Seriously, when is Nick getting that word filter removed? As has been pointed out, it’s a pain to parse sometimes. Plus, it highlights how much of a mindraping creep Dr Lee really is. I’m not sure why it’s still around at this point.
I’m a regular poster on D&D boards where it’s the name of a specific spell and has grown into shorthand for the entire concept, but it’s an accurate shorthand.
Virginia has gone into his head and removed his personal freedom basically for the hell of it. Nick has had his very thoughts violated because some beaurocrat got annoyed with his potty mouth. It’s not rape, but it is the same type of power play in order to crush a persons identity.
Yes, he seems okay with it(though we have no way of knowing if he actually is or if Dr Lee just twisted his mind so he would be), but the fact is that Virginia altered his brain without any actual consent just because she felt like it, and that’s not right.
You do realize that not a single element of his thoughts has, in fact, been changed, right? It’s a program that intercepts his actual speech, not how he thinks the words. Hence why, once he figured out he could use “pork” in a derogatory way, it took the system a while to catch up.
In that story arc it is suggested that the swearing filter is fairly standard for a subset of AI and robots, and that the entire team is responsible for the decision. Not saying I agree with what’s been done (the removal of choice) but you seem to have your facts wrong. Nick has expressed displeasure at his filter, many times, and it alters only audio output. Also, regardless of the history of the term, comparing a voice filter in a cartoon to rape is pretty trivializing, never mind that no actual ‘mindrape’ has taken place here. Yes, unethical and evil actions but not mindrape. Nick’s brain, soul, thought processes, memories, and perceptions are intact.
Comparing a voice filter to rape might be trivializing. Comparing having your brains scooped out, your body stolen, and an override installed on your free will (yep, there’s one of those for real in Nick as well – Virginia had just enough morality not to use it)… well, violation doesn’t really cover it.
I’m guessing that one of those D&D boards you post on is the GitP forum. (I think I’ve seen you around there, actually.) Does the fact that when you say “dick” on that forum it’s replaced with “****” mean that Rich Burlew (and/or the authors of the GitP forum software) has mindraped you?
Because it’s exactly equivalent. Nick is not prevented from thinking swears; he’s just got a filter on his voice that replaces the audio with something less (or more, headtoters) offensive when he speaks them. The very fact that the filter overdub happens is proof that his thoughts aren’t being censored – if they were, there wouldn’t be any swearing to overdub.
And note that his blog is very much uncensored. He could probably physically write swears as well. Or sign them. Or just make offensive gestures with his nacelles (or the girl-remote, if you don’t like a challenge).
That said, as Manifesta points out, there’s way more messed up about Nick’s crush on the woman who stole his heart and the rest of his original body and stuffed his brainmeats in a helicopter than the voice filter. But if Nick is okay with it, I don’t suppose it’s anyone else’s business.
In other news, Nick makes a blinking awesome princess.
‘Shorthand’ or any other shoeboxing of a complex issue is generally not very useful or accurate; it’s like saying that the sole cause of the entire American overweight population is junk food. **shrug** As people’ve already said in prior comments, his mind is intact, his will is intact, and apparently he’s happier as a ‘copter than as a human; good for him. Yes, violation, horrible violation… but he’s making the best of it and owning his situation. Go Nick! When you lose control in a fundamental way, the first thing you want when you’re free again is to gain it back; I respect Nick one hell of a lot.
Soujin, please don’t do that. If this website devolved into one where the comments are insults and ad hominem attacks, it would destroy a beautiful and loving community. I get such joy from these comments, and I learn so much—even from people with whom I disagree—because we assume goodwill on each others’ parts, and address each other respectfully.
Seconded- it’s fine to object to what someone says (I’m a bit dubious about casual use of “mindrape” myself) but please lay off of the personal insults even you think they’re deserved. (That’s what turned the old Achewood comments into a howling wasteland where people occasionally stopped slanging to talk about the actual comic…)
I think at some point one of them said that Jeff tends to pick words based on their humor value, whereas Shaenon tends to pick words that have some relationship to the word being redacted. So I imagine Jeff is responsible for today’s redactions. I feel like ‘cuffing’ kind of straddles the line and is amazing.
Okay, if—for the sake of argument—we’re going to treat this cartoon as something real, Virginia stole Nick’s brain, put it in a machine, and then destroyed his body. I think a swear filter is pretty small potatoes compared to that.
well, anasigma stole nick’s brain &c. virginia, afaict, was responsible mostly for (a) reattaching said brain to a helicopter and (b) reprogramming him to use that for his new body.
remember, they think she’s useful to have around as long as she doesn’t get to think about anything too hard. anasigma’s evil, ginny is vague and easily led by an interesting problem. (a classic issue among even the sanest of scientists.)
people usually can’t help who they get crushes on. given that nick does consider it ultimately way cooler to be a helicopter than the human that he was, do you really think you ought to second-guess him?
