Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2013-06-25
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2013-06-25

by shaenon on June 25, 2013 at 12:00 am
Chapter: My House Is Me
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Discussion (46) ¬

  1. Frank
    June 25, 2013, 12:09 am | # | Reply

    I’m starting to wonder whether these people are also telepresence drones with some sort of censorship filter on the perception (as opposed to the …. voice box)

    • the1trueian
      June 25, 2013, 7:20 am | # | Reply

      Why would someone bother doing that when there are actual mundanes?

  2. John Campbell
    June 25, 2013, 12:18 am | # | Reply

    How about the cartoonist at the other table drawing your life? Can you see her?

    • Ogden Wernstrom
      June 25, 2013, 12:51 am | # | Reply

      No, I can’t see the cartoonist, but this does appear to be an accurate depiction of my perceptions, and that would explain why. I don’t see ghosts, the invisible people with wings, the guy in a toga wielding thunderbolts and cancer, the unifying narrative of all experience, or any of the other stuff people commonly claim to see, either.

      • Prodigal
        June 25, 2013, 1:12 am | # | Reply

        There are ghosts in panel 3?

        • Cwar
          June 25, 2013, 4:16 am | # | Reply

          That’s not a ghost, reminds me of Dave and hellens kid….

    • soft
      June 25, 2013, 8:44 am | # | Reply

      Good Lord I hope there’s no cartoonist drawing my life… I can just imagine all of the people being traumatized reading it…. (Is it bad that the thought of traumatizing other people both scares and excites me at the same time? lol)

      • Wayne Zombie
        June 25, 2013, 12:38 pm | # | Reply

        Heh. I was just reading some quotes from Dogma:

        Rufus: You masturbate more than any man alive.
        Jay: Everybody knows that!
        Rufus: Yeah, but you’re usually thinking about guys.

        I think I need to do a Kevin Smith marathon when I get home.

      • Tetra Valent
        June 25, 2013, 3:27 pm | # | Reply

        There must be a cartoonist drawing mine. That seems like the best explanation for all the lunacy in my world.

  3. abb3w
    June 25, 2013, 12:32 am | # | Reply

    I suppose some particularly weird breast cancer treatment might involve removing both nipples; and really wretched reconstructive implants might explain the (likely) unusual firmness that the concealed gyro array would cause, if the inspection gets that intimate.

    • CM
      June 25, 2013, 2:21 am | # | Reply

      Not especially weird at all, unfortunately. Non-nipple-sparing surgery isn’t particularly unusual, though a surgeon can somewhat create artificial ones and use tattoos to simulate the natural skin pigmentation.

  4. Eddurd
    June 25, 2013, 12:42 am | # | Reply

    (TUNE: “I’m Late”, from Disney’s Alice In Wonderland)

    This date … is great!
    ‘Cause I normally have to wait
    Until date three for nudity!
    I rate this date as great!

    That girl who was mixed-race
    Had scars upon her face …
    My partner bagged the guy in drag
    And took him to our place!

    I heard the dog go bow-wow-wow,
    You say it talked? That’s odd …
    But if you strip, I don’t care how,
    Then I’ll just smile and nod!

    I must … confess,
    I hope that you’ll undress!
    I have a chance to lose my pants
    And mate! This date is great!

    • Jeff K!
      June 25, 2013, 10:39 pm | # | Reply

      Well done, sir! Though I must admit – it’s weird, I’m far more familiar with the version of the song included on the “stories and songs from” audio tape, as well as from a Disney songs compilation record that I grew up with than I am with the version actually sung in the film. It was sung by a woman and had more lyrics.

      I was going to post a link to show why your lyrics didn’t quite match up with the rhythm I had going through my head, and now I can’t find any information on it online at all. Weird. I don’t even know who the singer was.

      If anyone knows, I’d love to find out – the extra verse went more or less like this: (spoken, in possibly one of the earliest examples of rap)

      “I have to catch a plane to catch a train to catch a boat/So do excuse me darling, as I dive into my coat/ somethingsomething Walk the poodle, defrost the Fridgidaire/ Gotta run, gotta dash, get to the bank and draw some cash/ You see, I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date…”

      • JET73L
        March 3, 2015, 5:09 am | # | Reply

        This link may be dead by the time you read this (it’s not my Youtube account, and it IS Youtube), but here ya go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYxHXBirv3w

  5. Klyfix
    June 25, 2013, 2:02 am | # | Reply

    I’m now wondering if anybody is shipping Nick and, umm, this guy yet.

