Talita, you monster! How could you!
Transcript
Idrisah: Well, they better figure it out. Gillie will need that for her half of the papers.
Loud construction noises rev up outside the apartment window. Talita looks up, alarmed.
SFX: RRRRRRRRRR
Idrisah: I really wish they'd wrap it up before 17:00.
Talita rubs her eyes under her glasses and grimaces in embarrassment.
Talita: Ugh, sorry…
Idrisah: Sorry? For what?
Talita: Have you noticed that Mel has been weirdly secretive about this project?
Idrisah: You don't think…
Talita: They're remodeling it to fit me.
Idrisah grins and nudges Talita with an elbow.
Idrisah: That's so exciting! We'll be neighbors!
Talita stares of into the distance, looking irritated.
Talita: I guess…
Idrisah: You... don't want to be neighbors??
Talita glances back to Idrisah and is shocked when she looks as if she might burst into tears.
62 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 152”
Guest
I just realized that Bip is 80 yrs old and the centaur aliens were contacted 80 yrs ago. Bip had a crew of centaurs living inside of their body. I wonder if Bip split off from their “parent” because a part of them wanted to work with centaurs and a part of them didn’t, like with Calcery and working on Ixion.
Also, I feel that Mel’s meddling with Talita’s life will be the thing that convinces her to leave Dirtball. The Runaway is already outfitted for centaurs. Maybe she could hop on?
JoB
> I wonder if Bip split off from their “parent” because
> a part of them wanted to work with centaurs
·
… I’m not sure that that works out timeline-wise. It would need that centaurs were not only discovered but also illegally contacted, lured into space for cheap muscle, got fed up with that, resolved to take up piracy, and nabbed and got settled in the Runaway (originally a ship of human make) before Bip could choose to join them and move into the ship themself. It would also suggest that a) we’re missing one dead AI (as the servers to house one have breakers still labeled in human script) and b) Nabi-Nabu was aware of Bip-to-be vying for a criminal life, which they disapprove of (at least now), from square one.
Guest
I don’t get where you got illegally contacted and hired for cheap muscle from. Is that from supplementary material?
Trees
Ok. Just making sure I’m picking up what the comic is putting down.
From the information revealed to us so far, the gist of Mel’s plan is to refurbish that building to house centaurs and then hire some centaur temps so that Talita will be less lonely. Something along those lines, right? And this page confirms that Mel hasn’t consulted Talita at all because she assumes that the building is being altered ‘to fit me’ not ‘to fit a bunch of centaurs’.
I’m beginning to see why most commenters consider this a terrible idea.
Especially if Mel is trying to will into being a sort of ex-tempore centaur clan where Talita is expected to be the leader. Yuck!
From everything we’ve seen of Talita’s personality I think that would make her moult from stress.
.
Clacery thinks that Mel doesn’t listen. Really it seems that Mel doesn’t communicate in either direction. Bad boss, bad!
Enai
I also interpret it that way. Why renovate an entire apartment block for just one Centaur? That seems overkill. I’m curious: I can see Mel expecting Talita to be the boss of the possible Centaur employees, because she’s highly educated and experienced at what Ixion does. But that wouldn’t make her the leader in the sense of The Matriarch of Dirtball Clan. Can you elaborate what you meant?
.
Another reason just hiring a lot of Centaurs is a bad idea: Talita is culturally human and catholic, I think. I mean, I’d be surprised if her foster parent had actually had her baptised, but her name is (Brazilian?) Portuguese, she uses “Jesus Christ!” as exclamation and has even changed her body language and facial expressions to appear more human. So, if the commentariat is right and Mel wants to hire Centaurs to keep Talita company, that looks like an almost perfect recipe for disaster to me. Even the old standby of “Just smile and nod a lot, to show your good will to the people with whom you can’t actually talk” won’t work if your body language is so different. Her eyes alone are probably extremely offputting to Centaurs, to say nothing about her habit of showing teeth at any opportunity…
JoB
> Why renovate an entire apartment block for
> just one Centaur? That seems overkill.
