Yeah, this was just a little fire and everyone was unconscious for practically the whole thing. If giving Mustachio the Fusion Pie and letting Tigerlilly Jones escape wasn’t enough to break them, why would this happen now?
Chances are, the hive-boss going temporarily dim had something to do with it.
With Gavotte in smart-mode, nobody would be able to consider shutting down Skin Horse (unless Gavotte secretly wanted them to). Without? Well, if you had been very stealthy about it beforehand, you wouldn’t get a better opportunity than this…
I really love the “dead activist” shirts you give Unity. I would wear many of them, were they a thing that could be bought. “We belong dead” sounds like a progrock band name.
I think that the shadow government might soon find out that the agents of Skin Horse usually cause more trouble than they solve if they’re not balancing each other out.
I was going to wait until Project Skin Horse’s secret sinister-ness was brought up again to post this but I guess this is the best chance at relevancy I’ll get. Consider that this comic’s title and the title of our protagonists’ organization refers to a book in which a toy, a human-created life form wishes to become real, or a naturally occurring life form, and in the end does so through the love of a human child. This transformation saves the toy from destruction. I can’t remember when, but didn’t a character once tell Tip to consider the source of Skin Horse’s name as a way of hinting that the organization might have less than noble motives~?~ When you take into account the specific quote from comic’s prologue and how these concepts apply to the world of Skin Horse, a sinister message begins to take shape.
If we take The Velveteen Rabbit as an allegory for Skin Horse’s overall plan it becomes obvious that their approach is not what is best for non-human rights. The message boils down to: the human-created life forms must strive to be as much like naturally occurring life forms as possible to be considered real, but this goal is something they can only achieve through approval from humans. And those who do not achieve “realness” must be destroyed. Let’s take a look at two other children’s stories that are referenced in Skin Horse and how their symbolism compares. I will be discussing The Wizard of Oz for it is the most prominent, and Pinocchio, for that is the origin of the name of Dr. Collodi, the first character to directly warn non-human life forms about the dangers of Skin Horse [This discussion leaves out any symbolism relating specifically to the book version of The Wizard of Oz, as well as the other Oz books, simply because I have not yet read them].
In The Wizard of Oz, the non-human characters: The Scarecrow, The Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion; are all seeking things they believe that they lack and can only receive from the Wizard. In other words, the non-humans are seeking what they need to feel valid from the human government. But, in the end, it is revealed that they always had what they sought, and it needed to be recognized rather than given. In Pinocchio, a non-human character desperately wishes to be “real” and achieves this through his own merit and with help from another non-human character.* Someone associated in this and other ways with empowerment of non-humans warning said non-humans against Skin Horse is very worrying.
The messages of both The Wizard of Oz and Pinoccio seem to apply better and in a less problematic way to the plight of the non-human societies and individuals within the comic than the message of The Velveteen Rabbit.
Now, The employees of Skin Horse, who we know are all just trying to help people, are most heavily associated with the Wizard of Oz, but the deliberate association of the organization for which they work with the Velveteen Rabbit by whoever created/named Project Skin Horse seems to imply that the end goal of that project itself might not be true equality, but rather having the rights and continued existence of non-humans dependent on approval from humans and human society.
*Now that I mention the Blue Fairy, it has occurred to me that while Whimsy Corp. plays the symbolic role of Pinnocio in My House Is Me, her choice of the dead Mender Fairy automaton as her host when she needs to interact with the world on our level might foreshadow a future role for her in helping other non-human people “become real” aka achieve validity in human society. Some of you might say that non-human people have already achieved this under Prop 39, but it has been made apparent that non-human societies, perhaps excepting the Machine Union, are not as advanced or organized as they would need to be for human society to be able to easily accommodate all of the needs of non-humans. At this point Prop 39 probably makes it easier in many ways for the non-humans to be exploited.
