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Alice - Trying to create an agrican utopia

2 (6.3%)

Praeses - Trying to breach the peace agreement and threatening everyting

12 (37.5%)

Ardent and Gavia - Only pretending to be clueless

0 (0%)

Night Walker - Being made up of bits that are normally EVERYWHERE gives you influence

2 (6.3%)

Giant Birds - It's always the one you expect the least!

4 (12.5%)

The Unknown Shadowy Hand - Because there is always someone hiding behind the curtain

12 (37.5%)

Total Members Voted: 32

[BenRG]

Well, well! So, Gavia does care for Ardent after all (as if we ever doubted it )! Ardent has unexpected depths and... and I doubt that Alice has had the shakes like that from emotional conflict in a very, very long time.

Jeez Alice...

Did you have to punch a hole in the wall like that? I mean... It's going to take forever to fix it without it looking like basically a patch over a fist-sized hole!

[celticgeek]

Do not count a human dead until you've seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake.
     Margot Lady Fenring

[Undrneath]

I think the skruk was Alice's knife hand, however it didn't hit Ardent rather it hit the wall behind him after Alice saw how far Ardent was willing to go to protect innocent lives.

[pwhodges]

I sure don't know what's actually happened, but it seems to me that bluffs have been called, or reactions triggered.  As for the likelihood of Ardent's survival, I commend the site's favicon to your attention as additional circumstantial evidence.

[Method of Madness]

It's Ardent. Was it not always?

[Loki]

I suppose Paul means that a character who is dead after a few strips is unlikely to be the favicon for the comic.

[osaka]

"Alice Grove: The story of how Ardent made everything go topsy-turvy"

[hedgie]

True, he *could* be possibly all corpsified and gross by Alice, and have served his purpose in being a catalyst for a huge change in the society there, much like Kamina (who died fairly early in TTGL) ended up being.

[Zebediah]

My prediction: Ardent is completely unharmed. Meanwhile Alice's right arm is missing below the elbow. (Not to worry, it will grow back.)

[bhtooefr]

Yeah, I'm guessing that Alice was right, but the nanotech in Ardent's body is powerful enough that Alice can't kill him.

[BenRG]

My prediction, Alice punched a hole in the wall by Ardent's throat so deep that it indicates that her blow would have cut his head off if it had contacted.

Whilst Ardent is busy realising that he's alive, Alice will collapse, crying and sobbing that she's too weak to do what she has to do. Gavia floats over to her, hugs her from behind and says something like: "You've been alone for too long, haven't you?"

[ReindeerFlotilla]

If Alice breaks down, I'll give you a dollar.

I'm sure Alice has a softer side. It's made titanium alloy compared to her Depleted Uranium side.

She's like an onion. She has many layers. Like an onion, each successive layer is made of the same stuff.

[pwhodges]

Gavia floats over to her, hugs her from behind and says something like: "You've been alone for too long, haven't you?"

Given how Gavia was in the first frame, that seems an unlikely turn-around.

[Skewbrow]

Hmm. Many possibilities.

• Ardent dies, is revitalized by nano-bots that get consumed in the process (Alice knew that would happen? Or not?).
• Ardent dies with the nanobots, but Alice knows how to revitalize him with the threat eliminated.
• Ardent is irretrievably dead.
• Ardent is gone. The SKRUK was the sound of the Praeses yanking him back - and an admission that Alice saw through their plan.
• The SKRUK was the sound of the Praeses yanking the expensive nanos back. Alice recognizes the sound and manages to turn the blow into something that is painful but not lethal.
• The SKRUK was the sound of the Praeses yanking Alice and the Vicissitudes to the orbit world. New faces, new environs, new drama awaits us all.
• Something else entirely

... Stay tuned ...

I, too, doubt that Ardent is permanently removed from the story.[/list]

[Loki]

I am surprised this hasn't been suggested yet.
A hitherto unknown power intervenes.

[Kugai]

*Cue dramatic music and 'To Be Continued.....' screen*

[Neko_Ali]

Next week: Jeph announces he's taking a three month hiatus from Alice Grove to re-evaluate the plot...