    • the1trueian
      June 25, 2013, 7:22 am | # | Reply

      I hope not, they’re both straight and one of them is a helicopter.Not that there’s anything wrong with Being into helicopters

      • Wayne Zombie
        June 25, 2013, 12:41 pm | # | Reply

        There is (or was, been a while since I’ve been there) a Sikorsky Sky Crane at the Pima Air Museum in Tucson that you walk under/through to get to the museum entrance. I <3 me some choppers, particularly the Apache, but my loves are the A-10, F-111, and F-4. Hmmm. Warthogs, Aardvarks, and Phantoms. There's a story there….

      • Klyfix
        June 26, 2013, 2:35 am | # | Reply

        I’m reminded of the TV Tropes “Cargo Ship” page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CargoShip .
        So maybe that’s not that weird.

        And I see that Dave and Lovelace from Narbonic are on it, hmm.

  6. BlackWolfe
    June 25, 2013, 3:27 am | # | Reply

    Of course he saw Tip. If mundanes couldn’t see Tip, the girls would be immune to his charms, and I, for one, do NOT want to live in a world where girls are immune to Tip’s charms. (I live vicariously through him.)

  7. the1trueian
    June 25, 2013, 7:19 am | # | Reply

    It would get past the weirdness sensor, female genital nullification is quite unfortunately an actual thing.

    • the1trueian
      June 25, 2013, 7:23 am | # | Reply

      Or in a more in universe context usually accomplished without mad science.

      • the1trueian
        June 25, 2013, 7:25 am | # | Reply

        Now if the drone wasn’t intended to be undressed, and has exposed mechanisms when naked on the other hand.

  8. the1trueian
    June 25, 2013, 7:33 am | # | Reply

    Also, is anyone else getting scared that we might actually be mundanes, blinded to the wonders around us? I know if I was that close to unity, and I couldn’t perceive her beauty I would be quite sad. Granted, this is a self refuting idea, since I wouldn’t even know what makes her her. But if I suddenly found myself in the skin horse universe and I was mundane, I’d probably have another depressive episode at least.

    • jdreyfuss
      June 25, 2013, 8:52 am | # | Reply

      Don’t say things like that. You’ll attract Their attention, and trust me, you don’t want Them watching you when you’re trying to pierce the veil.

      • the1trueian
        June 25, 2013, 9:02 pm | # | Reply

        Considering the amount of antipsychotics, I’m on it’s probably too late. lol

    • Rex Vivat
      June 25, 2013, 1:54 pm | # | Reply

      Wait, so you say that Unity wouldn’t be beautiful to you if you couldn’t perceive she was made of different people? I mean, she wouldn’t be invisible to you, you would just see her stitches as if she had a scar, that’s all.

      • the1trueian
        June 25, 2013, 8:33 pm | # | Reply

        I do dig scars and she has an awesome personality,So I would probably still be into her pretty hard. But would I actually be dating her? Or an illusion created by my reality blindness?

        • =Tamar
          June 25, 2013, 11:28 pm | # | Reply

          Most people date illusions created by their reality blindness.

          • The_Rippy_One
            June 26, 2013, 10:08 am | #

            This is so true it hurts!

          • Storel
            November 22, 2017, 4:58 am | #

            Oh, ouch! You should warn a guy before you rip the band-aid off all his illusions that hard!

  9. ShireNomad
    June 25, 2013, 9:02 am | # | Reply

    This leads to an interesting question: what is “weird” enough to trip the weirdness censor, and what is “un-weird” enough that it can replace the weirdness? Where is the line?

    Talking dog? Too weird. Barking dog? Perfectly fine.

    Woman stitched together from multiple people and some kind of feline? Too weird. Woman with an odd scar? Sure, I can work with that.

    Dude in a dress? Already okay; need not process as dude-ette. But that’s because crossdressers are widely known to exist. Would he have said the same if he were operating with a weirdness censor circa 1800, or would Tip have tipped (no pun intended) the scales when, at least in the view of the vast majority of the public, drag didn’t exist?

    And if so, how does something that was too weird in the past become sufficiently “normal” to be seen by a mundane today?

    • Dewy
      June 25, 2013, 9:49 am | # | Reply

      If you walked out of your house right now and saw a zombie and a dog having a conversation, would you instantly believe in zombies and talking dogs? Nope. You would think someone is having a good time; dressing up and put a speaker on their dog’s collar. You might get curious and go talk to them to see how they did it OR you might think that shit is just too weird and just walk the other way.