The idea that social service agencies exist to create dependency in their client population is actually quasi-orthodoxy within social work / social welfare and education departments, at least in US universities. It’s pretty much how you outline it, with a little extra: Not only do the agencies create a material need for the client to be ‘approved’, they serve the end of satisfying unwholesome motives on the part of the social welfare / teaching professional.
I describe it as ‘quasi-orthodoxy’ because of course most social workers and M.Ed. / Ed.D. students don’t believe it, or they’d never complete their degrees. But I think most people who train them believe that it has the potential to be true. So it serves the purpose of a cautionary idea: Something to half-believe, to keep yourself from letting it be true.
Regarding the quasi-orthodoxy, remember that the first need of any entity is continuation, be it a life form, a business, or a government. Even if the individual agents don’t consciously want to create dependency, the agency itself requires it and will tend to create it through the conscious or subconscious actions of the group.
The first need of any entity isn’t continuation, it’s reproduction. To be evolutionarily successful a memetic entity like a social institution has to be copied. It can do this in a few ways: at a very basic level either by creating need for itself to exist (causing dependency, say) or by being successful (solving the problem and being used as an example). You can find example of both looking at the past for the natural history of the memetic lifeform.
Where this becomes problematic is when a memetic organism is successful because it creates problems for itself to ‘solve’. Terrorism is a good example: it gives disenfranchised people in violent poor places an outlet for their anger, economic benefits, and political power…by making the place violent and disenfranchising anyone associated with it.
So the dominant paradigm holds the key to social acceptability and (in some sense) reality? And, because of their dominance they hold vast resources. And with those resources engage in strange experiments. Those experiments, gaining sapience, may seek to join the status quo. However, it is more noble when a new life form creates a new order. Instead of attempting to conform with society, strives to add new dimensions of complexity to society. That is why the true heroes of the Narboniverse are the mad scientists who create life – which then strives to destroy its creator – metaphorically disrupting the status quo. And (returning to our own world) why the most noble struggle is the struggle against reality (this may be interpreted in many ways, some of them nearly sane).
So, in trying to informedly theorize about the nature of the hidden motives of a fictional organization I’ve sparked an intense philosophical discussion. That’s excellent~!~ 😀
This. This why I come here, why I loved Narbonic and why I gave Skin Horse a chance; Oh sure, I love the comic itself and the characters and story and all…
…but those COMMENTS.
This is what I missed from the Internet lo those last ten years or so. Being able to enter a discussion with people who weren’t trolls, and didn’t automatically assume that I was being a troll. People who could put several words in complex sentences conveying real ideas, inspiring real debate that didn’t eventually devolve into the full Godwin and teabaggers shouting non-sequiturs about “FREEDOM!!”, interspersed with cheep [sic] viagrow [sic] so I can “lay down some loving pipe for my b*tches” [sick].
Sadly, I am stuck typing this on my phone at the moment, otherwise I would have something more to contribute, but I wanted… No, NEEDED to thank y’all for restoring a bit of my faith in humanity.
To fill in one of those Oz gaps, since it is an important plot point both in the books and in reference here: the Tin Woodsman was a human (named Nick the Chopper) who underwent extreme body modification. The fact that this is our wrong-swearing black tilt-rotor’s name (Zerhaker, with one k, is German for chopper) was foreshadowing.
I suppose the speed is an indication of their operation by shadow government. If they were operated by the public-facing government (in the UK at least), there’d be a six week “consultation” followed by a week’s worth of notice for each year of service. Redeployment doesn’t happen automatically – you have to apply for any relevant internal jobs going, and you’re only guaranteed to have your application examined before other internal/external candidates. If you secure a job elsewhere before your date of redundancy, you officially haven’t been made redundant (so the statistics look better).
Yeah, although Sweetheart sounds paranoid, she’s more likely right than Tip. The government responding same-day to an incident like this doesn’t really fit with how everything in Annex One has been depicted as working.
As a polisci guy, when I hear “shadow government” my immediate thought is “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” (i.e., the real-life definition of “shadow government”–the opposition party members who shadow their elected counterparts in the governing party). Which would be quite a promotion for the Skin Horse crew, come to think of it.
