Nowadays Gillie dyes her white hair orange, shaves her body hair, and plucks her whiskers. Kid Gillie was much more visibly off-model.
Transcript
Idrisah: With my mom’s side arguing in Arabic… my dad’s side arguing in Urdu…
Panel background: On one side, Idrisah's mom argues with several of her middle-aged and elderly family members. On the other, Idrisah's dad argues with his own family members.
Idrisah: And me… who isn’t fluent in either…
Panel background: Idrisah stands awkwardly in the background while the silhouettes of her family members argue with each other.
Talita: Your parents never taught you?
Idrisah: We mostly spoke English at home, when I was a kid… It’s always been easier for us to use translation apps for family gatherings.
Talita: What’s there to be anxious about, then?
Idrisah: Well… I’m a linguist! I learned sign language as a kid to befriend Gillie…
Inset panel: Kid Idrisah offers help in ASL to a crying kid Gillie, who has fallen off her bike and scraped her knee bloody. Idrisah has long wild black hair, a t-shirt, and cargo shorts. Gillie is has long fluffy white hair in a high ponytail, mystacial and supraorbital whiskers, and sparse white body hair on her arms and legs. She is wearing a quailicorn graphic tank top, short shorts, and flip flops. Her dropped purse is shaped like a cute penguin and her bike has a design with Saturn on the seat.
42 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 155”
Bartimaeus
I’m just gonna assume Gillie plucking her whiskers is some kinda nervous thing.
JoB
Not quite …
Typhin
She PLUCKS her WHISKERS? Oh holy hell, Stars Above and Below, and every epithet I can think of and most I can’t! The poor girl! Gah, my whole body is just in skin-crawl mode thinking of how painful that has to be! As a kid, as part of a depression response, I used to pluck body hair with tweezers. I’d completely plucked my right knee and part of my leg, and after enough time of plucking regrowth, the nerves were dead and I didn’t even feel them come out anymore. But it still hurt in the beginning, and plucking eyebrow hairs or other hairs still hurts. Whiskers are way thicker, and have sensory nerves attached to them that give VERY strong signals, so I can only imagine it must be excruciating to pluck those.
(Also, yinglet therian brain makes me wanna curl into a ball and scream at the thought of plucking an eyebrow whisker.)
JoB
(Shyam agrees. ;-3 )
Gar G
Omg, feels so interesting to see her like this!
urlocallesbiab
aww, kid gillie is such a darling! i really love her off-model kitty-cat design :3
Kyle
Centuries into the future and kids bikes are still running 1″ cup and cone steering. Hell yeah.
JoB
Never change a
runningrolling system. 😉Guest
I just noticed all the zucchinis in the background of panel 4. I love how there’s so many details crammed into each page.
TeethBurglar
Aw Gillie crying is so sad. The way jay really puts emotion into faces is masterful. Also the penguin bag with the candy is so cute
Vinemaple
Found the older meet-cute, it’s at https://jayeaton.site/Art/RttS/AMA/2 but beware: LOTS of spoilers for non-Patreon readers, the meet-cute question is about 4/5 of the way down and features lots of teen-Gillie art, if you want to skip past the other questions.
Charl
I would have loved Gillie’s bike at that age, is it purple with white wheels?
Learning the hard way flip-flops and pedals don’t mix
Zidane
baby idrisah and gillie are both so cute, oh my god
Michi
In a world where text threads exists, why are there 6 minute lag video calls? Good to know that humanity doesn’t grow out of technological encumbrances even in their interstellar age.
On a more important note, are Gillies whiskers functional?
zaratustra
Distance between the wormhole and whatever rock the respective parties are standing on divided by light speed.
7arty
The question isn’t “why is there lag?” but “why are people using tech with lag when better alternatives exist?”
notanocelot
No form of ftl communication exists in rtts, so regardless of what you send there’s gonna be lag. Since this lag is caused by distance and not information density you might as well send over as much information as you realistically can (i.e. audio and video as opposed to just plain text)
JoB
Using wormholes and enduring a couple minutes of lag from the in-system distances having to be covered at light speed is the best they can do.
