Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2020-04-22
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2020-04-22

by shaenon on April 22, 2020 at 12:01 am
Chapter: The Dreadful Future
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Discussion (51) ¬

  1. enigma42
    April 22, 2020, 12:30 am | # | Reply

    Chilled canned dew not the bottle canned is the better choice Leo

    • awgiedawgie
      April 22, 2020, 1:35 am | # | Reply

      If you could get original Mountain Dew (not the “throwback” junk they sell now) in glass bottles, that would be the best choice.

      Plastic bottles and aluminum cans both change the taste of the beverage. Glass doesn’t.

      • BMunro
        April 22, 2020, 1:57 am | # | Reply

        Strictly speaking most cans nowadays have a chemical coating on the inside to keep the contents from reacting with the metal, but Mountain Dew _is_ impressively corrosive.

        • s854
          April 22, 2020, 7:02 am | # | Reply

          BMunro: That just means you get Mountain Dew laced with bisphenol A rather than metal. It’s probably better for you than pure Mountain Dew either way.

          I would recommend pouring it into a glass and drinking it from that, though, as you don’t taste the original container as you drink.

          • SVGeezer
            April 22, 2020, 11:45 am | #

            I have gone to stainless steel water bottles for this reason. Hate the plastic taste and glass shatters.

          • Sheik
            April 22, 2020, 1:39 pm | #

            @SVGeezer. I concur. If chrome weren’t so gawdawful expensive we’d see a lot less paint, rust, and waste than we do now.

      • Robert Nowall
        April 22, 2020, 7:45 am | # | Reply

        The local market stopped carrying glass bottles of Mountain Dew (or even Pepsi); dunno whether it was a decision by the distributor or the market to not stock it.

        (I’ve got an eight-pack of Mountain Dew bottles dating from the mid-1980s. I was gonna crack one open when I sold my first story to a magazine. Here it is, 2020, and I’m afraid to drink them now. They’ve been in my (hot) garage since the late 1980s.)

        • Midwestmutt
          April 22, 2020, 8:05 am | # | Reply

          There is a TV show now for that.

          • Robert Nowall
            April 22, 2020, 10:52 am | #

            I may have previously mentioned that I have a can of Spam from 1995. It’s a tradition in our family, to keep a can of Spam around till it explodes.

      • waynezombie
        April 22, 2020, 12:50 pm | # | Reply

        We had a miniature golf course in Phoenix back when I was a teen that had a soda machine that sold Mountain Dew in bottles that were so cold it was practically a slushie. Those were pretty darn good.

        I wouldn’t touch the stuff now.

        • Robert Nowall
          April 22, 2020, 11:52 pm | # | Reply

          “They call it that good ol’ Mountain Dew / And them that refuse it are few / I’ll hush up my mug if you fill up my jug / With some good ol’ Mountain Dew…”

  2. evilmidnightlurker
    April 22, 2020, 12:49 am | # | Reply

    Throwback, ideally.

    (Which apparently no one is shipping to my part of California anymore? I can’t get my liquid crack! Gaaah!)

    • Robert Nowall
      April 22, 2020, 7:41 am | # | Reply

      They’ve made a change in the packaging here in Florida, though I haven’t bought any yet.

  3. OneUniverse
    April 22, 2020, 12:55 am | # | Reply

    Is Leo getting to look more like one of the creators of this webcomic? Or both of them?

    • Nix
      April 22, 2020, 6:08 am | # | Reply

      My God, you’re right. Maybe we have some Narnia creeping into Oz here?

      (… responses to this will indicate that Narnia foreshadowing has been *all over the place* and really obvious for about ten years and I just completely failed to notice any of it.)

  4. BMunro
    April 22, 2020, 1:59 am | # | Reply

    Hmm. Is Leo the Most Vulnerable non-human? Is the Wizard manipulating the Cowardly Lion? Has Leo been promised his own Youtube channel?

    • Robert Nowall
      April 22, 2020, 7:46 am | # | Reply

      Well, H. T. played him pretty good.

    • jdreyfuss
      April 22, 2020, 8:32 am | # | Reply

      He’s an insecure narcissist. Of course he’s the most vulnerable to manipulation. Just like Tip was when he was going through his identity crisis.

