Alice Madness Returns Insane Child

Jun 14, 2011  Alice Liddel is an insane girl, still traumatized by a fire that killed her entire family. She imagines herself going to Wonderland and while there she has to stop a train from destroying it. While in the real world she ends up in different locations trying to get to places to help understand the circumstances of the fire a little better. Alice: Madness Returns Guides Dani's Guides This item has been removed from the community because it violates Steam Community & Content Guidelines. It is only visible to you.

1. Alice Madness Returns Art

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AliceMadnessReturns

This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

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• Where exactly to begin? Let's start with the 'where' indeed?
  • First we have lovely pastoral Wonderland...that slowly devolves into a hellish, dead world with black ichor dripping everywhere and a blood red sky.
    • And how. Going around the happy Wonderland, butterfly jumping, nice music, family memories. Down the slide- wheee! Oh, look! I just landed in a puddle of blood!
    • Right in front of the pile of bones that used to be the Jabberwock, no less.
  • Then there is Hatter's newly renovated realm, a steampunk's nightmare of gears, grinders, and a Dodo 'misery-ium'.
    • Oh God, the dodos. Forced to run on giant hamster-wheels to be killed if they stop is bad enough, then there's the fact that they have been mechanically mutilated like the March Hare and Doormouse who now run the place, THEN there's the delightful bit that they are attached to the aforementioned hamster-wheels by the axle going through their eyes!

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  • Next up is Tunderful and the Deluded Depths. Not too bad, at first. Little dark humor with the Carpenter & Walrus...and then you have to enter into the pitch black tombs of dead sailors, following a glowing seahorse through the gloom lest the seething darkness itself sap your life away.
    • After this, you find your way back to the Theatre...specifically, you find a back door and enter via the basement. Long story short, here's hoping that you weren't in the mood for sushi. Why? Because the basement is is brutally decorated with bloody piles of fish people that have been torn open and gored.
    • Especially when you notice that the mayor is still alive and crucified, and he's groaning insane gibberish.
    • After the above, you find your way back into the Theatre proper, and things look as normal as ever. But even as you walk past the production staff, all gathered for the big performance, the music is subtly off, reflecting how you now understand something's terribly, terribly wrong.
    • Wrapping things up in the Deluded Depths? Why, only the Walrus' rampage against the oysters and the audience, starting with him literally crashing the play, telling a gruesome rhyme about death in all its forms (complete with visuals), then straight up devouring all the aquatic citizens!

