They look like innocent bystanders — even fooling us with the occasional presence of their child — but they keep mysteriously popping up wherever the SH crew happens to be, so I think they’re secretly spies working for some as-yet-unknown organisation.
Too many reporters. Like the wily cicada, they will swamp their predator with sheer numbers until she’s too bloated to do more than nibble on a leftover medulla oblongata.
It looks like Unity’s digestive process, if you can call it that, rearranges the brain tissues to increase her intelligence in the short run, before burning out: Hence, the reporters’, and politicians’, brains will only get her smart for a few seconds.
So UNITY offers to eat reporters instead of to eat H.T. because priorities. This just reinforces my theory that H.T. only wins because the heroes can’t be bothered to actually stop him.
He says he wants to start a species war and commit genocide. They do nothing.
He openly admits he’s engaging in realpolitik – obtaining power, holding power, and denying it to others, without ideology or politics entering into the equation, purely power for power’s sake. They do nothing.
He starts a cult / eugenics program to literally manufacture and brainwash voters for the sake of corrupting the democratic process to take control of the state government. They send a narcissistic cross-dressing weirdo entirely out of league to have awkward TV interviews about crazy stuff most people can’t even perceive, blowing the cover of the secret shadow government in the process.
They’re the flippin’ shadow government. They can’t arrest H.T. themselves? Seize his compound, detain his turtles, and halt his schemes?
When Leo the lion went postal at the start of the comic, Skin Horse was sent in to stop him, and they weren’t afraid of using force if necessary. People’s lives were at risk, and they were prepared to use whatever force necessary. If Tip hadn’t been able to talk him down, they were going to shoot him, first with tranquilizers, then with actual bullets. And then they were prepared to lock him away if he survived, or put him in the ground if not.
But when it comes to H.T. who is Leo’s literal partner in literal crime, suddenly Skin Horse is powerless? He’s seditiously subverting the government, but there’s just nothing they can do about it?
They’ll arrest the demented bird who he manipulated into smoke bombing a transgenic meeting that one time, but they won’t arrest H.T. himself? They’ll threaten to shut down the mad science of the opposums he’s manipulating because they’re scaring the locals with explosions, but they won’t shut down H.T. with his plan to commit mass voter fraud? When a bunch of killer werewolves threaten Alaska, they do whatever it takes to stop them, but when a killer tiger threatens democracy itself they have to let him get away with it?
I’ve wondered about that myself. It’s almost like they’re suffering from a type of reality blindness themselves – they know HT is evil, but somehow they can’t fully accept it, so they end up ignoring him instead.
Perhaps they fear that arresting HT would have a similar effect to arresting Aung San Suu Kyi. In terms of harming your image in the eyes of people who can’t really do anything to you, rather than allowing you to continue doing whatever you feel like anyway, obviously.
They didarrest him, at the same time as the aforementioned mynah bird. Then he was released, along with everyone else, when California gave them all rights, since the lack thereof meant nobody had bothered actually trying them.
And as Sweetheart and Tip discussed last week, the problem they have right now is that they stopping H.T. from doing the thing they don’t want him to do (taking over the city) also stops him from doing the thing they do want him to do (giving non-human intelligences voting rights).
As far as “openly admitting to realpolitik” goes, “realpolitik” isn’t in itself necessarily illegal, or even immoral (although it certainly can be). It just means that you consider practical concerns over ideals – not necessarily that you don’t have ideals. Ludwig von Rochau, the guy who coined the term as being a good thing, definitely had ideals, he just didn’t think they were enough on their own.
Honestly, I find the fact H.T. calls what he’s doing realpolitik to be deliberately understating the issue, but all he’s “openly admitted” to is what what all politicians everywhere do. (Yes, even [insert your favourite “not like other politicians” politician here], sometimes.) The fact the voters have been conditioned to believe anything he says is obviously A Bad Thing, but it’s not clear they can do much about it beyond “try to convince them otherwise” any more than [Real world analogy removed because this is enough of a rant as it is].
Whew. Okay, I’m done. Can I talk about how cute Sweetheart looks when she’s exasperated now?
