There is more than 50 bees for each of them in each panel. You drew over 300 bees for this strip alone. And this scene was your idea? Mad respect, Shaenon
I uhm. Don’t disagree w Pavanne, exactly. Staying is doomed to repeat history, every so many decades. Humans will always choose racism in the long term.
And yet, the supply of racism falls so short of demand for it that hoaxes and fake hate crimes are required to address the shortage. Funny how that works. 🙂
It’s worse than that.
We’ve got a substantial part of the Liberal population who actually hate themselves for the unforgivable crime of being born White.
@ Nomi and Manifesta,
It is probably correct to say that the Boss Liberals such as Biden, Sanders and Pelosi do not hate themselves. Their sins appear to be in the opposite direction of that. And of course all talk of racism from their sort is merely a pretext for their attacks upon the middle class.
But many of those liberals at the grassroots levels fear to step outside their echo chamber and actually believe the current talk of racism to be a reason to hate themselves. Considering the problems associated with self hatred I would consider 1 of a hundred to be a substantial number but suspect that it is more like 20% to 40% of them. Your own mileage may vary since my estimate is an exercise in S.W.A.G. What is the smallest sample of a group that you yourselves would consider substantial? 🙂
FWIW, I’d actually put my wife in that category; she regularly asks if she, a Caucasian, can be racist against Whites, and feels shame from association.
Unfortunately so. We’re always “one generation away,” is one author’s way of putting it. It just takes one generation not teaching the next to lose advances–such as technology, or the dangers of racism.
In the last 5 years, I’ve had to counter racism directly, and grew up around it. There was a city near my home town whose politician ran as being part of a certain white-cone-hatted hate group as a point of pride. So I kinda feel the current argument.
Also, at least one of the posters is into alt-right. That isn’t name-calling, more, that is the pov they’re writing from and a heads-up. Just read past it, and move on if you aren’t into it, or celebrate it if you are, s’pose.
So Skin Horse is here to answer the validity of the vision of humanity as proposed by several Star Trek TOS episodes and constantly by the Q Continuum.
Is there hope for humanity? That seems to be the lingering question that occurs in the handful of episodes in which Captain Kirk refuses to end a being’s life during his triumph over numerous non-human sapients in “to-the-death” mortal combat contests.
Every dang alien appears saying, perhaps there is hope for humanity after all. (Often with an ambiguous Spock raised eyebrow.)
Pavanne believes that assertion pure fiction and rejects the Star Trek vision as a shirtless Shatner fantasy. In Pavanne’s view, the Gorn is crushed, the Horta extinct, the dancing light’s hunger for conflict slaked in the constant fighting between humans and klingons, and Q 100 percent correct in his disdain for humans.
Gavotte, however, believes humans capable of becoming more than they are, but is occasionally delighted when Patrick Stewart breaks all his little ships in the face of Alfre Woodard’s insight and logic.
Okay, first of all, cool. I’m enough of a nerd I understood all of that.
Secondly, I think that the thing that is never touched on in Star Trek (OG) (or even most other media) is whether Kirk/ “The Hero(es)” are outliers or actually indicitve of the human race. Many times whomever is testing humanity is much more interested in the single group they have in front of them. Sure it’s supposed to be representative of the species but it rarely is…
Starfleet’s standards are very high. They recruit only the best from each member world.
Whether in the primary or mirror universe… 😉
Personally, I subscribe to the Vulcan philosophy of IDIC. But also John W. Campbell Jr. and E.E. “Doc” Smith. David Brin’s “The Uplift War” is also optimistic about humanity’s future.
Yeah, but that’s kinda my point, media (written and otherwise) as a whole isn’t going to have their heroes flub- or if they do its so that they can make a comeback later. This isn’t a criticism (we all want superman to win after all) but it does mean that having “our hero(es)” as the benchmark isn’t exactly indicitve of humanity as a whole.
Take Starfleet, you have to be the best of the best- no doubt about that- but the best of the best is automatically an outlier from the average. If an average person was left in charge of the Enterprise (god forbid) there’s every chance that the Gorn would be crushed, the Horta hunted to extinction, the dancing light’s hunger for conflict would be slaked in the fighting between humans and klingons (until one side developed a WoMD to wipe out their opponents) , and Q…
I mean I’m human, and all it takes is a quick glance across the pond (we’ll just carefully ignore the backyard, yeah? ) to what’s currently going on east of Turkey to say… Q might be right.
