Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
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2014-05-08
‹‹ First ‹ Prev Buy! Comments(39) Next › Last ››

2014-05-08

by shaenon on May 8, 2014 at 12:01 am
Chapter: The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
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Discussion (39) ¬

  1. Jay Eff
    May 8, 2014, 12:06 am | # | Reply

    OK, so Babe will sound like Jonathan Harris in my mind from now on.
    Hooray!

  2. magecat
    May 8, 2014, 12:17 am | # | Reply

    Now I want to see Sweetheart cosplaying Okami.

    • K. Iceclaw
      July 18, 2016, 10:19 am | # | Reply

      Seconded! Me Too! This Needs To Happen!

      … And other statements along those lines.

  3. Rex Vivat
    May 8, 2014, 12:27 am | # | Reply

    even more?

  4. Shen Hibiki
    May 8, 2014, 12:28 am | # | Reply

    … Okami Sweetheart? You wanna kill me with cuteness overdose, don’t you?

  5. blahblah903
    May 8, 2014, 12:51 am | # | Reply

    Don’t you mean Amaterasu?

    Because…y’know…Okami’s the name of the game (and a japanese word for wolf, but that’s entirely relevant and not my point), not the character.

    • Nentuaby
      May 8, 2014, 1:46 am | # | Reply

      “Cosplaying [name of the work]” isn’t an unusual way to say it, though, when the rest follows from context.

    • heckblazer
      May 8, 2014, 2:17 am | # | Reply

      Okami also means “great spirit/god”, so it’s a pun that also refers to Amaterasu.

      • Tom Flapwell
        May 8, 2014, 2:00 pm | # | Reply

        And it’s a pun on the word for “wolf.”

      • SotiCoto
        August 22, 2014, 10:20 am | # | Reply

        Exactly the point I wanted to make. Those Japanese can’t resist their word-play… which is why they turned their goddess into a wolf and made a game of it.

        Funnily enough I didn’t get the joke at all until I got the Japanese language patch for Dragon’s Dogma. Given how often the Pawns go on about wolves (and the fact that they hunt in packs), it was only a matter of time until I cottoned on.

        • BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
          March 14, 2015, 8:12 am | # | Reply

          Japanese puns rarely translate

    • Sora Hjort
      May 8, 2014, 5:16 am | # | Reply

      People are more likely to remember “Okami” instead of “Amaterasu”

      • SotiCoto
        August 22, 2014, 10:24 am | # | Reply

        Anyone who reads any amount of manga, watches anime or plays Japanese games is inevitably going to pick up some of their mythology sooner or later (and possibly even some of their history, though the Samurai Warriors games are probably best for teaching that… loosely).
        The cave-dwelling sun-goddess is just one of those things… along with Susanoo of the booze-drinking, orochi-slaying and comb-marrying.

        Thing is… I could look this all up to make sure I get it exactly right… but just seeing what I can rip from my goldfish memory is kinda fun.

    • jdreyfuss
      May 8, 2014, 7:10 am | # | Reply

      I bet with Marci’s level of nerd, she said “cosplay as Amaterasu from Okami,” and Chris shortened it either for his own purposes or to simplify it for Sweetheart.

    • JET73L
      March 14, 2015, 6:30 am | # | Reply

      I noticed that and hoped Marcie meant “Tell her to cosplay as the box art, including the PS2 logo and back panels, from Okami.”

  6. Eddurd
    May 8, 2014, 6:37 am | # | Reply

    Yesterday was not a good day. Wrote a filk, was running late for work, forgot to post it until I got home. That was then, this is now …

    (TUNE: “Margaritaville”, Jimmy Buffet)

    Sweetheart can’t stand it!
    Chris will demand it,
    That you recite in a funny deep voice!
    Then Marcie will dress you
    As Amaterasu …
    Gotta obey, ’cause you don’t have a choice!

     Mocked by a Mata Hari who is mechanoid!
     She just stands there, and quietly smiles!
     Now say it with
     The voice of Doc-tor Smith!
     What you’ll do …
     Just to get back your files!

  7. jdreyfuss
    May 8, 2014, 7:20 am | # | Reply

    Mata Hari was a spy, not a saboteur. Though “mechanoid Mata Hari” definitely rolls of the tongue better than “mechanoid Violette Szabo.”

  8. Zobot257
    May 8, 2014, 8:58 am | # | Reply

    I’m gonna join the throng of people who say they want an Okami-ized Sweetheart.

    Heck, I’d be willing to pay for it.

