I feel like Lovelace cosplaying as Sarah is somehow… too easy. Plus, you know, I could see Aimee wanting to dress up as Sarah. I feel like if we ever see this cosplay (No idea if it’ll appear in comic, ofc), it’ll be Aimee-as-Sarah and Lovelace-as-Jareth.
Hell no! As repeatedly noted in Narbonic, Artie is the worst of them all: certainly going by consequences, almost everything bad that happens in the second half is his fault one way or another, mostly with a rather short chain of causation. Just because he doesn’t *mean* for most of it to happen doesn’t really excuse him — not after about the fifth time, anyway. Plus he *is* superintelligent, so he could be expected to have foreseen some of the (hilarious) disasters he triggers.
Being destructive / unlucky / naive is not the same as being evil.
Also, if we’re going by consequences, it’s hardly fair to assign blame on Artie but not on any of the many mad and evil people he was stuck dealing with through no fault of his own. Artie made sane, sensible decisions most of the time – it’s just they were all derailed by the insane, insensible people around him.
But Artie was created by an evil genius with the intent of his wreaking havoc on the world. So it’s pretty safe to say that he was indeed evil by design.
It wasn’t until after Dave went off that Artie really realized just how much potential for evil he possessed, and he made a concerted effort to go against his nature.
I don’t like or respect Lovelace. She’s basically a psychopath – cynically manipulating human emotions to get what she wants, while simultaneously concealing her true intentions, and making light of her own untrustworthiness.
Don’t get me wrong – as a character she’s interesting, but if I actually knew her as a person, I would deeply dislike her and view her as the very real danger she is.
Honestly, she reminds me a lot of Xellos from Slayers – not only in her personality, her basic appearance, and her propensity for floating in the air; but also in her potential for well concealed but extreme menace. We’ve seen hints of her sinister side, but have yet to see her fully go full blown remorseless murderer. Yet.
She is clearly manipulative, perceived as charming, and otherwise mostly appears “normal” to most observers. Sociopathy is different in that it’s less held together, with less capacity for operating within the rules and norms of society – sociopaths “don’t make sense”.
A psychopath who thinks you are secretly an alien will likely try to manipulate you into accidentally “revealing the truth”, but won’t tip their hand because they are aware that people will think they are crazy.
A sociopath might instead suddenly leap up onto a table in a rage, screaming insane accusations at you, and when confronted about their behavior will often feel some sort of remorse for their actions – or if not, they will feel defensive, and that they have been wrongly victimized, whether by specific individuals, society at large, or a conspiracy.
Psychopaths maintain “normal” lives and use social norms as cover for their willing transgressions; sociopaths can’t function well in society and frequently feel remorse for their unwilling inability to do so.
Psychopaths pretend to care when they don’t; sociopaths will make it clear they simply don’t care to begin with, sometimes with regret.
Psychopaths are fake; sociopaths are genuine.
Lovelace has never, ever been genuine. She lied and manipulated people from the very start, and is always looking to leverage power over others without them realizing. She may not actually be a full blown psychopath, but all the warning signs are there.
Love the nod to Lovelace being visually based on Jennifer Connelly (in-universe as well as RL) – the next question is, would Aimee adjust her appearance to that of David Bowie to perfect the look, or would she stick to things that would be possible if she were flesh and blood instead of AI?
… how DOES one define the rules for a cosplay contest in a theoretically-infinitely-mutable environment?
So Nick was multitasking on that rescue. A new Chekov’s gun has been cocked. Hopefully his copter body has enough of an autopilot that it remained airborne during the rescue.
Lovelace’s body langauge in particular is FANTASTIC in this one. SO flirty. Dang. And Aimee’s response is so in keeping with the internet gremlin she is, with that inviting/teasingly resigned gesture in the last panel, I really enjoy it!
Has she given her cause for doubt? Her trust with the data is out. But with cosplay all-star-eth they’ll play Sara and Jareth at the PalaceCon when they come out.
Argh, the cute!
If Lovelace didn’t have the appearance of Jennifer Connelly, would Aimee still have suggested the same cosplay?
I like to think she would.
Well, it’s a VR, so they can look like anything they want to.
I feel like Lovelace cosplaying as Sarah is somehow… too easy. Plus, you know, I could see Aimee wanting to dress up as Sarah. I feel like if we ever see this cosplay (No idea if it’ll appear in comic, ofc), it’ll be Aimee-as-Sarah and Lovelace-as-Jareth.
Could be a mini-series for the eventual Kickstarter….
I don’t trust Lovelace either. Oh, I like her fine! Respect her too.
I just believe her moral compass veers towards pragmatism and expediency.
Still, I’m relieved to see she isn’t villainous!
(the starry sky with planets backdrop is a nice touch)
Lovelace turned out about as ethical as you could hope for given her upbringing.
Goodness, the least evil person Lovelace knew was *Mell.*
…I seem to recall she had roughly as much (or rather, little) interaction with Mell as she did with Artie, so wouldn’t he be the least evil one?
