Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2017-01-21
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2017-01-21

by shaenon on January 21, 2017 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Yes, Virginia
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Discussion (53) ¬

  1. thejoemoose
    January 21, 2017, 12:10 am | # | Reply

    Aw, he remembered her name.

    Also, him forgetting the plans in three…two…

    • Towering Barbarian
      January 21, 2017, 10:16 pm | # | Reply

      Maybe. Then again, maybe not. I’ve a feeling that Ira is a lot like Claudius from “I, Claudius” by Robert Graves and that he knows enough to tell a hawk from a handsaw when the wind is Nor’ by Northwest! ^_~

      • temujin9
        January 23, 2017, 12:36 pm | # | Reply

        Barbarian: “hawk from a handsaw” was originally from Hamlet.

        I do agree, though: he’s probably only half crazy.

  2. thedoctor55
    January 21, 2017, 12:23 am | # | Reply

    I hope Ira is now working at the hew Skin Horse building.

    • awgiedawgie
      January 21, 2017, 10:21 am | # | Reply

      It doesn’t look like it. And the fact that Dr. Lee suggests having Tigerlily build the device for him implies that he is indeed back at A1.

  3. sandpiper
    January 21, 2017, 12:45 am | # | Reply

    I seem to remember weather control devices being the first step down the road to madness.

    • VillageWizard
      January 21, 2017, 1:11 am | # | Reply

      Yeah, so she’s probably seen a lot of blueprints for those, given that it’s been her job to study the inventions of mad scientists.

      • Sheik
        January 21, 2017, 2:27 pm | # | Reply

        Yes, it’s probably one of many. Dr. Lee probably selected it just for Ira because it controls the weather just within a few feet of his guard shack. I just hope he can handle an indoor hurricane.

  4. Freezer
    January 21, 2017, 1:06 am | # | Reply

    She gives him weather control machine plans instead of a heater. Mad Science Logic in a nutshell.

    • Zinc
      January 21, 2017, 5:21 am | # | Reply

      Give a man a heater, and he’ll be warm for a few years.
      Teach a man how to build a weather control device and he’ll show them, show them all!!! I mean, be warm for life.

    • D. Walker
      January 21, 2017, 6:17 am | # | Reply

      Actually, she probably would have given him a heater, except she was expressly forbidden from spending money by management, and it’s well established that Dr. Lee has a very hard time going against doing whatever her employers ask of her.

  5. VoxExMachina
    January 21, 2017, 3:28 am | # | Reply

    Is Ira suddenly sinister for anyone else?

    • Rex Vivat
      January 21, 2017, 10:47 am | # | Reply

      Suddenly? No. Ira’s been the prime suspect for the “real” identity behind Mr. Green for a long while now.

      • void
        January 21, 2017, 6:06 pm | # | Reply

        That’s nuts. You’re nuts. I’m nuts ’cause that actually makes sense to me.

  6. John Campbell
    January 21, 2017, 4:31 am | # | Reply

    She’s not Mad, but that’s not the same thing as being sane.

    • BRGR
      January 21, 2017, 4:42 am | # | Reply

      That is what dried frog pills are for.

      • cloudster
        January 21, 2017, 12:47 pm | # | Reply

        Thank you for refreshing a lovely memory.

    • codebracker
      January 21, 2017, 5:22 am | # | Reply

      I think she is just very very sane

      • Mental Mouse
        January 21, 2017, 7:03 am | # | Reply

        Perhaps even “yzarc”? (compare to “knurd”)

        Seriously though, I think she’s pretty much Mad, it’s just that her primary delusion is that she’s the sanest one of all.

        • Daibhid C
          January 21, 2017, 7:27 am | # | Reply

          If so, it’s a delusion shared by everyone else, since Not Being Mad was her primary purpose at A-Sig. She actually reminds me a lot of the description of Igors in Making Money, if we’re swapping Discworld references.

          “[M]ost of the people who employed Igors were not conventionally sane. Ask them to build a storm attractor and a set of lightning storage jars and they would laugh at you. They needed, oh, how they needed someone in possession of a fully working brain, and every Igor was guaranteed to have at least one of those.”

          • Daibhid C
            January 21, 2017, 9:48 am | #

            Come to think of it, Discworld also has several characters who are so very sane they’re not normal. Ginny isn’t quite as bad as Jeremy Clockson, but maybe on the same level as Sane Alex from Going Postal.

        • John Campbell
          January 21, 2017, 11:26 am | # | Reply

          The thing is, “mad scientist” is a misnomer. They’re not really scientists at all. They’re not using reproducible methods of pushing forward the boundaries of sapient knowledge. They’re doing the impossible through techniques that they barely grasp and other people can’t reproduce. What they’re doing isn’t science. It’s magic. They’re not scientists; they’re wizards whose trappings are technology.

          Dr. Lee isn’t a wizard. She’s something stranger and more rare – unique in the setting, from what we’ve been told. She doesn’t have magic powers that she uses to craft magical devices. What she does is take the magical devices that wizards have crafted, and she makes them reproducible by ordinary mortals. She turns the magic into science.

          Agatha Heterodyne tells us that any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science. Virginia Lee doesn’t do magic. She does the analysis.

          • John Campbell
            January 21, 2017, 11:35 am | #

            … but not being a wizard doesn’t mean that she can’t be a little off-kilter.

          • casimir
            January 21, 2017, 9:41 pm | #

            Kudos! You’ve put into words what I felt but could not.
            Virginia will always do the right thing…when someone tells her what it is.

          • GammarayCanon
            January 23, 2017, 6:45 am | #

            Helen (from Narbonic) was shown to be writing research papers, though. It’s more like the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics than magic: less caring about how it works and more about how to make it work. Also, neither make any goddamn sense.