    • Tom Flapwell
      May 8, 2014, 2:01 pm | # | Reply

      Would you settle for fan art?

      • zobot257
        May 8, 2014, 2:33 pm | # | Reply

        …yes. Yes I would.

  9. Snakebitcat
    May 8, 2014, 9:24 am | # | Reply

    I can’t help wondering whether Gavotte made everybody’s promotions dependent upon the basement dweller files in mutually exclusive ways, with Bubbles’ task being to prevent anybody else from completing theirs…

    • ariela
      May 8, 2014, 5:19 pm | # | Reply

      Oh, do you think that Bubbles got a task, too? I’d just assumed it/she was voluntarily (service is her only joy!) helping Moustacio with it/his request, which he verbalized in http://skin-horse.com/comic/adorable-2/

      And now I notice that M left out quite a bit of details… dun-dun-dun

      • Prodigal
        May 8, 2014, 8:14 pm | # | Reply

        She’s sentient enough to qualify as a federal employee, she stashed the files who knows where instead of giving them to Moustachio, and she went all poker-faced in panel 2. So while I could be wrong, I like the idea of her being smarter than the limited vocabulary she was programmed with led her coworkers to expect.

        • Rex Vivat
          May 8, 2014, 9:19 pm | # | Reply

          Funny how nobody said anything about her sentience/sapience until she acquired a humanoid shape.

          • irdburns
            May 9, 2014, 8:52 am | #

            Amazing how lack of ability to communicate with sentient beings makes it hard to get them recognized. Given what has happened in our world with Cetaceans, Elephants, and Great Apes I find this entirely realistic.

          • JET73L
            March 14, 2015, 6:32 am | #

            I always assumed she was sapient, back when she first spoke, and that that was the joke. It was only further confirmed when she and Sweet Daddy… Mack? (Whatever Tigerlily’s Cadillac-spider offspring was named) had their moment.

    • Tetra Valent
      May 8, 2014, 9:07 pm | # | Reply

      But we have Word of God that she doesn’t get paid, so she can’t be an official staff member.

  10. Dewy
    May 8, 2014, 10:40 am | # | Reply

    I actually think this is a very sneaky “team building” exercise cooked up by Gavotte. She knows they will soon need to work together in a way that most civil servants are not accustomed to. I would not be surprised at all if her “dumbness” is just an act.

    • mrmonkeyhead2013
      May 8, 2014, 11:03 am | # | Reply

      Or knowing that the dumbness was coming and set the lesson up to run while she was down.

      • Paul
        May 8, 2014, 8:45 pm | # | Reply

        My suspicion is that her instructions, taken as a whole, interlock beautifully. She set up a Xanatos Gambit to address several issues at once, then timed it so they couldn’t pester her for the best solution (say, talking with each other about their tasks and giving the DoI only the files they need/can process at a time, instead of the whole stake).

  11. Shadowmehr
    May 8, 2014, 8:15 pm | # | Reply

    Chris does realize Sweetheart was created as a super-attack dog, right? One shouldn’t scrape too deeply beneath the bureaucratic exterior.

    • Paul
      May 8, 2014, 8:42 pm | # | Reply

      In fairness she was also bred to be excessively Canadian, he’s probably banking on being perfectly safe so long as direct orders/duties don’t give her clearance for violence.

    • irdburns
      May 9, 2014, 8:53 am | # | Reply

      Yep. She might knock over his coffee.

  12. BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
    May 8, 2014, 9:31 pm | # | Reply

    No, seriously, how can Gavotte give assignments to Chris? He doesn’t work for her department.

    • Paul
      May 8, 2014, 9:57 pm | # | Reply

      She doesn’t need to give him orders. The DoI has apparently been after the files for a bit.

      • BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
        May 8, 2014, 10:05 pm | # | Reply

        So its just coincidence that he happened to decide to acquire them at exactly the same time every single member of Project Skin Horse was individually assigned to acquire them?

        • Norman
          May 8, 2014, 11:07 pm | # | Reply

          Not much of a coincidence, really. Chris or some other DoI researcher has probably been up there every day for months. This is just the first time Moustachio had any reason to help them.

        • Tetra Valent
          May 8, 2014, 11:48 pm | # | Reply

          This is the first day that the team is back from a long trip to California. Moustachio can’t get the files and Gavotte wouldn’t stoop to do staff work. Knowing that Chris has been waiting for the files for weeks, Gavotte made them the subject of all the conflicting assignments and let him know what day to show up.

  13. Prodigal
    May 9, 2014, 3:06 am | # | Reply

    Ah well, it was a fun theory while it lasted.

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