Justin Bacon wrote:
Aris Katsaris wrote:
On the other hand I would characterize the appearance of real-Aylee as a sort-of Deus-ex-Machina -- not in the sense of the defeat of Cloney, but in the sense of providing an artificial way to reintroduce a friendly likeable Aylee into the cast.
It doesn't qualify as a deus ex machina simply from the standpoint that Dr. Schlock's attempts to clone Aylee were established years before the Dangerous Days arc began. In fact, I'm pretty sure they were
firmly established (with Schlock acting as Aylee's psychiatrist) before Aylee even started her own webdesign company.
So, revealing that evil-Aylee was, in fact, clone-Aylee wasn't a deus ex machina: The groundwork was laid WELL before the revelation.
I hit reply, and then realized I had a fairly complex stance on this.
1. I agree that the designation of "evil crab" Aylee as Cloney is not a sudden, authorly way to cheat out of all those hard feelings. I don't think you can look at the whole arc and not decide that Pete knew Cloney was Cloney pretty soon after Aylee took over the web business (I'm sure he was planning it during A Very Big Bang). At the very least, Cloney truly distances herself from Aylee during that disastrous Halloween.
2. However, just because the gun was present in Act 1 before it went off in Act 3 doesn't mean that it's not a DeM in Act 3.
3. What really shows the value of Cloney's identification as separate from Aylee is that this fits in with Sluggy's general theme. As Aris pointed out, Cloney is distinct from the happy, likeable Aylee. This is because Pete, as always, is exploring the Tao-ic nature of good and evil. Ever since Aylee's introduction (barring the potato part), she's been a cannibal, and she's always been hated by Riff for that. This conflict had her feeling guilty about herself, afraid, angry, even rebellious at times. Obviously it had to be resolved, and this happened when she tended towards the good side (potato-eater) and reacted by going to the bad side (Cloney--note how Cloney hates the idea of her old friends, thinks the Spuddy Buddy is particularly dumb, and was transformed due to HeretiCorp hurting her [I feel that the process she went through is akin to the one in real life where a child from an abusive family becomes themselves violent]).
The device (cloning) doesn't matter. The point is that Aylee could externalize and make physical all her negative and evil tendencies, so that in the end (with the help of her friends) she could actually defeat them.
Note that after this big Aylee arc, she was mostly in the background (and really really good-natured, almost Kiki-ish); she barely had a speaking part before she went back into her coccoon. Her new form, I'm sure, will be one that once again invites some kind of conflict. 2 extraterrestrial steps forward, one extraterrestrial step back.