Alice Grove MCDT - April 2015

[Kugai]

New Month, new Thread.

[Method of Madness]

Hooray butts. Where's the poll?

[Thrudd]

Same place Boo hides out.

[Kugai]

I couldn't think of one

If any other Mod thinks of one, please feel free to add it on.


Or if someone has a brainwave, PM me and I'll consider it.

[jwhouk]

Go ask Alice.

(Yes, this was a test.)

[Zebediah]

Ardent? Gavia?

Jack? Margaret Wheelwright? Not them, I guess.

The Night Walker? Nope.

[pwhodges]

Although I could plead laziness or lack of time, it's actually that the other names had characters missing in that font and so I stuck with what worked.  Even the ones I did needed extra work compared with what I did to the QC names.

[BenRG]

Spoiler for the very last Alice Grove strip!
Then the Night Walker ate Gavia and they all lived happily ever after! The end!

[osaka]

Ardent'd go like "Thanks Night Walker. I was growing REALLY TIRED of my sister. That's why I tried to come here in the first place!

And butts, but that's beyond the point"

[Schwungrad]

Do the weird dogs from the cave bark at the (_!_)?

[cesium133]

New comic...

...I wonder how Alice became aware of this?   

[Gladstone]

Well, how do you think she found out the plants eat deer?

[explicit]

I work in the woods. There are deer here. I hope I don't get mounted.

[Gladstone]

How's your throwing arm?

No, wait.  Alice probably just punched 'em.

How's your punching arm?

[explicit]

I could maybe injure a small child. Or, seeing as I'll be working with children I could probably just outrun them.

[cesium133]

I work in the woods. There are deer here. I hope I don't get mounted.

Hopefully they at least perform a filesystem check first.

[hedgie]

Meh, if you have to run fsck, you're already fscked.

[mustang6172]

I'm starting to think Alice is of a world different from our own.

[Energia]

Wouldn't IR eyeballs need a big glassy domes supercooled with liquid helium (like snakes have

[Kugai]

Isn't Bioengineered Mother Nature grand? 


Well, that takes care of Ɠąѵìą wandering off

Not so sure about Ⱥɾժҽղէ

[BenRG]

Well, that explains the deer! This place is sounding more and more like 'GMO Park' - a dumping ground for various bits of technology and its products that no-one wants or needs anymore.

I'm with Gavia, by the way: No going into the woods during the Rut!

[KOK]

Wouldn't IR eyeballs need a big glassy domes supercooled with liquid helium (like snakes have

Liquid nitrogen should be enough.

Pit vipers have eyes too.

They can sense the heat from anything hotter than themselves. For snakes, this means anything hotter than the environment. For these deer, who knows? This sense will be no help in avoiding running into a tree. Unless the pits are kept colder than the trees.

[Zebediah]

Yeah, there's a reason that warm-blooded creatures don't see into the infrared. They'd be blinded from the heat of their own eyeballs. Or, given the lack of eyeballs in this case, the heat from the rest of the head.

Possible solution: An insulating layer behind the retina (or whatever else you'd like to call the heat-sensitive organ) that blocks the heat from the rest of the head.

Other possible solution: Don't overthink a webcomic.

[osaka]

Meh, if you have to run fsck, you're already fscked.

And this is now my signature, thanks. If you don't mind that is.

[hedgie]

Go ahead.  I think I lifted it from something similar said on Usenet ages ago, but I have found it to be quite true.

[T]

Yeah, there's a reason that warm-blooded creatures don't see into the infrared. They'd be blinded from the heat of their own eyeballs. Or, given the lack of eyeballs in this case, the heat from the rest of the head.

Possible solution: An insulating layer behind the retina (or whatever else you'd like to call the heat-sensitive organ) that blocks the heat from the rest of the head.

Other possible solution: Don't overthink a webcomic.

Thinking about it I found a single solution: they are cooled by air. The heat sensing membrane is very thin and the back is covered in mucus that receives direct flow of air from inhaled getting colder than the surround temperature while moisturizing the air.

[Kugai]

07:28 hours on Friday 2nd of April and I thought of a Poll


Lucky me

[ysth]

? Characidae are fish.

[Zebediah]

The Characidae family includes piranhas. They are piranha plants.

Who knows, with genetic engineering they might even have a bit of piranha in their ancestry.

[T]

The Characidae family includes piranhas. They are piranha plants.

Who knows, with genetic engineering they might even have a bit of piranha in their ancestry.

Characidae family also include these cute little guys http://youtu.be/V95qslKg3wU

But you can use the name characidae on a creature that have no relation to fish if you use in the species name for example. You can even name a species batmani even if it isn't a bat, an ape or a bat-ape http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otocinclus_batmani

[jwhouk]

Comic...

x 100.

[Zebediah]

No wonder Alice is always grumpy. Thousands of years old, and she still gets stuck baby-sitting.

[bhtooefr]

So, I'm thinking Alice Grove is set in the 5000s minimum, if it's on Earth. (I'm going for 3000 years minimum - 2000 would be "a couple thousand", 1000 would be "a thousand".)

[Is it cold in here?]

"Observation" probably didn't mean reading the name plate on Night Walker or counting its tree rings.

