She said they’re lucky there were only four of them, not that she couldn’t manage more if necessary. We’re probably supposed to laugh it off as a joke, but some topics are never funny. “Ironically” “joking” about not delivering fan service happens to look exactly like actually not delivering fan service.
WAIT FRICK. What if this is just the same as the main cast right now?
Like,
UNITY: Childlike optimism and energy
Sweetheart: Can keep organized
… okay it kinda gets vague-er there, but like arguably Tip has a pretty good sense of the way broad trends can go? And he’s definitely lacking in motivation now, iirc…
(Also — Shannon, feel free to delete this if you think it’s spammy — I’ve made a chat room for Skin Horse discussion, as, like, a place where larger-scale looking-for-patterns conversations won’t hit speedbumps every day as a new comic (and so new discussion page) creates a break. If people are interested, it’s here: https://riot.im/app/#/group/+skin_horse-fandom:matrix.org )
Yes, only four . . . How can she possibly hope to accomplish anything without Mayor Queen?
I see that Delphi has left her parlor after all. I guess it’s a good thing I never composed the speculative notion that Delphi couldn’t leave, and Mayor Queen was a partial gestalt formed by Delphi and whichever of the others who came to visit her.
I also note that Virginia created little puppet eye-covers without expressing any curiosity over the fact that none of the women ever removed theirs, even in dark indoor rooms.
Actually, it got noted in the next week’s Narbonic strips that it was specific to Dave only. Shaenon said “no other characters’ glasses follow this rule. Dave is the only one with meaningful glasses.”
I don’t recall any mention later that referenced whether they have any meaning in Skin Horse.
I’m wondering if the four of them make up Mayor Queen. ie, once she gets through to them and they recombine into the gestalt, Mayor Queen comes into existence.
And now I am left wondering what Melanie’s voice sounds like, and what it will sound like with Virginia trying to imitate it. Well, I know what I’ll be dreaming about tonight.
Move my hand, and they’ll talk to you, they’re my puppets.
I’ll move their arms if you need me to, they’re my puppets.
I’m here to make you all whole,
People you need full control of the puppets.
I’ve got arms and feet, and I’ll bend my hips, they’re my puppets.
You’re the ringers on these comic strips, they’re my puppets.
Listen, I’ll take a risk, with my foot and my hand.
All I’ve gotta do is trigger the right command.
They’re my puppets, they’re my puppets.
It was a ploy, just a dating ploy,
That stuck me here sad and blue.
I’ve been stranded here, but lo and behold!
I found something to do.
They’re my puppets, they’re my puppets.
Learn that you’re just bees, and then come along, they’re my puppets.
Voice might sound right or voice might sound wrong, they’re my puppets.
Got the idea from a cross-dressing shrink.
He worked with puppets and it worked, I think, they’re my puppets.
People, people, you have wings, there’s no strings, come along, anyway,
They’re my puppets, people, there’s no strings, we’ll right wrong.
I’m still hoping the reintegration will have something to do with dancing, because of bee dances and because of the names Gavotte and Pavane.
Writing that made me wonder in turn – could the fragmenting be part of splitting into a second sentient swarm? Is Gavotte about to have another daughter? Maybe this is too far-fetched.
Another possibility to Mayor Queen being a missing component, or a partial or full combination of the four we’ve met, is that she’s a ringer; a fake; a puppet for Mr. Green/Anasigma. After all, she seems to be mostly absent, and her mayoral decrees, when I think about them, seem to be overtly whimsical, but more subtly about keeping the four in stasis or preoccupied with tasks meant to distract them/keep them in conflict. So all transportation is suspended, and Melanie, who seems to be the only one with a real drive to leave, is given the task of earning skee-ball tickets for a bus that is non-running, and quite probably nonexistent. If Melanie gets distracted from skee-ball long enough to try something different, Mrs Apis breaks her efforts. The mayoral residence of City Hall is ridiculously difficult to reach, and seems to be empty at the point when Beatrix and Virginia make it up there.
