Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2012-12-26
‹‹ First ‹ Prev Buy! Comments(38) Next › Last ››

2012-12-26

by shaenon on December 26, 2012 at 12:00 am
Chapter: Railway Children
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Discussion (38) ¬

  1. Andrew
    December 26, 2012, 12:31 am | # | Reply

    The less said about the feminist flaws of Super Princess Peach, the better.

  2. M. Alan Thomas II
    December 26, 2012, 1:15 am | # | Reply

    panel 3: “maximation” –> “maximization”

    • The Office Pedant
      December 26, 2012, 9:12 am | # | Reply

      Ah, another pedant! Welcome to MY tribe!

      maximation (n.) – the act of raising to the highest possible point or condition or position

      • butting
        December 26, 2012, 9:18 am | # | Reply

        Huh?

        maximation (n.) – the act of acquiring a REALLY nize hat.

        • Axel
          December 26, 2012, 12:32 pm | # | Reply

          *polite applause*

        • Eddurd
          December 26, 2012, 2:43 pm | # | Reply

          Hah! Dot’s a goot vun!

          • Michael
            December 27, 2012, 5:33 am | #

            Ja!

  3. Bartimaeus
    December 26, 2012, 1:52 am | # | Reply

    Hey, I LIKE Paper Mario.

    • codebracker
      December 26, 2012, 4:26 am | # | Reply

      The sticker star is cool

      • Nick Zerhakker
        December 26, 2012, 12:52 pm | # | Reply

        No, Sticker Star is an unconscionable piece of shit that stripped out all the franchise’s best elements and completely removed the player’s incentive to get in any fuckin’ battles. Miyamoto’s batshit arbitrary decision to prohibit the developers from introducing ANY new characters is evidence that he’s losing a touch we perhaps only imagined he had in the first place. Don’t put your money anywhere near that garbage cash-in, aight?

        • Manifesta
          December 26, 2012, 1:09 pm | # | Reply

          Hey, dude, nice to hear from you, but how come you haven’t updated your blog since August 22nd? Too busy playing Paper Mario just so you could hate on it?

        • codebracker
          October 8, 2013, 2:29 am | # | Reply

          But I just can’t hate a giant boss squid, that beat is so catchy!

        • Darkstarr
          April 23, 2016, 3:27 am | # | Reply

          I have to ask… do you play StarCraft II, and if so, do you play as the Terran Battlecruiser, the Zerg Leviathan, or the Protoss Mothership?

  4. BlackWolfe
    December 26, 2012, 2:27 am | # | Reply

    That’s an unfair generalization about Nick there. Sometimes he talks about World of Warcraft.

  5. Eddurd
    December 26, 2012, 2:59 am | # | Reply

    (TUNE: “Happy Holidays”, Irving Berlin)

    Paper Mario! Paper Mario!
    Out of ev’rything Nintendo,
    It’s the stupidest they’ve made!

    Paper Mario! Paper Mario!
    Two-dimensional you’ll then go!
    It’s the dumbest game I’ve played!

     If you’re asking Nick Zerhakker,
     He will tell you what he thinks!
     He’ll list flaws, without pause,
     ”Paper Mario” stinks!

     Mario, at times, gets bigger;
     And at other times, he shrinks!
     Peach is hot! Game is not,
     ”Paper Mario” stinks!

    Paper Mario …
    Paper Mario …

  6. Mental Mouse
    December 26, 2012, 4:48 am | # | Reply

    OK, Violet B is in full rant mode here… Hey, I just thought of something. Given Sergio’s presence, could her trans-homicidal madness be connected to her exposure to Sergio’s gateway? Perhaps driven mad by exposure to the scope of alternity? (There’s a Larry Niven story….)

  7. Towering Barbarian
    December 26, 2012, 7:27 am | # | Reply

    One wonders how Violet would feel about the uplifted cat who spends all her free time checking out a site titled “LOLHumans”? o_O

    • Smithnik
      December 26, 2012, 9:30 am | # | Reply

      That would be most of the internet, as well as almost everything on MTV and the Speed Channel.
      I have never had a cat who was interested in the internet. I did have two that liked television [one for basketball, the other for commercials that featured human hands]. The one that liked basketball also liked to listen to certain human voices, so he kept playing back my answering machine messages. But I digress…
      Why WOULD a cybernetic entity bother complaining about Paper Mario? The game was a clever comment on the absurdity of our three- or four-dimensional world, as viewed through the interactions of a being of “lesser” dimensionality, in which unfavorable interactions lead to a temporary paralysis and loss of personal will…or else it was just a game.