Us USians have rather mangled the term. Not surprising, in light of the fact that from a USian perspective, a UK-style ‘shadow government’ would be regarded as heretical in its ideological impurity.
The informal, internal structure of Congress has exactly that. For every position which carries informal power in each house, e.g. majority leader or whip, there is an equivalent position within the minority party.
And who uses USian? I’ve heard a lot of alternate demonyms for Americans, but never that. Were you going for Usonian?
I hear (or rather read) USian quite a lot around the internet, but I mostly hang out with groups with an average age older than mine (knitters who are also Pratchett fans). I’ve also recently seen UKenglish used (presumably one could also have USenglish and maybe Austrenglish!)
Considering the other tenants at Annex One, I’ve always imagined the other departments had just as frequent near-disasters as Skin Horse and we just didn’t hear about them since they weren’t part of the main story line.
Whee! We’ve been demoted!
Tip and Unity and Sweetheart, torn apart!
Nick and Gavotte, too,
And Moustachio!
Splitting us up now,
Seems we’re done at Annex One …
Oo-o-oh … it’s a mess, I guess!
CHORUS:
We’re re-assigned!
Now we’ve got a brand-new slot,
We’re re-assigned!
Diff’rent position,
Lost the Skin Horse mission!
We’re re-assigned!
Gotta go, ’cause this says so,
We’re re-assigned!
Sweetheart’s saying that they set us up,
Who’s behind it all, who could it be?
Is it a conspiracy?
You know I’ve always wondered about that sort of thing. How much of a government has the shadow government actually got?
We’ve seen the Shadow Social Services, and, of course, there’s the Shadow Council and the Shadow Court and the Shadow Military and all that shadow-jazz. But is there a Shadow Post Office? A Shadow Department of Motor Vehicles? A Shadow Bureau of Weights and Measures? A Shadow Census Bureau? A Shadow Smithsonian? Shadow Public Libraries? A Shadow Zoning Board? A Shadow Parent-Teacher Association? Shadow National Parks?
Are there shadow interns? Shadow safety inspectors? Shadow park rangers? Shadow patent clerks?
Is there a shadow graphic design department to come up with all those neat spooky-looking Shadow Government sigils and insignias? Are there shadow janitors to clean the bathrooms in the Shadow Council’s secret lair and shadow cooks to man the cafeteria? Does someone have to do the shadow budget for the shadow office supplies that the Shadow Government clerks use? Are there shadow flight attendants on Shadow Air Force One? Can you get shadow mineral rights to your land, in addition to the regular mineral rights? Are there shadow meteorologists working for the Shadow National Weather Service and shadow astronauts working for Shadow NASA?
Can I go to the super secret, cleverly hidden Shadow Polling Places to vote in the Shadow Election?
In reply to BrokenEye, it seems to me that a lot of agencies would have to exist in Shadow form:
Post office [read Crying of Lot 49, and you’ll see why]
DMV, to handle registration of mysterious vehicles
Census Bureau, to keep a count of unnameable things
Public Libraries? Of course there are shadow public libraries. What a silly question. They’re the places that provide access to all the things man was not meant to know.
Shadow patent office and patent clerks, obviously, or else mad scientists would have no patent protection. Same for copyrights on documents describing things man was not meant to know, and let’s not get started on the trademarks, ranging from Hydra to Narbonic Labs.
Shadow meteorologists? How could you tell the difference. I mean, does anyone really understand how they do things?
Shadow NASA and astronauts? Of course. How else would they be able to maintain the secret moon bases?
As far as some of the other things…they kind of exist now. Do you really think Congress puts the NSA’s office supply budget in a place where the public can read it? Shadow mineral rights are the ones that weren’t supposed to be sold in the first place, not a separate set of minerals.
I’m not sure about shadow park rangers, though…
Shadow park ranger keep an eye out for the indigenous population of cryptids; sasquatches, jersey devils, what have you. Not all the weird things are created by mad scientists, nor do they want to blend in with greater society. Somebody has to police the wilds.
