Talita's bachelorette pad. It's a converted storage shed, because she is too tall for the human apartments.
Transcript
Talita walks past Gillie and the ferret line, rubbing the back of her neck in embarrassment about the interaction. She approaches one of the small, half cylinder shaped dry storage units and punches a code into the door number pad. The door noisily rattles as it rolls up to open.Inside is Talita's messy apartment. Most of the furniture looks vaguely cobbled together and homemade, or adjusted from human furnishings that were slightly too small. Windspinners hang next to air circulation units, shop lights hang from the ceiling, and a model space ship hangs from one of the shop lights. To the left is an enormous couch and TV surrounded by used dishes and pitchers, a fridge covered in weirdly shaped magnets extracted from electronics, a sink, and a range. To the right there is an overflowing electronics workbench with a twin-sized mattress on the floor as a crude chair, standing tool chest, and drafting desk covered different types of 3D printers.
50 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 30”
Redacted
“Welcome to my gamer pad! Not many girls come here because I get friendzoned so frequently!”
cat
I feel like I understand exactly how it smells in there
Honeysprings
Coming back to this page, I gotta say the establishing shot for the inside of her house with all the clutter and knickknacks inside kind of reminds me of wall-e’s house haha
SIGSTKFLT
Cursed keypad layout. Also why isn’t it an avian layout?
zofifi
My girl lives in a garage.
robbie
ah, furnishing details! i love how they convey talita’s interests/occupation/hobbies! notably:
– wind spinnies 😀
– plush otter and unicorn
– various tools and wip engineering projects
– centaur shoes and socks
– nutritional supplements or protein powder?
Ruby
I had a bit of an “Oh” moment when I saw that’s her place, but it’s actually not that bad. I personally find it cozy. Of course there’s a bunch of iffy details but Talita is making the most of it.
Comito
I love the idea of hanging wind chimes and such next to vents, since there’s no natural wind. That’s very clever!
Miggs
The trash can right next to the bedcouch is unfortunately too real
evileeyore
I’m torn between feeling sad for Talita due to her having to live in a storage utility… but ont he other hand they have made it into a homey little place and maybe they feel more comfortable this way? It’s a domed ‘city’ so climate controller and pests wouldn’t be an issue, just the space and perhaps lack of privacy. It’s a space I’d be comfortable in personally.
Septemberdale
At least in humans, desire for privacy when not naked is maladaptive and appears only as either an unhealthy trained behavior endemic to certain cultures in the developed world or a symptom of any of several mental abnormalities or disorders. I am not sure whether this also holds true for centaurs, but if it does, and Talita is not so afflicted, then I’m sure she’s fine.
Joey
How are you defining “privacy” here? Because the claim that “wanting to be alone sometimes” or “not wanting to be watched at all hours” is actually bad and pathological seems pretty bold, but I can’t figure out if that’s what you’re claiming or if you’re just using a different definition than I would. (Not trying to start an argument or change your mind, it’s just an interesting opinion and I want to know more)
Bright
To add to your comment, even extremely social animals want to be alone sometimes when in the wild and exhibiting their natural behaviors. Desire for privacy is maladaptive only if it interferes with someone’s ability to fuction (e.g. extreme paranoia or agoraphobia).
Wanting privacy in human society is pretty normal. For example, you don’t want to be in a shared social space while talking on the phone with your physician about a medical condition and you don’t necessarily want someone in your studio space while you’re trying to work with no distractions. Some people have limited social batteries. Some people just naturally like spending time alone.
If you want to assign a biological function to privacy, it’s a means for an organism to handle the stress that comes with social/group structures. It lets them de-stress without resorting to aggression or making members of the group responsible for defusing stressful situations.
Septemberdale
Because humans are highly visual animals, desire for privacy can be defined for humans as not wanting to not be within the sight of another being. When not naked or otherwise excessively vulnerable, this is extremely maladaptive and leads invariably either to paranoia or to possessiveness and thus greed.
40
This just isn’t true??
evileeyore
Well… that’s certainly a theory. And as a privacy enjoyer who has study the psychology of controlling groups, I gotta say it sounds //perfectly// set to fit into Orwellian control tactics.
Bright
I wonder how much of the pushback against privacy has to do with the erosion/overton window shift in digital privacy being pushed by companies like Facebook and Google because someone who goes by pseudonyms online can’t be tracked.
Privacy does things like protect minority groups (e.g. LGBT+ people) from potentially deadly retaliation. Privacy protects whistleblowers and journalistic sources from retaliation. Privacy is essential to the reproductive rights of people with uteruses. Privacy protects victims from abusers. (Gets off soapbox)
Septemberdale
I suppose in situations of particularly intense vulnerability privacy is sensible, but if someone who isn’t being actively persecuted is seeking a little alone time, that is suspicious, like, what are they plotting that other people shouldn’t see. And the circumstances would have to be pretty severe to warrant wanting to be out of another person’s sight, like, I’m an immigrant woman and in my new home a religious minority, but because I live in a statistically safe country in Europe with a culture of mostly leaving people alone if they aren’t causing trouble, if I were to want to in any given moment when I am not attending to personal hygiene not be seen by my partner or heard by my neighbors, I would still not feel that there is anything discriminatory for them to be suspicious what I was doing, because it is natural to be suspicious of those who are hiding something when not immediately vulnerable.
Joey
I can’t respond to your second comment, so I’m replying to your original: if you really believe that privacy is maladaptive, why include the nudity exception? Clothedness isn’t our natural state, after all, and nudity taboos are nowhere near universal. What makes you so sure that wanting to be alone while naked is normal?
