Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2014-06-27
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2014-06-27

by shaenon on June 27, 2014 at 12:01 am
Chapter: The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
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Discussion (34) ¬

  1. Webmetz
    June 27, 2014, 12:03 am | # | Reply

    For Unity to be an unwitting stooge, she’d have to have wits in the first place.

    • oneuniverse2
      June 27, 2014, 6:32 am | # | Reply

      You’ve seen Unity on brains, right?

    • jdreyfuss
      June 27, 2014, 6:58 am | # | Reply

      She just told them she wasn’t acting aimlessly. She knew exactly what everyone else was asking her to do the entire time and just followed their requests in the way most likely to screw with them. That sounds pretty clever to me.

    • BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
      June 27, 2014, 8:18 pm | # | Reply

      I think it’s easier to just tell her what to do, on the assumption that she’ll agree wholeheartedly to any suitably stupid and/or violent task, than to try to trick her into doing it

  2. ngmatt8652
    June 27, 2014, 12:04 am | # | Reply

    She did plan it? But why?

    • John Campbell
      June 27, 2014, 12:12 am | # | Reply

      Is “for the lulz” an answer?

    • grantwhy
      June 27, 2014, 12:38 am | # | Reply

      To get Skin Horse closed down?

      Gavotte is a pretty good schemer and while she can’t see the future, she can read the signs pretty well.

      Whatever is coming, (*NOT* Winter :p), Gavotte wants Skin Horse to be out of Government control.

      ?

      That or everyone is about to be re-hired as ‘independent outside contractors’ to take over the duties Skin Horse used to do?

      • mickeyf
        June 27, 2014, 9:22 am | # | Reply

        Or to keep it from closing down? Sometimes it seems like the government departments that screw up most spectacularly are the ones that persist.

    • oneuniverse2
      June 27, 2014, 6:35 am | # | Reply

      Somewhere back in this story arc, I posted that Gavotte was using some sort of bureaucratic jujitsu to save Skin-Horse. But an alternative is to move SH out of the shadows and make it mainstream government; another is to move the organization into the private sector.

      I’m sure funding will be a big motivator.

      • mittfh
        June 27, 2014, 6:55 pm | # | Reply

        Perhaps they’ll be saved by the R&D wing of the Shadow Government – who, after all, have already supplied two staff members to Project Skin Horse (although one is technically furniture) and mobile hardware for a third (who probably also counts as furniture given her previous life…)

        • WJS
          July 12, 2019, 1:14 pm | # | Reply

          We have had no indication whatsoever that Anasigma are Shadow Government. Everything we’ve seen suggests Corrupt Corporation.

    • BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
      June 27, 2014, 8:23 pm | # | Reply

      As George Mallory famously replied when asked why he climbed Mt. Everest, “because I was bored.”

      I may be paraphrasing slightly

  3. Windy Wanderings
    June 27, 2014, 12:26 am | # | Reply

    Does Nick know about this yet~?~ Does Moustaschio~?~

    • Rex Vivat
      June 27, 2014, 3:44 am | # | Reply

      Not the sane part of Moustachio, at least. He didn’t remember his previous… episode when he came back last time.

  4. codebracker
    June 27, 2014, 4:42 am | # | Reply

    Sweetheart could’ve done her job easily, if she wasn’t so aggresive to everyone.

    • oneuniverse2
      June 27, 2014, 6:27 am | # | Reply

      Couldn’t we all?

  5. oneuniverse2
    June 27, 2014, 6:31 am | # | Reply

    I never said “Skin-Horse” doesn’t teach me anything, and now I have more evidence. Lulz: Beginning as a plural variant of lol, Lulz was originally an exclamation but is now often used as a noun meaning interesting or funny internet content.
    Lol -> lul; lols -> luls; lolz -> lulz.

    Lulz is the one good reason to do anything, from trolling to rape. After every action taken, you must make the epilogic dubious disclaimer: “I did it for the lulz”.

    From the Urban Dictionary.

    I’m not sure how I’m going to use this information, but the evil part of my heart will surely try something for the lulz.

  6. Eddurd
    June 27, 2014, 6:34 am | # | Reply

    (TUNE: “Come Sail Away”, Styx)

    We’re failing today …
    Didn’t do our jobs, failed in ev’ry way!
    Files, looked all through there …
    There’s no millipedes mentioned anywhere!

    Our day spent in fighting,
    And running ’round …
    The building igniting,
    And burning down!
    There’s no doubt,
    We’ve been kicked out …
    Of Aaaaaaaaaanex One!

    This was a plot
    By Miss Gavotte!
    We’re set up for a fall!
    But Unity
    Succeeded, she
    Will now outrank us all!
    We were … failing today,
    Failing today,
    Spectacularly failed!
    We were … failing today,
    Failed ev’ry way,
    We’re lucky we weren’t jailed!

  7. skirtmanwarrior
    June 27, 2014, 7:22 am | # | Reply

    Unity’s instructions were just for Gavotte’s amusement, as they were completely unnecessary to get this team to disintegrate.

