I love name-dropping random animal ag team members who will never appear in the actual narrative comic its my favorite hobby
Transcript
Vinemaple asked: Talita, you have a little invertebrate farm on Dirtball, right? Do you have to take care of it yourself, or can you trust others to raise your food animals for you? How has it worked in other places?
Talita: Oh, no, I helped set it up but it's the animal ag team that does the daily maintenance! Ash likes to say they're basically just chabbit sized mealworms.
Inset Panel:
ASH
- Currently in charge of Talita ag
Talita: Nexus Jovia has guaranteed food supplies for visiting and resident aliens, but the diversity and quality of the options is dependent on the volume of consumers. There's a small amount of avian aquaponics and bug ferret mycoculture. But I was the only long term resident centaur in Nexus Jovia, so… Growing up I mostly ate printer food, which relies on microorganism cultures and synthesized compounds. It's… reliable.
44 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 15”
Sen
As a long time GM I can feel the pain of creating NPCs that the players will never know even existed.
Thumbs up for Ash. We may not get to know you, but your hard work keeps our favorite character in good health.
JoB
> I love name-dropping random animal ag team members who will
> never appear in the actual narrative comic its my favorite hobby
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Guess the comic’s bound to have a 1200-page epilogue to tie up all the loose ends, then 😉
[*not* complaining …]
Kayjack
Makes me wonder what they feed the bug farm for Talita. Do they need centaur home world plants for the bugs to feed on, or do they print special bug kibble?
Peter Jensen
The Centaur culture section has this note at the end:
“Animal agriculture usually requires a backbone of plant agriculture and horticulture first, the products of which can’t be sustainably eaten by centaurs. Spacer efforts to feed visiting centaurs has only recently moved onto live animals, with invertebrate farming supported by microbe culture diets.”
So looks like the Centaur homeworld bugs eat something based on microbes, presumably a bit like how we’ve got algae flakes to feed fish. More complex animals have more strict requirements for feed, which makes it much more complex. Human spacer animal rearing on the other hand is supported by by-products of plant agriculture already used to feed the omnivorous humans.
Paroxysmall
she squinches -_-
Vinemaple
When replying, Talita closes her eyes, brings her trunk forward instead of back, and ruffles her neck feathers, as well as grasping her throat the way she does. I’m not sure if she’s embarrassed or rather proud of getting the farm set up, or… the ruffled feathers and raised trunk are something we usually only see when she’s upset or being chased by Whoppers, but clearly this is not that.
Hunter
Put that on their advertising XD
“IT’S RELIABLE!
Zuorai
Feel like printer meat tastes like Sodexo sausage patties but maybe not as spicy
Ouugh when Talita does the lil :T with her mouth
creetur
Delicious! Bugs and paste, my favorite!
Jokes aside, it’s really neat to see small parts of Dirtball that seem insignificant but do add a lot of believability to it. Always felt odd to me when aliens could eat human food and vice versa.
evileeyore
Or my “favorite” trope (by which I mean I hate it), when all the aliens speak modern english with no difficulty…
This comic stands out for putting the ‘sci’ back into sci-fi.
JoB
> when all the aliens speak _modern_ english
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[imagines a setting where humans need to train the lingua franca before meeting the rest of the galaxy … from the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries!]
blythe
man, knowing how big Nexus Jovia is…imagine being the only One amongst millions. actually kinda makes me wonder if Talita was treated like a local curiosity
JoB
Well *some* of them *tried* …
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-reader-questions-4/
arf
Apparently, ‘printer food’ can be made quite palatable.
But we have a story to tell so, enough about that…
creetur
For humans, probably, but the centaurs were contacted only 80 years ago in terms of timeline (..at least I think, it’s been a moment since I’ve checked Jay’s Tumblr), so printer food for them is still in its baby stage. Edible enough but probably boring after a few years of eating it. No wonder Talita wanted something other than sausage and tuber paste..
Varyon
Even for humans, the fact that Gillie was so excited to have some chabbit, as well as the fact that their meat source apparently tends to be mealworms rather than printed food (just before she revealed the chabbit leg, she signed something like “We’ve got meat too, and not just mealworms”), strongly implies that printer food isn’t particularly tasty for humans either. I don’t know how likely it is that such food will be boring/bland – personally, I suspect we’ll be able to figure out ways to make it perfectly palatable while remaining healthy – but it’s an extremely common scifi trope that things like that are, with everyone preferring grown/raised food when they can get it.
