Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2013-01-08
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2013-01-08

by shaenon on January 8, 2013 at 12:00 am
Chapter: Railway Children
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Discussion (31) ¬

  1. Manifesta
    January 8, 2013, 12:19 am | # | Reply

    And with a perfectly executed smack-down, Ginny earns her black belt in verbal aikido.

  2. Cgreylore
    January 8, 2013, 12:26 am | # | Reply

    Miss Violet Bee: Hyper Technological Remote Sensing Drone?- $12.5 Million
    Cell Phone: $199.99
    Look on Violet’s Face when Dr. Lee smacks her arguement down?: PRICELESS!

    • Claire
      January 8, 2013, 8:53 am | # | Reply

      To be fair, Nick may well have cost a lot more than Violet.

      • Tetra Valent
        January 8, 2013, 3:28 pm | # | Reply

        $55 Billion was the amount quoted. An organization that can spend $9600 for an Allen wrench is not going to build Violet for a mere $12.5 Million, but I agree that her price tag didn’t come close to Nick’s.

        • Treesong
          January 8, 2013, 4:39 pm | # | Reply

          That’s irrelevant, isn’t it? The trick works with any cheapo human being far from GODOT who has a cellphone. Unless GODOT can also mess with hearing, and I don’t believe he’s ever done that. On the contrary, he’s always communicated visually.

          • Frank
            January 9, 2013, 10:50 am | #

            Yes. Yes he has. Remember when he “spoke” to Unity by masking the tour guide narration?

        • DanD
          January 8, 2013, 5:24 pm | # | Reply

          I don’t know about that. Nick is off the shelf technology, at least the Osprey body. Violet is all custom.

  3. Andrew
    January 8, 2013, 12:57 am | # | Reply

    Is that an actual app, Fruit Ninjas? And why am I reminded of Burger Time?

    • Chloe
      January 8, 2013, 12:59 am | # | Reply

      Yeap! I have it on my nokia and my ipod.. 🙂

    • abb3w
      January 8, 2013, 5:18 am | # | Reply

      One of the bestselling games in the iPhone App store.

    • Frank
      January 9, 2013, 11:01 am | # | Reply

      Variations exist for other touch-screen-type devices (I remember playing one on a borrowed NDS) but the iPhone one is the most successful

  4. Robert The Addled
    January 8, 2013, 1:50 am | # | Reply

    I’m just glad Nick is back in the game. I wonder if she has the same “see the invisible demon using the cell camera” thing they use on Supernatural….

    • Shadowmehr
      January 8, 2013, 3:41 pm | # | Reply

      Supernatural? Ha, this is a realm of Science! I scoff at your supernatural explanations for obviously (mad) scientifically obvious phenomena.

      Don’t let this crowd get near that show. If it doesn’t give them ideas for future experiments, it would be like taking a physicist to a Star Wars marathon and asking them to point out the the errors.

  5. Eddurd
    January 8, 2013, 3:10 am | # | Reply

    (TUNE: “Yes, We Have No Bananas”, Frank Silver and Irving Cohn)

    Watch! I’m playing “Fruit Ninja”
    While saving St. Charlie tonight!
    While the fruit I’m dissecting,
    Zerhakker’s detecting
    Illusions that fool our sight!

    Fear is lessened somewhat
    When you’re slicing a kumquat …
    So watch! I’m playing “Fruit Ninja”
    While saving St. Charlie,
    (How clever you are, Lee!)
    While saving St. Charlie tonight!

  6. WAKnight
    January 8, 2013, 6:06 am | # | Reply

    Is it just me, or do Violet’s mannerisms seem more decidedly military (and perhaps male) of late?

    • Unnatural20
      January 8, 2013, 6:57 am | # | Reply

      Well it’s not just you. She’s not trying to flirt with Tip, which was a big part of her femininity, I think.

      • JET73L
        February 21, 2015, 7:14 am | # | Reply

        Pretty sure she’s currently got a different operator than in previous missions, unless the operator suddenly became bored with roleplaying “14-year-old perky anime girl who can kill you with one finger and won’t hesitate to threaten you with it”.