So is the best of the best indicative of humanity as a whole? Hard to say. Humans are varied and complex in the best of times. An average person might have destroyed the universe, but they might have also completely revolutionized the way Kirk went about it too. There’s no one “right way” to do somthing (note: this does not mean that there are not wrong ways to do somthing- please keep this in mind), but if we don’t destroy ourselves we probably will do well as a species… eventually.
And if we do, I think it’ll be because of outliers; not the average person.
Considering some of the things we’ve seen the non-humans do—H. T. comes to mind—one could make a case that humans need saving from the non-humans. But wasn’t that Ira’s position?
Ira’s position was that nonhumans need extermination because they pose an existential threat to humans. He’s advocating genocide, not just protection.
Yes. That’s true. H.T. believed in slavery and an ultimate furtopia where humans were eventually turned entirely into animals completely erasing one’s identity and overwriting what it means to be human… well until he was subsumed into the biomass at which point he gave into more (to borrow Artie for a moment) “Simian war hormones.” (God I love that Gerbil).
Ira’s approach was a bit more direct from the outset: kill the nonhumans.
Now we could get political if we felt like it and point out that Ira was drawing conclusions (from datasets) that “soon there will be more of them than us” and “something has to be done before there’s too many of them and our way of life is destroyed forever.” Following that up with things like discussions about a continuously growing minority population eventually outstripping the current majority here in the U.S. and I’m sure you can get the picture.
-Not to throw Shannon and Jeff under the bus, I’m just sitting through a college sociology class and it’s on the brain. (Of course, history shows Shannon to have a pretty good finger on the pulse of politics: Nader in ’04 anyone?)-
Sticking purely to story beats, I think it’s hard to really say that one side is right or wrong here. Obviously, the methods leave a lot to be desired, but if you boil the four sides down to politically integrate(Gavvotte), segregate (Pavanne), revolutionize (H.T.), and racially destroy (Ira) I have to side with Gavvotte.
The fact is, most of the solutions (as in real life) are complex and can’t just be majicked into one category. Ira is going to feel threatened no matter what happens, and H.T. is (would have) felt threatened in anything other than a total control turnover to Nonhuman sapients. H.T.’s very position legitimized Ira in the same way that “Mr. Green” legitimized H.T.- and the tiger knew it!
I just reread my comment and I love this (so it oughta piss off half the audience).
Politically and socially integrate (Gavotte/ MLK jr.), segregate (Pavanne/ Booker T. Washington), revolutionize (H.T./Malcolm X), or racially destroy (Ira/ You don’t think it’s interesting that he’s a dumpy greying white dude in a suit? I should check his tie in the past and see if it’s consistently red).
You pointed it out first, but I was going to say that the two options that seem most attractive from the NHS’ standpoint are probably the ballot and the bullet, a la Malcolm X.
@ToweringBarbarian
See, the fact that we can pull from all parties is probably an even greater indicator than drawing the lines in the first place! 😉
@Xdgvy,
Heh. True enough. And the indicator here is that dumpiness, age and race are all superficial traits that are less important then what Ira does. Do you really think he would have been any different if Violet Bee had been his true body? o_O
Well, Robert Nowall, we appear to be generalizing here, and that is the problem with generalization. H.T. is not really representative of all (or, as far as I can tell, even most of) the non-human sapients. I notice that no one has mentioned Sweetheart in the comments thus far, and most of the non-human sapients seem to be mostly harmless (or at least not any worse than the average human).
If any of the non-human sapients can find a middle ground, it will be Sweetheart. She has leveled up, and will find a way to get this right. Remember that Gavotte always had faith in Sweetheart’s leadership abilities.
Since Tip is now in charge of Anasigma, I suspect that a deal can be struck. Mr. Green is finished for now, due to Sweetheart’s bureaucratic supremacy, although everyone will need to be on guard against his return.
Far as I can tell, the only firm commitments to going to Lovetron are Tony and Merc, and, since they’ve apparently been there, who knows if they want a permanent return visit? (Renard and #12 may have been, too, but that was more of a rescue.)
It seems that Pavane is ignoring – or dismissing, which is just as dangerous – the ramifications of transplanting a bunch of earthlings on their home world… earthlings who have been affected – possibly even corrupted – by the hatred and malevolence around them.
