Aw man, poor Nick! 🙁
His boss should know he hates getting stuck with a human body, since she’s psychic and all. That’s got to be AMAZINGLY disorienting.
True enough. OTOH, she probably also knows how he feels about Ginny. And unless he expects Ginny to become a wirehead that would mean him winning back his human body and learning to like being back in one again. If his boss does it right then this might not be bad practice. ^_^
As far as Ginny goes, the largest concern with their relationship isn’t body shape: it’s that he’s still got an override code in his head that both she and Asig know. “Would you kindly…”
And even that out the window, he’s still got to have an equivalent to sexual arousal given that the homunculus conversion was incredibly thorough. And Lee knows where his sensitive bits would up. The main problem is him doing anything for her if they want to consummate the relationship, and for that there’s always cyberspace.
Personally, I’m hoping he gets another drone body. Something like Violet Bee, except designed specifically for him.
Also, I’m way happier than I expected to be to see a classic superhero in this strip. I suppose it’s not all that surprising, given this is the same universe with ANTONIO SMITH, FORENSIC LINGUIST in it, but still, I’m happy.
1) We know what the code is. Buttermilk pancakes, remember? The point there was that VB’s drone was made with the same neural interface she used for Nick, which is why she hung up on him before saying it.
2) ASig doesn’t (officially) know about the override. Ginny was able to disable the drone because they (presumably) didn’t discover it, so they didn’t remove it.
3) Nick mentioned in his livejournal that he deleted the cyberspace (and had an awkward conversation with a techie to go with it) to make space for manga scanlations or something like that (I’m too tired to look for the post right now).
“Superhero” might well be correct, if the Narbonverse superheroes are trying to move away from gendered job descriptions. (“Actress” seems to be dropped in favour of “actor” a fair amount nowadays, and when’s the last time you heard of a “doctress”?)
Important point: he lied to get into Skin Horse. If he really thought of himself as a helicopter now, then even in his own mind he’d be a tiny helicopter.
The fact that he’s freaking out at being humanoid and going ‘rotor failure’ for body disorientation was actually the strongest sign to me that he WASN’T. Right now they’re in a mental construct created by someone else, who presumably set the scenario without knowing his preferences.
It’s just like the drone actually, where he was dealing with body disphoria. Body disphoria is basically the term for being unhappy that your body is radically different from your self image. It was bad enough that he gave up the drone, even though it gave him a chance to interact with Ginny as a humanoid.
No reason at all that I can see that a mind meeting would have anything to do with one’s self-image. If boss company controls the meeting, the desk and nick’s corporate tee-shirt and nick’s control of be in the meeting, I don’t see that Nick has control of anything.
Absolutely. If ASig empires tend to be recruited for the same anti-nonhuman bias that the big boss has, then yeah, a telepath forcing Nick into a human manifestation would be expected (as well as abuse)
Remember also, that forcing Nick into a form he’s uncomfortable with to keep him off-balance at a meeting is _entirely_ within ASig’s management style.
Heck, if was involved in a psychic conference and *did* have control over how I appeared, I would totally be the dolphin in my avatar, and I’m pretty comfortable in my humanity.
You may be right, Dave, but it’s also possible that he wasn’t lying then; after all, Nick wouldn’t have known anything about Skin Horse regulations yet. Perhaps when he said he felt like the helicopter was really him, he meant it at that time, and at the time today’s strip takes place, he feels more like his core self is human. (One possible explanation is that his … um, whatever passes for a relationship between him and Ginny has made him feel more connected to humanity in general and to his own humanity than he did when we first met him.)
Anyway, the point is, most people’s concept of identity is fluid in one way or another, and there’s no reason to think someone like Nick wouldn’t be any different.
Hmm, as cute as Human!Nick looks waving his arms around, I hope it’s not an actual rotor failure. Even one second of that can not be good for the passengers.
On the one hand, it annoys me when people dress their pets in human clothes, and it probably annoys the pets more. On the other hand, OMIGODTHAT’SSOFREAKIN’ADORABLE!
My dog hated being cold or wet*, and always seemed much happier walking when attired in foul weather gear, FWIW. Granted, she didn’t seem to appreciate the clothes per se, but she eventually connected “sweater” with “being warmer in the cold”, and started seeming eager to don it after a while. I wish we could’ve found a rain jacket for her.
