I originally thought it might have been Helen’s cure as well, but Helen seemed to believe that it would have also turned herself and Prof. Madblood mundane, which suggests that no one would be immune.
Of course, she also mentioned impotence, which could explain Tip’s and Artie’s current conditions. (Yeah, I know Artie’s not really human, but it’s possible that his human form would suffer similar side effects.)
Also, this definition is from Jeff’s own Mundamentia One:
“Okay. One-minute summary. For your entire life, you have lived in a little cocoon of spectral energy. It’s a spiritual condition that we call ‘Mundanity.’ It’s not unusual, as such. In fact, about twenty percent of the world’s population possesses it. Practical result is this: For your entire life, you have seen, smelled, tasted, felt and heard the world through a sort of… filter. Your brain automatically chose to generate this little cocoon around you to shut out things that are weird, unusual, strange or even slightly off-kilter. In essence, to you, the world has, up until, apparently, now, seemed like a normal, fundamentally sane place governed by the laws of physics and the principles of reason.”
This is a humor strip so I’ve never taken it too seriously, but I have to say that the whole reality blindness thing seems inextricably linked to an idea of privilege to me. You can be reality blind if you can afford to be reality blind, if things won’t hurt you if you ignore them.
But, that’s not true for a lot of people. It says something to me that the reality blind people we see are always middle class folks who (admittedly judging them by brief appearances in the comic) seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.
I mean, like I said I know it’s a humor comic and it’s a joke, but there’s something very safe and privileged in the idea that if you don’t want to think about something or acknowledge it’s existence, then it’s not you who suffers but the idea/person you’re ignoring. We always get reality blindness from the perspective that the joke is the pain and frustration of the ‘weird’ being ignored rather than the dread of a reality blind person being killed by something they can’t see or understand.
To be fair, most of the people we see in the comic period seem to be middle class. So it’s only natural that the reality-blind people we have seen would also fall into that category.
But if you read the Narbonic comics, you will have seen that Dave’s brother Bill — while he was indeed in the middle class — was at one point in very real potential danger from something that his reality blindness prevented him from seeing. He was one of the first examples of reality blindness we had seen in this universe.
And now reality blindness has affected a much greater portion of the populace than is naturally the case, so it’s fairly safe to assume that it has affected peoples of all classes.
That may have been true back in Narbonic, but all the discussion about reality blindness in Skin Horse has centered around it being a bad thing because it drives the ‘weird’ into the shadows and denies them the ability to fight for their rights. That it makes them ‘invisible people’ and that in itself is a bad thing… for them, the ‘weird’ people.
I don’t think we’ve once had reality discussion discussed in the sense that it’s a burden for the blinded, that now they’re going to be helpless and defenseless against being hurt by the things they’re ignoring. And it would have been so easy to see it through that lens. Artie talks about a New War, and it’s hard to see how one side can do anything but lose badly a war if they don’t even understand the other side exists.
I think the ‘weird’ stuff is actually pretty rare. We see a lot of it in this comic and Narbonic before it, but that’s because the comics revolve around it. However, what we see of the ‘normal’ world appears to be fairly similar to ours, indicating that all the mad scientists and sapient swamps and such have not had a big impact on the broader world. The world only seems filled with this stuff because it’s what we’re watching. I suspect most ‘normal’ humans will never encounter a mad scientist or one of their creations. Also worth noting, there are organizations unaffected by this outbreak actively working against the ‘invisible people’, and all signs indicate this is a directed attack for exactly that purpose
And then we have HT, who IS trying to use the reality blindness to attack humans, the heroes are trying to stop him, and he’s been consistently depicted as an extremist. Heck, when the blindness hit, HT didn’t even know what was going on, he had to have it explained to him. So it has come up, it’s just that all signs indicate that humanity is going to suffer less in this war, because our genocidal psychopaths have been planning this for ages, and their genocidal psychopaths are trying to adapt on the fly.