I was not attempting to imply anything about if or when the non-humans were ever innocent – after all, many of them were made specifically to wreak havoc. (And as for children being corrupted by adults, that’s entirely unnecessary. No parent has ever needed to teach their child to misbehave. Children come by that quite naturally.)
But Pavane seems to consider her home world to be a haven. What is going to happen to her haven when she introduces all these earth creatures into its ecosystem?
Everyone in Narbonic was well aware of their audience, as well as their own roles. They didn’t break the 4th wall so much as just ignore it altogether.
I could be wrong, but I seem to recall Shaenon saying at some point that she wanted to do less of that with Skin Horse. And I can’t recall any specific moment when anyone in Skin Horse has addressed the audience. Unity certainly has the right personality to do it, but I don’t know that she ever has.
Pavane doesn’t stand a chance of winning an argument with her mother. Gavotte is practically perfect in every way. 😉
But the refreshments haven’t even gotten cold yet!
There is more than 50 bees for each of them in each panel. You drew over 300 bees for this strip alone. And this scene was your idea? Mad respect, Shaenon
Indeed!
I would have drawn 3 or 4 bees, and just rubber stamped like crazy.
Yeah, I’m lazy.
I imagine the colouring was even harder.
And… their body language is perfect!
Mad respect? Yes. It is very wise to respect Madness.
This is the right answer
Huh, Gavotte is taking a human shape. Is it just me, or does she look a bit like Tigerlily?
I think it’s just you. Her posture is more Mary Poppins.
I uhm. Don’t disagree w Pavanne, exactly. Staying is doomed to repeat history, every so many decades. Humans will always choose racism in the long term.
Although we seem to have an endless talent for inventing new bigotries, racism is still the all time winner
And yet, the supply of racism falls so short of demand for it that hoaxes and fake hate crimes are required to address the shortage. Funny how that works. 🙂
It’s worse than that.
We’ve got a substantial part of the Liberal population who actually hate themselves for the unforgivable crime of being born White.
I don’t think that’s true.
Nor do I.
@ Nomi and Manifesta,
It is probably correct to say that the Boss Liberals such as Biden, Sanders and Pelosi do not hate themselves. Their sins appear to be in the opposite direction of that. And of course all talk of racism from their sort is merely a pretext for their attacks upon the middle class.
But many of those liberals at the grassroots levels fear to step outside their echo chamber and actually believe the current talk of racism to be a reason to hate themselves. Considering the problems associated with self hatred I would consider 1 of a hundred to be a substantial number but suspect that it is more like 20% to 40% of them. Your own mileage may vary since my estimate is an exercise in S.W.A.G. What is the smallest sample of a group that you yourselves would consider substantial? 🙂
FWIW, I’d actually put my wife in that category; she regularly asks if she, a Caucasian, can be racist against Whites, and feels shame from association.
Evidence suggests otherwise, Towering Barbarian.
Unfortunately so. We’re always “one generation away,” is one author’s way of putting it. It just takes one generation not teaching the next to lose advances–such as technology, or the dangers of racism.
In the last 5 years, I’ve had to counter racism directly, and grew up around it. There was a city near my home town whose politician ran as being part of a certain white-cone-hatted hate group as a point of pride. So I kinda feel the current argument.
Also, at least one of the posters is into alt-right. That isn’t name-calling, more, that is the pov they’re writing from and a heads-up. Just read past it, and move on if you aren’t into it, or celebrate it if you are, s’pose.
So Skin Horse is here to answer the validity of the vision of humanity as proposed by several Star Trek TOS episodes and constantly by the Q Continuum.
Is there hope for humanity? That seems to be the lingering question that occurs in the handful of episodes in which Captain Kirk refuses to end a being’s life during his triumph over numerous non-human sapients in “to-the-death” mortal combat contests.
Every dang alien appears saying, perhaps there is hope for humanity after all. (Often with an ambiguous Spock raised eyebrow.)
Pavanne believes that assertion pure fiction and rejects the Star Trek vision as a shirtless Shatner fantasy. In Pavanne’s view, the Gorn is crushed, the Horta extinct, the dancing light’s hunger for conflict slaked in the constant fighting between humans and klingons, and Q 100 percent correct in his disdain for humans.
Gavotte, however, believes humans capable of becoming more than they are, but is occasionally delighted when Patrick Stewart breaks all his little ships in the face of Alfre Woodard’s insight and logic.
Okay, first of all, cool. I’m enough of a nerd I understood all of that.