Am I the only one wondering how big the shadow government is? We’ve really only seen two offices so far (this one and the one they got Nick from) but if they’re all reassigned “elsewhere”, each to a different office, surely there must at least be a third office! To say nothing of a fourth… fifth… tenth… twentieth…
Remember, A-Sig is from the private sector, so they don’t count. Still, I imagine that even though they are in the same building, the DoI and the Department of Jetpack Suppression (et al) aren’t Social Services.
If money spent unaccountably is any indication, just consider that the U.S. is somehow spending 10 to 15 percent of funds allotted for entitlement programs on the allotment process itself.
The numbers are staggering.
*poof* Ahahahaha~ As of today, I have gone through the entire archive! Only took a couple of months… I am, of course, madly in love with Skin Horse now. And Artie/Tip/Virginia *cough* ANYWAY. Nothing of import to say, really. Just wanted to announce my achievement.
aaaaaaannnnd she snapped.
No coffee nor lawn is safe!
> All part of their plan!
That’s what they want you to believe… ¬.¬
So that we can keep looking to “they” as the barely-wiggling bees?
…on second thought, maybe Gavotte wanted Skin Horse shut down (can’t think of why, though. Maybe her office wasn’t big enough?
Of course it’s a conspiracy. The last time they did this nothing happened, and they nearly blew up D.C that time!
Yeah, this was just a little fire and everyone was unconscious for practically the whole thing. If giving Mustachio the Fusion Pie and letting Tigerlilly Jones escape wasn’t enough to break them, why would this happen now?
I smell a cat.
Chances are, the hive-boss going temporarily dim had something to do with it.
With Gavotte in smart-mode, nobody would be able to consider shutting down Skin Horse (unless Gavotte secretly wanted them to). Without? Well, if you had been very stealthy about it beforehand, you wouldn’t get a better opportunity than this…
I really love the “dead activist” shirts you give Unity. I would wear many of them, were they a thing that could be bought. “We belong dead” sounds like a progrock band name.
Just in case you (or some others here) are unfamiliar with the classics, it’s from _Bride of Frankenstein_.
I think that the shadow government might soon find out that the agents of Skin Horse usually cause more trouble than they solve if they’re not balancing each other out.
I was going to wait until Project Skin Horse’s secret sinister-ness was brought up again to post this but I guess this is the best chance at relevancy I’ll get. Consider that this comic’s title and the title of our protagonists’ organization refers to a book in which a toy, a human-created life form wishes to become real, or a naturally occurring life form, and in the end does so through the love of a human child. This transformation saves the toy from destruction. I can’t remember when, but didn’t a character once tell Tip to consider the source of Skin Horse’s name as a way of hinting that the organization might have less than noble motives~?~ When you take into account the specific quote from comic’s prologue and how these concepts apply to the world of Skin Horse, a sinister message begins to take shape.
If we take The Velveteen Rabbit as an allegory for Skin Horse’s overall plan it becomes obvious that their approach is not what is best for non-human rights. The message boils down to: the human-created life forms must strive to be as much like naturally occurring life forms as possible to be considered real, but this goal is something they can only achieve through approval from humans. And those who do not achieve “realness” must be destroyed. Let’s take a look at two other children’s stories that are referenced in Skin Horse and how their symbolism compares. I will be discussing The Wizard of Oz for it is the most prominent, and Pinocchio, for that is the origin of the name of Dr. Collodi, the first character to directly warn non-human life forms about the dangers of Skin Horse [This discussion leaves out any symbolism relating specifically to the book version of The Wizard of Oz, as well as the other Oz books, simply because I have not yet read them].