      • Shadowmehr
        April 22, 2020, 1:07 pm | # | Reply

        Which doesn’t explain why others are also still getting the dreams.

        • BMunro
          April 22, 2020, 1:26 pm | # | Reply

          Perhaps the dreams are a phenomenon separate from A-Sig?

        • jdreyfuss
          April 22, 2020, 1:30 pm | # | Reply

          Without knowing who or what is causing it, or what his, her, or its intentions are, it’s impossible to know why anyone in particular is getting the dreams. But if it is for the purposes of manipulation why would the sender limit itself only to one person?

        • awgiedawgie
          April 22, 2020, 2:43 pm | # | Reply

          If Leo is indeed the target, and if he were the only one getting the dreams, then either a) he would obviously be the target, or b) no one would believe him at all (he does write fiction, after all). Causing all of them to have the dreams could very well be subterfuge, so that no one would think there is a single target.

  5. maarvarq
    April 22, 2020, 6:21 am | # | Reply

    ‘Atelier’, like ‘smew’. ‘étui’, and ‘reredos’, is a word I rarely run across outside of cryptic crosswords.

    • serpentrose
      April 22, 2020, 10:35 am | # | Reply

      I mostly run across it when playing video games.

    • Doug Relyea
      April 22, 2020, 1:10 pm | # | Reply

      I find them when reading Web Comics

    • D. Walker
      April 22, 2020, 10:48 pm | # | Reply

      I run across ‘atelier’ way too frequently – it’s been picked up by pretentious hipsters who want think “workshop” or “studio” isn’t fancy enough to appeal to their upscale clientele.

      I wouldn’t mind it as much as I do, except they’re misusing the word, just as Leo himself is. A single artist’s personal workshop doesn’t qualify – an atelier is actually a large workshop where a head artist directs a group of assistants or apprentices to collectively create a work under the head artist’s name.

      • Shaenon
        April 22, 2020, 11:07 pm | # | Reply

        I did pick the word for its pretentious ring, but an atelier is usually a single artist’s workshop whether or not assistants also work there. For example, Hayao Miyazaki calls his private studio an atelier.

        Yes, I wrote this so I could mention that I once had tea with Miyazaki at his atelier. Thank you and God bless.

        • D. Walker
          April 23, 2020, 5:09 am | # | Reply

          Perhaps the modern meaning has simply changed more in recent years than I realized and I’m just behind the times somewhat.

          Atelier previously was used chiefly as I described – it comes from the French, and the French themselves used it to refer to their workshops which were (at the time) predominantly run as group arrangements, and hence that was for a long period the default association.

          But by the exact same token, the word itself evolved from an earlier usage referring specifically to -carpentry- workshops, and it clearly no longer has that strict association or usage. Language evolves, after all.

          —

          I suppose I’m just old-fashioned about the word, and would have preferred the older usage was retained, as it has great value in helping distinguish between different -kinds- of workshops, and simply using it as a direct synonym feels redundent.

          On the other hand, the word was clearly falling further and further out of usage, in large part because the way of making art it used to refer to has also fallen out of usage, so perhaps this more modern change in meaning is for the best, allowing the word to be revived instead of forgotten. Who can say?

          —

          All of that said, at no point did I intend to suggest you were using the word incorrectly yourself – I assumed it was just another layer of depicting Leo’s pretention. I fear I inadvertantly led you to think I was criticizing your word choice, and for that I apologize.

          —

          As for Miyazaki, I’m not sure how fair it is to compare two different languages’ loanwords, because different languages often borrow the same words in different ways.

          A quick Google search informs me the Japanese adopted “atorie” in the 1890s, but that doesn’t tell us how exactly they used it then. It’s possible they never had the association of a master artist leading a group of students / assistants – especially since that system wasn’t common in Japan in that era.

          Or, perhaps they did did have that association, but just as in English that usage changed at some point in the intervening years.

  6. Robert Nowall
    April 22, 2020, 7:40 am | # | Reply

    I had to look up “atelier.” Is Leo still drawing his internet comic?