[cesium133]

Next week: Jeph announces he's taking a three month hiatus from Alice Grove to re-evaluate the plot...

Don't worry, there will be Yelling Bird to fill the time.

[Zebediah]

That's when we discover that Yelling Bird is an agent of the Praeses. And Randy is Alice's boss.

[mustang6172]

Skruk?  I don't recall Batman ever using that one.

[Loki]

Next week: Jeph announces he's taking a three month hiatus from Alice Grove to re-evaluate the plot...

So basically Jeph is a GM in a pen & paper game and Alice's player just broke his plot with wanton PvP?

[BenRG]

Next week: Jeph announces he's taking a three month hiatus from Alice Grove to re-evaluate the plot...

So basically Jeph is a GM in a pen & paper game and Alice's player just broke his plot with wanton PvP?

One thing that all GMs should realise is that players are inherently perverse and unpredictable.

[hedgie]

So basically Jeph is a GM in a pen & paper game and Alice's player just broke his plot with wanton PvP?
[/quote]

It would be quite interesting if he was actually writing the comic as a GM, and both Ardent and Gavia are characters played by people he knew in IRL.  With the level of world-building involved, it actually makes a bit of odd sense.

Nah, nevermind.  The plot makes waay too much sense for the shit players do.

[KOK]

Skruk! If there is one thing Alice is not it is skruk. Well, I suppose it doesn't mean the same in English. In Danish it is a word used mostly of hens, but occasionally of women. Google translates it as "broody".

[de_la_Nae]

Guys, the skruk is Amos.

Duh.

[cesium133]

It turns out the peanut butter was entirely made of nanobots. That's what's kept Amos alive for so long.

[de_la_Nae]

Maaaaaybe.

I was thinking it's more him hitting Alice with a stick.

[Wildroses]

Does anyone else think the skruk might have been Gavia making a move on Alice? She's already made it clear she doesn't want Alice to kill her brother, has used violence to try get what she wants in the past and she doesn't strike me as the type to go: "Oh okay I'll just stand here while Alice kills you if that's what you want Ardent."

[Method of Madness]

Is Jeph only doing one update this week?

[Detachable Felix]

He did drive 14 hours today, we may get one tomorrow

[improvnerd]

I wonder if Alice dug those mass graves herself.

[Detachable Felix]

My reaction to today's strip can only be summarised by image.

(click to show/hide)

[Carl-E]

I wonder if Alice dug those mass graves herself.

No, she has our cultural memory.  Those are (or should be) some well known images of the world's greatest atrocities.  She's been around far longer than she lets on 

I just wanted to express my awe at the last panel.  Her face, the eyes especially, but its angle and the emotion evident in it just took my breath away. 

[Kugai]

Wow

Just ...... wow

[mustang6172]

Those were some really cheerful images I had to look up for reference, let me tell you

Yeah.  Those bloody hands can be tricky to draw.

[jwhouk]

Wow.

[ReindeerFlotilla]

Called the wall. Her motives for hitting the wall are far better than "I like ardent, after all."

I don't think that's prehistoric (From a post blink POV) despite being referenced on the inhumanity of, well, us.

I think that's from the war.

I'm guessing the blink didn't make Alice. I'm guessing there's a reason the MBT/LBT level Gavia was no match for ALice is that Alice is a weapons system, and that final flashback of the bloody had was her hand. She was confident she could kill to protect the mission objective because she always has.

But she can't now.

I'm less wondering whether she dug the graves and more curious how many she put in them.

If Alice is a walking WMD not by blink, but by war, it would explain her relationship with... everyone.

This also proves my assessment of Alice in error. I thought she had layers like an onion. Many layers, but all of them onion. Her evident surprise today makes me think she thought the same of herself. Clearly she was wrong. She's no longer as hard core as she thinks she is.

[Wildroses]

Well as far as I'm concerned this comic proved some of Alice's dark past was self-inflicted. I also think that blood-stained hand was hers, and she did not get blood on it by trying to save someone or by accident as I doubt she'd have been thinking about it while she was trying to work herself up to commit murder.