Good arguments, D. Walker, yes. There are a couple of points that may go partway toward explaining Team Skin Horse’s different approaches to Leo and H.T., though:
– H.T. may be a murderer (loopholes aside), but Leo’s personality is not particularly aggressive or violent. Sure, he got cheesed off at Tip during their first conversation, but so would most people. When Skin Horse got the call about Leo’s rampage at the zoo, he was “being mauled by vervet monkeys.”
– Leo also hasn’t shown any tendencies toward scheming or manipulation. He didn’t even seem aware that H.T. was using their webcomic partnership to gain an audience for his own ideas or that there was an agenda behind “the sinister human conspiracy stuff”; he was just happy the comic had more readers.
– When the Skin Horse Team first met Leo, they may have been underfunded and undercompetent, but they were fairly secure in their jobs and their sense of mission. By the time they met H.T., they had heard of the Old War and Anasigma, and there were signs that Skin Horse itself might not be trustworthy. Their confidence has been shaken. And even if they have departmental backing again now, they’re not so sure they can trust it.
In other words, Team Skin Horse is more reluctant to act aggressively against H.T. than they were against Leo both because they see H.T. himself as more dangerous than they’re prepared to handle and because they see themselves as less capable of handling a dangerous foe-cum-potential-client.
Also maybe keep in mind that a) they work for the shadow government, which means logic doesn’t always play a part in decision making and b) putting a stop to H.T. omce and for all would involve a lot of paperwork. And we hate paperwork.
Although there’s less paperwork for killing someone than there is for arresting them.
I think one conflict they may have is that their agency exists to assist NHS’s, so stopping HT technically goes against their purpose. They would have to get another agency – such as the FBI – to arrest him, and chances are that any of those agents are probably reality blind.
I would keep in mind that, right now, H.T. is the head of a Political Action Committee and has a lot of funding and lackies. While, back in the day, Leo was an escaped enhanced Lion who had attacked a zoo.
As much as we might want there to be an open season on Lobbyists, there isn’t one so doing a black bag op on H.T. is likely to create fallout and lots of paperwork.
I wrote a lengthy and possibly somewhat ranty comment yesterday which is still awaiting moderation, but short version: They did arrest him for his actions at the convention. And it was ruled illegal after California granted non-human sapients rights.
But because the NHS community had previously been its own judicial system, any of the NHS’s who had been locked away in the Sanctuary were freed once they were given equal rights with humans, since none of their crimes or convictions existed as far as the human judicial system was concerned. Because they were now under human jurisdiction, any convictions under the NHS system were simply nullified… Which was exactly HT’s purpose in getting equal rights for them back then.
Once again reading Skin Horse has taught me a new word, as Shaenon & Jeffrey continue to further my education. I feel like Unity when she’s eaten some smart person’s brains.
Pity the cartoonists probably can’t get away with the sauce’s slang name of “red cock” (for the rooster on the bottle of the original brand). Or perhaps they just haven’t found a point at which it would be funny.
I’d have to go back and look to find it, but it seems to me that they have at least used the term “Rooster sauce”.
As for “getting away with” using the term “red cock” – that’s not the issue… after all, look at some of the things Nick says whenever he’s trapped inside his own VR hell. “Red cock” would be mild by comparison.
Yeah, this is the kind of situation that agencies like Anasigma invented extirpation for. Skin Horse may find themselves out of another job, and into more hot water.
Sweetheart is never going to let them forget it, either.
I spotted two familiar people in panel one… did you?
They look like innocent bystanders — even fooling us with the occasional presence of their child — but they keep mysteriously popping up wherever the SH crew happens to be, so I think they’re secretly spies working for some as-yet-unknown organisation.
The Shadowier-Than-You-Could-Ever-Be,-Losers Government; OH NOES!!!
Zombie Hitchcock approves of this.
How else could they be recording this documentary if they weren’t there to witness it?
Certainly saw Shaenon there sitting opposite Unity…
“It’s way too much exposure”… Yeah, that and the fact that Tip is quite likely to say all the wrong things at the worst possible moments.
With hand puppets!
Oh, no! In the name of all that is right and good, not the puppets!
Most state legislatures deserve the puppets, IMO.
That is true… But it will probably be televised!
Should have let Unity deal with it. The government needed to be downsized anyway, right?
Wouldn’t have affected the government. She had offered to eat the reporters.