    I used to work with a management consultant who’d do tricks like this in workshops. One of his favorites was to give one person the secret instruction to get the meeting over with as quickly as possible, and tell another to stretch it out as long as possible. The second person never had to do anything, as the first person’s attempts to shorten the meeting always backfired and made it go on forever.

    Y’know, I didn’t expect a comic about black ops social services, zombies, talking dogs, killer machines, brain-in-a-tank helicopters and cross-dressing soldiers would do a story on project management…

    • Tetra Valent
      June 27, 2014, 12:05 pm | # | Reply

      Project manglement, however, is a regular aspect of Jeff’s day job.

  8. Robert Nowall
    June 27, 2014, 11:39 am | # | Reply

    Maybe it’s one of those “succeed to fail” assignments. They succeded in failing at their assignments; they failed to succeed at them. They succeeded in failing to see the merits of it; the failed to succeed in seeing any merit to it.

    I can’t help it, it’s the Internet Fan Fiction writer in me.

  9. Josh
    June 27, 2014, 1:18 pm | # | Reply

    So Gavotte is the Skin Horse world’s equivalent of Princess Celestia.

  10. davidbreslin101
    June 27, 2014, 4:49 pm | # | Reply

    So Tip’s job was to write a 50-page survey of something that doesn’t actually
    exist?
    They shoulda sent an academic.

    • Shadowmehr
      June 27, 2014, 6:59 pm | # | Reply

      I believe his psychology degree was based on his ability to fill out research grant forms and run rats through mazes. He sounds perfect for writing massive amount fluff on not much.

  11. Gemma
    June 27, 2014, 5:17 pm | # | Reply

    This is what I get for not checking in daily, instead catching up on several days worth at once. It is rather unusual to have that big of a bombshell dropped on a Wednesday, though.

    In response to Windy Wandering’s big theory yesterday:
    Whoa. I had my own theory regarding the department’s name, but yours makes a terrifying amount of sense. My own guesses led to a less sinister conclusion; I thought that Project Skin Horse’s goal was to help nonhuman sapients make a place in the world community, and gradually become visible to the reality-blind, and thus ‘real’.

  12. ackthp
    June 27, 2014, 7:32 pm | # | Reply

    Gavotte is too smart to be an unwitting tool and too free-thinking to be the knowing architect of a conspiracy designed for the humans’ benefit. That means she has to be shipped out and shut up quick, before she gets her wits back, but everything is in place to do that right now.

    But she needs to be studied, so they can’t just finish her off with a half-dozen cans of Raid, and the story is not over.

    In keeping with oneuniverse2’s idea, it’s also possible that for all that, Gavotte is one step ahead of everybody else even now, or alternatively that her counterpart isn’t so “counter” and is working towards a denouement not in keeping with the spirit of the orders given by the people nominally in charge.

    I’m pretty bad at this game, and look forward to being badly wrong.

    • ackthp
      June 27, 2014, 7:51 pm | # | Reply

      I still think Gavotte was framed and is genuinely disabled, but maybe she saw it coming.

      To achieve clear victory, Black Ops need a creature with Gavotte’s intelligence and the mynah bird’s insanity. Otherwise they might have to settle for a result in which everyone wins, and nobody wants that.

    • =Tamar
      June 27, 2014, 8:43 pm | # | Reply

      It’s possible that Nick’s use of the sound weapon was supposed to kill Gavotte. Luckily for the gang, it seems to have failed.

      • WJS
        July 12, 2019, 1:17 pm | # | Reply

        Has it? Stunning all her bees at once could very well kill her for all we know, even if the individual bees survive. We don’t have any idea how she works.

  13. metaldude555
    June 27, 2014, 10:20 pm | # | Reply

    I totally called it! When is Gavotte ever NOT playing her staff like chess pieces?

  14. Alexis
    July 2, 2014, 2:52 am | # | Reply

    Re-reading this arc with the knowledge of Unity’s task was very fun. Very nicely set up there.

  15. Owlmirror
    October 9, 2018, 1:48 am | # | Reply

    I just thought of a notion which I think is at least a possible alternative to “Gavotte set up Skin Horse to fail”.

    Mr. Green is deeply manipulative, and attacks by way of that manipulation. Gavotte, despite her advanced intelligence, is nevertheless not invulnerable to manipulation. Rather than Gavotte having decided to send the e-mails and form a mating swarm as part of some deep strategy, Mr. Green may have used a hidden pheromone pulse to induce a mating swarm, and then simply hacked her e-mail to get the employees to work at cross-purposes.

    As I type this, 4+ years after the Very Bad Day, Gavotte has not appeared in the story to give her version of what happened, or any sign that she is even still alive.

    • serpentrose
      June 25, 2020, 10:49 pm | # | Reply

      Or just managed to take advantage of when it happened naturally. I wonder if it’s on something like a predictable cycle.

    • awgiedawgie
      June 26, 2020, 2:30 am | # | Reply

      I suspected Mr. Green right from the start. We all know he’s an expert hacker (he did, after all, break Nick out of his VR program), so sending emails that appeared to come from her would be child’s play. Gavotte’s cycle is fairly predictable, so he just had to send the emails when she became “temporarily dull”, so she wouldn’t be able to do anything about them.

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