As others here have said, it was Anasigma in general and not Dr. Lee specifically that took Nick’s brain, but he did technically agree- “That’s the last time I just scroll down to the bottom and click OK.” Still wrong, but more trickery than outright stealing, albeit with the same effect.
Look, this is not sarcasm – what Nick says can seriously be parsed…? I mean the censored swear-words…? No matter how hard I tried, I could never get the faintest idea what he was actually trying to say, save for the occasionally all-too-obvious “f***” or “s***”…
I actually have very little trouble “parsing” what he says. They’re swear word substitutes… you can replace 90% of them with f*** or s*** (regardless if that’s the actual word he used or not) and get it to make sense. That said, I don’t even make the (re)substitution in my head. I just read the substitute words as expletives instead of what they really mean.
As for Dr Lee messing with his brain (“mindrape”), I don’t think she really has.
1) The profanity filter is on his verbal output. It intercepts his speech *after* it has left him.
2) The “safe” words she installs in all her projects similarly does not need to be forced or brainwashed into him. It could be a subsystem of the systems that Nick controls with his mind and when the safe word is used this subsystem automatically activates and shuts down all the other systems.
It’s great that everyone is having a serious discussion of the strip, but let’s keep things civil. No personal attacks, please, and do not use “rape” to refer to things that (however awful) are not rape.
It isn’t “trivialising rape”. The term “mindrape” is about as apt as a term as you’re likely to find for the act of intimately violating someone’s identity, expression or understanding of the world around them.
Would you tell a victim of gaslighting that their experience was trivial?
Nick’s situation might not be that severe, but it is a gross violation of the right to freedom of expression.
Ye gods, some people need to chill. This is a comic about evil scientists and their creations, of course it plays things for laughs that would be horrifying in real life.
And at that, it’s milder than her previous comic, which actively cheered seriously horrifying behavior. At least here there’s an occasional apparent criticism.
I don’t know what the pig is talking about. I understood Nick just fine. I was actually wondering if the program is starting to show signs of failure, since of the seven filtered words in the comic, “puddings,” “shoe,” and “flown” begin with the same phoneme as the word they’re replacing; “puddings,” “cuffing,” and “mist” are near-rhymes; “cuffing” is a Spoonerism; and “millstone” as a colloquialism is a synonym. The only word that requires context to figure out is “lime” and if it’s “lime” meaning “chalk” then it falls into the same category as “millstone.”
In the pig’s defense, we’ve been reading the wrongswear words for several years now and have gotten used to it. The pig is getting it all at once and audibly, which moves a little quicker than the written word.
Thanks, jdreyfuss. I don’t have the cultural background to parse the censored words, so your comment was helpful. Could you be more specific please? What exactly does “puddings” stand for? What is “cuffing”? Skin Horse is so well written, I’m sure I’m missing something.
Seriously, when is Nick getting that word filter removed? As has been pointed out, it’s a pain to parse sometimes. Plus, it highlights how much of a mindraping creep Dr Lee really is. I’m not sure why it’s still around at this point.
Uh, wow, you are bad and you should feel bad. I didn’t realise anyone reading this comic was enough of a douchebag to use the phrase “mindrape”.
I’m a regular poster on D&D boards where it’s the name of a specific spell and has grown into shorthand for the entire concept, but it’s an accurate shorthand.
Virginia has gone into his head and removed his personal freedom basically for the hell of it. Nick has had his very thoughts violated because some beaurocrat got annoyed with his potty mouth. It’s not rape, but it is the same type of power play in order to crush a persons identity.
Yes, he seems okay with it(though we have no way of knowing if he actually is or if Dr Lee just twisted his mind so he would be), but the fact is that Virginia altered his brain without any actual consent just because she felt like it, and that’s not right.
Not his thoughts, just the voice generator.
You do realize that not a single element of his thoughts has, in fact, been changed, right? It’s a program that intercepts his actual speech, not how he thinks the words. Hence why, once he figured out he could use “pork” in a derogatory way, it took the system a while to catch up.
In that story arc it is suggested that the swearing filter is fairly standard for a subset of AI and robots, and that the entire team is responsible for the decision. Not saying I agree with what’s been done (the removal of choice) but you seem to have your facts wrong. Nick has expressed displeasure at his filter, many times, and it alters only audio output. Also, regardless of the history of the term, comparing a voice filter in a cartoon to rape is pretty trivializing, never mind that no actual ‘mindrape’ has taken place here. Yes, unethical and evil actions but not mindrape. Nick’s brain, soul, thought processes, memories, and perceptions are intact.
Comparing a voice filter to rape might be trivializing. Comparing having your brains scooped out, your body stolen, and an override installed on your free will (yep, there’s one of those for real in Nick as well – Virginia had just enough morality not to use it)… well, violation doesn’t really cover it.