Of course, on the plus side, that would probably have guaranteed the failure of HT’s cause. Whereas now Tip might screw up and guarantee HT’s success.
They could let Unity handle the speaking at the special legislatiure session.
I told Shaenon to let Unity have the light saber. Now when she could really use it, she doesn’t have the “Harsh Light of Reality”…
Well, she sure would’ve killed the inflammatory coverage. All of them.
I don’t know. Too much rooster sauce and it’d still be pretty inflammatory.
Too many reporters. Like the wily cicada, they will swamp their predator with sheer numbers until she’s too bloated to do more than nibble on a leftover medulla oblongata.
Would feasting on reporters’ brains make her smart or would it have the opposite effect?
Would feasting on politicians brains make her sma… HA Ha Ha HA!…
Sorry. couldn’t finish that question without cracking up. 😀
The content of the brains doesn’t seem to matter. I seem to recall she ate artificially manufactured brains and it still made her smart.
It looks like Unity’s digestive process, if you can call it that, rearranges the brain tissues to increase her intelligence in the short run, before burning out: Hence, the reporters’, and politicians’, brains will only get her smart for a few seconds.
I figure that, until she finishes digesting them, the brains she eats are effectively “part of her”, like any other spare parts she sews on.
So UNITY offers to eat reporters instead of to eat H.T. because priorities. This just reinforces my theory that H.T. only wins because the heroes can’t be bothered to actually stop him.
He says he wants to start a species war and commit genocide. They do nothing.
He openly admits he’s engaging in realpolitik – obtaining power, holding power, and denying it to others, without ideology or politics entering into the equation, purely power for power’s sake. They do nothing.
He starts a cult / eugenics program to literally manufacture and brainwash voters for the sake of corrupting the democratic process to take control of the state government. They send a narcissistic cross-dressing weirdo entirely out of league to have awkward TV interviews about crazy stuff most people can’t even perceive, blowing the cover of the secret shadow government in the process.
They’re the flippin’ shadow government. They can’t arrest H.T. themselves? Seize his compound, detain his turtles, and halt his schemes?
When Leo the lion went postal at the start of the comic, Skin Horse was sent in to stop him, and they weren’t afraid of using force if necessary. People’s lives were at risk, and they were prepared to use whatever force necessary. If Tip hadn’t been able to talk him down, they were going to shoot him, first with tranquilizers, then with actual bullets. And then they were prepared to lock him away if he survived, or put him in the ground if not.
But when it comes to H.T. who is Leo’s literal partner in literal crime, suddenly Skin Horse is powerless? He’s seditiously subverting the government, but there’s just nothing they can do about it?
They’ll arrest the demented bird who he manipulated into smoke bombing a transgenic meeting that one time, but they won’t arrest H.T. himself? They’ll threaten to shut down the mad science of the opposums he’s manipulating because they’re scaring the locals with explosions, but they won’t shut down H.T. with his plan to commit mass voter fraud? When a bunch of killer werewolves threaten Alaska, they do whatever it takes to stop them, but when a killer tiger threatens democracy itself they have to let him get away with it?
I’ve wondered about that myself. It’s almost like they’re suffering from a type of reality blindness themselves – they know HT is evil, but somehow they can’t fully accept it, so they end up ignoring him instead.
Perhaps they fear that arresting HT would have a similar effect to arresting Aung San Suu Kyi. In terms of harming your image in the eyes of people who can’t really do anything to you, rather than allowing you to continue doing whatever you feel like anyway, obviously.
They did arrest him, at the same time as the aforementioned mynah bird. Then he was released, along with everyone else, when California gave them all rights, since the lack thereof meant nobody had bothered actually trying them.
And as Sweetheart and Tip discussed last week, the problem they have right now is that they stopping H.T. from doing the thing they don’t want him to do (taking over the city) also stops him from doing the thing they do want him to do (giving non-human intelligences voting rights).
As far as “openly admitting to realpolitik” goes, “realpolitik” isn’t in itself necessarily illegal, or even immoral (although it certainly can be). It just means that you consider practical concerns over ideals – not necessarily that you don’t have ideals. Ludwig von Rochau, the guy who coined the term as being a good thing, definitely had ideals, he just didn’t think they were enough on their own.