          • awgiedawgie
            January 23, 2017, 12:22 pm | #

            “She does the analysis.”

            That effectively makes her a scientist. And as we all know, magic is just science that we don’t yet understand.

          • cubist
            January 28, 2017, 6:11 am | #

            In other words, mad “scientists” are really mad engineers.

  7. Robert Nowall
    January 21, 2017, 6:23 am | # | Reply

    I’ve got a catchy name for it: a “thermostat.”

    • casimir
      January 21, 2017, 9:04 am | # | Reply

      …or how about “anthropogenic climate change”?

      • John Campbell
        January 21, 2017, 11:40 am | # | Reply

        You’re not allowed to say that in this brave new revisionist reality.

    • Demiurgent
      January 21, 2017, 5:08 pm | # | Reply

      As I recall, Annex One’s had sufficient structural damage that there’s exposure to the elements — and while a lot of the more insane aspects of A1 are still running, basic infrastructural services like HVAC are not.

      So a weather control device (which therefore wouldn’t use basic infrastructural services) is eminently practical if you want to keep the building climate controlled.

  8. Mental Mouse
    January 21, 2017, 7:06 am | # | Reply

    And waitasec… “Dr. Jones can build it for you”? Is Tigerlily still in control of Annex One? Also, Ginny may have checked the internal security cameras, but clearly not the local-airspace records. You’d think she’d know by now….

    • Guesticus
      January 21, 2017, 9:09 am | # | Reply

      She doesn’t have to be in control of anything: who else do they know that can build something like that?

      • s854
        January 21, 2017, 9:27 am | # | Reply

        Surely anyone with the right knowledge and experience could build Virginia’s entirely sensible weather control machine. I am intrigued by the notion that Tigerlily would ever consider “building it for him”, though.

        • John Campbell
          January 21, 2017, 11:39 am | # | Reply

          She may not have gotten done turning that one into science, so Ira will need the services of a wizard to have it crafted.

        • Sheik
          January 21, 2017, 2:33 pm | # | Reply

          Tigerlily will do it just so she can make “improvements”.

    • John Campbell
      January 21, 2017, 11:37 am | # | Reply

      Tigerlily is still in control of Annex One, which she’s turned into her funky lair, as per the last storyline. Skin Horse is no longer operating out of Annex One.

      • Demiurgent
        January 21, 2017, 5:13 pm | # | Reply

        It’s kind of an ideal situation, really. Tigerlily Jones is happy, but she’s also being contained and monitored and almost certainly analyzed from afar, letting Anasigma/black ops social services mine her for inventions without acknowledging that’s what they’re doing.

        What, you thought Ira was going into work every day purely because he forgot? He’s clearly still picking up a paycheck.

  9. Shadowmehr
    January 21, 2017, 8:52 am | # | Reply

    1. Poor Nick.

    2. This is an interesting glimpse into how Dr. Lee’s mind works. I agree that if she’s not a madgirl yet, it probably is only a matter of time. I wonder if the plans will become a Chekov’s Gun later?

    • Mturtle7
      July 20, 2022, 5:25 pm | # | Reply

      Slightly spoilery notice from the future: the plans were, in fact, a Chekov’s Gun. Nice job on past readers for predicting that!

      • awgiedawgie
        July 20, 2022, 6:42 pm | # | Reply

        In case you missed it in the comments below… DON’T PUT SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS. Even if you preface it with the word “spoiler”, it’s still a spoiler, and they’re frowned upon around here.

  10. Zana
    January 21, 2017, 11:27 am | # | Reply

    This is going to come up later…

    • JohnCD
      January 21, 2017, 12:07 pm | # | Reply

      I certainly hope so.

  11. void
    January 21, 2017, 6:11 pm | # | Reply

    OH dang. For some reason I feel like Ira remembering her name is foreshadowing or something like that.

    • awgiedawgie
      January 22, 2017, 4:00 am | # | Reply

      Anything Ira says may or may not be foreshadowing. Unfortunately, no one he says it to will actually know whether it was important until the moment arrives – and perhaps not even then. Recall the insane ramblings he mumbled to Dr. Sanders, which turned out to be eerily accurate and useful in his quest to win Tigerlily’s contest. Yet Chris didn’t know it was anything but gibberish until the last minute.

      And for all we know, there may be a to/from tag on the gift with Virginia’s name on it, so he might not be “remembering” much of anything.

    • BRGR
      January 23, 2017, 1:52 pm | # | Reply

      I think it is more telling that she is Virginia to him, not Dr Lee.

      • Altarboy
        October 19, 2021, 2:31 am | # | Reply

        Just tagging on here to say: THE GUY BELOW DROPPED A MILD SPOILER.
        Now just 299hrs and 57minutes of community service left to do.

  12. Carl Muckenhoupt
    August 28, 2018, 12:44 pm | # | Reply

    On re-read, this is a crucial moment.

    • Rex Vivat
      August 28, 2018, 2:42 pm | # | Reply

      Leaving spoilers in the comments for new readers to find is pretty damn rude, you know.

      • awgiedawgie
        February 13, 2020, 3:39 pm | # | Reply

        I would be perfectly happy if Shaenon and Jeff would delete spoilers.

      • khn0
        March 22, 2022, 4:03 pm | # | Reply

        SPOILER: I come from the future, and in the future, I come here to comment on the past future people of the past.

    • MyaApplesauce
      February 13, 2020, 7:07 am | # | Reply

      At least they were kind of vague about it.

  13. Knuckles
    February 2, 2022, 12:12 pm | # | Reply

    You know, even looking back on this today, this is still very sweet. <3

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