Both of them, I’d say. Anasigma doesn’t select for emotional maturity, it would seem. Of course, Ira resembles the archetypal child who pulls the legs off of spiders, whereas Ginny is more like one who tosses her dog out the window to see if it can fly.
this attempt at a guilt trip for a mercy kill will never work on Virginia, she KNOWS nick is actually happier as he is now then he ever was and it just serves to make out ira for the anti non human jerk that he is.
I don’t recall her ever being called Ginny in the comic, which is why I never call her that in comments. I think it’s rude to use a nickname for someone if they don’t use it for themselves. But that’s just my personal opinion.
I’d say that the “Villain has a point” trope has been invoked were it not tied so blatantly to a Fast Talk roll attempting to persuade Ginny that Nick isn’t worthy of her concern. 😛
Not just that Nick isn’t worthy of her concern, but he’s also trying to convince her that she’s responsible if and when they do decide to kill him. Sure, she schlorped out his brain, but she’s not the one who got rid of his body.
That’s a bit like saying, “Sure I strangled our specimen but it was Igor who buried him.”. Ginny’s cuter then Dr. Mengele (A RL Mad Scientist) but in some regards she’s not that different from him. But to be honest I don’t think he’s trying to shift any guilt. Nor do I think he’s trying to kid her anymore. I think he is rather trying to be as truthful as he can at this point for he knows that the cards are on the table as does Ginny.
Ginny’s “I need your word that Nick will live.” implies both that she knows that he is out to kill Nick and that she believes he still values his word. Which is proven correct by the fact that he does NOT give his word. He could have said, “OK, sure!” and then had their date. Instead he’s refusing to give his word and is trying to justify saying no. Remnants of a conscience making it’s final pulse perhaps. Then again Skin Horse is like Narbonic in that it’s for all it’s comedy it’s been a pretty noir series from the getgo. @_@
I’m not trying to imply that she is free from any responsibility. But he is trying to make her feel like it falls solely on her, which is also not the case.
Also, the apparent villain here actually doesn’t have the point he thinks he has. Green appears to be unaware that Nick is not only at peace with being an aircraft, but decided he likes it better than being in a “meat body”, so to speak. Nick is happy the way he is, and Virginia knows that, because she and Nick had a conversation about this quite some time ago. Mr. Green apparently has taken it upon himself to decide what is best for everyone, without ever bothering to ask anyone what they actually want.
I think now I was on the right track before when I posited that perhaps Mr. Green, in his Dr. Ao VR avatar, is acting dumb because he is blinded by his own arrogance. He presumes to “know” what is best for everyone else. If Nick is only “barely living now”, it’s because Ira enslaved him by issuing the command that removed Nick’s free will. I don’t think Nick would have described himself as “barely living” before that.
However, this does lead me to a possible way out for Nick, since Dr. Lee apparently doesn’t know how to reverse the command Ira gave that removed Nick’s free will. If Dr. Lee could somehow either convince or defeat Mr. Green (or even just escape with Nick, or his brain, she might be able to put Nick’s brain into a different, perhaps more modern aircraft. There would be a learning curve, but it could end up ultimately being an upgrade for Nick. (This is assuming the commands affecting Nick, and the swear filter, were all hardware-based items connected into his brain, vs. some type of brainwashing program.)
I have to think the Crown is going to come into play here at some point – otherwise what was the point of that storyline?
“Green appears to be unaware that Nick is not only at peace with being an aircraft, but decided he likes it better than being in a “meat body”, so to speak. Nick is happy the way he is, and Virginia knows that, because she and Nick had a conversation about this quite some time ago. Mr. Green apparently has taken it upon himself to decide what is best for everyone, without ever bothering to ask anyone what they actually want.”
Seeing as Mr. Green has interacted with Nick in a number of forms, I doubt he’s unaware of this; after the St. Charlie debacle, he must rate Nick as a formidable adversary. Rather, I think he’s trying to get Virginia to doubt what she knows by playing on her guilt.