Secondly, I think that the thing that is never touched on in Star Trek (OG) (or even most other media) is whether Kirk/ “The Hero(es)” are outliers or actually indicitve of the human race. Many times whomever is testing humanity is much more interested in the single group they have in front of them. Sure it’s supposed to be representative of the species but it rarely is…
Starfleet’s standards are very high. They recruit only the best from each member world.
Whether in the primary or mirror universe… 😉
Personally, I subscribe to the Vulcan philosophy of IDIC. But also John W. Campbell Jr. and E.E. “Doc” Smith. David Brin’s “The Uplift War” is also optimistic about humanity’s future.
Yeah, but that’s kinda my point, media (written and otherwise) as a whole isn’t going to have their heroes flub- or if they do its so that they can make a comeback later. This isn’t a criticism (we all want superman to win after all) but it does mean that having “our hero(es)” as the benchmark isn’t exactly indicitve of humanity as a whole.
Take Starfleet, you have to be the best of the best- no doubt about that- but the best of the best is automatically an outlier from the average. If an average person was left in charge of the Enterprise (god forbid) there’s every chance that the Gorn would be crushed, the Horta hunted to extinction, the dancing light’s hunger for conflict would be slaked in the fighting between humans and klingons (until one side developed a WoMD to wipe out their opponents) , and Q…
I mean I’m human, and all it takes is a quick glance across the pond (we’ll just carefully ignore the backyard, yeah? ) to what’s currently going on east of Turkey to say… Q might be right.
So is the best of the best indicative of humanity as a whole? Hard to say. Humans are varied and complex in the best of times. An average person might have destroyed the universe, but they might have also completely revolutionized the way Kirk went about it too. There’s no one “right way” to do somthing (note: this does not mean that there are not wrong ways to do somthing- please keep this in mind), but if we don’t destroy ourselves we probably will do well as a species… eventually.
And if we do, I think it’ll be because of outliers; not the average person.
Considering some of the things we’ve seen the non-humans do—H. T. comes to mind—one could make a case that humans need saving from the non-humans. But wasn’t that Ira’s position?
It was. And offhand I’d say that the TV Trope that applies is Villain Has A Point. 🙂
Ira’s position was that nonhumans need extermination because they pose an existential threat to humans. He’s advocating genocide, not just protection.
Yeah, Ira’s plan was to swat a fly with a thermobaric device. Messy, destructive, indiscriminate, and yet still not even guaranteed to work.
H. T. wanted to kill all the humans. GODOT just wanted to kill.
Yes. That’s true. H.T. believed in slavery and an ultimate furtopia where humans were eventually turned entirely into animals completely erasing one’s identity and overwriting what it means to be human… well until he was subsumed into the biomass at which point he gave into more (to borrow Artie for a moment) “Simian war hormones.” (God I love that Gerbil).
Ira’s approach was a bit more direct from the outset: kill the nonhumans.
Now we could get political if we felt like it and point out that Ira was drawing conclusions (from datasets) that “soon there will be more of them than us” and “something has to be done before there’s too many of them and our way of life is destroyed forever.” Following that up with things like discussions about a continuously growing minority population eventually outstripping the current majority here in the U.S. and I’m sure you can get the picture.
-Not to throw Shannon and Jeff under the bus, I’m just sitting through a college sociology class and it’s on the brain. (Of course, history shows Shannon to have a pretty good finger on the pulse of politics: Nader in ’04 anyone?)-
Sticking purely to story beats, I think it’s hard to really say that one side is right or wrong here. Obviously, the methods leave a lot to be desired, but if you boil the four sides down to politically integrate(Gavvotte), segregate (Pavanne), revolutionize (H.T.), and racially destroy (Ira) I have to side with Gavvotte.
The fact is, most of the solutions (as in real life) are complex and can’t just be majicked into one category. Ira is going to feel threatened no matter what happens, and H.T. is (would have) felt threatened in anything other than a total control turnover to Nonhuman sapients. H.T.’s very position legitimized Ira in the same way that “Mr. Green” legitimized H.T.- and the tiger knew it!
Ooh!
I just reread my comment and I love this (so it oughta piss off half the audience).
Politically and socially integrate (Gavotte/ MLK jr.), segregate (Pavanne/ Booker T. Washington), revolutionize (H.T./Malcolm X), or racially destroy (Ira/ You don’t think it’s interesting that he’s a dumpy greying white dude in a suit? I should check his tie in the past and see if it’s consistently red).