I’m guessing that one of those D&D boards you post on is the GitP forum. (I think I’ve seen you around there, actually.) Does the fact that when you say “dick” on that forum it’s replaced with “****” mean that Rich Burlew (and/or the authors of the GitP forum software) has mindraped you?
Because it’s exactly equivalent. Nick is not prevented from thinking swears; he’s just got a filter on his voice that replaces the audio with something less (or more, headtoters) offensive when he speaks them. The very fact that the filter overdub happens is proof that his thoughts aren’t being censored – if they were, there wouldn’t be any swearing to overdub.
And note that his blog is very much uncensored. He could probably physically write swears as well. Or sign them. Or just make offensive gestures with his nacelles (or the girl-remote, if you don’t like a challenge).
That said, as Manifesta points out, there’s way more messed up about Nick’s crush on the woman who stole his heart and the rest of his original body and stuffed his brainmeats in a helicopter than the voice filter. But if Nick is okay with it, I don’t suppose it’s anyone else’s business.
In other news, Nick makes a blinking awesome princess.
‘Shorthand’ or any other shoeboxing of a complex issue is generally not very useful or accurate; it’s like saying that the sole cause of the entire American overweight population is junk food. **shrug** As people’ve already said in prior comments, his mind is intact, his will is intact, and apparently he’s happier as a ‘copter than as a human; good for him. Yes, violation, horrible violation… but he’s making the best of it and owning his situation. Go Nick! When you lose control in a fundamental way, the first thing you want when you’re free again is to gain it back; I respect Nick one hell of a lot.
Soujin, please don’t do that. If this website devolved into one where the comments are insults and ad hominem attacks, it would destroy a beautiful and loving community. I get such joy from these comments, and I learn so much—even from people with whom I disagree—because we assume goodwill on each others’ parts, and address each other respectfully.
Seconded- it’s fine to object to what someone says (I’m a bit dubious about casual use of “mindrape” myself) but please lay off of the personal insults even you think they’re deserved. (That’s what turned the old Achewood comments into a howling wasteland where people occasionally stopped slanging to talk about the actual comic…)
Soujin, please phrase things more politely. “‘Mind Rape’ is a strong term” would be a better way of putting it, and it would sound more intelligent.
Implication is that the word “mindrape” is worse than the act of mindrape.
It disappears when it stops having comedic value.
Which is to say, never.
I’ve become convinced that most of the time, Shaenon and Jeff don’t even have specific cuss words in mind.
I think at some point one of them said that Jeff tends to pick words based on their humor value, whereas Shaenon tends to pick words that have some relationship to the word being redacted. So I imagine Jeff is responsible for today’s redactions. I feel like ‘cuffing’ kind of straddles the line and is amazing.
Okay, if—for the sake of argument—we’re going to treat this cartoon as something real, Virginia stole Nick’s brain, put it in a machine, and then destroyed his body. I think a swear filter is pretty small potatoes compared to that.
well, anasigma stole nick’s brain &c. virginia, afaict, was responsible mostly for (a) reattaching said brain to a helicopter and (b) reprogramming him to use that for his new body.
remember, they think she’s useful to have around as long as she doesn’t get to think about anything too hard. anasigma’s evil, ginny is vague and easily led by an interesting problem. (a classic issue among even the sanest of scientists.)
people usually can’t help who they get crushes on. given that nick does consider it ultimately way cooler to be a helicopter than the human that he was, do you really think you ought to second-guess him?
As others here have said, it was Anasigma in general and not Dr. Lee specifically that took Nick’s brain, but he did technically agree- “That’s the last time I just scroll down to the bottom and click OK.” Still wrong, but more trickery than outright stealing, albeit with the same effect.
That would be outright stealing.
Look, this is not sarcasm – what Nick says can seriously be parsed…? I mean the censored swear-words…? No matter how hard I tried, I could never get the faintest idea what he was actually trying to say, save for the occasionally all-too-obvious “f***” or “s***”…
You and me both. I always assumed it was because English is not my first language and there’s a lot of English swearing I was never exposed to.
Ok, so to throw my thoughts into the discussion…
I actually have very little trouble “parsing” what he says. They’re swear word substitutes… you can replace 90% of them with f*** or s*** (regardless if that’s the actual word he used or not) and get it to make sense. That said, I don’t even make the (re)substitution in my head. I just read the substitute words as expletives instead of what they really mean.
As for Dr Lee messing with his brain (“mindrape”), I don’t think she really has.
1) The profanity filter is on his verbal output. It intercepts his speech *after* it has left him.
2) The “safe” words she installs in all her projects similarly does not need to be forced or brainwashed into him. It could be a subsystem of the systems that Nick controls with his mind and when the safe word is used this subsystem automatically activates and shuts down all the other systems.