*Okay, she loved being wet if it was because she’d chosen to run into a body of water, but that’s different.
We used to have a dog who was extremely vain, and loved to have various things put on him. He was not, in general, a cooperative animal, but he loved his collar, and if it was taken off (say for bathing), he would happily stick his head into when it was held open for him to make it easier to put it back on him. When we had to replace his collar a couple of times, he was always excited about getting a new one. He also loved the bandanas that the groomer would put on him, and if one fell off, he would pick it up and carry it around, or lay it down and try to stick his head back into it.
At one point, we got seat belt harnesses for our dogs, and whenever we put it on this guy, he would start showing off like crazy, like he thought the harness made him look “tough” or something. In fact, he would pretty much start showing off any time we put anything on him.
I’m being charitable and assuming his boss made a mistake (assuming he’s a human IN a helicopter rather than a sentient helicopter). That said, if she DID know he’s a helicopter and is taking issue with it…then we’ve got a problem.
Looks to me like “AG” on the shirt. There was a brief mention, many episodes ago, of an official gov’t superhero group, “AG-I”. (Unity stole their recruiter’s leg, if I recall.)
My thoughts exactly. In fact they were listed as one of the agencies Nick’s case would’ve been better suited for than Skin Horse. Which means he might be harder to officially retrieve than the other team members…
Hmmm. This strip makes me wonder. Does Nick appear as a human, rather than a helicopter because of the various reasons that people have given above or is it just that Shaenon likes drawing Human Nick and why would she pass up another opportunity to do that? Or a combination of the two, for that matter.
(Also, while I don’t doubt that Nick sincerely identifies as a helicopter, a part of me suspects that was born out of his situation as much as anything else. I suspect that if Asig or someone else schlorps his brain out and sticks him in a humanoid body or something similar, he may start identifying as that, because he’s probably going to be stuck like that for the at-least-near future.)
Well, when he was in the drone, he didn’t seem to get hooked on it, and got out of it as soon as the storyline was over. I figured it wasn’t as much fun as he thought it would be—partly, but probably not entirely, because the drone lacked all the “fun parts” of the body.
(If I recall right, wasn’t Nick in the drone and the helicopter at the same time? The drone was all remote control? I suppose that means Bubbles was in the drone and the water cooler at the same time…but I never saw the water cooler part of her after she went into the drone.)
It could be like Dave’s cyberpersonality, where he could have a full-fledged conversation with someone without using a significant amount of his runtime.If I recall correctly, he could give Prof. Madblood his full attention while using only the processing power required to play Tetris.
The Dave cyberpersonality clearly had (and knew about) subroutines that were independent but managed – many probably inherited from the pre-existing Lovelace base-management software segment.
It hasn’t been made clear how much of Nick’s operation is HIM (wetware controlling hardware) and how much of it is external interface (wetware managing software managing hardware – in the extreme would be equivalent to you or I running a flight simulator a PC).
Can’t have certain functions like flight set to the autonomic portions of the brain or he’d be ‘unable’ to stop (for example) the engines, much like you can’t stop your heart or breathing by thinking about it.
YET – he probably doesn’t have to ‘think’ about keeping the engines running once they are on and he is airborne – much like the basics of walking. But adapting to the terrain usually requires some amount of attention – and considering he was just in a storm….
I’m pretty sure it’s mostly wetware running hardware: that was the whole point of the homunculus mapping, and why he’s a better pilot than the jack-in substitutes A-Sig switched to.
Probably, if they know your self image and deliberately impose another one.
On the other hand, if the telepath starts up the conversation in a mental construct of their own design rather than something set by the individual actors, then it’s just an honest mistake. I assume that’s what’s going on here, with his boss incorrectly assuming he’d prefer to be human given the option and setting the rules based on that.
Of course, if it turns out that she sees the helicopter self image as the result of evil mind control and wants to find a way to cure him of it (and lets be fair, it’s at least an understandable viewpoint even if it’s wrong…) then we’re going to have a rather heated discussion on our hands.
Oookay. Helicopter or human, Nick is probably panicking about meeting with the boss. Whatever department he’s in probably isn’t as lenient as Skin Horse, so part of his brain isn’t involved with a psychic meeting might be cataloging why he might be here.
