Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2012-08-13
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2012-08-13

by shaenon on August 13, 2012 at 12:00 am
Chapter: Railway Children
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Discussion (56) ¬

  1. Dave Van Domelen
    August 13, 2012, 12:09 am | # | Reply

    Gotta wonder where Tip’s libido draws the line. It doesn’t stop at gender, and at least now doesn’t stop at species (although he doesn’t seem interested in dogs). Maybe he can tell instinctively when someone isn’t organic?

    • pumpkincat
      August 13, 2012, 12:10 am | # | Reply

      Well, the android is arguably not organic. Must be something even more off about Violet than that?

      • woozy
        August 13, 2012, 12:12 am | # | Reply

        like she’s a total bitch?

        • Jeffrey Wells
          August 13, 2012, 10:51 am | # | Reply

          Didn’t stop him from romancing Julie.

          ba dum pum tish

      • Kay Gilbert
        August 13, 2012, 7:04 am | # | Reply

        Don’t know if any of you read Pibgorn, but her bottom half was replaced with android parts, and she’s still sending out sex signals all over hell and gone. So yeah, must be something else.
        He didn’t mind that Ruby’s a machine, he didn’t object to Julie seducing him in “Dead Dogs,” and Violet hasn’t been anything but sweet (well, cloying) around Tip so far, so it’s something else.

        • drbrain
          August 13, 2012, 8:16 am | # | Reply

          he may not *like* cloying. and she came around just after tigerlily, who’s got to be a tough act to follow.

      • Xartarin
        August 13, 2012, 10:57 pm | # | Reply

        maybe it’s her third panel bugeyes

    • Anonymous (no affiliation with 4chan)
      August 13, 2012, 12:24 am | # | Reply

      I suspect he knows she’s a robot, and is concerned with the ethics of her bosses possibly having programmed her to seduce him.

    • Rex Vivat
      August 13, 2012, 9:08 am | # | Reply

      I think it’s more him taking Nick’s warning seriously than anything else.

    • Werlitten
      August 13, 2012, 10:16 am | # | Reply

      No I think it may be a ‘don’t date people in the same profession type as you’ thing.

  2. History_PhD
    August 13, 2012, 12:09 am | # | Reply

    Tip’s subconscious knows…
    …of course, his conscious mind’s oblivious as usual.

    • K. Dragon
      March 24, 2016, 4:25 pm | # | Reply

      See, that’s the theory I’m operating under.

  3. pumpkincat
    August 13, 2012, 12:09 am | # | Reply

    Violet Bee doesn’t just not ping Tip’s type; she clearly does not register as a sexual being, now that Tip is uh, flexible.

    And considering Tip was okay with the idea of a threesome with the winged android and her amorph husband, that’s GOTTA hurt. Heh, heh, heh.

    • Forzin
      August 13, 2012, 2:03 am | # | Reply

      Ahahaha, oh god.

      Cybernetic Androids and Shapeshifting protoplasmic ur-entities are a-ok, but not Ms. Bee.

      Maybe it’s because she’s trying to seduce him? Tip is the seducer, not the seduced.

      • drbrain
        August 13, 2012, 8:22 am | # | Reply

        tip’s easy, sure, but i still think that he was not the primary seductor in alaska or new orleans… and both of those partners had somewhat-nefarious plans, but neither of them was just plain mean the way violet bee seems to be.

      • Shane
        August 13, 2012, 9:11 pm | # | Reply

        “I’m off to bed.” “But Bee, you don’t sleep… or cry!” “I do now.”

        • The Other Mike
          February 16, 2017, 12:43 am | # | Reply

          “I also now eat chocolate ice cream by the carton.”

  4. James
    August 13, 2012, 12:23 am | # | Reply

    I’ve been wondering if, with a last name of “Bee” and a code name of “Gold Bug”, if Violet isn’t related to Gavotte on some way.

    If so, then perhaps Tip’s survival instincts are telling him to not mess with the Boss’s daughter (or whatever she is), especially since he’s violently allergic to said Boss.

  5. Andrew
    August 13, 2012, 12:39 am | # | Reply

    All this time with Anasigma and Viv still has her logic center?

  6. Prodigal
    August 13, 2012, 2:04 am | # | Reply

    Technically, Dr Lee was Tip’s third choice, but still.

  7. Eddurd
    August 13, 2012, 3:41 am | # | Reply

    (TUNE: “Rock On”, David Essex)

    Hey there, Ruby hon,
    Would you like to have some fun?
    Married, she wants none!
    Strike one!