It’s great that everyone is having a serious discussion of the strip, but let’s keep things civil. No personal attacks, please, and do not use “rape” to refer to things that (however awful) are not rape.
Thanks, everyone!
I’m sorry for getting too aggressive in my original comment. :/ I have a pretty poor reaction to people trivialising rape.
Appreciate your great comic, as always.
It isn’t “trivialising rape”. The term “mindrape” is about as apt as a term as you’re likely to find for the act of intimately violating someone’s identity, expression or understanding of the world around them.
Would you tell a victim of gaslighting that their experience was trivial?
Nick’s situation might not be that severe, but it is a gross violation of the right to freedom of expression.
Just as soon as it stops being funny, which is to say never.
For some reason, Nick’s delivery here makes me think of Dante Basco. Crazy, or somehow justifiable?
The Princess, the Lime, and the Coconut. Episode 167: Daiquiri the Unicorn at the AA meeting.
The Princess with a Coconut at the AA meeting … isn’t that an answer in the latest version of Clue?
Aaannnddd… I just got a vision of a coconut bra with that….
“You put de lime in de coconut, you drink it all up…”
I am enjoying this *Pina Colada* and you *toad dressers* can *Like it or act like it*.
mnem
Feeling somewhat random this morning.
Yes. Yes. You say words, then I say.
It is fun *in between*. More fun than *dancing*.
We are *happy campers*.
…keep smiling, back slowly towards the door, and do not mention Androsynth. ohcrap
Funny, I came to the comments specifically to remind people to *ENJOY THE SAUCE*.
Yotz, disassemble.
mnem
*In some distant part of the universe*
Ye gods, some people need to chill. This is a comic about evil scientists and their creations, of course it plays things for laughs that would be horrifying in real life.
Welcome to the Internet. Are you here on business or pleasure? Will you be staying long? Do you have anything to declare? ;D
Just my mind and my sanity. Wait, are those prohibited items? Look, I’ll mail them back, don’t hurt me.
I think the pig in the tophat is far cuter than the pig in the wig.
And at that, it’s milder than her previous comic, which actively cheered seriously horrifying behavior. At least here there’s an occasional apparent criticism.
You mean I shouldn’t have been giving my colleagues radioactive coffee all these years? Damn. Way to skew my moral compass.
I don’t know what the pig is talking about. I understood Nick just fine. I was actually wondering if the program is starting to show signs of failure, since of the seven filtered words in the comic, “puddings,” “shoe,” and “flown” begin with the same phoneme as the word they’re replacing; “puddings,” “cuffing,” and “mist” are near-rhymes; “cuffing” is a Spoonerism; and “millstone” as a colloquialism is a synonym. The only word that requires context to figure out is “lime” and if it’s “lime” meaning “chalk” then it falls into the same category as “millstone.”
I have to admit, I don’t get ‘millstone’.
Millstone: a heavy weight. its a pain to have to think about filtering your speech when you are used to swearing…is what I think it means.
Another one! Welcome to MY tribe, fellow Pedant! 😀
In the pig’s defense, we’ve been reading the wrongswear words for several years now and have gotten used to it. The pig is getting it all at once and audibly, which moves a little quicker than the written word.
Yes, but the swears are in a different font, which I’m sure the pig can hear just fine.
Thanks, jdreyfuss. I don’t have the cultural background to parse the censored words, so your comment was helpful. Could you be more specific please? What exactly does “puddings” stand for? What is “cuffing”? Skin Horse is so well written, I’m sure I’m missing something.
In other news…..Unity made an awesome dress.
I just got back from the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum, and Skin Horse was all I could think about while looking at the ‘copters.
I never thought I’d say this about Nick, but– Awwwwwww, teh sweetness!
–Nonie
Since I don’t know how to do italics in this system, filtered swears are in parentheses.
So, working on the principal that a mediocre filk is better than no filk, I present:
To the tune of “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” by Otis Redding
Gonna get this “bellhop” done,
I’ve been princessing from dusk till dawn,
Singing Whimsy princess songs,
Trying different dresses on,
(Chorus)
I’m strollin’ through this long hallway,
Recalling “mist” from back in the day,
Strollin’ through this long hallway,
Doing “lime”,
Gonna sort out this mess,
Show the robots I’m a princess,
Got a dress and new hairdo,
Gotta work on swearing less,
(Repeat Chorus)
Left comfort zone behind,
Gaming buddy called me gay,
We’ll see who’s laughing last,
When he sees how well I sashay,
(Repeat Chorus)
(Whistling solo as done by Gussie)
Skreeeee! Skree Skree Skree (etc.)
Good job! The skrees are what really sell it.
i’m a bit confused why “cartoons”, though. isn’t whimsydom all about the animatronics?
The Little House is, but Whimsydom as a whole includes the animated princess movies.
Don’t worry, nobody expects your lot to be polite about anything.