Also, how do you have post that are longer than mine, when I had to split mine in half (now thirds) because the reply box is only allowed to take up so much vertical space and wordy paragraphs force the post comment button to dissappear
It’s long been thought that The Institute was doing research on using The Cure as a weapon. We are only now beginning to see the potential for harm realized on both sides.
@Estevon Golden If you have a tab key, you’re all set. Even if the “Post Comment” button gets pushed below you’re visual area, using the tab key will cycle down to it, and thereby bring it back up into view. If you’re on a mobile device without a tab key on-screen, I can’t help you. (I use an external keyboard with my iPad, so it’s not a problem for me.)
IIRC, wasn’t one of the principles of “Mundamentia” that reality blindness in that universe actually a form of reality warping that protected people even as it hid the real world from them? Say, if someone cast a deadly spell you might perceive it as them sending you a bunch of gross porn links – with no more actual effect than a necessary purging of your browser history.
While I haven’t read the story, that would be equivalent to the highest level of reality blindness in GURPS: Illuminati University (GURPS: IOU), while simple failure-to-notice would be the lower levels of the effect.
So I’m not sure if you’re thinking of that, or he’s thinking of that, or if this is convergent evolution, or what.
@Matthew, assuming A-sig is behind this they probably have plans to destroy the non-human community which do not involve the general population – after all, it’s always easier to commit genocide if the general masses can’t even perceive the victims as sapient beings. Also, they plan to make themselves rulers over all of humanity as well through presumably evil-sciencey means, so they really have to work from the shadows.
Of course, that they have no need for 99%+ of the human race to win is a remarkably arrogant view, but we don’t know how much of humanity was involved in Old War, so we lack a means of comparison.
Reminds me of Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians, where the titular librarians are hiding the weird world from the normal world while they lay siege to the weird and slowly integrate surrendered bits into the normal. (Where did you think Australia came from?)
Do you know what caused this blindness plague?
We’ve been around so long we might be wrong, it’s all so vague.
Do you know what caused this blindness plague? We’re going back to look inside the books for blindness plague.
Skin-Horse is a giant grab bag.
See a character be a rising star.
In a week, maybe two, they’ve gone so far.
Weeks turn into months, they go so fast.
And all these guys that showed some brass,
They’re out of shot and on their ass.
We don’t know what caused the blindness plague.
There’s been a lot of ref, but Shaenon and Jeff still pull our legs.
They must know what caused the blindness plague.
There must be something live in the archives on blindness plague.
These past comics brought excitement.
We have seen a lot of older friends.
With a stream of fine-tuned internet gems.
Some will start to leave and go away,
And here we are, it never ends,
But we’re still there on the next day.
There’s been lots of stuff with blindness plague.
Do you know what caused the blindness plague?
We’ve seen too much stuff about the blindness plague…
—from “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” Dionne Warwick (Burt Bacharach and Hal David.)
That was my thought as well, when I realized The Cure should have affected everyone, including Tip and Virginia (not to mention everyone at A-Sig). And the Crown would be easier to distribute as well… Just use the internet and you can reach the vast majority of the planet. A-Sig could simply filter it so their own personnel weren’t affected. Of course, dispersing The Cure in those areas not covered by the internet would take care of everyone.
Artie might not be aware of the mind control crown, so it might not factor into his plan. On the other hand, he is very intimately aware of the Cure, so it’s logical that it would be his first guess.
What I’m curious about is why no-one has asked either Helen or Victoria to make an antidote for the Cure.
The problem with Artie’s theory here is that it would be very easy to confirm, just see if the Mads have gone mundane. Seeing as they haven’t, he’s clearly wrong. Tigerlily was just as funky as ever when Tip visited her recently.
I meant to say this earlier, I still want director english to come back as a zombie human.
That would be quite a feat, considering he was eaten.
So, he would be a third zombie in the strip? Did I spell that right?
But we saw him get eaten in one bite, by what looked like a zombie.
Yes, but it was a giant zombie alligator, so I don’t hold out much hope for his return.
They may have returned just not from the end you’d hope for…
Since when has grisly death ever stopped anyone in the Narboniverse?
