- Composed by Justin.FM.
- Made in FL Studio 10 (7 hours & 30 minutes).
- Given Quality-of-Life update 02-24-2023.

BETA(s): jusu-tengu.bandcamp.com/track/rustic-ruby-piercing-beta


Once again in "Zootopia Crime Files", there's another shrew character by the name of Alice; the head-credit manager (and absolute fan of credit cards) at Vermin's. She appears in Case 7 of the game to help Judy and Nick track down a person who possibly stole a credit card and made a big purchase at the store she works in.

Unfortunately, there isn't much else to even say about her, as her personality is quite lacking in conveyance, if not non-existent. So, you know the drill: She's a shrew, I like shrews; I want more to be done with her as she could be a wasted one-off character (which technically speaking, she was); she needs a personality; and a theme... yeah.

So for Alice's derivative further-development, I made her ethnicity Indian. I got this idea not only from reading aloud her dialogue in a stupid Hindu-accent when playing the game, but also since I haven't tried writing an ethnic character yet, I thought Alice would be the perfect chance to do so.

I even gave her a full name, "Ailis (Alice) Chhachhoondar Nagarajan". The "Chhachhoondar" meaning "mole rat", and "Nagarajan" being an actual Hindi name meaning "King of The Serpents". This is simply a reference to Nāga, a snake deity in Hindi mythology.

To get a better chance for developing not only Alice's character but also Ilana's, I made them both related as cousins. This idea sparked from the fact both of them are based from the same character model in ZCF.

Personality-wise, Alice is optimistic; extroverted and curious; eccentric and *very* caring of family, and she's quite lenient... And while that can be a plus, it can also be her weakness. Too much leniency can lead to gullibility, in worst cases...

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So taking all of these things into consideration, I made sure that Alice's theme conveyed who she was in spades.

Obviously, Indian instruments were used to symbolize her ethnicity; namely, the Sitar (fucking duh), the Tar Shehnai, the Tabla, the Harmonium, and the Tanpura. Some compositional aspects of Raga were incorporated, and honestly, it was pretty damn fun composing in this classic Hindu style with a bit of Arabic flavor thrown in, here and there. It kind of gives off a gypsy vibe if anything, which I'm happy with, nonetheless! :D

The upbeat and bass-heavy tempo in the song symbolizes Alice's charismatic and eccentric chakra; the Tanpura's dark and eerie crescendo chords reflect a sombre, mystic aspect to her character... And some of the samples in the background are actually from "Narad Bhakti Darshan", a traditional Vaishnavish text talking about the whole process of Bhakti devotion, the nature of selfless love, and reaching contact with the higher deity.

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Now the only reason why there's so much exposition than usual this time around, is because Alice is a very bare-bone character with many aspects of her not set in stone. So hopefully the theme will do all of the talking for me, alongside whatever I may get the chance to do with her, in the future.