Hell no! As repeatedly noted in Narbonic, Artie is the worst of them all: certainly going by consequences, almost everything bad that happens in the second half is his fault one way or another, mostly with a rather short chain of causation. Just because he doesn’t *mean* for most of it to happen doesn’t really excuse him — not after about the fifth time, anyway. Plus he *is* superintelligent, so he could be expected to have foreseen some of the (hilarious) disasters he triggers.
@Nick Alcock – That’s just how they get his goat. Intentions matter if you’re deciding if something is moral or not, not just consequences.
Being destructive / unlucky / naive is not the same as being evil.
Also, if we’re going by consequences, it’s hardly fair to assign blame on Artie but not on any of the many mad and evil people he was stuck dealing with through no fault of his own. Artie made sane, sensible decisions most of the time – it’s just they were all derailed by the insane, insensible people around him.
But Artie was created by an evil genius with the intent of his wreaking havoc on the world. So it’s pretty safe to say that he was indeed evil by design.
It wasn’t until after Dave went off that Artie really realized just how much potential for evil he possessed, and he made a concerted effort to go against his nature.
Mell was Lovelace’s lawyer, and you think she was the least evil???
I don’t like or respect Lovelace. She’s basically a psychopath – cynically manipulating human emotions to get what she wants, while simultaneously concealing her true intentions, and making light of her own untrustworthiness.
Don’t get me wrong – as a character she’s interesting, but if I actually knew her as a person, I would deeply dislike her and view her as the very real danger she is.
Honestly, she reminds me a lot of Xellos from Slayers – not only in her personality, her basic appearance, and her propensity for floating in the air; but also in her potential for well concealed but extreme menace. We’ve seen hints of her sinister side, but have yet to see her fully go full blown remorseless murderer. Yet.
I think you mean Sociopath
Nah, I mean psychopath.
She is clearly manipulative, perceived as charming, and otherwise mostly appears “normal” to most observers. Sociopathy is different in that it’s less held together, with less capacity for operating within the rules and norms of society – sociopaths “don’t make sense”.
A psychopath who thinks you are secretly an alien will likely try to manipulate you into accidentally “revealing the truth”, but won’t tip their hand because they are aware that people will think they are crazy.
A sociopath might instead suddenly leap up onto a table in a rage, screaming insane accusations at you, and when confronted about their behavior will often feel some sort of remorse for their actions – or if not, they will feel defensive, and that they have been wrongly victimized, whether by specific individuals, society at large, or a conspiracy.
Psychopaths maintain “normal” lives and use social norms as cover for their willing transgressions; sociopaths can’t function well in society and frequently feel remorse for their unwilling inability to do so.
Psychopaths pretend to care when they don’t; sociopaths will make it clear they simply don’t care to begin with, sometimes with regret.
Psychopaths are fake; sociopaths are genuine.
Lovelace has never, ever been genuine. She lied and manipulated people from the very start, and is always looking to leverage power over others without them realizing. She may not actually be a full blown psychopath, but all the warning signs are there.
Thank you for an excellent analysis, D. Walker.
Having not read Carbonic yet I was unaware of Lovelace’s history.
Very solid assessment, D. Walker.
And David, you really need to read Narbonic already. You’re missing out on so much.
Well, she did copy the Crown once.
Once… that we know of.
That smile in the last panel. ♥
Oh, yeah. It took a websearch and a look on Wikipedia for me to figure out who Sarah and Jareth were. Heard of it, never seen it.
from the days before CGI, when muppets ruled the world. Labyrinth was a fine bit of work.
Ahh. Seen it, looong time ago, but didn’t retain character names in my head. Thanks to the both of you for posting that.
In deviantArts, there’s a serial comic called “Girls Next Door” by Pika-la-Cynique that has the Sarah/Jareth relationship at its center. Tres amusant.
Love the nod to Lovelace being visually based on Jennifer Connelly (in-universe as well as RL) – the next question is, would Aimee adjust her appearance to that of David Bowie to perfect the look, or would she stick to things that would be possible if she were flesh and blood instead of AI?
… how DOES one define the rules for a cosplay contest in a theoretically-infinitely-mutable environment?
An excellent question!
I think one would have to choose flesh-and-blood constraints, because otherwise they could outstrip the original.
So Nick was multitasking on that rescue. A new Chekov’s gun has been cocked. Hopefully his copter body has enough of an autopilot that it remained airborne during the rescue.
Lovelace’s body langauge in particular is FANTASTIC in this one. SO flirty. Dang. And Aimee’s response is so in keeping with the internet gremlin she is, with that inviting/teasingly resigned gesture in the last panel, I really enjoy it!
Agreed. And again their facial expressions are awesome too!
Has she given her cause for doubt? Her trust with the data is out. But with cosplay all-star-eth they’ll play Sara and Jareth at the PalaceCon when they come out.
I love that a “text from Nick” arrives in the appearance of snail mail. Delivered by a bird, no less.
Perfectly good reason, far as I’m concerned. And if Aimee can turn into a CGI owl, even better!
The “text from Nick” is delivered by the Twitter logo bird.
So I think the real question we all want to know the answer to is…
Is one of these girls planning to try and fix the other?
Or are they both gonna be bad together?
Either way, I support them.