It was the side effects that plagued Dave and Helen…
I originally thought it might have been Helen’s cure as well, but Helen seemed to believe that it would have also turned herself and Prof. Madblood mundane, which suggests that no one would be immune.
Of course, she also mentioned impotence, which could explain Tip’s and Artie’s current conditions. (Yeah, I know Artie’s not really human, but it’s possible that his human form would suffer similar side effects.)
Mundane = weirdness blind?
Yes. See the second strip on this page.
Also, this definition is from Jeff’s own Mundamentia One:
“Okay. One-minute summary. For your entire life, you have lived in a little cocoon of spectral energy. It’s a spiritual condition that we call ‘Mundanity.’ It’s not unusual, as such. In fact, about twenty percent of the world’s population possesses it. Practical result is this: For your entire life, you have seen, smelled, tasted, felt and heard the world through a sort of… filter. Your brain automatically chose to generate this little cocoon around you to shut out things that are weird, unusual, strange or even slightly off-kilter. In essence, to you, the world has, up until, apparently, now, seemed like a normal, fundamentally sane place governed by the laws of physics and the principles of reason.”
This is a humor strip so I’ve never taken it too seriously, but I have to say that the whole reality blindness thing seems inextricably linked to an idea of privilege to me. You can be reality blind if you can afford to be reality blind, if things won’t hurt you if you ignore them.
But, that’s not true for a lot of people. It says something to me that the reality blind people we see are always middle class folks who (admittedly judging them by brief appearances in the comic) seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.
I mean, like I said I know it’s a humor comic and it’s a joke, but there’s something very safe and privileged in the idea that if you don’t want to think about something or acknowledge it’s existence, then it’s not you who suffers but the idea/person you’re ignoring. We always get reality blindness from the perspective that the joke is the pain and frustration of the ‘weird’ being ignored rather than the dread of a reality blind person being killed by something they can’t see or understand.
To be fair, most of the people we see in the comic period seem to be middle class. So it’s only natural that the reality-blind people we have seen would also fall into that category.
But if you read the Narbonic comics, you will have seen that Dave’s brother Bill — while he was indeed in the middle class — was at one point in very real potential danger from something that his reality blindness prevented him from seeing. He was one of the first examples of reality blindness we had seen in this universe.
And now reality blindness has affected a much greater portion of the populace than is naturally the case, so it’s fairly safe to assume that it has affected peoples of all classes.
That may have been true back in Narbonic, but all the discussion about reality blindness in Skin Horse has centered around it being a bad thing because it drives the ‘weird’ into the shadows and denies them the ability to fight for their rights. That it makes them ‘invisible people’ and that in itself is a bad thing… for them, the ‘weird’ people.
I don’t think we’ve once had reality discussion discussed in the sense that it’s a burden for the blinded, that now they’re going to be helpless and defenseless against being hurt by the things they’re ignoring. And it would have been so easy to see it through that lens. Artie talks about a New War, and it’s hard to see how one side can do anything but lose badly a war if they don’t even understand the other side exists.
I think the ‘weird’ stuff is actually pretty rare. We see a lot of it in this comic and Narbonic before it, but that’s because the comics revolve around it. However, what we see of the ‘normal’ world appears to be fairly similar to ours, indicating that all the mad scientists and sapient swamps and such have not had a big impact on the broader world. The world only seems filled with this stuff because it’s what we’re watching. I suspect most ‘normal’ humans will never encounter a mad scientist or one of their creations. Also worth noting, there are organizations unaffected by this outbreak actively working against the ‘invisible people’, and all signs indicate this is a directed attack for exactly that purpose
And then we have HT, who IS trying to use the reality blindness to attack humans, the heroes are trying to stop him, and he’s been consistently depicted as an extremist. Heck, when the blindness hit, HT didn’t even know what was going on, he had to have it explained to him. So it has come up, it’s just that all signs indicate that humanity is going to suffer less in this war, because our genocidal psychopaths have been planning this for ages, and their genocidal psychopaths are trying to adapt on the fly.