Well, Nick did indeed say that he was happy that way. And that does go with him being the Tin Man who also stipulated that once. But the fact is that it was the fleshly remnants of Nick Chopper who got the girl in that particular Oz book. I think Nick would choose to abandon his chrome to be with Ginny again and I do not think he would want her to abandon her flesh for him.
I don’t recall Virginia saying that she didn’t know how to reverse the codeword commands for Nick. She just said she didn’t know how to remove them from his system.
I hesitate to say this, but what Green/Ao is saying sounds to me a lot like things I’ve been hearing about lately, wherein a man gaslights a woman into thinking that she knows nothing about anything, so that he gains a position of control in the relationship. It’s a hallmark of an abusive relationship, and the worst of it is that the man often doesn’t realise he’s in the wrong. Which he definitely is.
It also feels to me that Green/Ao feels he “deserves” Ginny, so he’s going to do anything and everything he can to make sure he gets her. But he seems to want it to be of her own free will, and he seems unable to notice the dissonance there – that he’s forcing her to choose something of her own free will…
Except that he’s not trying to belittle her so much as he’s implying a moral equivalence between them. It’s a classic villainous ploy. “We’re not so different, you and I…”
I have been having a whole lot of trouble finding anything to laugh at in this sequence because of the basic situation.
A male prison warden is pressuring a female inmate to “date” him in return for more favorable treatment. It’s really hard to laugh at because this has happened and will happen so much in the real world, and in this case the “it’s a VR prison” fantasy overlay just isn’t doing anything to turn it into a metaphor or put it at one remove. This is all happening to a character we like and are sympathetic to as well.
So I’m reading this series of comics and it’s the usual witty back-and-forth dialogue and snarking at each other and scoring verbal points… and whatever, it’s still a man telling a woman, **** me or else. And I don’t laugh.
Even leaving aside that we’ve been told “MR GREEN IS IRA” in huge flashing letters, if he is a rogue fax machine, he’s one who presents himself as male, uses the name “Mr Green”, and called himself a man in yesterday’s strip. “Assuming gender” is exactly what using his preferred terms for himself isn’t.
(I suppose you don’t believe water coolers can identify as female, either?)
^^This. Just because something is comedic (the Skin Horse comic as a whole), doesn’t mean it has to be funny all the time, and I think it’s good that it isn’t funny all the time. I recall the TV series M*A*S*H, which was billed as a comedy, but there were some episodes where there was very little that one could laugh at. It was based on real life, and in real life there are some things that just aren’t funny.
Not disagreeing with the statement but to note with M*A*S*H* on black comedy – when being more dramatic, those episodes could often be told by Hawkeye’s wisecrack level.
But even being the lecherous smartass and attention whore that he was, Hawkeye knew that there were some times when wisecracks were just uncalled for. I mean, there’s really no humorous or lighthearted way to tell a patient that the reason he can’t give his blood to save his best friend’s life is because he has cancer.
Granted, there are still some one-liners here and there during the whole episode, but when that specific serious storyline was the focus – as the one pictured above is here – there was nothing to laugh at.
Of course by the end they could barely muster a laugh at all. Comes from (1) lasting more than twice as long as the actual Korean War, and (2) really writing about the Vietnam War.
Besides, their treatment of Frank Burns, whatever you might think of Frank Burns, was pretty cruel for s’posedly “enlightened” men…
Actually, they were still writing about the Korean war, but rather than writing humorous fictional stories based in an Army camp in Korea, they were using actual stories from actual people who actually served in Korea. Turns out war isn’t funny after all.
As for Frank Burns, that was why Larry Linville left after the 5th season. For the first 4 seasons, he had Loretta Swit / Margaret to help bear the load of all the abuse that Frank suffered, but when she got engaged at the beginning of season 5, she turned against him as well, and left Frank to take all the abuse alone. Despite its being fiction, and his being an actor, it still had a profound effect on Larry Linville himself.