In The Wizard of Oz, the non-human characters: The Scarecrow, The Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion; are all seeking things they believe that they lack and can only receive from the Wizard. In other words, the non-humans are seeking what they need to feel valid from the human government. But, in the end, it is revealed that they always had what they sought, and it needed to be recognized rather than given. In Pinocchio, a non-human character desperately wishes to be “real” and achieves this through his own merit and with help from another non-human character.* Someone associated in this and other ways with empowerment of non-humans warning said non-humans against Skin Horse is very worrying.
The messages of both The Wizard of Oz and Pinoccio seem to apply better and in a less problematic way to the plight of the non-human societies and individuals within the comic than the message of The Velveteen Rabbit.
Now, The employees of Skin Horse, who we know are all just trying to help people, are most heavily associated with the Wizard of Oz, but the deliberate association of the organization for which they work with the Velveteen Rabbit by whoever created/named Project Skin Horse seems to imply that the end goal of that project itself might not be true equality, but rather having the rights and continued existence of non-humans dependent on approval from humans and human society.
*Now that I mention the Blue Fairy, it has occurred to me that while Whimsy Corp. plays the symbolic role of Pinnocio in My House Is Me, her choice of the dead Mender Fairy automaton as her host when she needs to interact with the world on our level might foreshadow a future role for her in helping other non-human people “become real” aka achieve validity in human society. Some of you might say that non-human people have already achieved this under Prop 39, but it has been made apparent that non-human societies, perhaps excepting the Machine Union, are not as advanced or organized as they would need to be for human society to be able to easily accommodate all of the needs of non-humans. At this point Prop 39 probably makes it easier in many ways for the non-humans to be exploited.
The idea that social service agencies exist to create dependency in their client population is actually quasi-orthodoxy within social work / social welfare and education departments, at least in US universities. It’s pretty much how you outline it, with a little extra: Not only do the agencies create a material need for the client to be ‘approved’, they serve the end of satisfying unwholesome motives on the part of the social welfare / teaching professional.
I describe it as ‘quasi-orthodoxy’ because of course most social workers and M.Ed. / Ed.D. students don’t believe it, or they’d never complete their degrees. But I think most people who train them believe that it has the potential to be true. So it serves the purpose of a cautionary idea: Something to half-believe, to keep yourself from letting it be true.
Regarding the quasi-orthodoxy, remember that the first need of any entity is continuation, be it a life form, a business, or a government. Even if the individual agents don’t consciously want to create dependency, the agency itself requires it and will tend to create it through the conscious or subconscious actions of the group.
The first need of any entity isn’t continuation, it’s reproduction. To be evolutionarily successful a memetic entity like a social institution has to be copied. It can do this in a few ways: at a very basic level either by creating need for itself to exist (causing dependency, say) or by being successful (solving the problem and being used as an example). You can find example of both looking at the past for the natural history of the memetic lifeform.
Where this becomes problematic is when a memetic organism is successful because it creates problems for itself to ‘solve’. Terrorism is a good example: it gives disenfranchised people in violent poor places an outlet for their anger, economic benefits, and political power…by making the place violent and disenfranchising anyone associated with it.
So the dominant paradigm holds the key to social acceptability and (in some sense) reality? And, because of their dominance they hold vast resources. And with those resources engage in strange experiments. Those experiments, gaining sapience, may seek to join the status quo. However, it is more noble when a new life form creates a new order. Instead of attempting to conform with society, strives to add new dimensions of complexity to society. That is why the true heroes of the Narboniverse are the mad scientists who create life – which then strives to destroy its creator – metaphorically disrupting the status quo. And (returning to our own world) why the most noble struggle is the struggle against reality (this may be interpreted in many ways, some of them nearly sane).
Sometimes a water cooler is just a water cooler.
So, in trying to informedly theorize about the nature of the hidden motives of a fictional organization I’ve sparked an intense philosophical discussion. That’s excellent~!~ 😀
This. This why I come here, why I loved Narbonic and why I gave Skin Horse a chance; Oh sure, I love the comic itself and the characters and story and all…
…but those COMMENTS.
