Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2013-05-11
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2013-05-11

by shaenon on May 11, 2013 at 12:00 am
Chapter: My House Is Me
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Discussion (37) ¬

  1. CptNerd
    May 11, 2013, 12:44 am | # | Reply

    I’m both amused and depressed, all at once…

  2. ysabet
    May 11, 2013, 12:49 am | # | Reply

    Me, I think that when Unity finally gets her hands on whoever’s responsible for the destruction of one of her favorite things in the world, it’s gonna be very, VERY ugly for them. They will Not Have A Good Day. Or any days afterwards, probably… I mean, just look at that expression. O_O

    • Shadowmehr
      May 11, 2013, 10:12 am | # | Reply

      Seconded.

      That is the emotive equivalent of the match in front of the fuse.

  3. ysabet
    May 11, 2013, 12:50 am | # | Reply

    …..also, how the hell can a robot smoke? **headscratch**

    • Chameon
      May 11, 2013, 1:32 am | # | Reply

      Typical, and similarly to human education…A robot that is poorly designed or raised will, inevitably, reveal its’ defects, smoke pouring out of its’ ears, mouth, or eyes. A better question would be, how could a robot smoke a cigarette. To which my response would be, with an utter lack of elegance, given this current situation.

      • Bernhard
        May 11, 2013, 8:11 pm | # | Reply

        At least she’s not like Burai King Boss from Casshern. He smoked cigars and the smoke came out of his ears.

    • Classic Steve
      May 11, 2013, 3:59 pm | # | Reply

      Must be an electronic cigarette.

      • KNO3
        May 11, 2013, 11:06 pm | # | Reply

        Dunno. Kinda look rolled.

      • Knuckles
        January 24, 2022, 10:27 am | # | Reply

        And an iron lung.

  4. Manifesta
    May 11, 2013, 1:09 am | # | Reply

    Unity’s expression in panel 4 is “shock and awwwwwww.”

    Picking up on yesterday’s earworm talk, for reasons I can’t hope to explain, I’ve had Gilbert O’Sullivan songs running through my head for days. For you young’uns, he’s an Irish singer who had a lot of pop hits in the ’70s, all of them dead catchy in the most annoying way. (I still thought he was awfully cute.)
    His most famous song was the über-depressing “Alone Again, Naturally” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ELnhjGw4Zs), which I hereby filk for your earworming pleasure.

    The Mender-Fairy’s dead and gone
    She found she just couldn’t go on
    She chose seppuku
    As who wouldn’t do
    Rather than being Whimsy’s pawn

    I’m Mary, this is Gus
    There’s not many more than us
    Here’s that Gerald thing
    Oh, please God, don’t sing
    I can’t take that sappy theme song

    Our park is a wreck, full of dreck, falling apart-re
    But I don’t give a rat’s patoot
    I smoke and channel Sartre
    This ride is just a trap
    With dancing pigs and crap
    This World of Love’s—as you see—
    Decrepit, sad and seedy

    • Eddurd
      May 11, 2013, 8:44 am | # | Reply

      Very nicely done! And yes, I remember Gilbert O’Sullivan all too well. I don’t know if I can top that.

      Oh, heck, I’ll give it a shot.

  5. Prodigal
    May 11, 2013, 2:24 am | # | Reply

    Poor Unity.

  6. Sparks
    May 11, 2013, 3:38 am | # | Reply

    This is the sound of a black-ops military zombie’s organic nanogoo-circulation unit (a.k.a. heart) breaking.

    • Altarboy
      May 11, 2013, 4:10 am | # | Reply

      I believe she refers to it as her “chest engine”.

  7. jdreyfuss
    May 11, 2013, 7:09 am | # | Reply

    If her spring winds down, is she still jaded?

    • Dave Van Domelen
      May 11, 2013, 2:11 pm | # | Reply

      That assumes they’re actually wind-up, and that the key isn’t just decorative. These are atomic-age creations…maybe they’re nuke-powered?

  8. Anderson
    May 11, 2013, 7:36 am | # | Reply

    You know…..I’m actually sorta tempted to get into the illegal arms trade to make a giant fortune with which to start a giant entertainment company (or buy one)….just so I can have an amusement park where the twee-looking rides are entirely sarcastic. Because 1. That’d be awesome and 2. Money and fame are fleeting, crying disillusioned children are forever.

    • Andy4Hire
      May 11, 2013, 1:22 pm | # | Reply

      I would go to that theme park every day it was open.

      • --jt--
        May 11, 2013, 7:43 pm | # | Reply

        Ok, now I have an idea for an Oculus Rift enabled project.

  9. Eddurd
    May 11, 2013, 8:45 am | # | Reply

    (TUNE: “Eleanor Rigby”, The Beatles)

    Awww, see the angsty robot people!
    Awww, see the angsty robot people!