I’ve heard that two actors on the show were the exact opposite of the characters they portrayed—and Larry Linville was one of them.
Also the show went downhill the moment they killed off Henry Blake. Whatever you might think of the portrayal of war—that’s not funny. And it looked less like “fortunes of war” than vindictiveness against McLean Stevenson leaving the show.
(Yet the thing got more popular after that. I think I watched it steady through Radar’s departure, sporadically after that, but catching the end movie.)
The abrupt change after Col. Blake was killed off was not so much vindictiveness over his departure. On the one hand, the show lost a lot of viewers, and CBS received a lot of hate mail for killing his character. But that episode was also the final episode for Trapper John McIntyre. So they lost two funny characters, and they replaced them with two much more serious characters in Col. Potter and B.J. Hunnicutt. So, whether it was intentional or not, they dramatically changed the overall tone of the show.
Incidentally, Jamie Farr was another actor whose character – at least for the first half of the series – was nothing like himself. He said that he stopped wearing dresses on the show around the 5th season because his kids were getting older, and he didn’t want them growing up with the misconception that he was actually a cross-dresser.
Gary Burghoff was actually quite a lot like his character Radar. Somewhat reserved and unassuming, he really did run a rescue for injured and orphaned animals, and continued to do so for many years long after he left MASH.
Old theater adage from Horace Walpole: “Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”.
That said, there is a difference between dating and the reproduction act so perhaps you should pause your feelings and see how events unfold before reacting. As I stipulated elsewhere this series has always been pretty noir from the getgo. The fact that the noir usually happened to NPCs or offstage never really made that aspect of things any better to me. But it’s still be a pretty good series for all that and I have no doubt that this will still be true when the final curtain falls. Best thing for you to do is to be patient and see where the story goes. ^_^
If it’s any consolation, Mr. Green isn’t winning any points here. All the “punchlines” serve to poke holes in his logic, or build Dr. Lee up while showcasing Green’s arrogance, self-centeredness, inability to relate, etc. To take today’s as an example: Dr. Lee points out, quite rightly, that this conversation is a microcosm of Green’s approach to everyone, and he responds with “But I have another illusion for you! An even swankier one!”
Yes, he seems to be operating on the mistaken and illogical belief that even though he does not know how to win the girl in reality, he thinks that his mind can somehow create an acceptable scenario in a fictional world.
And what of it? You say that like evil is a bad thing! And I suppose if I grant that, you’ll imply that there’s something wrong with badness. And if I grant that, you’ll insinuate that doing wrong is inappropriate. The circumlocutions would never end. Ira just can’t win with you people.
Urlance: I love the idea of Virginia ending up as a living computer virus (or maaaybe a brain in a jar with really good upload/download speeds) who spends most of her time spread between her “Can’t Catch Me” armor and a fully-equipped suite of surgical waldos.
Hmm… If I recall correctly, this is all based on Whimsy VR tech. Now, who else would have access to (a copy of) Aimee’s Whimsy VR control crown – and why would they be wanting to feel-out where Ginny’s actual sympathies about non-humans lie?
Because it’s just occurred to me that the person (of two, maybe three possibles) who had that crown could choose to _look_ like Mr. Green in there, but but some of their goofs sound more like an impersonation of Mr. Green from here.
Or of course, I could be reading too much into too little here. That _is_ always possible. 🙂
(And it’s okay, my predictions are ideally hopelessly wrong – I just enjoy the guessing.)
It _does_ still mean that duplicate(s) of the crown are in play (and as we know that thet crown itself is duplicatable, possibly infinite crowns wielded by many AIs).
At this point, though, I have to agree with the comments above that it’d be more satisfying and equitable to see Ginny escape herself.
