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[PA Comic] Wednesday, February 12, 2014 - The Old Ways
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(EDIT: And can we please get these comments moved to the relevant Automata strips, and whatever error is responsible fixed? Thank you.)
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That's an interesting idea but I'm not quite ready to jump to that conclusion unless there's something I've missed.
Other way around. She's got Betty Davis eyes.
There was a red flash right!? I didn't imagine that? Cause I can't get it to happen again on refreshing.
Also daaang, comments still getting redirected for Automata?
Yeah thinking about it now it seems more likely that Betty stole Pearl's green eyes so she could prey on human johns without her own red "danger signal" eyes scaring them off.
Although this raises some questions... like, how long has Betty been "rampant" (to borrow a Halo term for lack of a better one)?
Can we presume she's the one who killed the other two johns (or maybe more we don't know about)? If so, how was she concealing her red eyes then?
Or maybe an Automata has to be crazy for some period of time before the eyes turn red (if so, it doesn't seem like such a great warning system), so Betty's only changed from blue to red at some point after Regal and Carl left and she attacked Pearl for her green ones then?
Or I guess it's possible that Betty's been mugging other Automata for blue/green eyes for a while, replacing each pair as they turn red? That seems like something the "Foundry" would take note of if it was going on, though.
Or maybe... the entire eye color coding system is at least to some extent nonsense.
Maybe it's just propaganda by the human authorities. But if so, what's the goal? Create prejudice and fear against the pre-Law Automata? Or on the other hand it could be designed to keep the public in the dark about the fact the human authorities don't have nearly as much control over Automata sentience as they'd like people to think... maybe they couldn't actually fully engineer the intelligence out of the new models, they just tried to restrain it/dumb it down as much as they could and put green eyes on them to make people think there's a difference.
Or maybe the human powers-that-be truly believe the color coding system works but the Automata have found a way to circumvent it... uplifting newer model "green" Automata to sentience covertly, intelligent "blue" Automata masquerading as "greens" in regular human society, etc.
Red flash? What are you talking about?
Edit: Please note Geth's eyes... er, eye... is blue.
I tried comparing the head shape and the markings, but there wasn't anything that jumped out at me as conclusive. Not sure if this is a clue vs. cut-and-flip-and-paste on the artist's part, but I did notice that Betty's compu-speech bubble on page 4 is the inverse of what the eyeless bot on page 10 says. Maybe interesting when coupled with the fact that the next panel of page 4 has Detective Regal saying that even he knows Betty is talking about The Foundry.
What do you think- too far down the rabbit hole?
After this morning I was tremendously disappointed in the ending. It just didn't make any sense to me. Now that I've read some of the comments, I suppose it does, barely. I still have no idea why Regal knew to grab the car battery when he went back up to the apartment. Or why Carl tried to dissuade him from going. Or why Carl didn't go with him.
I really like Automata, but there were too many gaps in the information conveyed in the last 3 strips
The wonders of chrome's inspect element!
The red blink is probably just a wink. A nod to the reader to keep en eye (heyo!) on the color of the eyes.
Creepy stuff!
I assume the red flicker is just a sign that she's "going hostile", like a glitch caused from shoving another bot's eyeballs into her sockets.
If you look at poor Pearl who attacks detective Regal you can clearly see the same rounded lines on her stomach and neck which differ from Betty's.
If you look above you can see that Betty's neck has the straight lines demonstrating it is her.
Creepy. Very creepy. I didn't even realize the strips were finished until I actually took time to figure it out.
2. Pearl was originally a Betty but when the media got news of her existence the Senator had her mind destroyed and turned into a Pearl but that made me wonder how do we know that for certain? Betty actually contradicts her story saying that Pearl is afraid of humans since what happened to her but if Pearl has no memories and is unable to form new memories like she said how was she able to remember what was done to her let alone that she had been adopted by Betty?
3. Carl makes a comment that though he could replace his arm with a newer model it wouldn't be his arm. This made me think back on point 2 what happens if the Betty they were talking to was really Pearl to begin with. As an AI blue eyes would work fine on her but green may cause a flicker of red. If we assume that's true then the reason "Pearl" stumbles about the room could be attributed to the fact that her eyes are the wrong eyes assuming of course she hadn't been reprogrammed by the real Pearl.
4. Last point but it's actually the first point I noticed. Betty/Pearl is the one that implies that Detective Regal should go wait outside. Where he is subsequently ambushed. If we assume that the attack is unrelated how does the toaster know what to say to get the Detective to come check. Also when Automatons can relay large amounts of information over a series of short clicks and beeps how was it that Carl only finished the conversation after the fight broke out? Could be for dramatic effect but seems out of place.
Either way Pearl is obviously messed up and the villain. The murders were going on before Regal and Carl interviewed "Betty" so it seems highly unlikely that Pearl would suddenly attack Betty her night time escapade that night. And more likely that Betty's eyes were removed ages ago so that during the day she could play the role of Pearl during the day.
Spoilers: I think that is Pearl at the end. Simple reason. Pay close attention to Pearl's neck when you first see her. She looks slightly different, in that she has a wire from the base of her skull to her neck. Betty doesn't. The body we saw missing the eyes didn't have a wire, either. In the top panel of the last one here, we can see a small wire on the right side of the neck. Pearl attacked Betty and took her face.