Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2017-09-23
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2017-09-23

by shaenon on September 23, 2017 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Sure as You're Born
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Discussion (38) ¬

  1. Kaydrien Iceclaw
    September 23, 2017, 12:06 am | # | Reply

    Hmmm. Perhaps this is the Whimsy mind control in some form, rather than The Cure.

    • WuseMajor
      September 23, 2017, 12:35 am | # | Reply

      Does anyone still listen to The Cure anymore?

      • Seph
        September 23, 2017, 3:07 am | # | Reply

        Yes, I do.

      • Robert Nowall
        September 23, 2017, 11:25 pm | # | Reply

        Did anyone listen to The Cure back then?

    • awgiedawgie
      September 23, 2017, 1:21 am | # | Reply

      It’s sounding more and more like it could be Tony & Merc and the Groovitron, rather than the Cure.

      Although now that Tip uses the phrase “mind control”, I do recall that A-Sig had purchased Whimsy’s software, in addition to doing experiments with the Cure. So they’re all sorts of mind games — and none of ’em good.

      But why? Do they actually have something to gain by making these people reality-blind? Or is this just a large-scale test of the software and/or the Cure?

      • D. Walker
        September 23, 2017, 10:58 am | # | Reply

        It could indeed be a test, a la the Death Star.

        “You may fire when ready.”

    • David Breslin
      September 23, 2017, 4:44 pm | # | Reply

      It’s still just about possible that it was the Cure, administered before or during the session, perhaps in drinks or via air-conditioning. If the minutes-taker was one off the first to be affected, they may have censored out / altered all talk of non-human sapients by delegates who hadn’t been hit by reality-blindness yet.

      • ngmatt
        September 23, 2017, 8:15 pm | # | Reply

        maby being hooked up to the groveatron made tip immune to whatever is causing this, maby the grveatron is like a reverse cure in that it gets rid of reality blindness

        • Chrisn
          September 23, 2017, 11:07 pm | # | Reply

          Dang – I like that one!

    • WJS
      August 2, 2019, 3:15 pm | # | Reply

      I would consider that particularly poor writing myself. The Whimsy mind control software could influence people subtly while they were jacked in to a full immersion VR simulation. The difference between that and affecting a whole town with no vector is immense.

  2. Riniko
    September 23, 2017, 1:34 am | # | Reply

    It was the turtles, they have become the Turtle Overlords.

    • David Breslin
      September 23, 2017, 4:45 pm | # | Reply

      That would be turtley awesome, if a little terrapinfying.

      • bitflipper
        September 23, 2017, 8:35 pm | # | Reply

        Congratulations! You’ve tortoise some new puns!

  3. Deepthought42
    September 23, 2017, 2:17 am | # | Reply

    He isn’t cured!! Thank you Shaenon and Jeff!

    • Dark
      September 23, 2017, 7:14 pm | # | Reply

      Reality Blindness can only affect those who still have a shred of disbelief that this could happen.

      Tip has worked with Skin Horse for so long that he’ll never be affected by it again, if he ever was to begin with.

      (Or at least, that’s my take on how it works.)

      • awgiedawgie
        September 24, 2017, 6:00 pm | # | Reply

        Not to mention that Tip was bitten by a werewolf and injected with Extract of Unity. And who knows what he was exposed to when he was dealing with the basement dwellers at Annex 1. So he’s not exactly 100% human any more himself.

  4. Urlance Woolsbane
    September 23, 2017, 2:18 am | # | Reply

    Recall also that one of the possums mentioned Pavane, whose only appearance to date was in a VR simulation…

    • Urlance Woolsbane
      September 23, 2017, 2:18 am | # | Reply

      This was supposed to be below Kadrien’s comment. Gah…

    • Kaydrien Iceclaw
      September 23, 2017, 9:34 am | # | Reply

      Yeah. I wonder how a swarm of bees jacks in to a VR. Unless they aren’t Gavotte’s _biological_ daughter, but something more complicated, which could be the case.