(Though the universe thwarting Virginia does seem to be a theme)
[On the theme of self-rescuing, I also remember that in the looking-glass world, Fully-Whirlygig’d Nick was was seen to free himself from that state, withwa sufficiently powerful motivator (irritation and snark in this case, but that’s another aside :)]
Hmm…
You know, I foresee a VR happy ending for Nick and Ginny. Indeed, I’m kicking myself for not seeing it sooner.
Wow! One of them really _is_ bad at this!
Both of them, I’d say. Anasigma doesn’t select for emotional maturity, it would seem. Of course, Ira resembles the archetypal child who pulls the legs off of spiders, whereas Ginny is more like one who tosses her dog out the window to see if it can fly.
Yeah, but at least Virginia gives the dog wings first.
“awww maaan….”
You know, sometimes it takes them a little while to learn how to do it right.
The supervillian dating scene is a Farkle-ing garbage fire.
this attempt at a guilt trip for a mercy kill will never work on Virginia, she KNOWS nick is actually happier as he is now then he ever was and it just serves to make out ira for the anti non human jerk that he is.
Plus, she already apologized to Nick and they put her guilt to bed.
Ari just doesn’t understand that, because he could never see a friendship between a human and a cyborg as genuine.
Just like his arrogance prevents him from seeing the danger he’s in, with this equally brilliant mad scientist, whom he constantly underestimates.
Mark my words, he will regret having made her so sane.
I have completely forgotten who Ginny is you guys.
Time for a binge read, is it?
Short for Dr. Virginia Lee. Has anyone ever called her Ginny in the script? The closest I remember: http://skin-horse.com/comic/todays-comic-71/
First appearance as herself: http://skin-horse.com/comic/salt-and-pepper-haired/
Actual first appearance, but with a VR skin: http://skin-horse.com/comic/wardrobe-any-more/
When she shared a brain with Unity: http://skin-horse.com/comic/todays-comic-843/
Childhood memory during that same story (aka the very next strip): http://skin-horse.com/comic/todays-comic-844/
Assorted important panels from the first seven years (which I’m obviously sharing because I made it): http://skin-horse.com/comic/2013-12-08/
I don’t recall her ever being called Ginny in the comic, which is why I never call her that in comments. I think it’s rude to use a nickname for someone if they don’t use it for themselves. But that’s just my personal opinion.
I’d say that the “Villain has a point” trope has been invoked were it not tied so blatantly to a Fast Talk roll attempting to persuade Ginny that Nick isn’t worthy of her concern. 😛
Not just that Nick isn’t worthy of her concern, but he’s also trying to convince her that she’s responsible if and when they do decide to kill him. Sure, she schlorped out his brain, but she’s not the one who got rid of his body.
That’s a bit like saying, “Sure I strangled our specimen but it was Igor who buried him.”. Ginny’s cuter then Dr. Mengele (A RL Mad Scientist) but in some regards she’s not that different from him. But to be honest I don’t think he’s trying to shift any guilt. Nor do I think he’s trying to kid her anymore. I think he is rather trying to be as truthful as he can at this point for he knows that the cards are on the table as does Ginny.
Ginny’s “I need your word that Nick will live.” implies both that she knows that he is out to kill Nick and that she believes he still values his word. Which is proven correct by the fact that he does NOT give his word. He could have said, “OK, sure!” and then had their date. Instead he’s refusing to give his word and is trying to justify saying no. Remnants of a conscience making it’s final pulse perhaps. Then again Skin Horse is like Narbonic in that it’s for all it’s comedy it’s been a pretty noir series from the getgo. @_@
I’m not trying to imply that she is free from any responsibility. But he is trying to make her feel like it falls solely on her, which is also not the case.
Also, the apparent villain here actually doesn’t have the point he thinks he has. Green appears to be unaware that Nick is not only at peace with being an aircraft, but decided he likes it better than being in a “meat body”, so to speak. Nick is happy the way he is, and Virginia knows that, because she and Nick had a conversation about this quite some time ago. Mr. Green apparently has taken it upon himself to decide what is best for everyone, without ever bothering to ask anyone what they actually want.