·
One entire block (of eleven in the habitat, originally housing for 140+ avians each) certainly is. Only the one “cube” of the block adjacent to the street (lowest roof of the three) could be reasonable-ish, at least live-weight-wise (though I don’t have a figure at hand what 46+ average avians do weigh). I’d still ballpark it as having 20 times the habitable surface of Talitas current “dry storage” + fenced-off yard, but we’ve seen how cramped her place looks, compared to the Touati-Sharpes’ apartment …
Trees
‘Can you elaborate what you meant?’
So, I haven’t read ahead but I know that centaur culture is largely matriarchal. Mel wants to help Talita by giving her other centaurs to hang out with socially (which might not work out because of the cultural differences you pointed out that I didn’t think of).
But the key issue that jumped out to me is that these centaurs will be Ixion employees and Talita will be their boss (or at least their superior even if they aren’t in her department).
There is already an uncomfortable power dynamic in play from the get go (even among humans there would be). “Matriarch of Dirtball Clan” sound way too formal for what I’m imagining* but would there be an expectation from these new centaurs that Talita would take the lead socially as well? She’d hate that, I’m almost certain.
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*Though it does sound really cool.
Enai
Oh yeah, Talita would hate being in a “social leader” position. She can barely cope with being the temps’ boss. And being both the work boss and in a social position of power/seniority over somebody is somewhat fraught even without the cultural chasm between Talita and other Centaurs adding to the pile of problems.
Poor Talita. This is going to be a disaster.
Gheesfellow
introvert brain ringing the miscommunication alert
Duke1337-O
But seriously, Jay, damn if you didn’t just hit a huge nail of the disabled experience on the head right here. Major props.
Duke1337-O
Oh Talita, I feel for you. It’s always so great when people pour a ton of effort into being Helpy™ without actually asking how they can be helpFUL, huh?
Gar G
Oops
Also as someone with autism I can’t imagine how unbearable that noise must be for Talita 😅
Since I think she’d be a lot more sensitive to the vibrations than humans are
Hydrurgus
For some reason i’m expecting that this housing project will not be for Centaur tenants, and that Talita will be disappointed/relieved that it wasn’t so
JoB
They’re converting it to have fewer but higher floors than the human-appropriate ones it had before, and those avians who like to fly have the entire headroom of the habitat to do so … buuuut there is one hilarious possibility …
·
“Wait, what was that? You had the building remodeled to make housing for whom???”
“Your current co-workers, Talita. You’re not turning speciecist all of a sudden, I hope … ?”
“‘Speciecist’? The front loaders aren’t a species, much less sophonts, Mel!”
“You sure? They seem to have started behaving in a pretty independent and thoughtful way lately, if trying to avoid communication with us as they do …”
evileeyore
And when the multi-purpose tractors unionize, you better listen.
hessian
idrisah looks so jolly in that panel love that for her
evileeyore
Panel three Idrisah becoming muppet is my fav from this page.
When you can just swap your regular characters designs out for muppet versions and your audience loves it, you know you’ve got a winning style.
Phasma Felis
Jay has been dropping some A+ Idrisah faces the last couple pages.
Trees
Bug Ferrets: Let us make an interplanetary federation spanning many lightyears. A network of artificially created wormholes shall be the thread that weaves civilisation.
.
Humans: Let us make a jug that looks like a fish and stuff plants in it’s mouth. Lay it among the condiments, verily.
Enai
You talk like bug ferrets wouldn’t be all over tacky monstrosities, the tackier the better. Bonus points if it also makes noise or moves, if their tv shows are any indication. No, I think bug ferrets would love the fish jug vase
apprenticeNerd
That’s a lot of housing blocks for one centaur… Talita, are you sure it’ll just be you in there??
Greebus
She’ll have a resplendent mansion! 😀
Trees
Complete with extra long chaise longue.
JoB
It’s still unclear whether they’re remodeling the entire building (all the way from the ring road to the edge of the habitat, originally fit for at least 140 avians) or just the cube-shaped third adjacent to the road (46-ish) …
·
However, I thought of something else: If Idrisah has main responsibility for the launch loop schedule, and it was entirely full for the next two years originally, shouldn’t she know about an impending arrival of a couple metric tons of new workers … ?
Ossumsauce
It might be filed as a regular temp rotation instead of anything specific?
