Actually, the Fritz Leiber novel “You’re All Alone” made a pretty strong case that someone who is that completely invisible to humans has them at his mercy – In a circumstance like that it’s not whether they give you any rights but whether you will allow any to them. ^_^
Good thing nobody in Skin Horse thought of that angle. ^_~
Well, it would make ordering your favorite sandwich at subway something of a challenge. You’d have to sneak behind the counter and make it yourself. Also, there’s different levels of reality blindness. Most people don’t block out strange things completely. They just seem to ignore them until something happens to draw attention to them. So you wouldn’t be able to get anybody’s attention until you actual did something to upset them. That’s kind of the worst way to live life.
Well, monsters and freaks usually aren’t rendered _invisible_ by the cure, just normalized, so an ugly monster is seen as just an ugly guy or someone cosplaying: they definitely will notice if said monster tries to make off with their sammich.
Perhaps. But if we’re talking that level of reality blindness then the fact is that most of Our Heroes have just about nothing to worry about at all and are just being gullible. Tip *is* a normal human. Unity and Bubbles would have no trouble passing for one to the extent that they wanted to. Nick, if he ever gets his brainwashing reversed, has the option of going back to his old body if he wants it. Sweetheart is the only one who would seem to have problems and from what I’ve seen I doubt that they would be anything she hasn’t already encountered. And if someone has to be threatening in order to be seen as strange then there is still plenty to work with as far as the “Invisibility is a Power” angle goes. Something I bet a certain sentient tiger might think of. >_>
the reality blindness wouldn’t be universal. Imagine being at the mercy of an indifferent shadow government when no one else can even tell what’s going on.
You mean like that side story where the support group was teaching people to pretend they’re still normal? (In what little I time I had to search for it couldn’t seem to find it in the archive.)
No, Asig isn’t going to apply the cure to _themselves_, just the general population: that way they can wipe out the oddities with nobody ever even noticing the massacre.
Ooooh, I wouldn’t put it past them. A shadow war has rules, after all: do not involve the general populace. If the populace is rendered blind to the war, it can come into the open and the battle can be much more overt. After all, if a crowd can’t hear the dog calling for help, it’s just a dogcatcher with a new “client” after all.
I bet that would totally backfire on them – because if noone realizes that they are monsters, everyone would be thinking Asig is killing regular humans. Or even worse, innocent dogs like sweetheart.
I guess it depends on how it works. There seems to be something of an out of sight-out-of-mind aspect to it in past exhibits where the muggle mind only makes up the bare minimum necessary to explain the aberration and forgets about it completely afterwards. Given sufficient exposure a consistant delusional framework is formed, but that framework should be highly vulnerable to statements by authority figures.
Since if they play along the mental burden of denial lessens. In addition they’d still be setting off primal “strange” and “foreign” which are very easy to leverage in to distrust. There is also the non-negligible bias towards rationalizing and complying with a powerful and or dangerous authority figure.
This framework also completely ignores any special psychological or physiological needs the non-humans have.
In the Oval Office, we’d have an indefatigable worker for the common interest, who has experience in both the public private sectors, from entry-level tedium to boardroom-level enterprise, and is also a skilled orator who can make much out of few words.
And for philosophical balance, we’d have a genius VP capable of envisioning the sort of crises “normals” cannot and the sort of solutions “normals” will not, whose flights of groove (not fancy, you jive turkey) will be balanced by, and in turn inspire, the POTUS’s almost-mechanical reliability.
Nobody will keep his election promises, Nobody will listen to your concerns, Nobody will fix the economy, Nobody will end the wars and Nobody tells the truth, because Nobody cares.
The “Cure” could make us all boring adults. No more Fantasy,Science-Fiction or Super-Heroes. No more sense of wonder or imagination.
The “Cure” would make us just like all the “Normal” people we know.
I don’t really believe I want to be “Normal”.
I suppose if they all looked normal to everybody, Sweetheart would just look like this Canadian lesbian chick who roomed with this horribly disfigured girl. Or maybe that’s not normal enough…
Slowing down. Ever had one of those times when your brain figures something out right away but you need to think through it explicitly in order to explain it to others?
Even worse. Trying to explain the dumbed down version – and having to dumb it down even more.