I’ve speculated elsewhere that the Very Bad Day was engineered by Anasigma/Mr Green, manipulating Gavotte with pheromones to induce the mating swarm, and sending fake e-mails to the staff to get them to conflict.
But if Mr. Green used pheromones to do induce the swarm, maybe he’s continuing to use pheromones (and physical barriers) to keep the swarm separated and and controlled.
Something that I thought of is that bees have different tasks during different times of their lives. Perhaps each girl/woman is a subswarm of bees during a specific life stage, and bees that age out from one swarm are pheromonally induced to join the next, crossing a physical barrier of some sort. Gavotte/the full swarm would actually be a mix of all the bees, of course. But Virginia won’t be able to make any headway unless she is able to open all of the barriers and disable the pheromone system, which she probably can’t do inside of the VR.
Oh, wait. Maybe the bee swarm prison is partially/mostly automated, and she just needs to figure out how to hack it?
Although it’s worth mentioning that Dr. Ao/Mr. Green seemed to be completely unaware that anything existed at all outside the forest. Granted, his reaction may have simply been obfuscation, but then again, the women on the beach may in fact be – literally and figuratively – bugs in the system.
Obfuscation, or genuine confusion: “There’s no beach in this VR.”
How Ginny (and Beatrix!) have been able to so easily transfer between VRs is an open question. There may still be another player involved who has not appeared. Aimee and/or Lovelace and/or someone else (Pavane?) are still possibilities.
Perhaps I should reword it… I believe that it is all a single VR world.
Mr. Green may in fact know all about the beach. He may have only acted unaware of the beach and its inhabitants to throw Virginia off. Virginia did, after all, enter the VR on the beach.
But it’s just as possible that she was supposed to enter in the walnut work camp, and the VR world extends beyond what he knows (and therefore controls). Virginia may be the only one who has as yet seen beyond the forest. The fact that she entered on the beach may have been caused by someone interfering, knowing that if anyone could compromise the system from the inside, it could be her.
I strongly doubt that it could be a single VR. After all, given that Walnut Slave Camp has no guards or fences, there’s nothing to prevent people from leaving there and finding the beach.
With the usual caveats, I think what we see in “Fun For Some” is what VRs are supposed to look like in general — there are distinct systems/levels, and someone who has access to all of them can move someone from one to another, like Aimee did with Baron Mistycorn, and so on.
If a Collodi is persistent, then as we approach the finale someone may turn into a “real boy”. But even if true, exactly what that would mean, or who, is not any more obvious than anything else.
This is wonderful.
I have a new favorite Skin Horse panel.
And yes it is #4.
This is such a Dr. Lee solution to four puppets and two hands. Technically feasible, tricky to accomplish, utterly ignoring a simpler solution.
“utterly ignoring a simpler solution.” … um…..?
Swap the puppets around.
If she actually were Tip, she could operate five puppets- uh, never mind…!
Of course! Werewolf tip has a tail!
Six puppets then. It would be hard though.
She said they’re lucky there were only four of them, not that she couldn’t manage more if necessary. We’re probably supposed to laugh it off as a joke, but some topics are never funny. “Ironically” “joking” about not delivering fan service happens to look exactly like actually not delivering fan service.
“Fan service”? Think we’ve got some wires crossed…
Glad it wasn’t just me that thought that.
Me, too.
WAIT FRICK. What if this is just the same as the main cast right now?
Like,
UNITY: Childlike optimism and energy
Sweetheart: Can keep organized
… okay it kinda gets vague-er there, but like arguably Tip has a pretty good sense of the way broad trends can go? And he’s definitely lacking in motivation now, iirc…
And Nick DEFINITELY has Melanie’s drive…
(Also — Shannon, feel free to delete this if you think it’s spammy — I’ve made a chat room for Skin Horse discussion, as, like, a place where larger-scale looking-for-patterns conversations won’t hit speedbumps every day as a new comic (and so new discussion page) creates a break. If people are interested, it’s here: https://riot.im/app/#/group/+skin_horse-fandom:matrix.org )
I don’t know about Nick having Melanie’s drive, but Melanie definitely has Nick’s snark.