JoB
That’s why I alluded to the total weight (that, according to this page, needs to be factored into the launch loop operation). The five current temps combined weight about half as much as a single centaur …
0xabad1dea
it seems it won’t let you nest comments infinitely deep so to be clear this is re: centaurs weighing more than humans and that being visible on the shipping schedule
Surely when a batch of temps arrives, they also arrive not only with their own possessions but also with other random shipments such as food and materials they can’t source on-planet and whatever random special things have been ordered since the last delivery. In a habitat-class spaceship. The difference between ten humans and ten centaurs is even more of a rounding error than Talita’s ten tons of fuel.
evileeyore
Sure, but that’ll be offset by reducing other cargo on that drop. Unless Idrisah also has the cargo manifests, which she probably doesn’t. Otherwise she’d know about the possibility of an impending Centaur clan.
So it’s more likely Idrisah just has shipment tonnage blocks. So unless in the nearish future she asks if they can split up the “Temps and gear, 6 tonnes” into “just the temps and gear separately” and finds out that dropping the gear on it’s own will only shave maybe a ton…
JoB
> it seems it won’t let you nest comments infinitely deep
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(Yes, at some point, dialogue needs to move laterally and up again in the tree. Or even onto a new page, thanks to there being one so frequently. It’s one of the reasons why I often quote snippets of what I’m replying to.)
·
> Surely when a batch of temps arrives, they also arrive
> not only with […]. In a habitat-class spaceship.
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Actually we’ve been told that passengers switch from whatever interstellar ships into a resident fleet of ferries at the orbital station. And passengers are a lot more perishable than shipwrecks and scrap metal, so having a figure for the gross weight to move them singled out in case you’ll have to reschedule makes sense. Sure, Idrisah’s unlikely to get trialed for negligence if she doesn’t, but.
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Also note that Talita got the Runaway’s dry tonnage from an actual measurement planetside. Determining the mass of something in zero-g is nontrivial, so for any space-to-planet trips, you’d want to bring a lot of detailed data from where it was easy to collect (back in whatever celestial body’s gravity, ideally).
·
> The difference between ten humans and ten centaurs is
> even more of a rounding error than Talita’s ten tons of fuel.
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True. Now assume the same factor of ten applied to their belongings, the life-support they need, whatever extra food they brought in case that their transfer takes longer than the standard two weeks (which nobody would want to see go to waste by simply getting chucked out an airlock), … . And then there’s the possibility that Dirtball found it difficult to upsize the artificial centaur ecosphere they had tenfold on short order and this particular batch of new employees is required to bring stuff for that along as well.
Jay Eaton
The WordPress blog comments format is not intended for long form forum debates. Despite the best attempts of the comment section.
Greenjoe
Talita realizes she fucked up.
Tentament
Hold own face like hamburger
BoolahBoosh
YEESS
Claire
If I could vote to pin a comment… I’d vote for this one.
Adrienne
Give us a hundred pages or so, you’re gonna be closer than neighbors
Lilac
Chronic “Please-Don’t-Make-A-Big-Deal-About-Me”-er (talita) interacting with her surrounding Big Deal Makers
(Actually this comment might make no sense jfjfjfhs I’m sorry )
Lilac
Also the fact that talita has like already guessed what’s happening sucks noooo cause Mel’s gonna be like “Suprise!!! :D” when it’s finished and talita who didn’t want it in the first place will be like “..thaaaanks……..” . Like receiving a birthday gift you greatly dislike and trying to be polite about it . Aaagh that’s so terrible talita I feel your pain
Bunn
Makes complete sense, no worries. I was actually thinking the same thing, lol
Zuorai
If anything Talita apologizing on behalf of Mel’s project makes me sad for her. Implies her complex experiences with centaur accommodations and Mel’s responses
Vinemaple
Makes me want to do… something, I dont’ know what, to Mel. People who never listen, never really think about others, and believe that they’re doing both, are a very special pet peeve of mine. Especially if they never learn from their mistakes, because, what mistakes? You could even call it a trigger. I am SO DONE with IRL people like Mel, or at least the attitude and behavior I’m projecting onto Mel.
Intriguing to find out that Talita knew all along, although this AMA https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-reader-questions-8/ means that it probably was even easier for her to figure out than it was for us!
evileeyore
I have a felling that Mel treated Talita a lot more kindly and decently than her one completely mishandled action (that we’ve heard about) makes it seem (Cal’s attitude not withstanding, but we don’t know what went down there, Mel might be a subtle unconscious AI racist or something completely else happened, we don’t know).
