Post by todd on Apr 30, 2007 17:17:40 GMT
This thread is for the purposes of summing up what we know about Alistair so far, gathering together the evidence about him and offering possibilities as to just who or what he is.
Here's what we know:
1. He's a boy the same age as Annie and Kat (or at least, looks like one).
2. He's clearly very knowledgeable about pop culture - enough so that he can spend hours talking about it with Kat.
3. He's staying at Gunnerkrigg for only a week, and then heading somewhere else - but he doesn't know where.
4. He seems wary about Annie (judging from the way that he glanced at her in the fourth panel of last Monday's page), though we don't know why.
5. He's good at using a sense of humor to deflate a young troublemaker like Winsbury.
6. He clearly gets along well with Kat (though I don't know if he's as taken with her as she is with him - if he's not, I can see trouble ahead).
7. He prefers casual clothing over uniforms.
8. The house that he's building out of popsicle sticks is clearly spooky and run-down (even if you don't recognize it as an Elm Street reference - I didn't). Was that his idea? We know that somebody else (the school faculty?) suggested his building it, but the "haunted house" look might have been his own idea. We don't know yet.
It's just possible that Aly will turn out to be entirely ordinary and that this is only a "change-of-pace" story in which nothing weird happens (though I doubt it, in light of the past stories that we've had about Gunnerkrigg). For now, I'll assume that he is someone or something bizarre, underneath the youthful facade.
Whoever or whatever he is, he must be already familiar with current pop culture to be able to discuss it so easily with Kat (which means that he probably doesn't have any connection with the forest-people - I doubt that they'd have any interest in or fondness towards movies, video games, or rock music). So he most likely comes from the outside world, but perhaps with something paranormal in his background.
The fact that he doesn't know where he's going when the week is up (and ponders it with a thoughtful frown) means that, if he's here on a mission, it's for somebody else rather than a self-chosen matter, and that it's up to the people who sent him to the Court to decide where he'll go afterwards.
What his intentions are towards Kat, I don't know, but I doubt that he came to the Court for some malign reason involving her. She initiated the relationship between them by going over to his desk of her own accord, and seems to have noticed him before he noticed her. If he's on a mission, he might be planning on using her to help him accomplish it (such as getting information out of her), but only because she came up to him. (I doubt that he could have predicted that.) Of course, his intentions had better be honorable, or he's going to have two girls very unhappy with him (you don't think that Annie's going to take well to somebody using her best friend like that, do you?).
His wary glance towards Annie is also worth looking into. One possibility is that he simply takes an attitude of "Two's company, three's a crowd" (which Annie herself would have to agree with him after listening to Kat and Aly talk pop culture for a while, though in a different way). Alternately, he might be aware of something about her that would make her presence a serious threat to whatever he's planning on doing with Kat (or at Gunnerkrigg in general), and is hoping that she won't complicate things too greatly. If he does know her from somewhere, she clearly doesn't know him (or else she'd have told Kat about it).
At any rate, it should be interesting to see what more we can learn about him as the story proceeds.
Here's what we know:
1. He's a boy the same age as Annie and Kat (or at least, looks like one).
2. He's clearly very knowledgeable about pop culture - enough so that he can spend hours talking about it with Kat.
3. He's staying at Gunnerkrigg for only a week, and then heading somewhere else - but he doesn't know where.
4. He seems wary about Annie (judging from the way that he glanced at her in the fourth panel of last Monday's page), though we don't know why.
5. He's good at using a sense of humor to deflate a young troublemaker like Winsbury.
6. He clearly gets along well with Kat (though I don't know if he's as taken with her as she is with him - if he's not, I can see trouble ahead).
7. He prefers casual clothing over uniforms.
8. The house that he's building out of popsicle sticks is clearly spooky and run-down (even if you don't recognize it as an Elm Street reference - I didn't). Was that his idea? We know that somebody else (the school faculty?) suggested his building it, but the "haunted house" look might have been his own idea. We don't know yet.
It's just possible that Aly will turn out to be entirely ordinary and that this is only a "change-of-pace" story in which nothing weird happens (though I doubt it, in light of the past stories that we've had about Gunnerkrigg). For now, I'll assume that he is someone or something bizarre, underneath the youthful facade.
Whoever or whatever he is, he must be already familiar with current pop culture to be able to discuss it so easily with Kat (which means that he probably doesn't have any connection with the forest-people - I doubt that they'd have any interest in or fondness towards movies, video games, or rock music). So he most likely comes from the outside world, but perhaps with something paranormal in his background.
The fact that he doesn't know where he's going when the week is up (and ponders it with a thoughtful frown) means that, if he's here on a mission, it's for somebody else rather than a self-chosen matter, and that it's up to the people who sent him to the Court to decide where he'll go afterwards.
What his intentions are towards Kat, I don't know, but I doubt that he came to the Court for some malign reason involving her. She initiated the relationship between them by going over to his desk of her own accord, and seems to have noticed him before he noticed her. If he's on a mission, he might be planning on using her to help him accomplish it (such as getting information out of her), but only because she came up to him. (I doubt that he could have predicted that.) Of course, his intentions had better be honorable, or he's going to have two girls very unhappy with him (you don't think that Annie's going to take well to somebody using her best friend like that, do you?).
His wary glance towards Annie is also worth looking into. One possibility is that he simply takes an attitude of "Two's company, three's a crowd" (which Annie herself would have to agree with him after listening to Kat and Aly talk pop culture for a while, though in a different way). Alternately, he might be aware of something about her that would make her presence a serious threat to whatever he's planning on doing with Kat (or at Gunnerkrigg in general), and is hoping that she won't complicate things too greatly. If he does know her from somewhere, she clearly doesn't know him (or else she'd have told Kat about it).
At any rate, it should be interesting to see what more we can learn about him as the story proceeds.