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  • The Mysterious East isn't too bad...until you enter the paper wasp tombs that are slowly filling with the black ooze of ruin, and the walls whisper to you.
    • The seemingly innocent female statues later in the level that, upon further inspection, have the heads of wasps. And even the ones with normal human heads are crying blood and half-naked with their kimonos pulled open, which one can probably assume is a manifestation of Alice's guilt over Lizzie's rape.
    • What about the mutilated Origami ants, or those imprisoned in cages suspended on a huge abyss? And the fact that the Wasps will fill them with eggs, just like Real Life wasps?
    • The wasp samurai themselves, for anyone with a fear of hornets. The buzz they make as they attack is entirely too realistic.
  • Queensland. Hey remember how great that entire living womb of a castle was? Well now you get to play through a dead and rotting womb... until the end, and then you get the place in high-def!
    • Speaking of Queensland, it would be foolish not to mention the Queen's Executioner, who is three times taller than the normal cards, cannot die, and has maggots in both his eye sockets.
    • It's worse than that. That's not maggots; that's a tentacle going in and out of his eye sockets.
    • What you have to do to the King. Poor bastard's trapped and is blocking Alice's way into the castle. So, what does she have to do? Smash him. All that's left of him is his right eye, still trapped on the wall staring into nothing.
    • And who can forget the zombie cardmen? Their claw rush is tricky to dodge, they like to attack in packs, and they can get back up after being struck down. The only way to kill them is to [[swing the Hobby Horse down on their prone bodies, or blow them up twice with the Teapot Cannon.]]
    • How about the Queen herself? She might be more unsettling than downright terrifying at first, but that changes quite a bit towards the end of her scene: after giving Alice a lecture on ignorance, she picks her up with her tentacles, opens her mouth far too much for comfort and apparently eats her alive. All of which is seen in glorious first-person. Oh, and there's an image of it on the game's wiki, which you really don't want to accidentally stumble across.
• Did you know that the innocent, implicative, something's-definitely-off kinda horror; creepy, desolate, eerie horror; pervasive unease, mind-screwingly reminiscent, sorta-familiar horror and oppressive, bloodcurdling, soul distorting horror are supposed to be, at least to the extent that they don't ALL come into play at the same time, mutually exclusive, and for a good reason? Yeah, American McGee didn't know that, so he created the Dollhouse world. Wasn't that sweet of him?
  • To put it into perspective, when you get up there and start exploring, you can quickly go from longing to the point where things will get worse and the world will transform into an Eldritch Location just so you can get away from all the deformed, broken, creepy dolls, to longing back to the deformed, broken, creepy dolls when things GETWORSE without even easing up on the creepy factor...
  • At this point, a more in-depth description of the Dollhouse level might be in place: it looks like a giant city of dollhouses, only that the houses are ripped apart and disembodied doll parts are everywhere, as well as Dollgirls waiting to kill you with scissors and fire. Gets Worse as the game progresses, everything gets darker and darker and it feels like you're traveling through some sort of abandoned orphanage/basement/asylum, with even more disembodied doll parts, taxidermied things, skeletons in glass displays, dolls with parts cut and ripped out, hell, even the levers are with a bloodied eye or a doll head with it's brain exposed floating in liquid, watching you as you pull the lever.
  • The Broken Doll enemies. Yeah, it's a giant broken doll attacking you with fire breath and broken scissors. Imposing, but by this time we've been through the Queen's level. We've seen worse. Then, while you're attacking it, you shred its clothes. The doll then shrieks, wraps her hands around her body, and shakes her head. You follow this by blowing her arms off, rending her (almost) helpless and then ripping open her chest and attacking her heart.
  • Not to mention the music in that chapter. A really slow, out of tune, hurdy-gurdy track. Sweet dreams.
  • Never mind the music...try not to think too hard about the Unfortunate Implications of what fighting the Broken Doll is meant to resemble in Alice's fractured mind.
• When you replay the game. Did anyone see it? Yes, run around and look for collectibles you missed... then the Insane Child appears. Watching you. Waiting for you. And running away when you go after it. So does that mean that every time you've been in Wonderland there is a insane, horribly mutilated, unnatural young child that will never be innocent again waiting and following and watching your every move? Paranoia Fuel much?
  • Oh, and, guess what, it appears again! As Alice runs around in her subconscious in that place only lit by streetlamps, the horribly mutilated child shows up once again. It's following her, like it always has, but now it has lost half its body, trailing and dripping blood behind it and CRAWLING BACK to Alice while trying to talk to her and saying 'We need your help!' There is just something innately horrifying to a young child that has been reduced to such a state. Despite everything that has happened to the child it is following you, what could have happened to it that made it crawl back to Alice and beg for help? What attacked it? What could be looming ahead? It makes for powerful Foreshadowing. Then, even though it is the stuff of nightmares, the Insane Child is still on Alice's side, and it is trying to help her regain her sanity.