I also kinda feel that Mel might be “helicopter Aunty” to Talita, swooping in to ‘save her’ when Talita doesn’t need saving. Mel’s own kids long moved away and I was left with the impression that there was considerable emotional (if not now physical) distancing there. So Mel might just be an overreacting Helicopter Parent to her core and I’m just trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Green Heron
All good points. However, Mel uses they / them!
AnormalADN
Talita can hear infrasounds right? no wonder close construction work would make it harder for her to keep up a conversation
Light_In_The_Fog
Do we know how low she can hear?
Yay
AWWW TALITA… shes so cute. and relatable.
Enai
Talita may be a genius with thingamabobs and electr(on)ic whatsits, but she does have social … challenges, doesn’t she?
Enai
Also, aww, Idrisah, don’t cry! She doesn’t mean it like that!
Just… it occurs to me that a 750 kg hexapod at full speed would have to have her running mill (at more than 100 km/h it’s not “treading” any more. It’s full on barrelling with intent, it is) either on specially reinforced floors or straight up outside/right on top of regolith or better yet bedrock. She’d still have to exercise outside. And here, she’d have an audience that may (Adam) or may not (Idrisah, Gillie, probably Yao) be hostile. Talita is shy and anxious. Not an ideal situation :-/
Kasekine
I can understand Talita here. Even in a place that doesn’t quite fit, once one is settled in for long enough, changing where one lives is always hard. Besides that, moving always sucks.
Mothman
And being neighbors with Gillie and Idrisah *also* means she’ll be neighbors with the temps, who haven’t been the nicest to her.
Feather
Yeah, Talita’s place might not be ideal, but it’s hers and she looks very settled in it. And that’s not even mentioning how unpleasant a surprise house move where all the descisions have been made for you sounds.
Enai
No neighbors means no neighbor disputes. Nobody to complain if you’re having a little party in your backyard. Besides, Talita has very sensitive hearing – not having neighbors means she doesn’t have to hear her neighbor’s parties and/or conversations, either.
Ossumsauce
I was going to say the only people Talita could have a party with are her neighbours, but now I’m imagining one of Bip’s frontloaders in her yard with a party hat
evileeyore
Bip chillin out as twenty electrician worms on tiny little lawn chairs and one tractor working the grill…
JoB
> Bip chillin out as twenty electrician worms on tiny little
> lawn chairs and one tractor working the grill…
·
… while the rest of the tractors have grabbed pointy pieces of scrap metal themselves and are holding their equivalent of marshmallows up to the Runaway’s maneuvering thrusters’ nozzles running on “dead slow” (so as not to overtax the non-diegetic giant moth flitter-dancing in the fuel tank) …
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[non-diegetic giant spider strumming her net to provide some live music]
Apollo235
The timing of these we pages, between Calcery no longer contacting Talita after his move, and Talita herself being worried about her move, is really cosmically funny for me.
I just moved from central Texas to Chicago-land. Leaving Texas is good for me, an autistic agender second generation immigrant with bad allergies and bad heat-tolerance, but it still sucks. After moving around a bunch for the first 9 years of my life, then staying settled for the following 12, I’ve had to move again. I’m worried I’ll lose contact with my friends, or that it will be hard to get used to this new area.
It’s just really cool how this comic I got into at the end of last summer, when the move first started being thought about, ended up getting into the subject of moving right as I myself moved.
Sorry if i overshared, I just really thought this was neat and funny, and hope a few of y’all might find it funny too.
Apollo235
*these few pages
Eux
best of luck with settling in! i hope you’re able to enjoy lake michigan a little 🙂
Mobi-gg
Aw noooo 🙁 don’t make her sad Talita
Rubicon Art
OBSESSED with the toony faces on this, I love it. And all the angles of their home! I just want to gnaw on this comic it’s so good.
sugar-goat
We’ve gotten Talita muppet faces, only fair and just we also get idrisah muppet faces
Zuorai
Idrisah in the 3rd panel?? Jzxdfgvxdfgth
Matt
Tal!! You apologise right now— (Lmao we’ve all been there)