Think trying to teach somebody how to unlock and dial a smartphone SAME model you have.
Now imagine doing it over a different phone (hypothetical luddite grandma is calling you on the landline). And dealing with the facts that a) the phone works identically but is in a different language (stupid cousin playing a prank), and b) you are not allowed to swear or raise your voice at said hypothetical grandma, and c) speaking slowly and clearly gets interpreted as yelling.
Here I see the old war renewed, unless a team of renegade black ops social services agents and a funky mad scientist can bring a shadow science organization down.
If the Cure’s … released,
We’ll raise a fuss!
We’ll see folks … have ceased
To no-tice us!
For our rights … we fight,
But Tigerlily’s right!
We’ll really feel … uptight,
If they can’t see us!
What is strange … but true,
They just won’t see!
They are blind-ed to
Re-a-li-ty!
They won’t hear … Gavotte,
A talking dog, or ‘bot!
This strip will have … no plot,
If they can’t see us!
Geez! No one sees
Crazy things that make them nervous …
Bubbles agrees,
Says her only joy is service!
What the pub-lic dreads,
Avoids their minds!
‘Cause they’ve got … their heads
Up their behinds!
Now we know … for sure,
That we must stop the Cure!
‘Cause we’re in deep … manure
If they can’t see us!
Actually, the Fritz Leiber novel “You’re All Alone” made a pretty strong case that someone who is that completely invisible to humans has them at his mercy – In a circumstance like that it’s not whether they give you any rights but whether you will allow any to them. ^_^
Good thing nobody in Skin Horse thought of that angle. ^_~
Well, it would make ordering your favorite sandwich at subway something of a challenge. You’d have to sneak behind the counter and make it yourself. Also, there’s different levels of reality blindness. Most people don’t block out strange things completely. They just seem to ignore them until something happens to draw attention to them. So you wouldn’t be able to get anybody’s attention until you actual did something to upset them. That’s kind of the worst way to live life.
Well, monsters and freaks usually aren’t rendered _invisible_ by the cure, just normalized, so an ugly monster is seen as just an ugly guy or someone cosplaying: they definitely will notice if said monster tries to make off with their sammich.
Perhaps. But if we’re talking that level of reality blindness then the fact is that most of Our Heroes have just about nothing to worry about at all and are just being gullible. Tip *is* a normal human. Unity and Bubbles would have no trouble passing for one to the extent that they wanted to. Nick, if he ever gets his brainwashing reversed, has the option of going back to his old body if he wants it. Sweetheart is the only one who would seem to have problems and from what I’ve seen I doubt that they would be anything she hasn’t already encountered. And if someone has to be threatening in order to be seen as strange then there is still plenty to work with as far as the “Invisibility is a Power” angle goes. Something I bet a certain sentient tiger might think of. >_>
They’d probably just see her has a normal dog and not hear her talking.
Ehmm, Nick’s body was chopped up and made into MRE’s. I don’t want to know how he’d regain his body.
the reality blindness wouldn’t be universal. Imagine being at the mercy of an indifferent shadow government when no one else can even tell what’s going on.
Ah, but would The Cure make someone invisible to themselves?
Oooooo! Adventures in Sensory Deprivation! ^_^
You mean like that side story where the support group was teaching people to pretend they’re still normal? (In what little I time I had to search for it couldn’t seem to find it in the archive.)
Because I have nothing better to do with my time right now: the start of the story in question.
No, Asig isn’t going to apply the cure to _themselves_, just the general population: that way they can wipe out the oddities with nobody ever even noticing the massacre.
(That is, of course, if they are actually planning to use it that way: Tigerlily may just be pulling this out of her ass to manipulate the team.)
Ooooh, I wouldn’t put it past them. A shadow war has rules, after all: do not involve the general populace. If the populace is rendered blind to the war, it can come into the open and the battle can be much more overt. After all, if a crowd can’t hear the dog calling for help, it’s just a dogcatcher with a new “client” after all.
I bet that would totally backfire on them – because if noone realizes that they are monsters, everyone would be thinking Asig is killing regular humans. Or even worse, innocent dogs like sweetheart.