• Body Horror: The opening sequence of the game. Alice is sailing 'with a friend' the White Rabbit, but then his head explodes in a shower of blood, the river turns into black slime infested with doll heads and doll parts, then the dolls crawl up Alice and rip her face off!
• Doctor Angus Bumby. And not just his monstrous, Wonderland form (The Dollmaker), but also of his role in real life. And also the fact that he was going to be a Karma Houdini if it weren't for Alice.
• The asylum sequence. Not the usual brand of creepy that Alice dishes out. It was the subtle atmosphere, seeing the other patients wandering around, trying to get a good look at their faces — only to see that they had no faces, and then being cornered by the Tweedle Brothers and the faceless nurse, strapped to a bed, and nearly trepanned.
  • The patients do have faces. Horrible, grimacing dark faces equipped with clamps and stretchers straight from A Clockwork Orange.
  • Poor Alice. She's been shaved of all her hair, her brain is fried and is just a hollow shell of herself doing nothing but walking around the asylum with nothing but a vacant stare and a straitjacket binding her.
  • Which is not to say that the Asylum is devoid of less subtle imagery. After the cutscene in the Trepanning room, giant bloody screws are sticking through the ceiling and walls. And the Bloodletting room drips endlessly. But not with blood: it's leeches. The ceiling is teeming with them, or possibly is made of them. (Thankfully, the Ward has a pretty amusing conversation.)
  • And that nurse? You remember her: it's Pris Witless.
  • In the deleted Shock Therapy room, the Tweedles mention that they hope the shocks make her forget the time they touched her inappropriately.
• The rape subtext on the Dollhouse. Near the end you find a giant doll, with a gaping hole between its legs, lying on the floor, legs wide open. You have to go through that hole and through that doll to the other side.
  • There are two giant dolls: the one referred to above, each with a hole to go through.
• Alice getting turned into a doll with a giant freaky head near the end.
• The hopelessness of the London segments. Almost every named character is looking to take advantage of Alice in some way or another - and most of them are bigger than her. It's a setting where innocence is prey, trust fatal and virginity a myth. The banality of it all is shocking. After the first few throaty offers to take Alice to bed, paranoia sets in. The poor thing is scarred enough as it is; but even without the schemes of Dr. Bumby, an encounter with the wrong gentleman could so easily undo all her slow recovery and destroy her for good.
• In the first game, the insane children represent the others at the asylum. In the sequel, they're the orphans at Houndsditch. Everyone knows that, right? Well, now make the connection. Not only are those kids being pimped out, but they're all mentally damaged to that extent. And then Bumby's 'therapy' corrupts their memories and destroys whatever's even still left of them until they're just blank slates, toys for others to abuse. That's pretty horrific. Just...no.
  • Hey, you know those framed cross-stitch things that typically say 'HOME SWEET HOME'? Well, Houndsditch has a couple like it that you might just blow by if all you're trying to do is get on with the game part of the game. The first says 'HOME SAFE HOME'; given the above, it's rather ironic. The second you'll encounter says 'EARN YOUR KEEP'; normally good advice, except for how Bumby expects them to do so...
• Near the beginning of the game, before your first Wonderland section, in fact, you can encounter some children playing hopscotch, if you go to the right place. Nearby, facing the wall, is a little girl. If you go near her, she numbly recites a poem. The way she says it might lead you to wonder what happened to her. A possible clue? Near the end of the game, The Dollmaker recites it when turning Alice into a doll.
• It's a minor thing but there are a few implications that Alice's lawyer, Radcliffe had spent quite an amount of Alice's inheritence on luxury items (the Eastern vases and other objects seen in his house): who knows how much money is left now? What if Alice finally gets well enough to take her money, only to discover it's all gone? Who knows how she will end up taking care of herself with no money...
  Pris: On the street, selling 'er backside!
  • This particular fear doesn't eventuate (we learn from Alice: Otherlands that she found a job shelving books in an opera house), but that doesn't make its likelihood any less worrying.
• The Colossal Ruin. The character profile says that it just gets worse if you fight it.
• The line 'And that noise wasn't Lizzie talking in her sleep.' was pretty damn creepy, largely because of what it implies.
• If you look around in the Dollhouse level you will see a lot of implications of child prostitution, like dolls in corners with a price tag on them, which becomes especially devastating when later, on the Infernal Train, you see a cutscene of Bumby selling off children wearing price tags to 'wanting customers'. Or what about the beds soaking with blood, implying horrible things may have happened to the dolls of the dollhouse.
  • Once you realize that all those dolls were created by the Dollmaker, and the Dollmaker makes those dolls out of real children, you start to grasp how many lives have been destroyed for the sake of child prostitution.