      • Wayne Zombie
        December 26, 2012, 10:43 am | # | Reply

        Dunno about cats, but both of our poodles (one ex-, one current) were fond of Google searching on my wife’s laptop. And a friend of mine had a 50″ iguana that mastered turning off the power strip on her Amiga when he wanted attention. But that was pre-WWW, so I don’t know if that counts.

        Our current poodle is fascinated by bird sounds on TV, we are amused.

  8. Robert The Addled
    December 26, 2012, 7:29 am | # | Reply

    I’ll reference/paraphrase a A.D.Foster book at this point – an offical communicates it’s agency that there is a threat to the race. Another character (of a different species) asks which one? “The race of reason”

    Basically implying that Sapient life should stick together – whether they be AI’s, Uplifted gerbils, dolphins, or iguana-men.

    BTW – MANY SF authors have conflicting views (in their books) whether uplift can be transferred to offspring.

    • Norman
      December 26, 2012, 8:55 am | # | Reply

      It depends on how the uplift is achieved. Brin’s uplifted species, IIRC, were achieved through genetic engineering, but because of an incomplete understanding (they’re still in the process of researching the Prudent Textbook) atavism is still an occasional issue. Cybernetically enhanced but otherwise “normal” animals likely would breed true to their unaltered genome, if at all. Creatures enhanced by a nanotech transformation, rebuilding them on a cellular level, might be anywhere in a spectrum from “can’t breed” at one corner to “can breed with original species, producing unaltered offspring” or “can breed with sufficiently similar creatures, producing sapient offspring” at other corners, depending on the intent of the programmer and the limits of the programmer’s knowledge and equipment.

      • Wayne Zombie
        December 26, 2012, 10:45 am | # | Reply

        I liked the way Scalzi handled it in Old Man’s War: the soldiers were genetically-engineered to the point that there was zero chance they could breed with standard humans, and sterilized so they couldn’t reproduce with fellow soldiers. The fact that their blood and genes were patented could also mean that there was a DRM issue involved.

        • Jack
          December 26, 2012, 12:22 pm | # | Reply

          That only lasted two books, though.

          • Wayne Zombie
            December 27, 2012, 8:06 am | #

            There’s a new Old Man’s War story being serialized off of Tor Books, it’s going to be collected and published as a novel later in ’13.

      • Robert The Addled
        December 26, 2012, 10:49 am | # | Reply

        Thats why I described it as ‘conflicting’. Brin, McCaffrey, Weber, Tayler (Schlock Mercenary), Garriety (Narbonic) – Those are the ones that IMMEDIATELY pop to mind. MOSTLY imply gene mods prior to/part of conception and embrionic development, w/ the traits inherited by subsequent generations.

        Lawnmower Man style ‘uplift’ of mature organisms is typically considered not transmitted genetically.

        It’s buried in the rest of the novels, but Weber’s Honerverse series has some interesting discussions on the complexities and ramifications of gene mods (such as high gravity mods), including unintended consequences.

        Flint/Drake’s Belesarius series (despite it’s Roman-era setting) touches on whether gene mods for environmental adaptations can even be considered human. Same goes for the Council Wars by John Ringo.

        Thats part of why I like the Foster bit I mentioned above. It’s from one of the Humanx universe Pip&Flinx novels, I should settle down and re-read them again.

        • Manifesta
          December 26, 2012, 1:37 pm | # | Reply

          Throw into the mix Mark Stanley’s Freefall, which seems to suggest: 1) that Florence, the genetically modified wolf, would also have sapient offspring, even though her parents were non-sapient wolves; and 2) that, because of this, these altered “Bowman’s wolves” are intended to breed with each other.

          • Evil Midnight Lurker
            December 26, 2012, 6:36 pm | #

            well, yes, the wolves are sort-of prototypes: the ultimate intention is to engineer sentient lifeforms to colonize a world that humans can’t live on at all, and the wolves are tests of the mental architecture and so forth.