This is what I missed from the Internet lo those last ten years or so. Being able to enter a discussion with people who weren’t trolls, and didn’t automatically assume that I was being a troll. People who could put several words in complex sentences conveying real ideas, inspiring real debate that didn’t eventually devolve into the full Godwin and teabaggers shouting non-sequiturs about “FREEDOM!!”, interspersed with cheep [sic] viagrow [sic] so I can “lay down some loving pipe for my b*tches” [sick].
Sadly, I am stuck typing this on my phone at the moment, otherwise I would have something more to contribute, but I wanted… No, NEEDED to thank y’all for restoring a bit of my faith in humanity.
I said it before and I’ll say it again: Skin Horse has the best comment section of every web comic ever (Narbonic too, while it was still running).
Holy hell. If I had known that my meta comment was going to be this influencial I would have double-checked the grammar.
To fill in one of those Oz gaps, since it is an important plot point both in the books and in reference here: the Tin Woodsman was a human (named Nick the Chopper) who underwent extreme body modification. The fact that this is our wrong-swearing black tilt-rotor’s name (Zerhaker, with one k, is German for chopper) was foreshadowing.
I suppose the speed is an indication of their operation by shadow government. If they were operated by the public-facing government (in the UK at least), there’d be a six week “consultation” followed by a week’s worth of notice for each year of service. Redeployment doesn’t happen automatically – you have to apply for any relevant internal jobs going, and you’re only guaranteed to have your application examined before other internal/external candidates. If you secure a job elsewhere before your date of redundancy, you officially haven’t been made redundant (so the statistics look better).
I assumed the “speed” meant that the decision had been made and the memo drafted long ago. Perhaps even before Gavotte began her … episode.
In that light, my thinking is that this is Gavotte’s parting “gift” to the team, as a perverse* way of helping them bond.
—
*would Gavotte choose a way that WASN’T perverse?
Yeah, although Sweetheart sounds paranoid, she’s more likely right than Tip. The government responding same-day to an incident like this doesn’t really fit with how everything in Annex One has been depicted as working.
As a polisci guy, when I hear “shadow government” my immediate thought is “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” (i.e., the real-life definition of “shadow government”–the opposition party members who shadow their elected counterparts in the governing party). Which would be quite a promotion for the Skin Horse crew, come to think of it.
Us USians have rather mangled the term. Not surprising, in light of the fact that from a USian perspective, a UK-style ‘shadow government’ would be regarded as heretical in its ideological impurity.
The informal, internal structure of Congress has exactly that. For every position which carries informal power in each house, e.g. majority leader or whip, there is an equivalent position within the minority party.
And who uses USian? I’ve heard a lot of alternate demonyms for Americans, but never that. Were you going for Usonian?
ISTR USian being popular on the Usenet group (remember those?) alt.fan.pratchett. It contrasted with UKian.
I hear (or rather read) USian quite a lot around the internet, but I mostly hang out with groups with an average age older than mine (knitters who are also Pratchett fans). I’ve also recently seen UKenglish used (presumably one could also have USenglish and maybe Austrenglish!)
I know it as a Metafilterism. US-centricity can court fierce and articulate mockery, there.
Considering the other tenants at Annex One, I’ve always imagined the other departments had just as frequent near-disasters as Skin Horse and we just didn’t hear about them since they weren’t part of the main story line.
(TUNE: “The Sign”, Ace of Base)
Whee! We’ve been demoted!
Tip and Unity and Sweetheart, torn apart!
Nick and Gavotte, too,
And Moustachio!
Splitting us up now,
Seems we’re done at Annex One …
Oo-o-oh … it’s a mess, I guess!
CHORUS:
We’re re-assigned!
Now we’ve got a brand-new slot,
We’re re-assigned!
Diff’rent position,
Lost the Skin Horse mission!
We’re re-assigned!
Gotta go, ’cause this says so,
We’re re-assigned!
Sweetheart’s saying that they set us up,
Who’s behind it all, who could it be?
Is it a conspiracy?
Elsewhere in the shadow government, eh?
You know I’ve always wondered about that sort of thing. How much of a government has the shadow government actually got?