• Alice finding out who caused the fire. We're treated to a lovely cutscene of Dr. Bumby breaking into Alice's house and closing in on her sister while alone in her room. He gives her a horrificDeath Glare and locks the door...
• There is a loading screen tip that reads: 'The Hobby Horse is the most direct route to a Dollgirl's heart.' If you fight a Dollgirl, you slowly but surely undress her until you break open her chest and destroy her heart. A Hobby Horse is a toy. Basically, when you are fighting a Dollgirl you are, symbolically, earning the girl's trust by playing with her and her toys, and you slowly continue until she is fully undressed, at which point you can pretty much imagine what is being done to her next. It makes killing those Dollgirls just that much harder.
  • Well hey, if you don't like that suggestion, you can always reach her heart with several spots of tea... oh right, tea parties.
• The way the Fleshmaiden dress looks almost seamless on Alice's skin, it might not be a dress at all...
• The way how each piece of Wonderland is at least partially inspired by the Victorian London segment before that is abit sad in how Wonderland seems to show how things really are beneath the surface...
  • Let's start with the Vale of Tears and Mad Hatter's Domain. The Vale of Tears is an original part of Wonderland with seemingly no counterpart in London. But as we keep going onwards, we find the land distorting with black sludge and the corpse of the Jabberwock, until we eventually get to the Mad Hatter's Domain. The Domain itself seems like a steampunk fantasy inspired by Victorian London...until you see all the Dodos working themselves exhausted or to death by their overbearing bosses, the March Hare and Dormmouse. This somewhat reflects the era of the Industrial Revolution, where worker abuse was commonplace with little to no regard for the workers getting hurt or even killed.
  • Next is Tundraful. The Victorian segment before this involved Alice being fished out of a river by two brutes who were talking about bedding her, going through a freezer and seeing Jack Splatter making his way through the Mangled Mermaid, a whorehouse, and setting the place on fire. Tundraful starts off nicely enough as glaciers, a few sharks here and there and you make your way to the Deluded Depths where a nice town of fish people live, and the Walrus and the Carpenter are putting together a play. But then things get terrible when it's revealed it's a ruse by the Carpenter to keep pieces of Wonderland alive and trying to sate the Walrus's appetite with the audience they play to, lulling them into a false sense of security before devouring them whole. Such is the monstrosity of pimping, devouring everyone else to sate your desire for more money and sex.
  • Next is the Vale of Doom and Oriental Grove. We start with Alice leaving with Nan Sharpe to go to Radcliffe's place, and his shelves are adorned with oriental imagery. Then Alice has another psychotic episode making her go to the Vale of Doom, her Vale of Tears ran through by the train. She finds one miniscule place of safety, but even that has its own issues. The Grove is taken over by warlike wasps hurting the peaceful ants who pray for help only to recieve none. The Vale of Tears becoming the Vale of Doom can be seen as synonymous to Alice losing the last peaceful place in Wonderland she had with Nan Sharpe being one of the only people supporting her. The Oriental Grove can be seen as synonymous to British Colonialism in the Far East with the Wasps being the English, or, more relevant to the actual story, the parasitic abuse and destruction of the weak and helpless by those in power.
  • At Chapter 4, we have Cardbridge and Queensland. The Victorian Section starts with Alice waking up in a jail cell, being taken there for a psychotic episode, during which she had called out a man who used others for their own gain. Then we get treated to the cells becoming like the dungeons in Queensland and Alice appears in Cardbridge. Now Cardbridge isn't that bad...until we get towards Queensland. Here, the Castle of Hearts is ruined, the Queen's tentacles still there but rotted and useless. So many White Chess pieces scattered about and dead, with the White King needed to be smashed through to enter! Then you need to run through the corridors as the Executioner chases you and terrorizes you. All the while, you have to make your way to the Queen and the closer you get, the more 'alive' things get. When you finally get to the Queen, she calls out Alice on ignoring the abuse around her and wants her to realize the true threat causing it all, and the fire, is right next to her...
  • And finally, we have the Dollhouses. As said above, the Dollhouses don't have a victorian segment, and are made up of supposedly colorful bits with Doll Girls, where fighting them is synonymous to rape, and many bits implying the act of rape. The lower bits show the true horror, littered with devices of torment and body parts scattered about. Out of all the areas that this place can take after, it takes after the Houndsditch Home For Wayward Youth and the truth of what Bumby has been doing there. He makes it look like a respectable place on the surface, but in reality it's a horrible place where kids are taken apart mentally until they're mindless enough to be used for other's pleasure. The kids are no different to the pieces of dolls scattered about in the Dollhouse, or the body parts kept in vats, conscious enough to be alive but unable to do anything about their situations.