  7. Moe Lane
    January 8, 2013, 7:44 am | # | Reply

    Those things can have an incredibly distorting effect on tabletop roleplaying games, too.

  8. Kd7sov
    January 8, 2013, 8:48 am | # | Reply

    Hmmm.

    We don’t know about Violet’s, but Nick’s brain is definitely still biological. Is he out of GODOT’s range? Or does whatever conduit GODOT uses require some other body part? Because as the situation has been explained, it looks like using Nick could backfire on them.

    • jdreyfuss
      January 8, 2013, 9:15 am | # | Reply

      Nick’s brain is biological, but his inputs are all mechanical. Plus, if you factor in the remote viewing through the cell camera, he’d be operating on the same basic parameters as Violet.

      My guess is it’s similar to a video camera picking up scan lines on a recording of a TV. Your brain automatically matches your eyes to the frame rate of the TV to block out what it sees as an unimportant underlying pattern. However, even if they’re operating on the same frame rate and wavelength, a video camera cannot automatically do that the way your brain can, so the scan lines become visible on the recording. I think GODOT is exploiting animals’ naturally evolved perception bias and Violet (and likely Nick), who’s not directly experiencing the deception, can see through it.

      • Dewy
        January 8, 2013, 10:08 am | # | Reply

        Agreed. There are a TON of little tricks the brain has evolved to filter what you see for humans to survive. Also, it fills in a lot of information for you, that you don’t actually see. Magicians have learned to trick you from the end source. GODOT seems to bypass that and go straight to your brain.

        So, as long as GODOT can’t get to Nick’s brain, it should work…if this theory is correct. We ARE dealing with Mads here.

    • Frank
      January 9, 2013, 11:11 am | # | Reply

      Remember St. Charlie is on rails and moving fast. Nick is parked somewhere in Boston.

  9. Dewy
    January 8, 2013, 10:11 am | # | Reply

    Oh, and whoever is controlling Violet doesn’t seem to be from one of the younger generations. My parents would say something like what she did in the last panel.

    • Rex Vivat
      January 8, 2013, 7:43 pm | # | Reply

      Violet’s language tends to be that of a middle aged person, at least in this storyline (and, if my suspicions are correct, in the Cast page)

      • Manifesta
        January 8, 2013, 8:07 pm | # | Reply

        I still think Mr. Green is the man behind the curtain to whom we are supposed to pay no attention.

      • davidbreslin
        January 9, 2013, 8:29 am | # | Reply

        [re-reads cast page] …oh! That’d certainly make sense of the tone of Artie’s file, and the bit about Dr Lee being “useful to have around.” And the lack of a Violet Bee file too. Clever!

  10. matt w
    January 9, 2013, 5:24 am | # | Reply

    But how much use is Nick going to be when they can’t hear half of the sock-darning things he says anyway?

  11. BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
    January 23, 2014, 3:27 pm | # | Reply

    Don’t feel bad, Violet. You’re not alone. People in fiction are always forgetting about those things. Otherwise you’d never pull off a good closed-circle plot nowadays.

  12. Ddurand
    June 16, 2016, 11:20 am | # | Reply

    Mmh… Sorry but :

    I know that, as most wecomics artists you are pretty rich AND think you are poor rebellious totally non-PC and Co, but using a 200$ “cheese-watcher” phone as the low thing in a “priceless joke” is, well, a suprinzing choice.

    And honestly, you really think too high of the capabilities of these stuff. You don’t want the autonomous drone ? Well, I takin’ it over every phone “with app” on the planet. Send it to me, please.

    Yes, I know it’s a PC webcomic about crazyness, but sometimes, you know, “suspension of disbelief” and all that…

    • Shaenon
      June 16, 2016, 1:29 pm | # | Reply

      You are a funny little man.

    • Jon
      December 23, 2019, 7:35 am | # | Reply

      So was there a point to this crap?

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