      The people with weirdness censors are like the latter but magnified. Nothing in their perfectly ordered world is going to get through to them unless it is something so irrefutable that it breaks through their assumptions of the world. Then they will probably crack. You wouldn’t do them any favors by showing them, that’s for sure, unless their lives depended on it.

      The people with wierdness censors are like the latter but magnified. Nothing in thier perfectly ordered world is going to get through to them unless it is something so irrifutable that it breaks through thier assumptions of the world. Then they will probably crack. You wouldn’t do them any favors by showing them, that’s for sure, unless thier lives depended on it.

      • Dewy
        June 25, 2013, 9:51 am | # | Reply

        Damn. That second paragraph has an evil clone.

        • Rob Davidoff
          June 25, 2013, 11:54 am | # | Reply

          What second paragraph?

        • Kona
          June 25, 2013, 2:08 pm | # | Reply

          What second paragraph?

          • Kona
            June 25, 2013, 2:09 pm | #

            Damn damn damn. Beat me to it.

      • The_Rippy_One
        June 26, 2013, 10:17 am | # | Reply

        Am I the only person here who wouldn’t find a dog talking to a zombie weird?

    • woozy
      June 25, 2013, 1:43 pm | # | Reply

      Well, *usually* the assumption in stories that have a reality filter is that it’s things that are impossible. Talking dogs and zombies– impossible. Transvestites– possible. Of course that utterly avoids the issue that in the story world where zombies and talking dogs exist then by definition they are not “impossible” so what’s the criteria?

      In some books it’s usually specifically magic which is usually something that by it’s nature exists apart with its own side rules. (One being, magic doesn’t want the world at large to see it.) But in the more sci-fi based books it’s usually just a device and it’s assumed the reader herself will provide this impossible/possible distinction without anyone thinking too hard and realizing that that’s a logical fallacy.

      I think skin horse has always had a bit of tongue in cheek with the idea that the characters are aware of a pseudo-impossible; things that are impossible but occur anyway because this is fiction. Thus it can become a joke that the *least* weird of the weird things is on the possible side of the threshold and thus seen as the *most* weird by those who can only see the possible.

      Which is kind of funny.

      ===

      What if I walked out and saw a dog and a zombie having a conversation? Well, the thing is I *wouldn’t* walk out and see a dog and a zombie having a conversation because talking dogs and zombies don’t exist.

      • Caelo
        June 26, 2013, 7:05 pm | # | Reply

        Before the wide spread acceptance of the scientific method for arriving at plausible conjectures people believed, whole heatedly, in the supernatural. Events we describe today as obviously natural, electricity, movement, wind, and so on, where considered undoubtedly supernatural. In that mind set talking dog plus zombie would have been thought to be talking dog and zombie. This points to the plausibility that we are all under the influence of a very powerful reality filter called bias or simply our brain. I think that is what Garrity et Wells was going for

    • Tuscahoma
      June 25, 2013, 5:00 pm | # | Reply

      Hmm, speaking of the historical existence of reality blindness to a guy in a dress or girl in pants, how many plays with cross-dressing protaganists, including some of Shakespeare’s, would gain in plausibility?

      What? You say Cesario is a woman in disguise? Nonsense!

      • John Campbell
        June 25, 2013, 7:27 pm | # | Reply

        Note that in the original performances of Shakespeare’s plays, all of the “women” were cross-dressing boys.

  10. commodorejohn
    June 25, 2013, 11:40 am | # | Reply

    That last line is what thought bubbles are for, Not-Sergio. Why, just listen to this!

    MARK TRAIL: “I used to awkwardly blurt out every thing that crossed my mind! People would pretend they didn’t hear, and even the artist would perform tight closeups on my head in a vain attempt to indicate that my conversation was internal! Now that I have been introduced to the power of thought balloons, my foes cannot hear my plans, and Cherry and Rusty do not hear me scheming to get away from them after I have eaten the pancakes they made every storyline!”

    ♫ Thought Balloons! They keep your inner life pri-vate…! ♪

    Buy Thought Ballons where you work or bank.

    • kag
      June 25, 2013, 1:31 pm | # | Reply

      Mark Trail ends up with the opposite of a reality filter: it consistently makes it look like the animals are talking.

    • commodorejohn
      June 25, 2013, 1:45 pm | # | Reply

      Damn, I let a conjuction slip through…

      • commodorejohn
        June 25, 2013, 1:46 pm | # | Reply

        Contraction. Contraction.

        Yeesh. I’m off my game today.

        • The_Rippy_One
          June 26, 2013, 10:19 am | # | Reply

          Contraction? PUSH!

          …
          Okay, now breathe for me…

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Skin Horse by Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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