Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2018-11-03
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2018-11-03

by shaenon on November 3, 2018 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Figgs and Phantoms
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Discussion (47) ¬

  1. Owlmirror
    November 3, 2018, 12:04 am | # | Reply

    Hm. Dr. Lee notes patterns of responses, but not patterns of eyewear?

    • Ken
      November 3, 2018, 12:50 am | # | Reply

      I sort of see a pattern. But Mayor Queen has clear glasses. So does Dr. Lee. So does that mean Dr. Lee is part of Gavotte too?

      I hear that seeing patterns can drive one crazy eventually.

      • Candace
        November 3, 2018, 1:28 am | # | Reply

        “I hear that seeing patterns can drive one crazy eventually.”

        Not necessarily. Our brains are wired to look for patterns. In general, it is an adaptive trait, which helped humans survive and evolve. However, it is certainly possible to become obsessive about looking for patterns, and to find patterns that aren’t really there, leading to the pattern-recognition trait becoming maladaptive. (Think paranoia, for example.)

        That being said, I do suspect it means something that all the individuals who appear to be parts of Gavotte are wearing eyewear that obscures their eyes, except for Mayor Queen. No doubt all will become clear soon.

        • Owlmirror
          November 3, 2018, 1:54 am | # | Reply

          There’s also the pattern of wearing flowers. I thought at first that Ms. Driver wasn’t, but looking closely, the insignia on her cap looks to be a half-flower.

        • Ember
          November 3, 2018, 10:46 am | # | Reply

          There’s also literally a term for ‘pattern-recognition gone to the extreme’: apophenia. And a subset of that, pareidolia, involving seeing things like faces in images that aren’t intended to be there.

      • Owlmirror
        November 3, 2018, 1:58 am | # | Reply

        This is the writing team that has deliberately sprinkled references to “The Wizard of Oz” (and lots of other stories) throughout this comic. If you think that there are no patterns to look for, you’re reading it wrong.

        Which doesn’t mean that every pattern found is correct, but still.

        • Randomfan
          November 3, 2018, 4:54 am | # | Reply

          Yes, but I can see that the pattern of “eyewear” is possibly weaker than “talks like gavotte”.

  2. awgiedawgie
    November 3, 2018, 12:04 am | # | Reply

    It is encouraging to see that – without introduction – the bus driver recognizes Virginia as a doctor.

    • Candace
      November 3, 2018, 1:31 am | # | Reply

      Yes. I get the idea the bus driver knows who she is and what’s going on. Perhaps Mayor Queen isn’t really the queen after all.

      • tyersome
        November 3, 2018, 1:45 am | # | Reply

        My understanding is that the queen is more like the reproductive system rather than like the brain …

      • Wesley Vidler
        November 3, 2018, 3:46 am | # | Reply

        Well, the Bus Driver is the one driving them. It makes sense that she might be the one in charge.

    • Barking Monkey
      November 3, 2018, 7:56 am | # | Reply

      I’ve heard recently that if you want to know what’s going on in a town you ask a bus driver.

      • Daibhid C
        November 3, 2018, 8:17 am | # | Reply

        Graham from Doctor Who?

        • awgiedawgie
          November 3, 2018, 7:10 pm | # | Reply

          If you’ve ever talked at any length with a bus driver, you know that to be quite true. They overhear everything, whether they want to or not.

  3. Owlmirror
    November 3, 2018, 12:13 am | # | Reply

    I recall that “Contrariwise” was used by Mustachio as well, to indicate negation — and was also ignored by Dr. Lee. To greatly disastrous and dramatic effect, that time.

    Has she been making an incorrect inference all along, or is Ms Driver merely being pedantic (she isn’t also Gavotte; she’s also part of Gavotte)?

    Ooh, and the driver knows that Virginia is a doctor! Does she have memories of her?

    • Owlmirror
      November 3, 2018, 12:19 am | # | Reply

      Wait. Maybe this one is (a fragment of?) Pavane.

      • Owlmirror
        November 3, 2018, 12:52 am | # | Reply

        While my previous idea that the bus might be described as being Whimsycal seems to have been, once again, completely wrong, it occurs to me now that the bus might also be described as funky.

        Does the space bus route end at Planet Lovetron?

        • Shadowmehr
          November 3, 2018, 6:15 am | # | Reply

          It is entirely possible that this whole comic will end with all main characters on Planet Lovetron.

          • Robert Nowall
            November 3, 2018, 6:08 pm | #

            Well, then they’ll all be happy, except probably Sweetheart.

      • Pygar
        November 3, 2018, 6:44 pm | # | Reply

        And the residents of Lovetron… A quote from a favorite film…

        “Now he’s off to Gstaad. Today… a paradise in the Swiss Alps; tomorrow… a wasteland!”

    • Pygar
      November 3, 2018, 12:35 am | # | Reply

      “Contrarywise” was used by either Tweedledee or Tweedledum; for some reason I have trouble sorting them out…

      • Owlmirror
        November 3, 2018, 12:41 am | # | Reply

        . . . And Mustachio turned out to be his own evil twin. Hm, hm, hm . . .

    • Daibhid C
      November 3, 2018, 8:21 am | # | Reply

      “Contrariwise” does mean “Contradicting that”, but I don’t get the impression the Bus Driver is addressing Dr Lee’s question at all. In the second panel she’s complaining the VR is representing her as human, in the third, she’s saying that, on the other hand, she’s a pretty cool human.

      • Daibhid C
        November 3, 2018, 8:23 am | # | Reply

        Oh, somebody already said this further down.

      • Trivena
        November 3, 2018, 6:07 pm | # | Reply

        Perhaps she *is* answering the question, by pointing out that Gavotte wouldn’t have the hat or bus?