Yup, Tip certainly has a sense of broad trends, specially when it comes to their fashion 😛
I like to think Tip would be beaming with approval…
At least applauding her effort and explaining how to puppeteer with a little more dignity.
Yes, only four . . . How can she possibly hope to accomplish anything without Mayor Queen?
I see that Delphi has left her parlor after all. I guess it’s a good thing I never composed the speculative notion that Delphi couldn’t leave, and Mayor Queen was a partial gestalt formed by Delphi and whichever of the others who came to visit her.
I also note that Virginia created little puppet eye-covers without expressing any curiosity over the fact that none of the women ever removed theirs, even in dark indoor rooms.
It is interesting that they all have those. I hope it pays off for something surprising in some way.
My guess: compound eyes.
(Of course, I guess that wouldn’t be terribly “surprising” at this point.
Certainly possible but as you said not very surprising. Also a fairly creepy visual, so I hope not.
The meaning of opaque glasses in the Narboniverse is more or less established here: http://narbonic.com/comic/july-17-22-2006/
Of course, being a VR, this reality doesn’t follow the rules of the Narboniverse.
I thought it also got noted somewhere that this was specifically for Narbonic as was not being applied to Skin Horse….
Actually, it got noted in the next week’s Narbonic strips that it was specific to Dave only. Shaenon said “no other characters’ glasses follow this rule. Dave is the only one with meaningful glasses.”
I don’t recall any mention later that referenced whether they have any meaning in Skin Horse.
Dr. Lee made them? I thought maybe the skee-ball prizes were much better than expected.
I’m wondering if the four of them make up Mayor Queen. ie, once she gets through to them and they recombine into the gestalt, Mayor Queen comes into existence.
And now I am left wondering what Melanie’s voice sounds like, and what it will sound like with Virginia trying to imitate it. Well, I know what I’ll be dreaming about tonight.
Virginia has such tiny feet!
There’s the absent Mayor Queen, that makes five…
Awright, when do they become merch?!
This situation is precisely why finger puppets exist.
or toe puppets
Move my hand, and they’ll talk to you, they’re my puppets.
I’ll move their arms if you need me to, they’re my puppets.
I’m here to make you all whole,
People you need full control of the puppets.
I’ve got arms and feet, and I’ll bend my hips, they’re my puppets.
You’re the ringers on these comic strips, they’re my puppets.
Listen, I’ll take a risk, with my foot and my hand.
All I’ve gotta do is trigger the right command.
They’re my puppets, they’re my puppets.
It was a ploy, just a dating ploy,
That stuck me here sad and blue.
I’ve been stranded here, but lo and behold!
I found something to do.
They’re my puppets, they’re my puppets.
Learn that you’re just bees, and then come along, they’re my puppets.
Voice might sound right or voice might sound wrong, they’re my puppets.
Got the idea from a cross-dressing shrink.
He worked with puppets and it worked, I think, they’re my puppets.
People, people, you have wings, there’s no strings, come along, anyway,
They’re my puppets, people, there’s no strings, we’ll right wrong.
Honey, yeah.
—from “I’m Your Puppet,” James and Bobby Purify.
I’m still hoping the reintegration will have something to do with dancing, because of bee dances and because of the names Gavotte and Pavane.
Writing that made me wonder in turn – could the fragmenting be part of splitting into a second sentient swarm? Is Gavotte about to have another daughter? Maybe this is too far-fetched.
Well, we don’t know for sure that it’s either Gavotte or Pavane. Could be some other swarm.
BOB MY PUPPET MORE!
Can my puppet be on the other appendage?