Edit 3 (Last one, I promise!):
Nope, it’s green. Guess you can’t hit the nail on the head *that* hard.
You’re missing the “Back to Africa” movement. Pavane / Marcus Garvey? (Info not at my fingertips, so I might mean someone else.)
You pointed it out first, but I was going to say that the two options that seem most attractive from the NHS’ standpoint are probably the ballot and the bullet, a la Malcolm X.
@Xdgvy,
Dumpy, greying white guy in a suit, eh? A lot like Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders then. 🙂
@ToweringBarbarian
See, the fact that we can pull from all parties is probably an even greater indicator than drawing the lines in the first place! 😉
@Xdgvy,
Heh. True enough. And the indicator here is that dumpiness, age and race are all superficial traits that are less important then what Ira does. Do you really think he would have been any different if Violet Bee had been his true body? o_O
Isn’t that the beauty of the world though? that ther’s so many ways to look at things?
More obvious now (to an infuriating degree) than when the comic started in 2007
Well, Robert Nowall, we appear to be generalizing here, and that is the problem with generalization. H.T. is not really representative of all (or, as far as I can tell, even most of) the non-human sapients. I notice that no one has mentioned Sweetheart in the comments thus far, and most of the non-human sapients seem to be mostly harmless (or at least not any worse than the average human).
If any of the non-human sapients can find a middle ground, it will be Sweetheart. She has leveled up, and will find a way to get this right. Remember that Gavotte always had faith in Sweetheart’s leadership abilities.
Since Tip is now in charge of Anasigma, I suspect that a deal can be struck. Mr. Green is finished for now, due to Sweetheart’s bureaucratic supremacy, although everyone will need to be on guard against his return.
Bravo!
Now if Sweetheart can just get “Zombie Ben Franklin” on board… 🙂
Interesting that even when they’re alone they anthropomorphize their appearances.
We draw more of our self-image from those around us then we like to admit and they’ve both been around humans for a while. 🙂
And, on a more meta note:
It makes it easier for the readers to tell them apart.
Gavotte: I don’t think I care for your new look.
Gavotte 5 minutes later: Have you seen my completely original new look?
Interesting conversation, but it’s up to the people whether they want to go or not.
Far as I can tell, the only firm commitments to going to Lovetron are Tony and Merc, and, since they’ve apparently been there, who knows if they want a permanent return visit? (Renard and #12 may have been, too, but that was more of a rescue.)
It seems that Pavane is ignoring – or dismissing, which is just as dangerous – the ramifications of transplanting a bunch of earthlings on their home world… earthlings who have been affected – possibly even corrupted – by the hatred and malevolence around them.
I suppose your thesis to be that the child—the non-human, in this case—is innocent until corrupted by the adult—the human.
I was not attempting to imply anything about if or when the non-humans were ever innocent – after all, many of them were made specifically to wreak havoc. (And as for children being corrupted by adults, that’s entirely unnecessary. No parent has ever needed to teach their child to misbehave. Children come by that quite naturally.)
But Pavane seems to consider her home world to be a haven. What is going to happen to her haven when she introduces all these earth creatures into its ecosystem?
Which is assuming she even has a utopia to go to. In my experience everywhere has its own problems; even if it says it doesn’t.
What problems will Lovetron have for “Our Heroes” tm when they’re miles from help with no way home?
Also very good points.
“Humans will never grow up,” says the daughter who had to show up. Ignoring potential, she’s undeferential. And it’s making us want to throw up.
Worthy.
Pavane is being, harsh, critical, cynical, and far too accurate for my continued comfort.
I don’t think Pavane cares abut your comfort
The Joker has shown full awareness he’s a comic book character; have any Skinhorsians ever shown such awareness of *us*?
Artie did, but back in “Narbonic.”
I think they all did at one point or another (not including Sundays ofc).
Everyone in Narbonic was well aware of their audience, as well as their own roles. They didn’t break the 4th wall so much as just ignore it altogether.
I could be wrong, but I seem to recall Shaenon saying at some point that she wanted to do less of that with Skin Horse. And I can’t recall any specific moment when anyone in Skin Horse has addressed the audience. Unity certainly has the right personality to do it, but I don’t know that she ever has.
Tip did once poke the panel border. This was back during Tigerlily’s first appearance, when Tip was questioning why she hadn’t fallen for him yet.