I think Gavotte is trying to get Sweetheart to the point where the specific orders she gives don’t matter, because the others will end up getting her the result she wants regardless. The first responsibility of any good personnel manager is to train her replacement after all.
Alright, I want you all to think for a moment. Imagine explaining just the first two strips of this week to somebody who hasn’t heard of the comic.
“So there’s a precog and a computer hacker – his girlfriend – sitting on a bench, when suddenly, a silver dragon with a group of Sasquatches on its back lands next to them. The head Sasquatch says he comes in peace, and reveals the fact that Sasquatches invented the internet and run a branch of the military.”
That’s when you step back and realise what a weird comic this is. How did we all start reading this? I mean, the authors didn’t exactly ease us into this level of crazy: the very first strip is a cross-dressing psychologist staring down a lion. I tried showing this comic to my friends, and they quit at the Killotrons in the first storyline.
I can only assume that we readers have a rather good weirdness tolerance, or something of the sort. Any ideas?
How did Werner Herzog start making a film where he had a 320-ton steamship hauled over a mountain using primitive tools?
Because he didn’t have the imagination to make the steamship a sarcastic cyborg, the rubber baron an OCD dog, the madam a crossdresser, and the tribe a patchwork person, that’s how.
For a lot of us, the weirdness began with an IT graduate being recruited by an evil lab, and slowly escalated from there. I think those readers were habituated to weird *long* before Skin Horse started.
I’ve given up even trying to explain SH strips to my flatmate (not the weirdness, but just too much explaining), and just show them the funniest ones without context. One of the reasons I got the print version of Narbonic is in hopes of eventually enticing them into reading both comics. It’ll lose something without the Little Dave pages, though.
I came to SkinHorse because I was pointed to Narbonic, but the link didn’t go to the strip they were talking about. Instead it went to “Narbonic will be coming to an end this month”
Me too: Skin Horse led me to Narbonic, though I’d heard about the latter much earlier. (Christopher Baldwin — Spacetrawler et al. — might have led me to Skin Horse.)
Oddly (a word that pretty much describes me), I started with Li’l Mell, then moved on to Narbonic and further on to Skin Horse. Of course, I already existed in the mindset of “why not?” so there was no real transition needed for acceptance of these plots. I live in constant hope that reality is weirder than I’ll ever know…
I actually read Skin Horse first. But back then, Skin Horse was on their way to Groom Lake to investigate a rogue AI, so the weirdness level was still pretty low, and it didn’t take long to read the whole thing.
Then I read Narbonic. It didn’t really seem all that weird either.
Of course, I grew up watching Doctor Who in the 1970s, so my weirdness benchmark is set pretty high.
I also grew up watching Doctor Who, but in the eighties. Then I spent the nineties reading the novels.
After the one where the villain is a pink alien poodle who wants to stop a thinly-disguised George Lucas making a film based on a thinly-disguised Lord of the Rings (Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Paul Magrs), I’m not sure I still have a weirdness benchmark. Certainly I didn’t have one that was troubled by reading Narbonic.
(Like most webcomics I read, I discovered it through a link from Arthur, King of Time and Space. My weirdness benchmark was also untroubled by “King Arthur, only sometimes he’s a 21st century high school student and sometimes he’s Captain Kirk. When he’s Kirk, Merlin is the Doctor.”)
Since we’re all reminiscing about how we started reading Shaenon’s (and Jeff’s) works, I started reading Nabonic just as Artie came into the picture, well before he was altered to become Beta’s dream hunk. Back then I was limited in time and had to limit myself to four webcomics (Girl Genius and xkcd, plus Userfriendly (now defunct)), and working with lawyers made it easy to accept lawful good grammar Nazis and wannabe dweeb world conquerors could exist in the same universe.
Interestingly, the first work of Shaenon’s that I read was Trunktown, published on Serializer.net starting in 2002. Because I was subscribing to that site, I was led to Girlamatic.com when it launched in 2003, and that site featured L’il Mell. Later in 2003 I discovered Narbonic when I was given the first book as a birthday gift.
And the only reason that I signed up for Serializer was that Matt Feazell was going to be doing Cynicalman comics there. I’ve been reading Feazell’s stuff since 1990.
I came to Skin Horse from Narbonic, but I came to Narbonic from Trudy Cooper’s (sadly now defunct) comic Platinum Grit, which at times is even weirder than both.
Yeah. After seeing Terry Pratchett’s Dog Latin version, I decided that a real translation would make for a great line. It’s also my sig on sites that use them.
There is an underappreciated humor book called History Made Stvpid (sic, the front page was designed to look like it was chiseled in stone) which in its introduction said that history and communication has enabled mankind to live as a family – in continuous, squabbling enmity. This appears to be the ideal that Skin Horse is striving for, based on the archive (history) and the conversation above (communication).
C’mon, I’m sure Gavotte, at least, doesn’t obey you, Sweetheart. And I doubt many of the others do, either.
I think Gavotte is trying to get Sweetheart to the point where the specific orders she gives don’t matter, because the others will end up getting her the result she wants regardless. The first responsibility of any good personnel manager is to train her replacement after all.
Alright, I want you all to think for a moment. Imagine explaining just the first two strips of this week to somebody who hasn’t heard of the comic.
“So there’s a precog and a computer hacker – his girlfriend – sitting on a bench, when suddenly, a silver dragon with a group of Sasquatches on its back lands next to them. The head Sasquatch says he comes in peace, and reveals the fact that Sasquatches invented the internet and run a branch of the military.”
