Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2022-05-20
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2022-05-20

by shaenon on May 20, 2022 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Phantomwise
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Discussion (38) ¬

  1. Robert Nowall
    May 20, 2022, 12:03 am | # | Reply

    If anybody on board is allergic to bee stings, the cobras have anti-allergy medicine in their venom.

    • alanoodle
      May 20, 2022, 8:26 am | # | Reply

      Life saving hugs! (May cause drowsiness. Use caution when operating machinery or driving a motor vehicle.)

      • Shadowmehr
        May 20, 2022, 1:04 pm | # | Reply

        I don’t care if you’re in a car or not, if you’re covered in cobras biting you to prevent anaphylactic shock, you will not be operating a motor vehicle.

        • awgiedawgie
          May 20, 2022, 6:20 pm | # | Reply

          You might be saved from anaphylaxis, but you’ll be suffering from a completely different kind of shock.

          • Duane B.
            May 20, 2022, 9:46 pm | #

            Finding the right dosage could be tricky.

          • awgiedawgie
            May 20, 2022, 10:43 pm | #

            I was thinking of the shock of “AAAAAAH I’M BEING BITTEN BY COBRAS!” and I don’t think there is a right dosage for that.

  2. D. Walker
    May 20, 2022, 12:05 am | # | Reply

    EpiVen™

    • Candace
      May 21, 2022, 12:40 am | # | Reply

      Hats off!

  3. Frank Hightower
    May 20, 2022, 12:12 am | # | Reply

    “why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
    “But if they’re smaller, it’s easy to win!”
    “Er, not exactly”

  4. Moe Lane
    May 20, 2022, 12:13 am | # | Reply

    “Try a threat that works. You die a little every time you land a punch.”

    • Duane B.
      May 20, 2022, 12:24 am | # | Reply

      And, smoke can calm bees down, even more if it’s one of those funny cigarettes.

    • Daibhid C
      May 20, 2022, 4:38 am | # | Reply

      Dies a little. The individual bees aren’t her, any more than a person worries about their component cells. Like that bit in Godel, Escher, Bach with Aunt Hilary the anthill.

      • jdreyfuss
        May 20, 2022, 8:16 am | # | Reply

        If the hive is a hive mind with a collective intelligence, then it’s more like each bee is an individual brain cell, which are a little harder to replace for us than other individual cells. On the other hand, since beehives are constantly replenishing then maybe she can afford to lose a few workers or soldiers as long as she doesn’t lose her queen or isn’t interregnum for too long.

        • Frank Hightower
          May 20, 2022, 10:05 am | # | Reply

          well we did see Gavotte, to quote Sweetheart, “sex herself stupid”

      • D. Walker
        May 20, 2022, 9:57 am | # | Reply

        The difference is that a person has somewhere around 37.2 trillion cells, and can afford to lose quite a few cells with every punch.

        Meanwhile, bee colonies are usually between 20,000 and 80,000 individuals – with a “swarm” usually being only 50% of a colony at most. So even a “large swarm” of bees should only be around 40,000 individuals – meaning every 400 bees that die is 1% of the total.

        The average person can safely tolerate 10 bee stings per pound of their body mass, meaning the average adult can safely suffer over 1000 bee stings. That’s 2.5% of the swarm dead just to make someone HURT LIKE HELL, but not actually get them into dangerous territory.

        And that doesn’t at all account for the number of bees that would be crushed by the flailing and swatting and whatnot before they ever get a chance to sting.

        It also doesn’t account for things like Sweetheart or Leo having a protective coat of fur that makes stinging her difficult, UNITY and the Kill-Bots just flat out not caring about being stung, and Tigerlily’s brilliantly sequined outfit and fur cloak acting as a pretty decent form of armoring against bee stings.

        It ALSO doesn’t account for the fact that the Kill-Bots have flamethrowers, which will make VERY short work of any swarm of flying insects.

        • Xerxes Aragon
          May 20, 2022, 10:16 am | # | Reply

          Give Tigerlily a moment and she’ll come up with her own spring-powered flamethrower.

    • awgiedawgie
      May 20, 2022, 9:02 am | # | Reply

      Only honey bees die after they sting. Pavane could belong to any of a number of stinging bee species that can sting as much as they want to.

      • D. Walker
        May 20, 2022, 10:03 am | # | Reply

        No she couldn’t. She’s the “child” of Gavotte, who it has firmly been established is honey bees, as early as the second chapter of the comic.

        • awgiedawgie
          May 20, 2022, 8:14 pm | # | Reply

          Touché. After what may be the fastest I’ve ever read through the archive – twice – I finally found the reference that started rolling around in the back of my head after reading your comment. But it wasn’t back in the second chapter. It was only a few years ago, when Virginia was talking to Gavotte in the Extirpation VR, and Gavotte says “our honey”.