Jay Eaton
Human printer food can be made pretty tasty, but it’s tasty in the way processed meat and chips and cereal are tasty. The eternal irony is that the less balanced of a diet it is, the tastier it is. Most people eat some amount of printer food because it’s cheap and filling (and it’s common in industrial food processing), but cheap yeast and algae products that have been processed more like traditional food products are more popular. “Real” meat products also have a level of prestige because of their rarity and expense, Gillie isn’t eating chabbit meat for dinner everyday so it’s much more special when it does get on the menu.
aaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAA
printer food: It’s Digestible!
IncompleteMachine
Printer Food: it wont kill you!
Amber
Printer food: enough to keep you alive and moving!
Furubatsu
Printer food: It beats starvation!
Peter Jensen
Printer food: Long term use no longer risks malnutrition!
JoB
Printer food: We can make it look any way you like!
https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2021/3/2/on-the-plus-side-its-never-too-soon-to-introduce-your-five-year-old-to-power-point-xtzj4
evileeyore
Printer Food: 75% more ethically sourced!
Vinemaple
A man can live on printer food from here to Judgement Day, if he’s got enough rosemary.
JoB
Printer food: Satiating *and* less harmful than explosive decompression!
(And you take *that* risk every spacefaring day, dontcha …)
Vinemaple
It’s cool to meet a new character this way! (although Ash might have been introduced alongside Rasheed somewhere)
I’m pretty sure Ash is shown wearing a mask because they work with tissue cultures as well as Talita’s invertebrates. Something about tissue cultures requiring a clean room.invertebrates. Something about tissue cultures requiring a clean room.
malmo
I bet allergies play a role too. I work with animals and it’s really common for animal caretakers to develop allergies to the species they work with if not controlled, and we know allergies to alien food are a thing in this universe.
Vinemaple
Good point!
Enai
Also toxins. Many of the most potent neurotoxins are proteins – who’s to say what aerosolized centaur bug food components will do to the human body with long term exposure?
Flour allergies are enough of a bitch to force talented professional bakers to change careers every day – now imagine the flour contains alien tetrodotoxin because it’s the centaur equivalent of a nice tangy flavor.
Phasma Felis
It’s actually kind of nice that Talita’s employer was cool with building and maintaining a whole separate agricultural setup for one single employee. Especially when she’s capable of surviving on food printer mush.
JoB
Three words: Centaur Food Riot.
0xabad1dea
I get the impression the company is very, very lucky to have found someone with a master’s degree in Space Science who’s willing to spend ten years on an especially socially isolated rock without even asking for rides out to visit their family and they know it.
evileeyore
It’s also a good experiment for Ixiom, they’re clearly interested in hiring more biological forklifts… errr… Centaurs to their work crews, so a small scale setup for one Centaur to see if it’s a) viable, b) reliable, and c) allows the current ag team to draft technical schematics and how to’s. Not only does it make keeping Talita on staff long term, but it prepares them for expansion, it’s a win-win for Ixiom.
Vinemaple
I kind of get the vibe that they’re legally required to, aside from Talita being worth it.
Also, I guess, Mel probably really does like Talita. They just don’t understand how to solve management-type problems… or listen.
Lilac
I wonder if talita and ash talk a lot/a decent amount because talita’s the sole person eating the thing they’re raising jghdfddsgs, or if it’s more just like a “the person i get groceries from” kinda deal
Eldermage1
I’m just imagining Food Printer Ads being like ‘Its Edible!’ ‘Most Reliable Food to Date!’ ‘It contains nutrients!’
Phasma Felis
We kind of do that IRL. Like, how often do you see sort of cheesy comestible that says “Made With REAL Cheese!” Like, that’s a pretty fucking low bar, innit?
Vinemaple
You’d think, but this distinguishes it from products made from vegetable oil, or… well, I’ve never really wanted to know.
JoB
Well *technically* the two aren’t mutually exclusive …
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“Made with Real™ cheese … it’s what we feed our employees at work … once every blue moon!”
JoB
“It’s just the RIGHT stuff to eat!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homochirality#In_biology
Amanda/OwlBear
Ash has elf ears!
I’d love to know more about bug ferret mycoculture
Vinemaple
And Dirtball seems a little more real, now that we know the name and ears of someone quietly keeping things running outside the narrative… thank you, Jay!
malmo
I bet it’s like leafcutter ants!