Septemberdale
That is… actually a great question. Perhaps desire for privacy while naked is also maladaptive but more widespread. I was assuming that cultural expectation of desire for privacy while not naked is maladaptive because it only seems to exist in some subsets of the culture of the United States and seemingly nowhere else in the world, and things that appear so rarely and only in the presence of vast wealth are typically not beneficial.
Jay Eaton
Very curious how you’re defining privacy. I know there’s a lot of Anglo-Americans with a cultural touch aversion, which can cause feelings of isolation, but that’s not the same thing as privacy. The social function of privacy is like sleep, it’s downtime where you can rest and recalibrate without spending energy thinking about how others are perceiving you and keeping up with complex interpersonal social rules. Different people need different amounts, and being denied social downtime can run you ragged the same way not sleeping will. Nudity has little to do with the topic, other than clothes being part of social rules in many societies.
SpaceDragon
Except that it isn’t necessarily entirely maladaptive. As in my experience (and that of a few other people I know), privacy is something that I seek out when I feel mentally spent. And I know that the amount of this that people desire varies from person to person, with the classic split between introverts and extroverts being a common shorthand for this. Not every person is built to be in constant contact with other human beings at all times.
But also, there is the type of privacy wherein not everyone needs to know every single aspect of any other given person, up to and including access to their personal belongings. So (again, in my experience) a healthy sense of privacy is expected in many cases.
Skip
I am extremely curious how you came up with this theory. How do you square it with things like the history of hermits? What are the mental abnormalities and disorders?
bea p
do you have a source for this take on the nature of privacy, maybe some sociology/social psych articles? my gut reaction is that it’s bogus but if the concept has been studied i’d love to learn more
Trees
Huge TV, tool box, fridge magnets, four toed socks
Tablet, pens, jeweller’s lens, miles of tape, can’t find the ends
Protein pills for bulking up, unwashed spoons and bowls and cups
Human switches set too low, hand tools hanging in a row.
.
Glue gun, radios, hard drive with your favourite shows
Saddle bag, wind chimes, stuffed animals from younger times
Screw drivers, dirty floor, risk of fire there by the door
Quantum phones, nowhere to store, I can’t take it anymore!
.
She didn’t dare aspire
But she’s always yearning since Dirtballs been turning
She didn’t dare aspire
No, she doesn’t like it but she tries to hide it
evileeyore
/chef’skiss.gif
Peter Jensen
Oh well played! Now just waiting for someone to publish a performance of it …
ploapgusset
Awwwe, I love seeing Talita’s anxious body language and physical tics that show when she’s nervous. The art a excellent re: body language and I can highly relate to her just from that even though we’re barely into the first chapter.
cola
would it be okay if i colored this page for fun? wouldnt post it anywhere
Jay Eaton
You can color it and post it wherever you like as long as you say where you got it from.
Fallingfeather
omg the MEGACOUCH
I think my favorite of the small details though is the pen next to her drawing tablet (regular paper and pad? idk) that has a puffy grip on it for her larger hands. 🙂
(Also, transcript typo- it says the door rattles “nosily” when I’m p sure it should be “noisily”. Unless the door is just getting all up in her business. :p )
Liza
I find the transcript on pages like this, which are very visually dense, very interesting because it shows what details are the most important or significant. I never would have noticed the fridge magnets without the transcript.
Jay Eaton
I cheated a little. This description features a couple things that aren’t visible in this specific panel but will be in future panels, where it would be weird to bring them up because they’re not establishing shots.
Guest
Nooooo Talita don’t keep the flammable liquids near your clothes…
Mr. Son
Oh so many details to pick through. And spinny things for Talita to watch when she’s bored.
Robin
Ohh her stuffed animals are so cute
Peter Jensen
So many neat little details that make this setting look lived in and real. Like the access panel having been raised (and I’m guessing resized) to accommodate centaur dimensions, but also still with obvious marks from where it was. The magnets look suspiciously like the neodymium voice coil magnets you’d find inside “old” style hard disk drives, though presumably they’re from something else entirely here. They would also be a tad difficult to use as fridge magnets (speaking from experience).
Jay Eaton
I have some of those as fridge magnets; they’ll certainly pinch your fingers if you aren’t careful, lol. I stole them from my dad’s salvage collection. Maybe it’s a bit anachronistic to have them here, but I feel like they are a fun clue about Talita’s hobbies and interests. We can pretend they are from strange futuristic applications of oddly shaped neodymium magnets.
GreekCeltic
Seeing a character’s personal space is so fun. I love seeing what they occupy their mind with.
Guest
Talita exuding strong loser girl energy. I feel bad for her though. She has to carve herself a space to live in a place not built for people like her.
Mr. Skeleton
Oh jeez Talita. You gotta get outta there and find something better!
zaratustra
the transcript uses “to the left” twice. While technically correct, one of those is our left and one is Talita’s left.
Jay Eaton
Fixed.
Ambrose
talita’s place is very r/malelivingspaces, but it’s understandable given no one expected a centaur to live there when it was built
TotallySomebody
There’s a mattress in there! I wonder though, can she even fit on it? Or is it for a smaller guest?
TotallySomebody
Oh wait I just realized- it’s a place for her to sit where she can work on electronics and doodads-
Jay Eaton
To Talita a mattress is basically a chair. Can comfortably sit on her haunches, or lower-body loaf.
Heather
Ooh, are the hanging things from the ceiling the wind spinners that were mentioned in one of the character AMAs? What a cool detail!
Amanda/OwlBear
home sweet home
ooh, cute plushies on the top shelf!!
looks like a winged horse (maybe unicorn) and some sort of ottery beast
Ruby
An otterwordly creature