    Miss Lee, how ’bout you?
    Covers her head and cries, boo-hoo!
    Mad town makes her blue!
    Strike two!

      So who wants to sleep with him?
      Who will give Tip some trim?
     He’ll ask around, so …

    Tell me, Violet Bee,
    Wonder who’d spend some time with me?
    She rolls her eyes, dis-gus-ted-ly!
    Strike three!

  8. midwestmutt
    August 13, 2012, 5:32 am | # | Reply

    What is going on in the balcony in the background?

    • davidbreslin101
      August 13, 2012, 8:32 am | # | Reply

      Robots in disguise (as other robots). Sneaky.

      • woozy
        August 13, 2012, 5:36 pm | # | Reply

        They’re planning a product of ‘A midsummer’s night dream’. They’re going to play the rude mechanicals. … What? You don’t like that joke? Well, screw you!

  9. Terry Smith
    August 13, 2012, 6:47 am | # | Reply

    He knows. Somehow – he knows…..

  10. John Campbell
    August 13, 2012, 8:27 am | # | Reply

    Honestly, if anyone made their eyes go like that at me, I think I’d back away slowly, too.

  11. davidbreslin101
    August 13, 2012, 8:42 am | # | Reply

    I don’t know why, but Panel 2 makes me want Ginny and Sergio to end up together in some warm, steam-filled tunnels somewhere. Is this what shipping feels like?

    • Jeffrey Wells
      August 13, 2012, 11:01 am | # | Reply

      This is exactly, one hundred percent, what shipping feels like. Pretty soon you’ll be reading all sorts of subtext into the tiniest, most trivial interpersonal interactions to be found here in the core property until even the most mundane co-occurrences start looking like sexually-charged come-ons.

      Not that, um, I do that or anything. *cough*

      • Kay Gilbert
        August 13, 2012, 3:16 pm | # | Reply

        About today’s Narbonic: Director’s Cut, Shaenon said:
        “This is probably the most overt slash joke in Narbonic. Which is funny, because that’s like 60% of Skin Horse.”
        I assumed that she meant the slash jokes were all your contribution, so I scoff at your “*cough*.”

        • Ryushikaze
          August 14, 2012, 7:21 am | # | Reply

          Of course not. Skin horse is an equal partnership, so 10% of that slash has to be coming from Shaenon.

  12. E.T. The Eccentric Type
    August 13, 2012, 9:26 am | # | Reply

    Yeesh. This is like the brain-eating zombies ignoring Homer Simpson.

  13. Jon
    August 13, 2012, 10:04 am | # | Reply

    Let’s not forget – Tip IS a psychologist, after all. I suspect he has a pretty good idea of when somone’s trying to play him…

    • Shadowmehr
      August 13, 2012, 3:49 pm | # | Reply

      Seconded. One tends to forget he has skills and brains behind the skirts and sex. He knows somehow that a) she’s metal, and b) she’s trouble.

      • Jon
        August 13, 2012, 4:28 pm | # | Reply

        And given his reaction to Ruby, I expect B is more of a concern to him than A.

    • jdreyfuss
      January 21, 2020, 4:59 pm | # | Reply

      He may have known and not cared that Julie was playing him, but he pretty clearly could not tell that Phoebe wasn’t just another party girl.

  14. Kay Gilbert
    August 13, 2012, 10:33 am | # | Reply

    “This is like the brain-eating zombies ignoring Homer Simpson.” That’s a great line, and I plan to use it a lot. Where do I send the royalties?

    • Eddddd the mad genius
      August 13, 2012, 2:21 pm | # | Reply

      to me.
      then i’ll… send them on. to, the place where they go.
      trust me.

  15. Beachfox
    August 13, 2012, 10:36 am | # | Reply

    NORBY!!! Hey little guy!!

    *suffers from totally ‘I had forgotten about that series for years and now I suddenly remember all of it’ syndrome*

    • Jon
      August 13, 2012, 4:27 pm | # | Reply

      Oh, man. You’re right. That totally is him.

  16. Kirt Dankmyer
    August 13, 2012, 10:57 am | # | Reply

    I know Violet is evil, but that smile is *adorable*

  17. Wodwo
    August 13, 2012, 11:00 am | # | Reply

    So we’re not going clubbing? Maaaaaan.

  18. Saberbeam
    August 13, 2012, 11:05 am | # | Reply

    To the tune of “Take a Chance on Me” by ABBA

    Can’t change Ruby’s mind, you’re the next in line
    Miss Virginia Lee, please have sex with me
    Yeah, you’re logic centers ache, and all reason is gone
    Silliness too much to take, but could we get it on?

