Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE
Alice Grove MCDLT - THE END...?
brasca:
--- Quote from: Emperor Norton on 27 Jul 2017, 06:43 ---The reason it matters that Ardent and Gavia are not unique is that it makes their journey and their purpose matter even less. What difference did everything they do make when nothing they did had any strong impact that wasn't already being done by all the other people sent to Earth weren't already doing?
--- End quote ---
Ardent and Gavia are the only ones to make it back to the space habitats. None of the others encountered any old super soldiers that tried to get them back into orbit and now they know the truth. Moreover, their journey ultimately involved Alice, Sedna, Church, and Pate. The last 2 were effectively eliminated as guides for humanity while Alice felt so discouraged by everything that transpired that she decides to leave Earth. That's your impact. Unless Sedna decides to interfere humanity will find it's way out of the dark ages on its own.
--- Quote from: Emperor Norton on 27 Jul 2017, 06:43 ---And in regards to Church, remember there are multiple people of Gavia's strength on the planet that just got sent there from the Praeses, plus super tech about to become the norm. The fact that Church could die from a single bone through the neck when surprised, I don't think he could fight all of that at once.
(Plus there is the whole issue that Church and Pate are basically introduced with 1/4th of the pages left, they never really had room to breathe as villains before being killed).
--- End quote ---
Alice defeated Gavia easily enough and claimed she could do the same if the Praeses invaded and it wasn't a boast. The only way to keep Church at bay was to put Pate in check. That could easily be done, but if Pate managed to persuade or compel one of the people who develops abilities to protect him against others with similiar abilities then Church could eliminate everyone else that doesn't fall in line. Or possibly one of the other Gavias usurp Pate and take control of Church with the dream of world domination. However, with Church neutralized this is no longer a possibility.
--- Quote from: Emperor Norton on 27 Jul 2017, 06:43 ---Nothing in the comic they did really mattered, and nothing they did other than get to space actually gave them any answers. They didn't learn anything other than what they were told and what Alice then inferred from her knowledge (which we never get much of during the comic itself), to give us more exposition. And once they have the answers, there is nothing really ACTIONABLE to do with those answers. They just, oh, ok. Now we know. (And knowledge is half the battle!)
--- End quote ---
I liked the theme of the futility of power. Pate with Church at his command was the most powerful man on Earth, but ultimately got in over his head and died trying to achieve a dream that would've been his for the taking if he had waited. And for all of Alice's extraordinary power she was ultimately powerless to stop the world from changing.
--- Quote from: Emperor Norton on 27 Jul 2017, 06:43 ---And the reason that it matters that there are no hints is that you want to make the whole ending about their search for knowledge, but the only thing that matters for that search is the last 5 minutes when someone tells them the answers. There is no slow reveal of bits and pieces of information, everything is just dumped on you at once. I can't believe people are defending Deus Exposition as good writing.
--- End quote ---
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and you cannot convince me otherwise. I will, however, argue some of the plot points above you've taken to task.
Emperor Norton:
You missed the exact point I just made. Yes, Alice could defeat Gavia. But there isn't just one Gavia on the planet. And the planet is about to get crazy when super tech takes off. Plus remember the exposition at the end points out that the majority of humans will be able to do what Ardent does with tech very soon.
You really think Church will still be the same level of threat on a planet with massive amounts of super tech everywhere. Yes, he is still dangerous, but he isn't unstoppable. And there is no way he could stop all of that. You are correct about the futility of their power, because the mass amount of power that Church and Alice had mean nothing compared to the oncoming onslaught of power humanity is gaining. And of course, removal of Church only makes a difference if you assume that in the entire world, he was the only one of his kind. Or that Pate was all that unique in outlook.
And even if you do count killing Church and Pate as a big deal: having your characters only accomplishment be solving an issue that the audience didn't even know about until nearly the end of the story is kind of lame.
Also, getting to space ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING. That is the point I'm making. They, as individuals learn information, but none of that information is actionable. They now know that the world is about to become covered with supertech humans. (And considering that, it wouldn't have been long before someone reached the Praeses anyway). All they managed is to learn is something they would have learned in a couple of years anyway.
And "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is just sidestepping the whole concept of mass exposition being a terrible way to end a story.
SmilingCat:
Odd thought that popped into my head while contemplating a late dinner (don't ask me why, my brain is a rat maze).
But I had a thought about where the AIs went. They went into the people.
We have evidences of phenomenal levels of technology. Including nanotechnology that can perform something not dissimilar to magic.
We know the functions of the praesses were hijacked by something that allowed Ardent and Gavina to become embodied and travel to earth. From a basic data intrusion standpoint, that's easier to do if you already have network access rather than trying to force your way in from the outside.
We also know that the Praesses create virtual worlds from scratch, an "inner reality" that they populate with, for want of a better word, digital copies of humans. Their goal of making it effectively no less "real" than the outer reality suggests that these digital copies would be complete down to the finest detail.
So suppose the AIs, knowing that continued warfare would only push both sides closer to complete extinction, wrote themselves into the human genome and exist as just another part of human microbiota, borrowing from the body for whatever they need to function alongside all the other bugs that hang around on and inside us, maybe writing to our unused (junk) DNA for storage space, drawing excess thermal or bioelectric energy to power any major actions, communicating with each other through human interaction or physical contact. Maybe even influencing people to a degree by tampering with brain chemistry to facilitate communication between each other, and maybe to keep the peace. Humans lost their ambition, as Pate described it. Maybe that was intentional, in order to prevent another cataclysmic war.
So the praesses. They're alien, they'd have no frame of reference of what a human's genome and microbial hangers on are supposed to look like until they get a look at one. So they make their virtual humans, and inadvertently replicate the AIs along with them. These spaceborn AIs figure out where they are, what they are, and how they are, and they see an opportunity to fix everything. Since they're already running on the Praesses network, they gradually figure out how to subvert it to send their chosen agents to earth.
Apologies if someone's already suggested this.
brasca:
Neat theory although it does remind me of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica where the Cylons were created by humans and eventually evolved into human like AIs. Only difference is these AI descendants don't seem to be out to exterminate humanity.
Method of Madness:
God, don't even get me started on that piece of shit ending, all the more frustrating that until the last hour or so, that show was mostly great.
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