I’m a little unclear here: how much of the secret government does A-Sig actually control? Presumably they don’t run the secret cheese program, giving people free cheese doesn’t seem their style (unless it’s EVIL MUTAGENIC cheese or something.)
As far as we know, none of it. Apparently Skin Horse was set up by Mr. Green, but they’ve been shut down and while he may have a hand in other agencies, we’ve not seen any evidence to show that.
Aw man, poor Nick! 🙁
His boss should know he hates getting stuck with a human body, since she’s psychic and all. That’s got to be AMAZINGLY disorienting.
True enough. OTOH, she probably also knows how he feels about Ginny. And unless he expects Ginny to become a wirehead that would mean him winning back his human body and learning to like being back in one again. If his boss does it right then this might not be bad practice. ^_^
Who’s Ginny, and what’s otoh?
OTOH = On The Other Hand.
Ginny = Dr. Virginia Lee of Anasigma, who created UNITY and who stuck Nick’s brain in a helicopter to begin with.
He luuuuuuuvs her, and vice versa, but they’re too dopey to tell each other.
As far as Ginny goes, the largest concern with their relationship isn’t body shape: it’s that he’s still got an override code in his head that both she and Asig know. “Would you kindly…”
And even that out the window, he’s still got to have an equivalent to sexual arousal given that the homunculus conversion was incredibly thorough. And Lee knows where his sensitive bits would up. The main problem is him doing anything for her if they want to consummate the relationship, and for that there’s always cyberspace.
Personally, I’m hoping he gets another drone body. Something like Violet Bee, except designed specifically for him.
Also, I’m way happier than I expected to be to see a classic superhero in this strip. I suppose it’s not all that surprising, given this is the same universe with ANTONIO SMITH, FORENSIC LINGUIST in it, but still, I’m happy.
1) We know what the code is. Buttermilk pancakes, remember? The point there was that VB’s drone was made with the same neural interface she used for Nick, which is why she hung up on him before saying it.
2) ASig doesn’t (officially) know about the override. Ginny was able to disable the drone because they (presumably) didn’t discover it, so they didn’t remove it.
3) Nick mentioned in his livejournal that he deleted the cyberspace (and had an awkward conversation with a techie to go with it) to make space for manga scanlations or something like that (I’m too tired to look for the post right now).
He should really be a tiny chopper though.
Yay! We actually get to see human!Nick in full color, not just Android!Nick
Hey, human Nick’s back.
So, who’s the lady dressed as a superhero.
“Looking like she’s dressed like a superhero in his mind.” Her normal appearance may be quite different.
Nick is rather out of practice in being humanoid, it seems…
Random thought: if the water cooler was reassigned, did it get to take the android body with it?
Sorry, I meant superherione.
“Superhero” might well be correct, if the Narbonverse superheroes are trying to move away from gendered job descriptions. (“Actress” seems to be dropped in favour of “actor” a fair amount nowadays, and when’s the last time you heard of a “doctress”?)
Please! Bubbles and the android body were “made for each other”. None of it’s other inhabitants have fit it so well.
In Nick’s blog, http://nickzerhakker.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/41/, he mentions that his “supervisors is all psychic”. I think this is one of them.
Important point: he lied to get into Skin Horse. If he really thought of himself as a helicopter now, then even in his own mind he’d be a tiny helicopter.
Hard to fit a helicopter onto office furniture.
I think the fact that he is freaking out suggests that he is not used to thinking of himself as human.
The fact that he’s freaking out at being humanoid and going ‘rotor failure’ for body disorientation was actually the strongest sign to me that he WASN’T. Right now they’re in a mental construct created by someone else, who presumably set the scenario without knowing his preferences.
It’s just like the drone actually, where he was dealing with body disphoria. Body disphoria is basically the term for being unhappy that your body is radically different from your self image. It was bad enough that he gave up the drone, even though it gave him a chance to interact with Ginny as a humanoid.
Eh, I think the “rotor failure” is him being melodramatic/playing up the situation, but otherwise I think you’re probably dead on.
Unless bosslady has control over his form for the meeting, despite it being in his head. I do not pretend to know how this works.
A conversation with a little RC helicopter would be adorable, though.
No reason at all that I can see that a mind meeting would have anything to do with one’s self-image. If boss company controls the meeting, the desk and nick’s corporate tee-shirt and nick’s control of be in the meeting, I don’t see that Nick has control of anything.