Alice: Madness Returns is the sequel to the third person action-adventure game American McGee's Alice.

Alice[edit]

• My Wonderland is shattered. It's dead to me.
• Another day, a different dream perhaps.
• Is it mad to pray for better hallucinations?
• I know what's real!
• I know I'm guilty of something, but punishment hardly ever suits the victims of a crime.
• Who set that bloody train in motion? Where has it come from?
• You've used me and abused me, but you will not destroy me!
• It's not a dream. It's a...memory. And it makes me sick!
• Wonderland has become quite strange. How is one to find her way?
• This is good for me. I'm not insane! I didn't kill my family. I am fine. I'm not mad. I am innocent, I mean, not guilty!
• I've not come back here looking for a fight.
• I want to forget! Who would choose to be alone, imprisoned by their broken memories? [bitter]
• I know their pain. I would assist. But is sanity required for the job?
• Blasted Cat!

Cheshire Cat[edit]

• Puurrfect. When you're not on edge, you're taking up too much space.
• Threats, promises and good intentions don't amount to action.
• Every picture tells a story. Sometimes we don't like the ending. Sometimes we don't understand it.
• Ah, Alice. We can't go home again. No surprise really. Only a very few find the way, and most of them don't recognize it when they do. Delusions, too, die hard with memory. Only the savage regard the endurance of pain as the measure of worth. Forgetting pain is convenient, remembering it: agonizing. But recovering the truth is worth the suffering and our Wonderland, though damaged, is safe in memory... for now.
• Abandon that hope! A new law reigns in this wonderland Alice, it's very rough justice all around. We're at risk here. You, be on your guard.
• A secret is only a secret when it is unspoken to another.
• Different denotes neither bad nor good, but it certainly means not the same.
• Only the insane equate pain with success.
• Only fools believe that suffering is just wages for being different.
• Every adventure requires a first step. Trite, but true, even here.
• The uninformed must improve their deficit, or die
• Only a few find the way, some don't recognize it when they do - some... don't ever want to.
• Haste makes waste, so I rarely hurry. But if a ferret were about to dart up my dress, I'd run.
• A reflection sometimes exposes more reality than the object it echoes.

Mad Hatter[edit]

• The world is upside-down, Alice. Inmates run the asylum - no offence - and worst of all... I'm left tea-less!
• The insolence, the arrogance the execrable table manners! They are destroyers of Wonderland! Defilers! Denuders! Derangers! Delightful...
• The law is just. Just a whisper away. Who knows how to measure rules? With a ruler! Cruel rules.
• Everything's a nail, is it, Miss Hammerhead? First it was your search, freighted with fear and fragmented memories. Now it's the train! Never time for tea. While your brain's on holiday, we're ruined! Now we're all mad here and that's a good excuse for going to hell in a teapot, but not for forgetting what your senses saw.
• Forgetting's just forgetting, except when it's not. Then they call it something else. I'd like to forget what you did. I've tried, but I can't.