[Gladstone]

So, we finally get a (vague) answer on who Alice is.  But the real question, which I've been wondering for most of these last two chapters, is still whose story is this, anyway?  Immortal witch aside, Alice is still as mysterious and aloof as she was in the beginning, and the siblings are still unsympathetic fish-out-of-water with no clear motive.  We don't know where they came from or why they're stuck here, we don't know who Alice is or why she's there, and we haven't really learned much about this world they're living in.  There's no hook.  If we had a window into this world, that might help--say, if the story was being narrated by Jack, who could give us some sort of normal perspective, because right now it's just two ridiculously spoiled kids being chaperoned by a mysteriously superpowered babysitter, and so far we haven't been given much reason to care.

I'm not really complaining, since I don't really have anything invested in this story--I read it because Jeph updates it twice a week, but I could easily stop anytime because there's nothing else keeping me here.  I just wish there was, is all.

[SomeCanadianWeirdo]

I wonder if Gavia has an actual bed back home, or if she literally hovers to do everything in her life.

[Gladstone]

Maybe she's just really germophobic.  Like her many-times-great-grandmother...

[Meilu]

whose story is this, anyway?

Well, given the title, I'd guess Alice. But  only in the same sense QC is about Marten, when really it's about all of the characters Jeph wants it to be about. Slow start aside, it has some minor intrigue. I agree with your assessment of everyone so far, however. Hopefully the babysitting thing ends sooner rather than later. He's clearly using it as a vehicle to describe the world he's creating, so once things are fleshed out a little more maybe we'll get more character development.

[Kugai]

We'll find out next time her last name is McCloud

[Half Empty Coffee Cup]

We've learned two things here.

1. Alice is a few thousand years old. This is the less interesting of the things we've just found out.

2. For all the technological wonder of the civilization that Ardent and Gavia are now estranged from, such longevity is rare, if at all heard of.

[Kugai]

At least it doesn't sound like they have to go to Carousel

[BenRG]

How very, very Granny Weatherwax of you, Alice. You haven't explicitly said that you are thousands of years old. You just implied it and let Gavia's imagination do the rest.

Being a 'witch' was a dodge, not an explanation. We still don't know how Alice does what she does. She's denied by implication having nanotech but she strikes me as the sort who can lie without a twitch, so we can't really be sure of much she says, especially about herself!

So, we finally get a (vague) answer on who Alice is.  But the real question, which I've been wondering for most of these last two chapters, is still whose story is this, anyway?

Mostly, I think that it will be answering the mystery that is Alice. I suspect that, like Granny in the Discworld books, she likes being the mysterious, morally ambiguous 'Wicked Witch'. What this will be will very much a journey in which we discover that she is very much a good person and a hero. It's just that being a hero is just a lot harder with far more challenging decisions than we see in the funny papers. Alice would prefer being an anti-hero or even an anti-villain; she will always deny being a good guy, but those who know and love her know the truth (and occasionally have to hit her upside the head to stop her sulking about it).

I also have the feeling that Gavia is becoming more and more prominent in the narrative. I'm starting to think that she is like that spectacularly talented witch that the Lancre Three met in a recent book (I think it was called Black Hat). Alice is going to teach her how best to use her powers and, more importantly, when not to use them (i.e. 'most of the time'). The B-plot could be titled: "How I Became a Witch by Gavia Vicissitude". Alice doesn't want an apprentice; actually there is, according to her, nothing that she wants less! However, the girl is just too powerful and talented to leave untrained!

There may be a C-plot about Ardent's learning curve and how he grew up to be a conscientious and mature man.

[Loki]

Ben: A Hat Full of Sky.

We'll find out next time her last name is McCloud

Or Jones.

[BenRG]

Ben: A Hat Full of Sky.

That's one of them, yes. I suspect that Gavia is going to find herself walking a similar path to Tiffany with Alice being her "Granny" Esme Weatherwax.

[BenRG]

Sorry for the double-post but I had to add this.

I was watching an Age of Ultron trailer and, oddly enough, I heard what Ultron says to Pietro and Wanda being said by Alice to Ardent and Gavia:

"I was made... to protect the world... So that the people would look to the skies... with hope instead of fear in their eyes."

[KevxD]

I also got the Granny Weatherwax vibe from Alice in today's comic  .

Really enjoying Alice Grove the last few strips I have to say, opening up a really intriguing world.

[FunkyTuba]

whose story is this, anyway?

Well, given the title, I'd guess Alice.
[...]
He's clearly using it as a vehicle to describe the world he's creating, so once things are fleshed out a little more maybe we'll get more character development.

Yeah, about that...
the full title is "Alice Grove"

Seems clear to me that this is about the world and its complexities, of which Alice surely is a major one, but is not the only one necessarily 

[Meilu]

I like how you said what I said in a different way from what I originally said it, all while chopping it out of the quote.

[T]

whose story is this, anyway?

Weird dogs. It is always about weird dogs.

[Mlle Germain]

I have to say that I thorougly enjoy the Granny Weatherwax type of witch.
And up until now I never bought into the 'Alice is an AI' theory -- I still thought she's human -- but not so sure now, just because of the age thing. For story purposes, I still want her to be human (maybe from the same society as Ardent and Gavia), again because of the Granny Weatherwax principle: There wouldn't really be anything setting her apart as special, except observation and education, which are things she got for herself through hard work (and more opportunities than the people in town, probably).