    • awgiedawgie
      April 22, 2020, 11:36 am | # | Reply

      He’s working on his memoir.

      • Robert Nowall
        April 22, 2020, 1:35 pm | # | Reply

        One doesn’t preclude the other.

        • awgiedawgie
          April 22, 2020, 3:33 pm | # | Reply

          I suspect his webcomic went on hiatus a long time ago. He was on a book tour for his first novel when the reality blindness hit. It’s quite challenging to write a novel and a webcomic at the same time. Then, after the reality blindness hit, he holed up in the abandoned Jersey safehouse, living off the land, so he wasn’t working on anything.

          • Robert Nowall
            April 22, 2020, 4:43 pm | #

            With the good ones, they always wear down and stop before I lose interest.

  7. jdreyfuss
    April 22, 2020, 8:31 am | # | Reply

    “Atelier”? My God, he’s so pretentious.

    • D. Walker
      April 22, 2020, 10:59 pm | # | Reply

      It’s possible he had a unusually French-inflected upbringing…?

      I mean, sure, his creator Doctor Bloodworth doesn’t very French, and sure, he raised Leo as an instrument of death, but I mean… maybe he’s a half-Quebecois who inherited an English last name from his father, but he hated that side of his heritage and created Leo as a weapon for the cause of radical secessionism?

      Man, these straws are just so hard to get a hold of…

      • awgiedawgie
        April 23, 2020, 12:14 am | # | Reply

        But when the French use “atelier”, they mean an actual workshop, not an artist’s studio.

  8. Victor Wren
    April 22, 2020, 10:06 am | # | Reply

    Any OTHER large, powerful predators? Have you MET Sweetheart? Her idea of a rampage is taking a shortcut across the grass instead of staying on the sidewalk.

    • Candace
      April 24, 2020, 12:57 am | # | Reply

      Well, Victor Wren, you say that, but Sweetheart did recently rip a zombie’s arm off. I think she did that to make a point, but still…

  9. Pat
    April 22, 2020, 10:39 am | # | Reply

    She said “powerful”, Sweetheart.

    • awgiedawgie
      April 22, 2020, 11:39 am | # | Reply

      Sweetheart is powerful. She’s just afraid to use it.

  10. Robert Nowall
    April 22, 2020, 11:00 am | # | Reply

    They’ve all been out their all these whiles.
    A lot of data in their files.
    But Leo was the first they met.
    Is he that easy to forget?

  11. wykstrad
    April 22, 2020, 11:56 am | # | Reply

    Unity’s been wearing that T-shirt for nearly a full week, and I just now noticed it.

    • Robert Nowall
      April 22, 2020, 3:28 pm | # | Reply

      “Wear three days, turn around…wear three more days, turn inside out…wear three more days, turn around, still inside out…wear three more days, get dunked in the creek ’cause nobody will ride in the same canoe with you.”

    • awgiedawgie
      April 22, 2020, 9:02 pm | # | Reply

      A week for us. It’s all been the same day for them. She went and talked to Remy, then they all went out for breakfast at the IHoP, and now they’re here talking to the Queen. It probably isn’t even noon yet.

  12. Jim Baerg
    April 22, 2020, 3:30 pm | # | Reply

    Obviously the mane suspect has shown up

    • awgiedawgie
      April 22, 2020, 3:36 pm | # | Reply

      And you can never tell if he’s telling the truth, because he’s always lion.

      • Robert Nowall
        April 22, 2020, 5:09 pm | # | Reply

        He could be just a-kitten you.

        • awgiedawgie
          April 22, 2020, 8:54 pm | # | Reply

          That’s just a sign of pride.

          • Robert Nowall
            April 22, 2020, 11:51 pm | #

            That’s a catty remark.

  13. Gyrre
    April 22, 2020, 7:47 pm | # | Reply

    Had to look up ‘atelier’.
    Apparently it’s a fancy word for an artist’s workshop.

  14. awgiedawgie
    April 22, 2020, 8:53 pm | # | Reply

    It just occurred to me that the Queen said “our kind seldom attack one another.”

    That implies that they do, in fact, sometimes attack one another.

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