity.
--- End quote ---
The water pump was powered before Ardent upgraded it. That was clearly an electric power windmills. A mechanical windmill is different. It's possible that they still use some sort of powered grinding wheel, but that's nothing like a Dutch windmill.
JimC:
--- Quote from: Neko_Ali on 11 Jul 2017, 06:55 ---The water pump was powered before Ardent upgraded it. That was clearly an electric power windmills.
--- End quote ---
'xactly so. A more interesting question is where the wind turbine came from, since its clearly of a size and scale requiring much higher strength materials than wood or steel. but I was assuming Alice (and Sedna for weapons repair) have some access to industrial capabilities way beyond that available to the baseline humans.
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