Also, how do you have post that are longer than mine, when I had to split mine in half (now thirds) because the reply box is only allowed to take up so much vertical space and wordy paragraphs force the post comment button to dissappear
It’s long been thought that The Institute was doing research on using The Cure as a weapon. We are only now beginning to see the potential for harm realized on both sides.
@Estevon Golden If you have a tab key, you’re all set. Even if the “Post Comment” button gets pushed below you’re visual area, using the tab key will cycle down to it, and thereby bring it back up into view. If you’re on a mobile device without a tab key on-screen, I can’t help you. (I use an external keyboard with my iPad, so it’s not a problem for me.)
IIRC, wasn’t one of the principles of “Mundamentia” that reality blindness in that universe actually a form of reality warping that protected people even as it hid the real world from them? Say, if someone cast a deadly spell you might perceive it as them sending you a bunch of gross porn links – with no more actual effect than a necessary purging of your browser history.
While I haven’t read the story, that would be equivalent to the highest level of reality blindness in GURPS: Illuminati University (GURPS: IOU), while simple failure-to-notice would be the lower levels of the effect.
So I’m not sure if you’re thinking of that, or he’s thinking of that, or if this is convergent evolution, or what.
It’s been a while since I read it, so I can’t say whether you recall correctly or not.
@Matthew, assuming A-sig is behind this they probably have plans to destroy the non-human community which do not involve the general population – after all, it’s always easier to commit genocide if the general masses can’t even perceive the victims as sapient beings. Also, they plan to make themselves rulers over all of humanity as well through presumably evil-sciencey means, so they really have to work from the shadows.
Of course, that they have no need for 99%+ of the human race to win is a remarkably arrogant view, but we don’t know how much of humanity was involved in Old War, so we lack a means of comparison.
Reminds me of Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians, where the titular librarians are hiding the weird world from the normal world while they lay siege to the weird and slowly integrate surrendered bits into the normal. (Where did you think Australia came from?)
…confirmation the blizzard is man-made?
Do you know what caused this blindness plague?
We’ve been around so long we might be wrong, it’s all so vague.
Do you know what caused this blindness plague? We’re going back to look inside the books for blindness plague.
Skin-Horse is a giant grab bag.
See a character be a rising star.
In a week, maybe two, they’ve gone so far.
Weeks turn into months, they go so fast.
And all these guys that showed some brass,
They’re out of shot and on their ass.
We don’t know what caused the blindness plague.
There’s been a lot of ref, but Shaenon and Jeff still pull our legs.
They must know what caused the blindness plague.
There must be something live in the archives on blindness plague.
These past comics brought excitement.
We have seen a lot of older friends.
With a stream of fine-tuned internet gems.
Some will start to leave and go away,
And here we are, it never ends,
But we’re still there on the next day.
There’s been lots of stuff with blindness plague.
Do you know what caused the blindness plague?
We’ve seen too much stuff about the blindness plague…
—from “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” Dionne Warwick (Burt Bacharach and Hal David.)
Applause!
More Applause!
Whatever happened to the mind control program?
I was wondering about that myself. It seems like the Crown would be more suited for this than the cure.
That was my thought as well, when I realized The Cure should have affected everyone, including Tip and Virginia (not to mention everyone at A-Sig). And the Crown would be easier to distribute as well… Just use the internet and you can reach the vast majority of the planet. A-Sig could simply filter it so their own personnel weren’t affected. Of course, dispersing The Cure in those areas not covered by the internet would take care of everyone.
Artie might not be aware of the mind control crown, so it might not factor into his plan. On the other hand, he is very intimately aware of the Cure, so it’s logical that it would be his first guess.
What I’m curious about is why no-one has asked either Helen or Victoria to make an antidote for the Cure.
…Sorry, I meant Virginia.
Well, at least it wasn’t disseminated via untested transgenic mosquitoes with a laughably ineffective kill switch.
*shoots Oxitech a dirty look*
The problem with Artie’s theory here is that it would be very easy to confirm, just see if the Mads have gone mundane. Seeing as they haven’t, he’s clearly wrong. Tigerlily was just as funky as ever when Tip visited her recently.