Much to think about.
Transcript
Bip: Yes. A clan of 10.Talita stares off into space, thoughts racing through her head. Bip rolls their eyes and places a hand on their avatar's chin, tilting its head knowingly.
Bip: Would you like to ask me something?
Talita: Huh? No. Talk to you later, Bip.
Bip: Good night, Talita.
The tablet screen goes black again. Talita stares at it for a bit, feeling a complicated emotion, then drops her hand to her side. She stands alone in her apartment.
45 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 73”
feesh
i love bip for their humor but their genuinely earnest side is so… that first panel makes me a little emotional
Spinland
Pure, unattributable speculation here. The previous Runaway crew was comprised of a nomad clan, that being more amenable to piracy/smuggling hijinks out in The Black. Talita also came into being via such a clan, thinking as I am that no “landed” clan would be involved in something so messy as an abandoned offspring.
Quinkana
I’ve been assuming during this scene that Bip getting help from somewhere was a given, they’re a person and their body is severly injured after all, and what’s skeeving out Talita and co is Bip approaching her in her home and asking for help without contacting authorities instead of asking for the AI equivalent of an ambulance.
But now (somehow) that’s got me wondering what would happen if Bip was arrested. Would they impound the whole spaceship and just disable the specific parts required to prevent a dramatic prison escape into the atmosphere? Or is bodily autonomy just kind of tossed out when it comes to AI and they get put into specially designed servers when incarcerated?
hal9000
big thoughts big thoughts.
of course… bip is a cultural link to her people. talita… go get em girl.
big feelings.
by their joviality towards discussing their last crew, i do hope they survived. otherwise Bip you’re one stone cold motherfucker.
hal9000
on a slightly more meta level, i have to say Talita is remarkably relatable as someone who is also completely cut off from their birth culture. English isn’t my first language, but it is my only one. I can relate to feeling alien in both the culture you adopted and the culture in your blood, although perhaps not as literally as Talita lmao. This page, the previous page, and the page where she realised the Runaway was centaur but she couldn’t even recognise the language- struck an interesting chord that I thought I’d long suppressed. Masterful bit of storytelling so far
hessian
right!!! i really feel for her as an immigrant who cant even speak my family’s language. its so well done
Apollo235
As a second generation immigrant with quite strong ties and interest in my parent’s culture, I am extremely fascinated by Talita’s story. If I was orphaned at birth would I still be interested by Brazilian culture? Honestly I suspect I’d be more fascinated by it, but of course that just me,–
**TALITA CHARECTER SPOILERS**
–so the fact that in the extra material Talita seems disinterested in (even avoidant of?) Centaur culture just fascinates me more!
godspeed
More Spoilers below:
I think, part of the reason is -as once mentioned by Jay- is that Talitas Foster parent reached out to the centaur embassy/doctors, to get her adopted or at least help to find out how to raise her properly.
The centaurs weren’t interested at all and considered her worth the bother, without a proper family and standing.
Which is to a human and our cultural and moral ideas how to care for other people and especially children, sad and disturbing.
And to Talita, who was raised in the same values, it’s probably a very cold and uncaring way to act toward a small child.
Not judging centaurs here, it’s just a totally alien culture.
Paroxysmall
I think the transcript says “paces” instead of “places”?
Jay Eaton
Fixed.
Ossumsauce
I wonder how accurate Bip’s eyeline is, considering they have one camera on the tablet but still seem to direct their avatar’s eyes a lot. Is it weird to look an ai’s avatar in the eyes?
zaratustra
Presumably that’s what the avatar is there for.
Ruby
Much to think about indeed. This was a way more eventful day than intended.
dokki
TEN?! now you have me speculating on how many were in each caste, if they were that organized.
Ruby
Honestly? It doesn’t sound like that big of a group. A matriarch, one or two entourages and the rest workers.
Tyrone the Miner
I am mostly thinking what happened to them , considering the explosive decompression the impact must have caused. Unless there was a closed airlock between the hole and the living quarters.
Mr. Son
The first question that congeals into actual words for me is “were you counted as part of the clan, Bip?”
But I suppose that’s because of the connection from the last strip bringing up cross-species adoption.