I think now I was on the right track before when I posited that perhaps Mr. Green, in his Dr. Ao VR avatar, is acting dumb because he is blinded by his own arrogance. He presumes to “know” what is best for everyone else. If Nick is only “barely living now”, it’s because Ira enslaved him by issuing the command that removed Nick’s free will. I don’t think Nick would have described himself as “barely living” before that.
However, this does lead me to a possible way out for Nick, since Dr. Lee apparently doesn’t know how to reverse the command Ira gave that removed Nick’s free will. If Dr. Lee could somehow either convince or defeat Mr. Green (or even just escape with Nick, or his brain, she might be able to put Nick’s brain into a different, perhaps more modern aircraft. There would be a learning curve, but it could end up ultimately being an upgrade for Nick. (This is assuming the commands affecting Nick, and the swear filter, were all hardware-based items connected into his brain, vs. some type of brainwashing program.)
I have to think the Crown is going to come into play here at some point – otherwise what was the point of that storyline?
Oops, missed a closing parenthesis! Should have been, “(or even just escape with Nick, or his brain), she…”
“Green appears to be unaware that Nick is not only at peace with being an aircraft, but decided he likes it better than being in a “meat body”, so to speak. Nick is happy the way he is, and Virginia knows that, because she and Nick had a conversation about this quite some time ago. Mr. Green apparently has taken it upon himself to decide what is best for everyone, without ever bothering to ask anyone what they actually want.”
Seeing as Mr. Green has interacted with Nick in a number of forms, I doubt he’s unaware of this; after the St. Charlie debacle, he must rate Nick as a formidable adversary. Rather, I think he’s trying to get Virginia to doubt what she knows by playing on her guilt.
Well, Nick did indeed say that he was happy that way. And that does go with him being the Tin Man who also stipulated that once. But the fact is that it was the fleshly remnants of Nick Chopper who got the girl in that particular Oz book. I think Nick would choose to abandon his chrome to be with Ginny again and I do not think he would want her to abandon her flesh for him.
Exactly this! Though, what is rolling around in my mind at the moment, is the comment about how walnuts look like tiny brains. (They kind of do.)
I don’t recall Virginia saying that she didn’t know how to reverse the codeword commands for Nick. She just said she didn’t know how to remove them from his system.
Oh.
OH.
… maybe there’s hope for him, or I’m just making my personal theories too wild… XD
‘Assuage’ is misspelt in the third panel.
Haha! I didn’t even catch that. I use that word often enough in my writing, that my brain automatically saw it correctly.
I hesitate to say this, but what Green/Ao is saying sounds to me a lot like things I’ve been hearing about lately, wherein a man gaslights a woman into thinking that she knows nothing about anything, so that he gains a position of control in the relationship. It’s a hallmark of an abusive relationship, and the worst of it is that the man often doesn’t realise he’s in the wrong. Which he definitely is.
It also feels to me that Green/Ao feels he “deserves” Ginny, so he’s going to do anything and everything he can to make sure he gets her. But he seems to want it to be of her own free will, and he seems unable to notice the dissonance there – that he’s forcing her to choose something of her own free will…
Except that he’s not trying to belittle her so much as he’s implying a moral equivalence between them. It’s a classic villainous ploy. “We’re not so different, you and I…”
I have been having a whole lot of trouble finding anything to laugh at in this sequence because of the basic situation.
A male prison warden is pressuring a female inmate to “date” him in return for more favorable treatment. It’s really hard to laugh at because this has happened and will happen so much in the real world, and in this case the “it’s a VR prison” fantasy overlay just isn’t doing anything to turn it into a metaphor or put it at one remove. This is all happening to a character we like and are sympathetic to as well.