Another possibility to Mayor Queen being a missing component, or a partial or full combination of the four we’ve met, is that she’s a ringer; a fake; a puppet for Mr. Green/Anasigma. After all, she seems to be mostly absent, and her mayoral decrees, when I think about them, seem to be overtly whimsical, but more subtly about keeping the four in stasis or preoccupied with tasks meant to distract them/keep them in conflict. So all transportation is suspended, and Melanie, who seems to be the only one with a real drive to leave, is given the task of earning skee-ball tickets for a bus that is non-running, and quite probably nonexistent. If Melanie gets distracted from skee-ball long enough to try something different, Mrs Apis breaks her efforts. The mayoral residence of City Hall is ridiculously difficult to reach, and seems to be empty at the point when Beatrix and Virginia make it up there.
Something is off here.
I’ve speculated elsewhere that the Very Bad Day was engineered by Anasigma/Mr Green, manipulating Gavotte with pheromones to induce the mating swarm, and sending fake e-mails to the staff to get them to conflict.
But if Mr. Green used pheromones to do induce the swarm, maybe he’s continuing to use pheromones (and physical barriers) to keep the swarm separated and and controlled.
Something that I thought of is that bees have different tasks during different times of their lives. Perhaps each girl/woman is a subswarm of bees during a specific life stage, and bees that age out from one swarm are pheromonally induced to join the next, crossing a physical barrier of some sort. Gavotte/the full swarm would actually be a mix of all the bees, of course. But Virginia won’t be able to make any headway unless she is able to open all of the barriers and disable the pheromone system, which she probably can’t do inside of the VR.
Oh, wait. Maybe the bee swarm prison is partially/mostly automated, and she just needs to figure out how to hack it?
Although it’s worth mentioning that Dr. Ao/Mr. Green seemed to be completely unaware that anything existed at all outside the forest. Granted, his reaction may have simply been obfuscation, but then again, the women on the beach may in fact be – literally and figuratively – bugs in the system.
Obfuscation, or genuine confusion: “There’s no beach in this VR.”
How Ginny (and Beatrix!) have been able to so easily transfer between VRs is an open question. There may still be another player involved who has not appeared. Aimee and/or Lovelace and/or someone else (Pavane?) are still possibilities.
Perhaps I should reword it… I believe that it is all a single VR world.
Mr. Green may in fact know all about the beach. He may have only acted unaware of the beach and its inhabitants to throw Virginia off. Virginia did, after all, enter the VR on the beach.
But it’s just as possible that she was supposed to enter in the walnut work camp, and the VR world extends beyond what he knows (and therefore controls). Virginia may be the only one who has as yet seen beyond the forest. The fact that she entered on the beach may have been caused by someone interfering, knowing that if anyone could compromise the system from the inside, it could be her.
I strongly doubt that it could be a single VR. After all, given that Walnut Slave Camp has no guards or fences, there’s nothing to prevent people from leaving there and finding the beach.
With the usual caveats, I think what we see in “Fun For Some” is what VRs are supposed to look like in general — there are distinct systems/levels, and someone who has access to all of them can move someone from one to another, like Aimee did with Baron Mistycorn, and so on.
Normally I would agree with you. But there are bugs in the system.
It’s obviously one VR. Otherwise how exactly do you think Virginia could walk from one part to another?
Lucky? I don’t feel RABBIT WRANGLING lucky.
If a Collodi is persistent, then as we approach the finale someone may turn into a “real boy”. But even if true, exactly what that would mean, or who, is not any more obvious than anything else.
Hahahaha!
AnsleyAbso bloody wonderful!
Wait, what?!
*Absolutely bloody wonderful!* even!
(And yes, it still damn well is!)
The one of Mme. Delphi really looks like the little girl robots from Whimsy.
Dr. Lee has successfully reverse engineered Tip’s puppet technology.
I still say this qualifies Tip as a Mad Genius.