Hunter
So now it’s not just wanting to get off of Dirtball and explore things, it’s that Bip is one of the only possible connections she can have to her people.
dokki
Ohhhh man now I feel stupid for not picking up on this part of Bip’s persuasion.
Tumorhead
what do you think Bip does in the phone while waiting to get hooked back up?
Trees
841 simultaneous games of snake.
Zidane
that makes me wonder, considering bip could download a language similar to how you would on a phone/computer, could they do something similar with games as well? Probably not considering the ai code is supposedly very spaghetti, i imagine compatibility with an ai’s “operating system” for lack of a better term, is a nightmare, but the idea of just being able to run idk like. resident evil on your brain is very funny.
dokki
new RTTS bumper ask: Bip can you run DOOM?
Counterpoint
Considering how much computing power you must get on a quantum phone (or even distributed across 841 of those), Bip can probably run pretty much every ‘normal’ computer operating system of their time inside a VM, or whatever their contemporary equivalent is. I just can’t see the type of game an AI capable of hacking into the systems of a base as easily as we’re breathing _wouldn’t_ consider, cue Homer Simpson, “BOOOO-RING!!!!!” 😁…
evileeyore
I’m sure there’s one or two databases or secured portions of the local net Bip hasn’t completely infiltrated.
bisexual
tentaurs.. (ten centaurs)
Green Heron
TEN!? I always envisioned Bip’s old crew as being three, maybe four Centaurs, mostly because the Runaway seems pretty cramped to me, like it’d be really challenging for more than a couple Centaurs to live comfortably in there. I hope we’ll learn more about Bip’s crew. I was waiting to see how they’d respond to the question.
Tyrone the Miner
To quote Bender, “well a lot of them were children”…
=)
Paroxysmall
Did Bip make their avatar vanish in the fourth panel?
Jay Eaton
Oh that’s incredible. I don’t know how that made it through both Patreon and my comics friends unnoticed. Guess I’ll go add another Bip to the file.
Jay Eaton
Ok, blooper fixed. If you hard refresh the page Bip appears.
Paroxysmall
Hooray, Bip is back!!!!
Rubicon Art
Weird question,. how does one hard refresh? I’ve tried evrything I can think of but I am Bipless*
*many bips present, just not that one.
Sparky Lurkdragon
Hard-refresh: CNTL + F5 on Windows.
Trees
Huh. That very much looks like a sort of ‘gather round and I shall tell ye a tale’ pose from Bip in panel 3, seemingly eager to respond to questions about his crew. That would strike me as an odd reaction if Bip were grieving their deaths so hopefully they survived.
Having said that I imaging AI are pretty good at hiding their emotions considering their ability to completely control how their avatar looks to fleshy mortals.
That being said: those who have read ahead please don’t tell me if I’m right or wrong. Let me live in hope!
Trees
Damn it!
“…eager to respond to questions about *THEIR* crew”.
I apologise for that. Right after the page all about using the correct gender language, too!
I blame my inability to stop imagining Bip sounding like Tim Curry from Muppets Treasure Island.
evileeyore
Damn*, now //I’m// hearing Bip using Tim Curry’s voice… and since Curry is such a magnificent bastard villain… now I can’t help but cast Bip in a slightly more sinister light.
As for grieving? I’m sure Bip is grieving in his own way.
* It’s a good ‘damn’ though so no apologies. Casting Tim Curry as Bip is not a slight to either of them in my opinion.
Apollo235
I’m still a pretty new fan, but it seems Jay has been quite tight lipped about Bip’s previous crew. I’m fairly certain that only Jay knows what happened.
But again, new fan, likely to be completely wrong
ImJustaTourist
“Now this is a story
all about how
my data got flipped
to 841 phones,
I’d like to take a minute,
just sit right there.
I’ll tell you how I became
the pirate prince
of a Centaur corsair.”
Apollo235
JAY DO CENTAURS HAVE AN INSTRUMENT THAT SOUNDS LIKE A TRUMPET OR SAX?
evileeyore
Sweeeeet!
Storel
“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful trip
that started from this Dirtball port
aboard this tiny ship.”
Apollo235
No followup thoughts or too many followup thoughts?
Arcstone
Latter I should think.
And being the engineer she is, it probably makes a lot of sense to make a propper itemized and orderly list first.
Amanda/OwlBear
yep that’s going to give you the thinky thoughts