Honestly, I find the fact H.T. calls what he’s doing realpolitik to be deliberately understating the issue, but all he’s “openly admitted” to is what what all politicians everywhere do. (Yes, even [insert your favourite “not like other politicians” politician here], sometimes.) The fact the voters have been conditioned to believe anything he says is obviously A Bad Thing, but it’s not clear they can do much about it beyond “try to convince them otherwise” any more than [Real world analogy removed because this is enough of a rant as it is].
Whew. Okay, I’m done. Can I talk about how cute Sweetheart looks when she’s exasperated now?
Good arguments, D. Walker, yes. There are a couple of points that may go partway toward explaining Team Skin Horse’s different approaches to Leo and H.T., though:
– H.T. may be a murderer (loopholes aside), but Leo’s personality is not particularly aggressive or violent. Sure, he got cheesed off at Tip during their first conversation, but so would most people. When Skin Horse got the call about Leo’s rampage at the zoo, he was “being mauled by vervet monkeys.”
– Leo also hasn’t shown any tendencies toward scheming or manipulation. He didn’t even seem aware that H.T. was using their webcomic partnership to gain an audience for his own ideas or that there was an agenda behind “the sinister human conspiracy stuff”; he was just happy the comic had more readers.
– When the Skin Horse Team first met Leo, they may have been underfunded and undercompetent, but they were fairly secure in their jobs and their sense of mission. By the time they met H.T., they had heard of the Old War and Anasigma, and there were signs that Skin Horse itself might not be trustworthy. Their confidence has been shaken. And even if they have departmental backing again now, they’re not so sure they can trust it.
In other words, Team Skin Horse is more reluctant to act aggressively against H.T. than they were against Leo both because they see H.T. himself as more dangerous than they’re prepared to handle and because they see themselves as less capable of handling a dangerous foe-cum-potential-client.
Also maybe keep in mind that a) they work for the shadow government, which means logic doesn’t always play a part in decision making and b) putting a stop to H.T. omce and for all would involve a lot of paperwork. And we hate paperwork.
Although there’s less paperwork for killing someone than there is for arresting them.
I think one conflict they may have is that their agency exists to assist NHS’s, so stopping HT technically goes against their purpose. They would have to get another agency – such as the FBI – to arrest him, and chances are that any of those agents are probably reality blind.
I would keep in mind that, right now, H.T. is the head of a Political Action Committee and has a lot of funding and lackies. While, back in the day, Leo was an escaped enhanced Lion who had attacked a zoo.
As much as we might want there to be an open season on Lobbyists, there isn’t one so doing a black bag op on H.T. is likely to create fallout and lots of paperwork.
I wrote a lengthy and possibly somewhat ranty comment yesterday which is still awaiting moderation, but short version: They did arrest him for his actions at the convention. And it was ruled illegal after California granted non-human sapients rights.
Not “illegal”, per se.
But because the NHS community had previously been its own judicial system, any of the NHS’s who had been locked away in the Sanctuary were freed once they were given equal rights with humans, since none of their crimes or convictions existed as far as the human judicial system was concerned. Because they were now under human jurisdiction, any convictions under the NHS system were simply nullified… Which was exactly HT’s purpose in getting equal rights for them back then.
Time to call on Tremontino again, Tip Wilkin?
Once again reading Skin Horse has taught me a new word, as Shaenon & Jeffrey continue to further my education. I feel like Unity when she’s eaten some smart person’s brains.
So which word was new to you?
Sriracha?
This certainly wouldn’t be the first time Unity has mentioned (or used) Sriracha sauce.
http://skin-horse.com/comic/toddler-gave/
Pity the cartoonists probably can’t get away with the sauce’s slang name of “red cock” (for the rooster on the bottle of the original brand). Or perhaps they just haven’t found a point at which it would be funny.
I’d have to go back and look to find it, but it seems to me that they have at least used the term “Rooster sauce”.
As for “getting away with” using the term “red cock” – that’s not the issue… after all, look at some of the things Nick says whenever he’s trapped inside his own VR hell. “Red cock” would be mild by comparison.
Yeah, this is the kind of situation that agencies like Anasigma invented extirpation for. Skin Horse may find themselves out of another job, and into more hot water.
Sweetheart is never going to let them forget it, either.