          I did find one mention of honey back in the second chapter, when Gavotte told Tip the toffee on her desk was made with real honey, but that’s hardly confirmation of her species. At the time, I took that as Gavotte trying to make Tip uncomfortable (and succeeding, I might add).

  5. Alphaghoul
    May 20, 2022, 12:39 am | # | Reply

    I’m not sure if I said this already but I have this theory; you know how in fiction you’ll see stuff like sapient brood parasites who do their thing to other intelligent species, or super advanced godlike aliens who “reproduce” by uplifting a less advanced race to their level, or instances of one intelligent race supposedly evolved to feed off of another? Well maybe the bees thing is that they feed off of the offspring of other sentients except it’s exclusively sentients that were produced artificially through science instead of conventionally through their evolved reproductive means, and Tigerlily was brought along to provide them with more. Either that or the alien thing is a lie and Gavotte just plans on holding them on the ship for generations convincing them that they’re still heading for Lovetron. The latter seems more likely.

    • Regret
      May 20, 2022, 1:30 am | # | Reply

      I’m voting for some kind of hypnosis or a gas that makes people more suggestible or something. Either there is no ship and this is all VR, or there is a ship and it is flying into the sun.

      • Alphaghoul
        May 20, 2022, 4:32 am | # | Reply

        So then how do you explain what’s happening in the other story?

        • Nix
          May 20, 2022, 6:07 am | # | Reply

          Easy: they’re both in VR, or they’re both breathing the gas. (But I think that if either was true, we’d have had more hints than the none I’ve spotted. Shaenon plays fair with the reader.)

          (Or it’s *really awesome* gas that affects even those who didn’t breathe it, or it’s fallout from the whole normality thing or oh dammit there are so many possibilities in this huge shaggy Sweetheart of a story that I can’t even enumerate them 🙂 )

  6. BMunro
    May 20, 2022, 12:48 am | # | Reply

    And robots and zombies will care why?

    • Duane B.
      May 20, 2022, 1:01 am | # | Reply

      Would they become zombie bees …zombees?

    • JoB
      May 20, 2022, 2:50 am | # | Reply

      “So, the ship’s controls are fifty yards down this bee-sized corridor?”

      • Candace
        May 21, 2022, 1:10 am | # | Reply

        Meh, Unity could send one of her hands down there. She could probably attach an eye to it, too.

    • jdreyfuss
      May 20, 2022, 8:18 am | # | Reply

      Unity’s parts are still vulnerable or she wouldn’t have to replace them occasionally. The killbots would need to worry about gunking up their servos, but that would take a lot of bees and I don’t think Pavane is willing to risk that kind of attrition.

      • D. Walker
        May 20, 2022, 10:05 am | # | Reply

        Her parts need replaced because they rot away or get destroyed. Bee venom isn’t going to affect them in any meaningful way. She doesn’t have blood or a metabolism.

  7. skullthetroll
    May 20, 2022, 9:53 am | # | Reply

    Whelp guess its time to destroy up to the command deck and destroy some controls.

  8. bergerjacques
    May 20, 2022, 10:20 am | # | Reply

    Before Pavane can move any closer, Sweetheart immediately whips out the Whimsey/Marble cease and desist order for infringement on the character SMARM(tm).
    A placid, even petulant young adult bee swarm entity is fine. But act in an aggressive manner and we’ll whip a purple cape around you and you’ll answer to Whimsey’s lawyers. And escaping to Lovetron will not escape their summoning.”

    • Shadowmehr
      May 20, 2022, 1:08 pm | # | Reply

      Frighteningly plausible.

      • awgiedawgie
        May 20, 2022, 8:23 pm | # | Reply

        And plausibly frightening.

  9. Robert Nowall
    May 20, 2022, 11:42 am | # | Reply

    This ship, you cannot just seize it. It’s not that they lack expertise, it. One swarm runs the ship, with a much firmer grip, but the hive mind is now angry bees-it.

  10. Bernerlb
    May 20, 2022, 4:07 pm | # | Reply

    Maybe it’s a good thing that Tip didn’t make it onto the saucer…

    • Candace
      May 21, 2022, 1:12 am | # | Reply

      Indeed. Gavotte wouldn’t have stung Tip, because she liked him. Pavane obviously has no such compunction.

  11. HittyfanUncleLeslie
    May 21, 2022, 7:40 am | # | Reply

    :Got to say, it’s getting better, it’s getting better all the time’…..

    • Robert Nowall
      May 21, 2022, 12:10 pm | # | Reply

      Can’t get no worse.

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