Absolutely. If ASig empires tend to be recruited for the same anti-nonhuman bias that the big boss has, then yeah, a telepath forcing Nick into a human manifestation would be expected (as well as abuse)
Remember also, that forcing Nick into a form he’s uncomfortable with to keep him off-balance at a meeting is _entirely_ within ASig’s management style.
‘ASig _employees_’ even. That’ll teach me not to comment using my phone.
(No it won’t)
Heck, if was involved in a psychic conference and *did* have control over how I appeared, I would totally be the dolphin in my avatar, and I’m pretty comfortable in my humanity.
(Or maybe Rincewind.)
You may be right, Dave, but it’s also possible that he wasn’t lying then; after all, Nick wouldn’t have known anything about Skin Horse regulations yet. Perhaps when he said he felt like the helicopter was really him, he meant it at that time, and at the time today’s strip takes place, he feels more like his core self is human. (One possible explanation is that his … um, whatever passes for a relationship between him and Ginny has made him feel more connected to humanity in general and to his own humanity than he did when we first met him.)
Anyway, the point is, most people’s concept of identity is fluid in one way or another, and there’s no reason to think someone like Nick wouldn’t be any different.
I think this is just how “super boss lady” wants him to look. She’s arranging the meeting after all
Hmm, as cute as Human!Nick looks waving his arms around, I hope it’s not an actual rotor failure. Even one second of that can not be good for the passengers.
Also, I’m guessing by the matching AG t-shirts that that’s Nick’s new boss.
Also, here’s a link for Jeff to a dog wearing a raincoat: http://greenjellies.tumblr.com/post/78181115286/if-u-ever-need-something-to-smile-at-heres-my-dog
On the one hand, it annoys me when people dress their pets in human clothes, and it probably annoys the pets more. On the other hand, OMIGODTHAT’SSOFREAKIN’ADORABLE!
My dog hated being cold or wet*, and always seemed much happier walking when attired in foul weather gear, FWIW. Granted, she didn’t seem to appreciate the clothes per se, but she eventually connected “sweater” with “being warmer in the cold”, and started seeming eager to don it after a while. I wish we could’ve found a rain jacket for her.
*Okay, she loved being wet if it was because she’d chosen to run into a body of water, but that’s different.
We used to have a dog who was extremely vain, and loved to have various things put on him. He was not, in general, a cooperative animal, but he loved his collar, and if it was taken off (say for bathing), he would happily stick his head into when it was held open for him to make it easier to put it back on him. When we had to replace his collar a couple of times, he was always excited about getting a new one. He also loved the bandanas that the groomer would put on him, and if one fell off, he would pick it up and carry it around, or lay it down and try to stick his head back into it.
At one point, we got seat belt harnesses for our dogs, and whenever we put it on this guy, he would start showing off like crazy, like he thought the harness made him look “tough” or something. In fact, he would pretty much start showing off any time we put anything on him.
He was pretty much a show-off anyway, but putting anything on him would leave to increased and more enthusiastic showing off.
Aww yiss. Dress all the pets. All of them.
How to put youself straight on the Bad Guys list in one easy step:
Disrespect Nick’s identity as a helicopter and force him into a human body.
NOT. FROSTY.
BRING SKIN HORSE BACK AND GET THESE MONSTERS AWAY FROM MY POOR NICK!
I’m being charitable and assuming his boss made a mistake (assuming he’s a human IN a helicopter rather than a sentient helicopter). That said, if she DID know he’s a helicopter and is taking issue with it…then we’ve got a problem.
Yeah, I’m with Nick on this.
I don’t think that’s a G on the t-shirts – I think it’s a sigma.
oooOOOOOOoooohhh…. That makes so much more sense!
From the Wikipedia entry for Sigma:
“upper-case Σ, lower-case σ, lower-case in word-final position ς”
Looks more like an upper-case “G” than any of those sigmas. And as Eddurd noted, “AG” is already A Thing in canon, as a super-group, even. ^_^
Looks to me like “AG” on the shirt. There was a brief mention, many episodes ago, of an official gov’t superhero group, “AG-I”. (Unity stole their recruiter’s leg, if I recall.)