    If you feel hassled, we’ll get some White Castle, eat comfort food together
    Ignore impossibilities, talk Euclidean geometry, and have a lot of sex here

    But you know I had
    So much I wanted to do, with Ruby and her husband too
    It’s tragic
    She says I should drop it there, scratch up one more affair
    But by now we know
    I won’t let this go

  19. bigbearseviltwin
    August 13, 2012, 11:23 am | # | Reply

    This seems strange Tip normally doesn’t have this much problem finding a partner. Maybe there is some anti Tip field on St. Charlie. His super power does seem to be canceled out.

  20. Xyxoz
    August 13, 2012, 12:05 pm | # | Reply

    Maybe he just doesn’t like Bee all that much?

    • woozy
      August 13, 2012, 5:46 pm | # | Reply

      *THANK you!*

  21. Sandy C
    August 13, 2012, 1:44 pm | # | Reply

    Fearless prediction: Tip already knows Violet’s a robot. He’s just not saying anything.

  22. Andy4Hire
    August 13, 2012, 4:06 pm | # | Reply

    Could be Tip doesn’t think of Violet as a prospective sexual partner because Violet’s not giving off the right pheromones. And it doesn’t register with Tip that something’s amiss for the same reason the rest of us haven’t figured out why he’s immune to her charms: as Artie himself once pointed out, “You people always neglect the olfactory dimension.”

  23. woozy
    August 13, 2012, 5:26 pm | # | Reply

    MAYBE HE JUST DOESN’T LIKE HER!!!!

  24. Eric Burns-White
    August 13, 2012, 8:46 pm | # | Reply

    Okay — serious critical theorist hat on for a second?

    Tip’s major flaw is his callousness with those who have identity issues. Remember how he hurt Sweetheart? How she wasn’t a real girl, and so he could talk stuff up to her? Contrast this with his time with the werewolves and with Artie — there were nonhuman elements that came across as exotic to him… but also came across as real to him. Artie and Julie were happy in their own skin, and in the end, Tip found that compelling.

    Tigerlily Jones completely blew his mind, because her self-image is so sharply defined that it was blinding — it’s a part of her insanity, to the point of monofocus.

    Sweetheart has issues with her own personal self-image, so Tip has issues treating her as ‘real.’ Ruby is entirely comfortable in her own android ‘skin,’ and wears her android nature proudly. So Tip is into her. And of course Tip himself is entirely confident in his own self-identity and how he presents to the world.

    Violet Bee hides herself. And clearly she wants to be ‘real,’ and by real she means a woman. She digs Tip physically, of course, but more than that she wants the validation that would come from Tip boffing her circuits out. But she lacks the confidence in herself and she is hiding in a role presenting something she’s not, so she doesn’t ping sexually at all in Tip’s world.

    Of course… this is Skin Horse. How does the Velveteen Rabbit become real?

    When someone loves him.

    Sweetheart wants love. She wants to be real. Violet wants love — or at least hot sex. She wants to be real.

    Tip’s superpower makes him the locus for such things, but Tip only extends that affirmation to those who don’t need it — to those who are already real.

    Tragic, ain’t it?

    • Forzin
      August 13, 2012, 10:26 pm | # | Reply

      That… is incredibly impressive and I want to bake you a batch of cookies.

      It also makes me feel very, very sad.

    • Sandy C
      August 13, 2012, 10:51 pm | # | Reply

      That is really, really astute. Plus it provides a nice look into Violet Bee’s psyche.

      Given Tip’s established competence as a psychologist, though, I think we’ll really be in for fun when he starts revealing what of the others that he knows. In the last few chapters we’ve really only seen the laid-back, fun side of his, and it’s easy to forget that he’s actually a very savvy people-reader. I’ll be waiting the return of competent!Tip very eagerly.

  25. Dave Van Domelen
    August 13, 2012, 11:27 pm | # | Reply

    I guess he just doesn’t like the ViBe she puts off.

  26. Anderson
    August 13, 2012, 11:50 pm | # | Reply

    Hmm. I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing some Madblood androids? Those guys were awesome…

    • Forzin
      August 14, 2012, 12:04 am | # | Reply

      I hope one of them escaped the cute furry hamsters.

      • Rex Vivat
        August 14, 2012, 1:03 am | # | Reply

        They did! http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic/series.php?view=archive&chapter=15096&mpe=1&step=1

  27. WJS
    September 25, 2017, 1:28 am | # | Reply

    OK, even if she is only trying to seduce him for nefarious purposes (I theorise that her not really being into him is why he’s not interested) I do kinda feel a bit sorry for her after that.

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