We’ve seen the Shadow Social Services, and, of course, there’s the Shadow Council and the Shadow Court and the Shadow Military and all that shadow-jazz. But is there a Shadow Post Office? A Shadow Department of Motor Vehicles? A Shadow Bureau of Weights and Measures? A Shadow Census Bureau? A Shadow Smithsonian? Shadow Public Libraries? A Shadow Zoning Board? A Shadow Parent-Teacher Association? Shadow National Parks?
Are there shadow interns? Shadow safety inspectors? Shadow park rangers? Shadow patent clerks?
Is there a shadow graphic design department to come up with all those neat spooky-looking Shadow Government sigils and insignias? Are there shadow janitors to clean the bathrooms in the Shadow Council’s secret lair and shadow cooks to man the cafeteria? Does someone have to do the shadow budget for the shadow office supplies that the Shadow Government clerks use? Are there shadow flight attendants on Shadow Air Force One? Can you get shadow mineral rights to your land, in addition to the regular mineral rights? Are there shadow meteorologists working for the Shadow National Weather Service and shadow astronauts working for Shadow NASA?
Can I go to the super secret, cleverly hidden Shadow Polling Places to vote in the Shadow Election?
The people have a shadow right to know!
@Brokeyeye – you are right… beyond a shadow of doubt!
In reply to BrokenEye, it seems to me that a lot of agencies would have to exist in Shadow form:
Post office [read Crying of Lot 49, and you’ll see why]
DMV, to handle registration of mysterious vehicles
Census Bureau, to keep a count of unnameable things
Public Libraries? Of course there are shadow public libraries. What a silly question. They’re the places that provide access to all the things man was not meant to know.
Shadow patent office and patent clerks, obviously, or else mad scientists would have no patent protection. Same for copyrights on documents describing things man was not meant to know, and let’s not get started on the trademarks, ranging from Hydra to Narbonic Labs.
Shadow meteorologists? How could you tell the difference. I mean, does anyone really understand how they do things?
Shadow NASA and astronauts? Of course. How else would they be able to maintain the secret moon bases?
As far as some of the other things…they kind of exist now. Do you really think Congress puts the NSA’s office supply budget in a place where the public can read it? Shadow mineral rights are the ones that weren’t supposed to be sold in the first place, not a separate set of minerals.
I’m not sure about shadow park rangers, though…
Shadow park ranger keep an eye out for the indigenous population of cryptids; sasquatches, jersey devils, what have you. Not all the weird things are created by mad scientists, nor do they want to blend in with greater society. Somebody has to police the wilds.
Am I the only one wondering how big the shadow government is? We’ve really only seen two offices so far (this one and the one they got Nick from) but if they’re all reassigned “elsewhere”, each to a different office, surely there must at least be a third office! To say nothing of a fourth… fifth… tenth… twentieth…
Dammit. Didn’t see BrokenEye’s post
Remember, A-Sig is from the private sector, so they don’t count. Still, I imagine that even though they are in the same building, the DoI and the Department of Jetpack Suppression (et al) aren’t Social Services.
If money spent unaccountably is any indication, just consider that the U.S. is somehow spending 10 to 15 percent of funds allotted for entitlement programs on the allotment process itself.
The numbers are staggering.
Maybe it’s time to check out something in the shadow private sector.
You mean ASig?
The shadow government is involved in conspiracies? Surely not!
Funny how they seem to be ignorant of the part Chris played in this.
(Marcie was just doing her job, after all, so I’ll leave her out of this)
*poof* Ahahahaha~ As of today, I have gone through the entire archive! Only took a couple of months… I am, of course, madly in love with Skin Horse now. And Artie/Tip/Virginia *cough* ANYWAY. Nothing of import to say, really. Just wanted to announce my achievement.
Ha! Gavotte totally saw it was coming! She promised to give everybody more money, knowing she wouldn’t have to follow through with it.
I want to argue, but I cannot find a valid argument.