  4. thedoctor55
    November 3, 2018, 12:19 am | # | Reply

    Oh,is Dr. Lee really the “New” Doctor?

    • Candace
      November 3, 2018, 1:34 am | # | Reply

      Oh, I would watch the heck out of that!

  5. Clifton
    November 3, 2018, 2:25 am | # | Reply

    This only just dawned on me, and hasn’t much to do with this strip or context, but in terms of Oz correspondences, Virginia is … the Wicked Witch of the West.

    Virginia is the one who turned Nick the hacker into the Tin Man, by removing his body and replacing it with a metal one. That’s what the Wicked Witch of the West did. (I’m probably not the first to observe this.)

    • Towering Barbarian
      November 3, 2018, 5:22 am | # | Reply

      I think Ginny herself would agree with you completely as seen here. @_@

      http://skin-horse.com/comic/the-new/

      The thing to remember is that she’s become aware of it and is trying to draw back from what she had been. As Moe Lane says in the comments, she’s trying to become the wizard. ^_^

      • awgiedawgie
        November 3, 2018, 7:16 pm | # | Reply

        I was thinking of her line in the final panel here.

    • woozy
      November 4, 2018, 1:16 am | # | Reply

      That was the wicked witch of the east. And actually she only enchanted the axe. Ku-klip the tinsmith replaced his body.

  6. Towering Barbarian
    November 3, 2018, 5:26 am | # | Reply

    “Just admiring the best mind prison ever!” doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing Gavotte or even a Gavotte fragment would say so I suspect a new character has come onto the scene and that Ginny may be now dealing with the Spark who designed this part of the VR section in the first place. ^.^

  7. Judas
    November 3, 2018, 5:56 am | # | Reply

    It’s the Magic Space Bus!

  8. ebonysable
    November 3, 2018, 6:24 am | # | Reply

    I think the driver is saying contrariwise to her own comment in the previous panel, about being anthropoid. She doesn’t seem to like being anthropoid, or would at least prefer to not be, but at least she has a cool hat and a seriously cool bus.

  9. 5-tons-of-flax
    November 3, 2018, 7:51 am | # | Reply

    The bus has beelike characteristics. Big buggy ‘eyes’ (windshields), six ‘legs’ (wheels), diaphanous wings sticking out the back, and of course, stripes.

    • mickeyjf
      November 3, 2018, 9:32 am | # | Reply

      And it hums.

  10. Robert Nowall
    November 3, 2018, 10:08 am | # | Reply

    I see “we’re” still vaguely British in speech, too.

  11. Owlmirror
    November 3, 2018, 1:42 pm | # | Reply

    I was leaning towards the driver being Pavane, but after re-reading where we first see her conversation with Sweetheart, I’m leaning against that. Pavane is direct and friendly; a people person. Being oblique and tending to ignore people has been more a trait in common with the Gavotte fragments.

    So, new whack hypothesis:

    The driver is the fragment that Gavotte sent off in the mating swarm before the beginning of the Very Bad Day. Gavotte was anticipating Anasigma moving against her, and this fragment has most of her memories, especially of classified material.

    • Malicron
      November 3, 2018, 3:39 pm | # | Reply

      True, but the bus does follow with Pavane’s name-drop of Lovetron. Also, remember Pavane’s “Sometimes, you folk are barley an improvement over your creators” line, and her initial disappointment with being an anthropoid here. I think she just doesn’t like humans, and is thus being somewhat rude to Virginia.

      • Owlmirror
        November 4, 2018, 12:29 am | # | Reply

        The connection to Lovetron is just my guess, not anything that follows explicitly from what we see or what the driver says.

        That is even more the case if her statements in panels 2 & 3 are interpreted as meaning that just as she would not normally be anthropoid (presumably, she would actually be a (sub-)swarm of bees), the bus would not normally appear as a bus (I suspect it’s actually some software for moving between VRs). The current appearances of both herself and the whatever-it-is-that-now-looks-like-a-bus are the result of the current VR.

        Which reminds me of something I’ve been wondering: Are the VRs all just automatic systems, or do at least some of them have some sapience of their own?

  12. Mishalak
    November 3, 2018, 1:53 pm | # | Reply

    At last! All six of them.

    • Owlmirror
      November 4, 2018, 12:37 am | # | Reply

      I have to wonder, why six?

      The only thing I can come up with at the moment are the 6 directions that an entity with flight can move.

      I note that Mayor Queen was up the hill, and the bus and driver came from down.

      The six legs of insects seems too obvious, and yet not otherwise germane.

      Hexapodia is the key insight?

      • Anders
        November 4, 2018, 1:04 am | # | Reply

        Looking at a beehive cross-section, bees like hexagons.

      • Stu Friedberg
        November 4, 2018, 2:31 pm | # | Reply

        And Twirlip of the Mists was ultimately correct, to the extent that we think we understand what he/she/it/they was saying, despite all appearances of being a clueless net-noob.

        On the other hand, I’m not convinced that there’s anything very significant about six aspects of Gavotte, compared to five or seven, say.

      • jdreyfuss
        February 3, 2020, 4:56 pm | # | Reply

        Six aspects of her personality. Optimism (Bea), organization (Apis), determination (Melanie), predictive logic (Delphi), superego (Queen) and ego (bus driver)

  13. =Tamar
    November 3, 2018, 7:07 pm | # | Reply

    Unity likes cool hats…

  14. jdreyfuss
    February 3, 2020, 4:53 pm | # | Reply

    So this would be Gavotte’s ego then? Interesting that her ego would be driving the bus, as it were.

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