    Mary and Gussie,
    Stuck in a park that is broken and falling apart …
    They have no heart!
    Poor Mender-Fairy,
    Since she was dying, she went and abandoned the ride …
    Chose suicide!
    Angsty robot people,
    Who smoke and wear berets …
    Angsty robot people,
    How do they spend their days?

    Listen to Sweetheart,
    Saying “You know, this is not quite as bad as I feared …”
    Although it’s weird!
    Unity’s shocked now,
    Ride that she loved is now broken and twisted and sick …
    She’ll sh*t a brick!
    Angsty robot people,
    Depressing, dark, and drear …
    Angsty robot people,
    Abandon hope, ye here!

    • Norman
      May 11, 2013, 10:09 am | # | Reply

      Nice ose-filk, Eddurd!

    • Wayne Zombie
      May 11, 2013, 12:23 pm | # | Reply

      Excellent filk, and excellent trivia question: the one song of the Beatles in which they perform no musical instruments.

  10. Jacob Haller
    May 11, 2013, 9:46 am | # | Reply

    Excellent!

  11. Robert The Addled
    May 11, 2013, 11:52 am | # | Reply

    How would seppuku work for animatronics anyway? It is ritual disembowelment followed by beheading by your second before you dishonor yourself further by reacting to the pain of having your guts in a puddle in front of you.

    Hydraulic rupture followed by smashing the controllers? Where would the seat of consciousness even BE to do a proper beheading equivalent? Dropping the CPU and drives into a monster shredder?

    • Zap Rowsdower
      May 11, 2013, 11:55 am | # | Reply

      DIGITAL seppuku, so it probably consisted of deleting files.

    • nemryn
      May 11, 2013, 1:56 pm | # | Reply

      The disembowelment would be replaced by a core dump, probably.

      • bear
        May 11, 2013, 2:59 pm | # | Reply

        Digital seppuku consists of deleting your own executable and source code files, overwriting them twenty times with random data, starting a process that will sleep for one second and then do the same to all core files, and crashing.

        Your second is still needed; somebody has to delete the backups.

        • Robert The Addled
          May 11, 2013, 6:29 pm | # | Reply

          That brings up the question of a digital ‘soul’. Is a copy or a restored backup really the same individual? Even in the case of Lovelace- there was ‘missing time’, and each individual is the net sum of all their experiences.

          I (need to go check the books) think that Lovelace even said something to the effect of “it wasn’t really me” when she met Dave at Mom-Madblood’s house when Mel was there.

  12. Wayne Zombie
    May 11, 2013, 12:25 pm | # | Reply

    THANK YOU for using seppuku rather than hara kiri! I hate it when people use the vulgar for the ultimate act.

    • Hielario
      May 12, 2013, 7:39 pm | # | Reply

      Would you kindly tell me what’s the difference?

      • Dayglo Pterodactyl
        May 12, 2013, 10:24 pm | # | Reply

        From the wikipedia article: “In Japanese, the more formal seppuku, a Chinese on’yomi reading, is typically used in writing, while harakiri, a native kun’yomi reading, is used in speech.”
        (The difference is basically that Seppuku is the formal, Chinese pronunciation, while Hara Kiri is the less formal Japanese version. They’re written the same in Japanese, though.)

  13. WuseMajor
    May 11, 2013, 1:17 pm | # | Reply

    I confess I’m curious as to what Nick’s reaction to all this is. Also, is the Little House one big AI and each of these is a puppet controlled by it, or is each robot a separate intelligence.

    Also, why haven’t the robots been freed from the ride yet?

  14. Rob Davidoff
    May 11, 2013, 1:39 pm | # | Reply

    Not sure if it means anything, but in the strip when we meet Mary and Gussie (http://skin-horse.com/2013/with-and-have/), Mary is wearing all-white and Gussie is in all-black. No, while both have elements of each color in their design, Mary’s is predominantly back, and Gussie’s is predominantly white–a reversal. Not sure if meaningful, but it’s sort of interesting.

    • Robert The Addled
      May 11, 2013, 2:21 pm | # | Reply

      It does kinda fit the ‘jaded’ behavior in todays strip. I wonder if the dark glasses is due to the historical fame (think child actors gone bad) and darkening of the personality – or is it like Dave’s glasses – that we don’t see his eyes until he’s (pun intended) ‘gone thru the looking glass’ into mad-land.

  15. Rex Vivat
    May 12, 2013, 1:17 am | # | Reply

    Huh. I guess if someone was gonna make me feel sorry for some animatronics in a comic strip… I shouldn’t be surprised.

  16. Darkstarr
    May 3, 2016, 11:57 pm | # | Reply

    Is it just me, or were a certain webcomic artist and/or her author friend somewhat less than impressed by Mercenary Mouse-Land during their last visit?

  17. Kaydrien Iceclaw
    November 19, 2017, 10:20 am | # | Reply

    Who’s the black-haired lady (I think?) in the background?

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