So I’m reading this series of comics and it’s the usual witty back-and-forth dialogue and snarking at each other and scoring verbal points… and whatever, it’s still a man telling a woman, **** me or else. And I don’t laugh.
so you are assuming the gender of the character on the right.
could be a rogue fax machine from the office equipment apocalypse.
I’m pretty sure we actually have confirmation that Ao is Ira.
Even leaving aside that we’ve been told “MR GREEN IS IRA” in huge flashing letters, if he is a rogue fax machine, he’s one who presents himself as male, uses the name “Mr Green”, and called himself a man in yesterday’s strip. “Assuming gender” is exactly what using his preferred terms for himself isn’t.
(I suppose you don’t believe water coolers can identify as female, either?)
Tip often has the base assumption of sleeping with people but he never had (presumably absolute, or at least life and death) power over his partners.
Don’t think your supposed to laugh here, tbh
^^This. Just because something is comedic (the Skin Horse comic as a whole), doesn’t mean it has to be funny all the time, and I think it’s good that it isn’t funny all the time. I recall the TV series M*A*S*H, which was billed as a comedy, but there were some episodes where there was very little that one could laugh at. It was based on real life, and in real life there are some things that just aren’t funny.
Not disagreeing with the statement but to note with M*A*S*H* on black comedy – when being more dramatic, those episodes could often be told by Hawkeye’s wisecrack level.
But even being the lecherous smartass and attention whore that he was, Hawkeye knew that there were some times when wisecracks were just uncalled for. I mean, there’s really no humorous or lighthearted way to tell a patient that the reason he can’t give his blood to save his best friend’s life is because he has cancer.
Granted, there are still some one-liners here and there during the whole episode, but when that specific serious storyline was the focus – as the one pictured above is here – there was nothing to laugh at.
Of course by the end they could barely muster a laugh at all. Comes from (1) lasting more than twice as long as the actual Korean War, and (2) really writing about the Vietnam War.
Besides, their treatment of Frank Burns, whatever you might think of Frank Burns, was pretty cruel for s’posedly “enlightened” men…
Actually, they were still writing about the Korean war, but rather than writing humorous fictional stories based in an Army camp in Korea, they were using actual stories from actual people who actually served in Korea. Turns out war isn’t funny after all.
As for Frank Burns, that was why Larry Linville left after the 5th season. For the first 4 seasons, he had Loretta Swit / Margaret to help bear the load of all the abuse that Frank suffered, but when she got engaged at the beginning of season 5, she turned against him as well, and left Frank to take all the abuse alone. Despite its being fiction, and his being an actor, it still had a profound effect on Larry Linville himself.
I’ve heard that two actors on the show were the exact opposite of the characters they portrayed—and Larry Linville was one of them.
Also the show went downhill the moment they killed off Henry Blake. Whatever you might think of the portrayal of war—that’s not funny. And it looked less like “fortunes of war” than vindictiveness against McLean Stevenson leaving the show.
(Yet the thing got more popular after that. I think I watched it steady through Radar’s departure, sporadically after that, but catching the end movie.)
The abrupt change after Col. Blake was killed off was not so much vindictiveness over his departure. On the one hand, the show lost a lot of viewers, and CBS received a lot of hate mail for killing his character. But that episode was also the final episode for Trapper John McIntyre. So they lost two funny characters, and they replaced them with two much more serious characters in Col. Potter and B.J. Hunnicutt. So, whether it was intentional or not, they dramatically changed the overall tone of the show.
Incidentally, Jamie Farr was another actor whose character – at least for the first half of the series – was nothing like himself. He said that he stopped wearing dresses on the show around the 5th season because his kids were getting older, and he didn’t want them growing up with the misconception that he was actually a cross-dresser.
Gary Burghoff was actually quite a lot like his character Radar. Somewhat reserved and unassuming, he really did run a rescue for injured and orphaned animals, and continued to do so for many years long after he left MASH.