The Queen of Hearts[edit]

• A good guest does not overstay, a perfect guest stays home!
• The train is trying to destroy all evidence of your past and especially the fire. Now, who would want that? Who benefits from your madness?
• There is no method in this madness!
• Authority must be obeyed, or it must be overthrown!
• What you claim not to know is merely what you've denied. You've recaptured your vagrant memories. What are you doing with them?
• You shouldn't ask questions you know the answer to, it's not polite.
• Make your survival mean something, or we are all doomed!
• I may survive here, but you're finished!
• You don't know your own mind!

Dr Bumby[edit]

• Memory is more often a curse than a blessing.
• The cost of forgetting is high.
• The past must be paid for.
• A flower's purpose is simple and immutable. Human purpose is fickle because it is a slave to memory. Memories must be strictly managed, Alice. Unproductive ones must be eliminated.

Other[edit]

• Nurse Witless: Still a mess, no surprise. Her kin roasted like chestnuts right before her eyes. Ten years in Rutledge Asylum wasted everyone's time! Dr Bumby won't do better. Still hauling out her questions: the fire, her memory. I deserve consideration, don't I? Who found her her new clothes? Who got her a place at Bumby's? Where she'd be without me? On the street, selling her backside! Likes my pigeons, though. She's doled out the odd pound or two. But I know what's worth more than that! Kept her secret, haven't I? Heard her say 'All died on my account, I couldn't save you!' I've told her my silence is for sale, cheap! I'm a good sort, really, not like her nanny, that uppity whore! Or that lawyer fellow Radcliffe [who] took her stupid rabbit! Need money... warned her I'd tell the coppers if she didn't make a 'donation' to my upkeep. She yells and goes off her head. Days she can't remember her name, what I heard.

• Dr Bumby: Come, Alice, am I not to be as much honoured and obeyed as the Queen? Is that asking too much? I want what she wanted. Give yourself over to that: trade the tentacles for the train. It's altogether a better ride. It's that or back to Rutledge!

• Nurse Witless: Never a kind word or reward for services rendered! Don't I deserve a bit of luck? Don't piss on what's right and owing to me, I say! Brought you out of the asylum, now you'll go back of your own accord!

• Nanny: I told your mother, dear. You're a distant and stubborn child, too content in her own world. Young women need to leave their wonderlands. The real world is not so 'wonderful'. You'll need to grow up. Perhaps some more time in 'care'?

• Radcliffe: You look decent enough. But appearances deceive: I know you for an unstable and violent person! I can't say I'm surprised you've been incarcerated in the asylum again. A long stay under supervision would serve you right!

• Dr. Wilson: 'Flight or Fight' implies a permanent choice. But 'flight' often just means putting the fight off to another day. Choose your battles wisely, Alice.

• Walrus' Poem:

Sword and crown are worthless here,

I invite everyone to dance

Labourers, lawyers, church and gown all make their little prance.

This life is full of random death

And heaps of grief and shame,

So few are soothed by 'accident'

You want someone to blame.

Fire, plague or strange disease,

Drowned, murdered or, if you please,

A long fall down the basement stairs

None are expected, no one cares.

I often must work very hard

Sweat running down my skin,

After the dance I then must rest

And the eating can begin.

Dialogue[edit]

Alice: At least the place I've landed is somewhat familiar

Cheshire Cat: [Suddenly materializing] About time, too, Alice.

Alice: Blasted cat! Don't try to bully me. I'm very much on edge!

Cheshire Cat: Purrfect. When you're not on edge, you're taking up too much space.

Alice: You are no help at all!

Cheshire Cat: But you know I can be.

Alice: I'll frighten myself when necessary, thanks very much. I was hoping to escape all that!