That’s when you step back and realise what a weird comic this is. How did we all start reading this? I mean, the authors didn’t exactly ease us into this level of crazy: the very first strip is a cross-dressing psychologist staring down a lion. I tried showing this comic to my friends, and they quit at the Killotrons in the first storyline.
I can only assume that we readers have a rather good weirdness tolerance, or something of the sort. Any ideas?
Reality Blindness…we’ve become incapable of realizing that it doesn’t make sense.
How did we start WRITING this?
Indeed. Thank you, Shaenon and Jeff, for sharing your madness with us.
How did Werner Herzog start making a film where he had a 320-ton steamship hauled over a mountain using primitive tools?
Because he didn’t have the imagination to make the steamship a sarcastic cyborg, the rubber baron an OCD dog, the madam a crossdresser, and the tribe a patchwork person, that’s how.
For a lot of us, the weirdness began with an IT graduate being recruited by an evil lab, and slowly escalated from there. I think those readers were habituated to weird *long* before Skin Horse started.
I’ve given up even trying to explain SH strips to my flatmate (not the weirdness, but just too much explaining), and just show them the funniest ones without context. One of the reasons I got the print version of Narbonic is in hopes of eventually enticing them into reading both comics. It’ll lose something without the Little Dave pages, though.
I actually only started reading Narbonic when I was halfway through Skin Horse.
I came to SkinHorse because I was pointed to Narbonic, but the link didn’t go to the strip they were talking about. Instead it went to “Narbonic will be coming to an end this month”
Started reading it when it turned up on GoComics….it was a while before I wandered over here…
Me too: Skin Horse led me to Narbonic, though I’d heard about the latter much earlier. (Christopher Baldwin — Spacetrawler et al. — might have led me to Skin Horse.)
Oddly (a word that pretty much describes me), I started with Li’l Mell, then moved on to Narbonic and further on to Skin Horse. Of course, I already existed in the mindset of “why not?” so there was no real transition needed for acceptance of these plots. I live in constant hope that reality is weirder than I’ll ever know…
Most of us already read Narbonic, which primed us for ever-increasing weirdness.
The first strip of Narbonic is Dave’s graduation—comparatively normal.
BINGO. A lot of us are carry-overs from Narboic.
I haven’t read Narbonic yet.
I actually read Skin Horse first. But back then, Skin Horse was on their way to Groom Lake to investigate a rogue AI, so the weirdness level was still pretty low, and it didn’t take long to read the whole thing.
Then I read Narbonic. It didn’t really seem all that weird either.
Of course, I grew up watching Doctor Who in the 1970s, so my weirdness benchmark is set pretty high.
I also grew up watching Doctor Who, but in the eighties. Then I spent the nineties reading the novels.
After the one where the villain is a pink alien poodle who wants to stop a thinly-disguised George Lucas making a film based on a thinly-disguised Lord of the Rings (Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Paul Magrs), I’m not sure I still have a weirdness benchmark. Certainly I didn’t have one that was troubled by reading Narbonic.
(Like most webcomics I read, I discovered it through a link from Arthur, King of Time and Space. My weirdness benchmark was also untroubled by “King Arthur, only sometimes he’s a 21st century high school student and sometimes he’s Captain Kirk. When he’s Kirk, Merlin is the Doctor.”)
Probably finished reading Narbonic and saw this was was the same author and decided to read this one too!
Been a veery long time and I can’t really remember to be honest…
The first strip is almost necessary. It’s like a big warning sign saying “This is as mild as it gets. If you can’t handle this, turn back now.”
Then a severed zombie head complains about this, and is immediately reprimanded for sleeping in the transvestite’s hat boxes
Since we’re all reminiscing about how we started reading Shaenon’s (and Jeff’s) works, I started reading Nabonic just as Artie came into the picture, well before he was altered to become Beta’s dream hunk. Back then I was limited in time and had to limit myself to four webcomics (Girl Genius and xkcd, plus Userfriendly (now defunct)), and working with lawyers made it easy to accept lawful good grammar Nazis and wannabe dweeb world conquerors could exist in the same universe.
Interestingly, the first work of Shaenon’s that I read was Trunktown, published on Serializer.net starting in 2002. Because I was subscribing to that site, I was led to Girlamatic.com when it launched in 2003, and that site featured L’il Mell. Later in 2003 I discovered Narbonic when I was given the first book as a birthday gift.
And the only reason that I signed up for Serializer was that Matt Feazell was going to be doing Cynicalman comics there. I’ve been reading Feazell’s stuff since 1990.
I came to Skin Horse from Narbonic, but I came to Narbonic from Trudy Cooper’s (sadly now defunct) comic Platinum Grit, which at times is even weirder than both.
I was born crazy and weird. I live and breathe crazy and weird. You will find it is really easy to get to read webcomics like this one.
We few, we weird but happy few.
We’re all mad here…
We must be, or else we wouldn’t have come here.
Were I to get a tattoo, it would either be that exchange from Alice in Wonderland or “Ave! Magister novum; idem magister priorem.”
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”, is it?
Yeah. After seeing Terry Pratchett’s Dog Latin version, I decided that a real translation would make for a great line. It’s also my sig on sites that use them.
How about “We the Mad are the truly sane.”
“It’s weird not to be weird” – John Lennon.
That must be it.
Hmmm, that didn’t work right. This was supposed to be a reply to Dave from Indy.
But such a fine madness!
And we have such a wonderful universe in which to exploit it.
There is an underappreciated humor book called History Made Stvpid (sic, the front page was designed to look like it was chiseled in stone) which in its introduction said that history and communication has enabled mankind to live as a family – in continuous, squabbling enmity. This appears to be the ideal that Skin Horse is striving for, based on the archive (history) and the conversation above (communication).