  5. Flah
    September 23, 2017, 2:50 am | # | Reply

    Tip’s last line would be hubris coming from anyone else.

    • D. Walker
      September 23, 2017, 11:06 am | # | Reply

      I don’t agree. I think Artie could easily say it without any hubris, and possibly Konstantin or Tigerlily as well, although those two are both pretty arrogant at times.

  6. s854
    September 23, 2017, 3:10 am | # | Reply

    Incomplete minutes, and the first thing Tip thinks of is mind control? Can he tell himself he’s not crazy?

    You’d see much the same result if a swarm of bees was to fly into the council chamber towards the end of the day.

    • BRGR
      September 23, 2017, 4:10 am | # | Reply

      They stopped mid-sentence debating non-human rights. They didn’t stop debating.

    • Kaydrien Iceclaw
      September 23, 2017, 9:25 am | # | Reply

      Remember the baseline weirdness of their jobs.

  7. Kitirena Koneko
    September 23, 2017, 6:05 am | # | Reply

    Just because nobody else posted it, and just for Sweetheart and HT…
    https://youtu.be/Od6hY_50Dh0

    • awgiedawgie
      September 23, 2017, 1:11 pm | # | Reply

      Oh, good call. Reward yourself with a can of tuna.

  8. Urlance Woolsbane
    September 23, 2017, 6:47 am | # | Reply

    Also, Tip is still wearing his clothes from the night before. Odd, that.

    • Daibhid C
      September 23, 2017, 6:55 am | # | Reply

      For all sorts of reasons.

      • Kaydrien Iceclaw
        September 23, 2017, 9:22 am | # | Reply

        He probably had to trade the majority of his previous wardrobe for it.

    • Robert Nowall
      September 23, 2017, 11:44 am | # | Reply

      Well, when you hook up with someone and go to their place…

    • Werwolfe
      September 26, 2017, 10:19 pm | # | Reply

      Or the cartoonist just wants to squeeze more mileage out of suited Tipp.

  9. Shadowmehr
    September 23, 2017, 9:17 am | # | Reply

    Ladies and gentlemen, the Crown has been deployed. The New War has officially begun.

    To the laboratories, lairs, and secret bunkers. This is not going to be fun.

    • Pygar
      September 23, 2017, 11:48 pm | # | Reply

      For *them*, anyway. I got popcorn and a popper waiting, myself…

  10. Robert Nowall
    September 23, 2017, 11:45 am | # | Reply

    It needn’t be the town council who stopped in mid sentence. It could just be the stenographer.

    • awgiedawgie
      September 23, 2017, 1:06 pm | # | Reply

      As someone else noted, Tip implies that they stopped debating only non-human rights, not that they stopped debating altogether.

      I imagine seeing everyone’s face going blank, their eyes glazed over, and then all glancing around the room for a second in that bewildered way that says “what just happened?” And then carrying on with the next piece of business. The minutes still shows everything because the secretary likely couldn’t even see that they had typed anything weird.

      Here’s what I don’t get… I thought H.T. was at that Coucil meeting. Yet he acts like he doesn’t know about this happening. He would have witnessed it firsthand.

      • GREEM
        September 23, 2017, 8:15 pm | # | Reply

        He was… for a time. He didn’t stay for the entire thing; as soon as Tip walked out, he went to threaten Tip. And after that, he probably went to his base to plot his next move, because Tip’s meddling was going to derail any progress he would have made at the council meeting.

        He didn’t see any point in staying after things had gone so far off the rails. If he had stayed, he would’ve been a very great disruption…

  11. Frank Hightower
    September 23, 2017, 11:53 pm | # | Reply

    Plot twist: they had been mind-controlled until that point and were just being suddenly released!

  12. Werwolfe
    September 26, 2017, 10:38 pm | # | Reply

    That last panel reminds me of PKD’s The Golden Man. Tip has the oldest adaptation, and is likely rapidly breeding human intellect out of the world.

    (Also, Frank, PKD and Lem both already did your idea, and with a Cure-like chemical nonetheless.)

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