Cheshire Cat: Abandon that hope! A new law reigns in 'this' Wonderland, Alice, it's very rough justice all round. We're at risk here, you be on your guard!

Duchess: Ah it's you again, Alice. You may approach.

Alice: Why would I do that? You want to eat me!

Duchess: Yes, well you taught me manners and I've lost my taste for mad women; strictly a porcine diet for me. Everything is better with bacon, don't you agree? Of course you do. Now, there are pig snots scattered about. I heard a few behind the house; go fetch them for me. But take care of the pests that block your way. Pepper them up if they do. They need spice and you're just the dish -- ehm -- girl to season them for me. You'll find that grinder serviceable.

Alice: Why not season your own pig parts?

Duchess: Matters of priorities! My Alabaster skin needs protection from the disgusting creatures running amok amidst the environs. But one gets peckish! Look, all you have to do is listen for the oink, then shoot the snout! You may like the results. I certainly will.

Alice: The Hatter's Domain, almost as I remember it!

Cheshire Cat: Appearances, as you know better than most, can be deceiving, Alice. Much has changed since your last visit.

Alice: Dr Bumby says change is 'constructive', that 'different' is good.

Cheshire Cat: Different denotes neither 'bad' nor 'good', but it certainly means not the same! Find the Hatter, Alice. He knows more about 'different' than you.

Alice: But does he know more about the difference between bad and good?

Cheshire Cat: [noticing the Bolterflies attacking] Making friends, Alice? You're as randomly lethal and entirely confused as you ever were.

Alice: I've managed without you so far, Cat. Return to whatever hovel's home to you, I'll call if I need you.

Cheshire Cat: Predictably rash. It's not a question of 'if', Alice, it's 'when'. Now hold on, and as they say, 'shut up'! [he disappears]

Alice: So typical.

Mock Turtle: You'd better come aboard, Alice. We're doomed, of course!

Alice: What? There's no hope, then?

Mock Turtle: Oh, there's an infinite amount of hope, but not for us!

Alice Madness Returns Art

Mock Turtle: Confounded beasts, they want my ship!

Alice: I think you're more to their taste.

Mock Turtle: [outraged] Never! We're almost relatives!

Alice: You're related to soup, Admiral.

Caterpillar: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!

Alice: A single step off London Bridge could end my journey...

Caterpillar: Failure as your epitaph? I'd hoped you were more courageous!

Alice: I've come all this way to find a simulacrum?!

Caterpillar: If I had the time, I'd detail how often you prefer dealing with illusions rather than the real thing. Problems you refuse to deal with don't exist! You deny reality!

Alice: That's not right! I know what's real!

Caterpillar: No! You allow others to tell you what isn't real.

Alice: My memories are shattered! This wicked train has ruined nearly all I can recall and Wonderland will perish completely as I lose my mind. So much has changed... I can't help Wonderland if I can't help myself!

Caterpillar: Much has changed, but you've got it backwards: save Wonderland and you may save yourself! The Carpenter was on to something, but he was hiding from the real. Your goal is to accept it!

Alice: Where should I go, then? What should I do?

Caterpillar: The Queen must be served, Alice. The Queen, in all her guises, must always be served.

Alice: How can she stem this growing corruption or assist my search? What does she know that I don't?

Caterpillar: She is someone you once knew and loved. Time changes us all.

Alice: Not all change is good!

Caterpillar: Remember that when you find the Queen!

Cheshire Cat: Back to admire your handiwork? Returning to the scene of the crime?

Alice: It had to be done, Cat, you said so yourself! 'You and this Red Queen cannot both survive. She is a cancer in your body. Excise her or perish!'

Cheshire Cat: Well, she was the face of evil in the heart of darkness...

Alice: She didn't treat you too well last time, lost your head as I recall!

Cheshire Cat: She was completely deranged. You picked up her crown, but now you've put it down. You must speak to her; what's left of her, anyway.