I guess it depends on how it works. There seems to be something of an out of sight-out-of-mind aspect to it in past exhibits where the muggle mind only makes up the bare minimum necessary to explain the aberration and forgets about it completely afterwards. Given sufficient exposure a consistant delusional framework is formed, but that framework should be highly vulnerable to statements by authority figures.
Since if they play along the mental burden of denial lessens. In addition they’d still be setting off primal “strange” and “foreign” which are very easy to leverage in to distrust. There is also the non-negligible bias towards rationalizing and complying with a powerful and or dangerous authority figure.
This framework also completely ignores any special psychological or physiological needs the non-humans have.
Bubbles/Jones as a third-party ticket in 2016.
No, seriously.
In the Oval Office, we’d have an indefatigable worker for the common interest, who has experience in both the public private sectors, from entry-level tedium to boardroom-level enterprise, and is also a skilled orator who can make much out of few words.
And for philosophical balance, we’d have a genius VP capable of envisioning the sort of crises “normals” cannot and the sort of solutions “normals” will not, whose flights of groove (not fancy, you jive turkey) will be balanced by, and in turn inspire, the POTUS’s almost-mechanical reliability.
Nah, I’m still voting for Nobody.
Nobody will keep his election promises, Nobody will listen to your concerns, Nobody will fix the economy, Nobody will end the wars and Nobody tells the truth, because Nobody cares.
You’re saying Tigerlilly will actually promise anything?
Does Bubbles meet the age and residency requirements? How old is she? Where was she born? Was she “born?”
I can already see the posters: “Vote Bubbles for a refreshing change”
The “Cure” could make us all boring adults. No more Fantasy,Science-Fiction or Super-Heroes. No more sense of wonder or imagination.
The “Cure” would make us just like all the “Normal” people we know.
I don’t really believe I want to be “Normal”.
“Rise of the Planet of Mundanes”. Scary…
If it would make me like Bill – something to avoid at all costs.
What is this “Normal” you type about? Is it contagious? Please keep it away from me!
I suppose if they all looked normal to everybody, Sweetheart would just look like this Canadian lesbian chick who roomed with this horribly disfigured girl. Or maybe that’s not normal enough…
One would like to think so, but no. She’d come across as the service animal for a woman who’d been in an industrial accident or three.
“normal” is a statistical anamoly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rIy0xY99a0
So we have to go all quantum mechanics to be normal. Alright.
Thinking at normal speed hurts my head. Does Tigerlily mean slowing down or speeding up?
Slowing down. Ever had one of those times when your brain figures something out right away but you need to think through it explicitly in order to explain it to others?
Even worse. Trying to explain the dumbed down version – and having to dumb it down even more.
Think trying to teach somebody how to unlock and dial a smartphone SAME model you have.
Now imagine doing it over a different phone (hypothetical luddite grandma is calling you on the landline). And dealing with the facts that a) the phone works identically but is in a different language (stupid cousin playing a prank), and b) you are not allowed to swear or raise your voice at said hypothetical grandma, and c) speaking slowly and clearly gets interpreted as yelling.
Alternatively: slowing down or speeding up? Yes. She is mad, after all.
Here I see the old war renewed, unless a team of renegade black ops social services agents and a funky mad scientist can bring a shadow science organization down.
Bubbles always knows just what to say.
(TUNE: “You Won’t See Me”, The Beatles)
If the Cure’s … released,
We’ll raise a fuss!
We’ll see folks … have ceased
To no-tice us!
For our rights … we fight,
But Tigerlily’s right!
We’ll really feel … uptight,
If they can’t see us!
What is strange … but true,
They just won’t see!
They are blind-ed to
Re-a-li-ty!
They won’t hear … Gavotte,
A talking dog, or ‘bot!
This strip will have … no plot,
If they can’t see us!
Geez! No one sees
Crazy things that make them nervous …
Bubbles agrees,
Says her only joy is service!
What the pub-lic dreads,
Avoids their minds!
‘Cause they’ve got … their heads
Up their behinds!
Now we know … for sure,
That we must stop the Cure!
‘Cause we’re in deep … manure
If they can’t see us!
Loving Bubbles’ expression in the last panel 😀
Actually I just thought of an answer to what it would be like if Sweetheart were affected by The Cure.
Remember Philip, the Mynah bird who thought he was human?