My thoughts exactly. In fact they were listed as one of the agencies Nick’s case would’ve been better suited for than Skin Horse. Which means he might be harder to officially retrieve than the other team members…
Still better than any domestic carrier.
Forgotten how to move his mental arms and legs, has he?
Hmmm. This strip makes me wonder. Does Nick appear as a human, rather than a helicopter because of the various reasons that people have given above or is it just that Shaenon likes drawing Human Nick and why would she pass up another opportunity to do that? Or a combination of the two, for that matter.
(Also, while I don’t doubt that Nick sincerely identifies as a helicopter, a part of me suspects that was born out of his situation as much as anything else. I suspect that if Asig or someone else schlorps his brain out and sticks him in a humanoid body or something similar, he may start identifying as that, because he’s probably going to be stuck like that for the at-least-near future.)
Well, when he was in the drone, he didn’t seem to get hooked on it, and got out of it as soon as the storyline was over. I figured it wasn’t as much fun as he thought it would be—partly, but probably not entirely, because the drone lacked all the “fun parts” of the body.
(If I recall right, wasn’t Nick in the drone and the helicopter at the same time? The drone was all remote control? I suppose that means Bubbles was in the drone and the water cooler at the same time…but I never saw the water cooler part of her after she went into the drone.)
Nick used the drone as a drone. Bubbles had Dr. Lee install her into it. There’s a difference.
Metaphysical/metapsychological/metaphysiological question here:
She summoned Nick/appeared in his head.
Is this a ‘time stopped except for us’ instantaneous mental conversation/phenomenon?
Is Everything okay because His Osprey body has mech/computer backups (autopilot)?
Or is Nick and the (presumed) passengers lives in danger because suddenly the Osprey-body has nobody home and nothing is controlling it.
It could be like Dave’s cyberpersonality, where he could have a full-fledged conversation with someone without using a significant amount of his runtime.If I recall correctly, he could give Prof. Madblood his full attention while using only the processing power required to play Tetris.
His disorientation is what started me wondering.
The Dave cyberpersonality clearly had (and knew about) subroutines that were independent but managed – many probably inherited from the pre-existing Lovelace base-management software segment.
It hasn’t been made clear how much of Nick’s operation is HIM (wetware controlling hardware) and how much of it is external interface (wetware managing software managing hardware – in the extreme would be equivalent to you or I running a flight simulator a PC).
Can’t have certain functions like flight set to the autonomic portions of the brain or he’d be ‘unable’ to stop (for example) the engines, much like you can’t stop your heart or breathing by thinking about it.
YET – he probably doesn’t have to ‘think’ about keeping the engines running once they are on and he is airborne – much like the basics of walking. But adapting to the terrain usually requires some amount of attention – and considering he was just in a storm….
I’m pretty sure it’s mostly wetware running hardware: that was the whole point of the homunculus mapping, and why he’s a better pilot than the jack-in substitutes A-Sig switched to.
‘I do mean one second.’
Angry little nerdy guy returns!
I wonder if forcing someone into the wrong mind-body counts as harassment.
Probably, if they know your self image and deliberately impose another one.
On the other hand, if the telepath starts up the conversation in a mental construct of their own design rather than something set by the individual actors, then it’s just an honest mistake. I assume that’s what’s going on here, with his boss incorrectly assuming he’d prefer to be human given the option and setting the rules based on that.
Of course, if it turns out that she sees the helicopter self image as the result of evil mind control and wants to find a way to cure him of it (and lets be fair, it’s at least an understandable viewpoint even if it’s wrong…) then we’re going to have a rather heated discussion on our hands.
Oookay. Helicopter or human, Nick is probably panicking about meeting with the boss. Whatever department he’s in probably isn’t as lenient as Skin Horse, so part of his brain isn’t involved with a psychic meeting might be cataloging why he might be here.
It just might be a long list.
By the way, who’s the girl? (Actually, I say “girl,” but I’ve been fooled before by Tip and Sweetheart, so “girl” is just for asking the question.)
I’m a little unclear here: how much of the secret government does A-Sig actually control? Presumably they don’t run the secret cheese program, giving people free cheese doesn’t seem their style (unless it’s EVIL MUTAGENIC cheese or something.)
As far as we know, none of it. Apparently Skin Horse was set up by Mr. Green, but they’ve been shut down and while he may have a hand in other agencies, we’ve not seen any evidence to show that.