[Neko_Ali]

I would guess that she's killed a lot of people. Both in the war, and afterwards. But she's convinced herself that all the people who she killed deserved it. They were soldiers, or had done some wrong. Ardent's last words.. If you're wrong, you're killing an innocent person, probably was the final straw to break millennia of doubt. So much of what she does seems to be tied up with 'I know more, don't question what I say or do'. She's been avoiding this question for a long, long time... what if I was wrong?

[Rghfrgl]

Where's Harrison Wells when you need him?

[mikmaxs]

Whelp. Alice Grove just went full-on PG-13 Adult Audience Star Wars Episode III, didn't it?

[ReindeerFlotilla]

When Jeph surpasses the raw carnage of Schlock Mercenary, I'll consider him to have gone Adult audiences.

I remember the old days when Tayler would repeat that SM was a family comic, and I'd think, "Howard, these people casually rip each other's head off. And this among friends."

[Sorflakne]

Hmm, unsure if I approve of Alice not offing Ardent, or disappointed that she didn't off him.

On the one hand, the one panel makes it seem she had a large hand in the carnage and destruction of the wars before the Blink, and that the experience broke her in a way, which would indicate that by sparing Ardent, she doesn't want to reawaken the monster she once was (though you can see it here and there in the comic).  On the other hand, by offing Ardent, it would've shown that she's willing to do what it takes to prevent any harm from coming to the world she's tried to rebuild.

Of course, the second option assumes that Ardent is indeed a pawn/sleeper agent.

[BenRG]

Called it!

Killing enemies and threats to the innocent? She can do that and even enjoy it on a disturbing level. Kill an innocent pawn who is willlingly offering himself to death? That's something totally different and I don't think that Alice has ever been that able to disconnect her conscience from her actions to that extent.

About those images...? I think that Alice was remembering the next few steps down the path to hell that starts with killing the innocent 'for the greater good'. Pogroms, genocides and all the horrors that come from radical eugenics. Something tells me that things got bad just before the Blink. She's seen just where well-intentioned extremism goes to. She can't be part of that, let alone the start of it... she won't.

[improvnerd]

Something tells me that things got bad just before the Blink.

According to Alice: "This led to a series of regional conflicts that escalated to all-out war. It lasted for years. Billions died." (6/11, panel 6)

The art for that panel looks a lot like panel 1 of today's strip.

[Method of Madness]

Did anyone actually think Ardent was dead?

[Neko_Ali]

I think she is capable of it. She was perfectly willing, even eager maybe to slowly beat Gavia to death before Ardent stopped her. Given that she's shown here that she's capable of immediately ending a fight that only leaves Gavia's nanobots were enough to stop Alice from splortching her in one punch. Or Alice was holding back so she could enjoy the killing. Or she never intended to kill Gavia. Just hurt her really, really badly. That seems the less likely option.

I am beginning to wonder if Ardent doesn't have some sort of pheremone type effect on people to make everyone like him. It seems everyone he encounters wants to be nice to him. The only person who breaks that mold, kind of, was when Miss Wheelright slapped him. And even then she seemed taken by him before his ah... indelicate suggestion offended her sensibilities. If that's true, and he is a kind of sleeper agent, that would be a fantastic tool. Everybody likes Ardent, nobody wants to hurt him so his hidden nanobots are free to do whatever...

[Loki]

No, she has our cultural memory.  Those are (or should be) some well known images of the world's greatest atrocities.

Can you elaborate? I don't think I know any of those images.

[BenRG]

Can you elaborate? I don't think I know any of those images.

Panel 1 looks like a mass burning of heretics or some mass-cremation or it could just be the fires of total war such as those that consumed large parts of London, Berlin, Hamburg, Coventry, Tokyo and dozens of other cities during WW2.

Panel 2 is a loose adaptation of an iconic photograph of a mass grave of Jews, Slavs and other 'subhumans' at a Nazi extermination camp at the end of WW2 in Europe.

Panel 3 is a bloody hand, the universal and seemingly instinctual symbolic visualisation of murder.

It is... disturbing at times just how terrifyingly efficient and enthusiastic the human race is when it turns its collective mind to the mass eradication of life.

[Roborat]

Starting to get a strong Jones vibe (Gunnerkrigg Court) with her now.