Enai
You know, I’ve noticed that many especially younger people (I suddenly feel rather old) keep trying to video call me when there’s a perfectly usable voice call option, even though they know my reception and thus the video and audio quality will be the absolute pits. A simple voice call works much better, and text, of course, never suffers from horrid image quality and unintelligibile sound. But no…
.
So, I guess I’m saying: people are gonna peop. Now as well as in the distant future.
Michi
THIS.
Information wise I get more out of still images and text than audio/video, since I never going to catch everything all in one watch and end up endlessly rewinding a section over and over again. So the only benefit to A/V is realtime communication, which as established is not possible. A/V is just wasted bandwidth at that point.
JoB
It isn’t a video call, see Jay’s comment beneath page 153.
Vinemaple
GMH whiskers _can_ be functional, but as Gillie is off-model, who knows. There may be more info on the Gillie and GMH sections of Jay’s actual website, it’s different than the info here at the comic.
Enai
Well, it’s not like the hairs contain the nerve endings for sensing. The hairs are just dead keratin. The nerve endings connect to the hair’s root. So, unless Gillie has a nerve ending disorder, of course her whiskers are functional. So are everyone’s arm, head and everywhere-else-hairs.
Guest
Oh wow. It’s interesting to see Gillie as a kid. She looks way more blended between human and cat. I wonder if spironolactone works on cat-people.
Apollo235
*reads through transcript, looks at the seat on Gillie’s bike seat* SATURN!!
(referencing question 18 on https://jayeaton.site/Art/RttS/AMA/2)
Apollo235
*The pattern on Gillie’s bike seat
God I wish we could edit comments, I’m too used to doing it and i forget to proofread
Vinemaple
Quailicorns T-shirt confirmed, I wonder if Talita knows?
Chrysalis
It’s not a surprise that Gillie and Idrisah were also incredibly cute together as children, but oh my gosh. I have never so badly wanted to reach through the screen and comfort a fictional character.
Vinemaple
We’ve seen kid Gillie and kid Idrisah before, in a pre-Wordpress AMA, but this is SO much more of a meet-cute, I’m beginning to wonder if Idrisah had to slowly, painstakingly gain Gillie’s trust, the way people used to have to gain mine? Idrisah looks so cringily desperate, I want to give them BOTH a hug!
LupusAstartis
Well, she is a cat.
1d4Nadg
Kid Gillie and Idrisah !!!
Storm
Her lil tail all poofed up 😭
tyrone
Family guy “tripped and hurt knee” scene springs to mind
poor girl…hurts like mutherf…..well a lot
Ruby
Ah, family gatherings. Either a blessing or a living hell, but never not messy and exhausting.
Robin Bobcat
Ideally, both!
Lamprey
the normal human amount of body hair is already annoying enough to deal with; so what a *fun* experience shaving an entire humans worth of cat fur must be…
Gheesfellow
Social image be damned, I would never be able to keep up this kind of maintenance.
Enai
Maybe she uses space nair as shower gel? Or has some kind of futuristic auto-shaving contraption that you can program to shave exactly what you want shaved, and nothing else, while you take a relaxing bubble bath. I wonder if you can make it shave patterns into your fur.
Vinemaple
Yeah it threw me when I realized the spots on her arms and legs weren’t freckles, but follicles. I have this theory that they’re ALL whiskers on her arms and legs… potentially maddening sensory overload!
Jay Eaton
She has freckles, she got more after she started shaving.
JoB
> what a *fun* experience shaving an entire humans worth of cat fur must be…
·
… in unrelated news, there is a world record of 392 (only somewhat cooperating) sheep in one workday … >;->
notableanonymity
Oh little penguin bag, we’re really in it now