        • jdreyfuss
          December 26, 2012, 2:08 pm | # | Reply

          It’s a matter of how evolution works. Like Norman and Robert said, if the trait is achieved through genetic manipulation and the specimen is capable of reproduction it would be passed on to successive generations. If the trait is achieved through manipulation of the organism as a whole, it wouldn’t be. Think of Darwin’s finches versus Lamarck’s rats.

  9. Norman
    December 26, 2012, 9:09 am | # | Reply

    If VB is considering Nick to be the maximization of cybernetic potential, she needs to look again. One subject does not a clinical trial make. At most, this may be Nick’s maximum potential, assuming she’s even right that he’s reached it. What other former humans have been uploaded into machines, and what have they achieved? I would suggest (s)he be the next subject, but I’m fairly sure that (s)he’d still be a bigoted jerk.

    As for Nick, I think he’s achieved a lot. Anasigma tried to make him into a killing machine and a slave. He said “No”. If/when Nick reaches his full potential, it will be in the direction he chose, not just being what some bureaucrat (please pardon the profanity, and no offense is intended to the characters Robert the Addeled mentioned) thought he should be.

    • Robert The Addled
      December 26, 2012, 11:02 am | # | Reply

      I don’t exclude myself from such descriptions – I’ve got opinions of my own after all. And they do stink as much as everybody elses.

      I DO like your finessing of defining the potential as being Nick’s – not that of the program. We are all trapped into thought paradigms of our own making – even if its only by accepting external paradigms.

      Your statement there made me think of the Narbonic re-run now approaching it’s end – where Dave does things using the Lovelace systems that she seemed to be unable to conceive of.

      I think it’s possible we could see a transformative Nick at some point – he’s already shown personal growth – from being an antisocial hikikimori to socalizing w/ Marcy and the others, even to heroic behaviour during the Alaska arc and again during the New Orleans trip. Even to being a nice guy and rescuing his online frienemy from the A-sig roof.

    • VonZorch
      December 26, 2012, 6:05 pm | # | Reply

      VB is completely wrong about Nick. He is not cybernetic he is hyperprostetic.
      Cybernetic would be personality downloaded into a computer. Nick is a meat brain controlling a mechanical body.

      • Robert The Addled
        December 27, 2012, 5:45 am | # | Reply

        I think people are blending cyber and cyborg.

        Cyber is the electronic like you described – brain uploaded, pure hardware and software from that point on.

        Cyborg is a mix of wetware and hardware, whether a bionic limb or a full body w/ a brain in a jar (Nick).

        Where things REALLY get blurry is when you start programming subroutines into your hardware prosthetics. Some EXISTING prosthetics (legs pop to mind) respond partly to existing muscles (no nerve interfaces yet) and partly autonomous based on that limited input. I think i saw a documentary last year about a prosthetic leg that shifted its center of gravity and the ‘bounce’ of the achillies tendon equivalent based on how quickly the owner was walking/running.

  10. Wayne Zombie
    December 26, 2012, 10:47 am | # | Reply

    Since we’re talking Mario and Princess Peach, I highly recommend the movie Wreck-It Ralph. Excellent story, great animation (they put the Disney logo in 8-bit render), and most of it revolves around a racing arcade game. I’m definitely buying a copy when it comes available. And the love story in it is great.

    • Ryushikaze
      December 26, 2012, 12:20 pm | # | Reply

      Pixelated, not 8 bit. The color Palette was too rich to be 8 bits.

      But yes, it’s a great movie, though it raises some serious metaphysical issues regarding arcades and consoles re: intelligent life that are completely outside the basic scope of the story the movie is telling.

      • Wayne Zombie
        December 27, 2012, 8:07 am | # | Reply

        Good point. I don’t do pixelation in Photoshop, it’s something that I should play with.

  11. Shadowmehr
    December 26, 2012, 4:37 pm | # | Reply

    Let’s see, the woman who is basically a brain-in-a-jar remote-controlling an android being depressed about the future of cybertization based on another brain-in-a-jar controlling a helicopter?

    That alone is reason to despair for the future of the human race. Or to break out in insane laughter.

    • Shadowmehr
      December 26, 2012, 4:40 pm | # | Reply

      Yes, I know whoever’s controlling V. Bee can move when he/she/it wants to. But while controlling, I doubt he/she/it can do anything else.

  12. griffin8aka8evonix
    November 12, 2014, 8:26 pm | # | Reply

    He is mentaly unchanged

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