Old theater adage from Horace Walpole: “Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”.
That said, there is a difference between dating and the reproduction act so perhaps you should pause your feelings and see how events unfold before reacting. As I stipulated elsewhere this series has always been pretty noir from the getgo. The fact that the noir usually happened to NPCs or offstage never really made that aspect of things any better to me. But it’s still be a pretty good series for all that and I have no doubt that this will still be true when the final curtain falls. Best thing for you to do is to be patient and see where the story goes. ^_^
If it’s any consolation, Mr. Green isn’t winning any points here. All the “punchlines” serve to poke holes in his logic, or build Dr. Lee up while showcasing Green’s arrogance, self-centeredness, inability to relate, etc. To take today’s as an example: Dr. Lee points out, quite rightly, that this conversation is a microcosm of Green’s approach to everyone, and he responds with “But I have another illusion for you! An even swankier one!”
Yes, he seems to be operating on the mistaken and illogical belief that even though he does not know how to win the girl in reality, he thinks that his mind can somehow create an acceptable scenario in a fictional world.
he _is_ evil.
And what of it? You say that like evil is a bad thing! And I suppose if I grant that, you’ll imply that there’s something wrong with badness. And if I grant that, you’ll insinuate that doing wrong is inappropriate. The circumlocutions would never end. Ira just can’t win with you people.
How much feeling on a first date do the two of you have in mind?
Chez Panisse is my favorite restaurant, and even I wouldn’t go with him.
Oh come on!
I absolutely REFUSE to believe that Ginny hasn’t watched The Princess Bride at some point, probably with Nick!
She should ABSOLUTELY know that she can’t trust any promise from Prince Humperdink to not hurt her dear sweet Westley!
Dragons are blind right in front of their noses. Curiously enough, so are most humans.
If Nick is barely living, does that mean he’s a nudist?
Well, we haven’t seen him put on so much as a t-shirt in his current incarnation. From a certain point of view, you might be right.
The thrust of the storyline suggests he wouldn’t need to wear a jockstrap, either.
Urlance: I love the idea of Virginia ending up as a living computer virus (or maaaybe a brain in a jar with really good upload/download speeds) who spends most of her time spread between her “Can’t Catch Me” armor and a fully-equipped suite of surgical waldos.
“Yes, young Lee. Embrace your guilt, your rage. Join us in the Dark Side of the Science.”
Hmm… If I recall correctly, this is all based on Whimsy VR tech. Now, who else would have access to (a copy of) Aimee’s Whimsy VR control crown – and why would they be wanting to feel-out where Ginny’s actual sympathies about non-humans lie?
Because it’s just occurred to me that the person (of two, maybe three possibles) who had that crown could choose to _look_ like Mr. Green in there, but but some of their goofs sound more like an impersonation of Mr. Green from here.
Or of course, I could be reading too much into too little here. That _is_ always possible. 🙂
Whimsy’s VR was abandoned and given to Baron Mistycorn. The only thing that A-Sig got from them was the mind-control software (the Crown).
Ah, it was indeed – thank you. 🙂
(And it’s okay, my predictions are ideally hopelessly wrong – I just enjoy the guessing.)
It _does_ still mean that duplicate(s) of the crown are in play (and as we know that thet crown itself is duplicatable, possibly infinite crowns wielded by many AIs).
At this point, though, I have to agree with the comments above that it’d be more satisfying and equitable to see Ginny escape herself.
(Though the universe thwarting Virginia does seem to be a theme)
[On the theme of self-rescuing, I also remember that in the looking-glass world, Fully-Whirlygig’d Nick was was seen to free himself from that state, withwa sufficiently powerful motivator (irritation and snark in this case, but that’s another aside :)]
And there it is. Mr. Green believes NHS’s are not people.
Ah yes, because Nick has to use AI technology to get in touch with Dr. Lee.
Not like you at all, old man.