Alice: The Red Kingdom's in ruins, but you're no better off!

White King: When you defeated her, I tried to reclaim the castle, but I was set upon by her monstrosities. The malignant royal bitch still reigns.

Alice: I'm here to petition her. I must get inside.

White King: The only way in is through me. Sacrifices must be made.

Alice: Those who say so usually mean 'they should be made by others'.

White King: Cynicism is a disease! It can be cured. Once inside, beware of the outsized killer who patrols her domain. Never confront him; he is invincible. Now cut me loose: I'll show you the meaning of 'sacrifice'!

Alice: [to the Queen] I was expecting someone else!

Queen of Hearts: You don't know your own mind!

Alice: It's nearly a complete stranger!

Queen of Hearts: What you claim not to know is merely what you've denied. You've recaptured your vagrant memories: what are you doing with them?! You once rejected my attempts to control our lives forcefully, but now you've allowed another to succeed in my role!

Alice: I won't miss your tentacles.

Queen of Hearts: [infuriated] You'd prefer the hot stinking breath and unyielding attentions of a potent, unreasoning, unfeeling hellraiser?! I don't think so!

Alice: Can you give me more than a warning? Caterpillar said you might help!

Queen of Hearts: I'd need a better reason to respond than what's currently on offer!

Alice: If you don't, we're all doomed!

Queen of Hearts: Not doomed. Forgotten! I may survive here, but you're finished! You see the pattern of destruction, I know you do! The train is trying to destroy all evidence of your past and especially the fire. Now, who would want that? Who benefits from your madness?!

Alice: The destruction of Wonderland... is the destruction of me?!

Queen of Hearts: Indeed! And vice versa!

Alice: I've set it in motion, I can derail it. This is good for me! I'm not insane! I didn't kill my family. I am fine. I'm not mad, I'm innocent - I mean, not guilty! [sees the tentacles wrapping around her] What's happening, what are you doing?!

Queen of Hearts: The train must be stopped, but there's more to do. Your view conceals a tragedy. The whole truth you 'claim' to seek eludes you because you won't look at what's around you! [swallows Alice; Inside Alice's memories] There is no method in this madness!

Dr Wilson: My professional opinion? Madness is often a treatable disease, though perhaps not in this case.

Queen of Hearts: Authority must be obeyed, or it must be overthrown!

Nurse Witless: 'Cruel to be kind', that's my technique as they say, but she's as mad as a hatter, poor dearie!

Dr Bumby: Worst is over, and over, and over. Forget it, Alice - forget it!

Insane Child: The unstable are more than merely mad: they have 'other parts'. The Dollmaker will deprive them of what remains of their deranged souls. They need care!

Alice: I know their pain. I would assist, but is sanity required for the job?

Insane Child: A limited quantity. You're not mad enough to be rejected. You're like them, of them in a way, but not them. I should say 'not us', for I'm them, but you are on your way. The way is clearly marked.

Alice: I believe I know that way and I'd rather not travel further along it.

Alice: My Lizzie... What is this train's destination?

Queen of Hearts: Madness and Destruction. You shouldn't ask the questions you know the answers to, it's not polite. And that noise wasn't Lizzie talking in her sleep.

Alice: Oh no... Poor Lizzie!

Queen of Hearts: And there are no centaurs in Oxford. Make your survival mean something or we are all doomed!

Caterpillar: Come to receive your punishment then?

Alice: I know I'm guilty of something, but punishment never suits the victims of the crime.

Caterpillar: Abuse is a crime the strong visit on the weak, and you're right, abusers are insufficiently punished for the damage they do. Those who witness abuse without seeking retribution for the harmed pay a penalty. Your own pain mitigates your failure to act earlier, but you may not yet have paid enough for witnessing the pain of others...

Alice: Is there really so little hope?

Cheshire Cat: There is even less. And if fear paralyzes you... we're lost.