If you've already scoured the website and blog for lore, this is old news, but this book is written with the expectation that most readers will be completely unfamiliar with setting. Instead you will simply have to bask in the light of narrative context.
Transcript
Idrisah: It’s like bug ferrets, right? Big families with lots of adults all married into a coterie?
Panel background: A swarm of stick figure ferrets is labeled with "8-40" and combined male/female symbol.
Talita: Er… it’s… closer to bees. Or meerkats, I’ve read? Clans have a matriarch responsible for bearing young, their partners, And the majority are caretakers, who don’t participate in reproduction.
Panel background: A pyramid of centaur stick figures shows clan structure. On top is the "Matriarch," one female centaur with larvae on their back. below that are the "Entourage", a small group of mostly male centaurs married into the clan. Under them is a much larger group of "Workers" who are a mix of male and female, mostly consisting of the matriarch's children, but a few are married in.
Talita: I didn’t run into other centaurs very often, living on Nexus Jovia. But their first question was always about my clan, and it gets awkward fast when I say I’ve never been in one.
Inset panel: Talita is sitting in a public area in Nexus Jovia, looking up in alarm from her tablet as a pair of centaurs silhouetted in the foreground call out to her.
Talita: That is, when they speak English.
Idrisah: Have you ever tried picking up a centaur language?
11 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 158”
Teod
“A centaur language”, lol. It’s probably hard to even figure out which one would be the correct one to learn. There was a really unfortunate story IRL about adoptive parents teaching their foreign child a culture and language that later turned out to be completely wrong. I think it was a Chinese/Japanese/Korean mix up?
Although centaurs probably have their own “common” that might work like english for humans, but it’s not a sure thing.
Graham_Cheshire
Poor Talita. Hope she gets at least one Centaur friend in the future willingly to look past her oddities, she’s awesome.
Chrysalis
No matter how familiar I am with a setting’s lore, it’s always a treat to see it worked into the story. There’s always a little extra flavor depending on which character’s explaining it!
Hubert
if I was a centaur leader I would arrange a worker marriage for Talita. She has a good resume. IDK who the wokers are marrying though I guess marriage is not necessarily reproductive or monogamous in centaurs.
Curona
Has Talita ever considered claiming to be a Skychaser Clan of One or saying she’s part of the Despacio Clan or something along those lines? Doing so might simplify interactions with other homeworld centaurs Talita encounters in the future. It can’t be that unheard of for a female centaur to go independent from her birth clan in order to establish a clan of her own, right? So Talita being a lone centaur not currently surrounded by a clan would have precedent, at least to a homeworld centaur’s mind, and would probably ease some of the awkwardness.
HAL9000
iirc, talita looks permanently freaked tf out & aggressive to other centuars because her body language is so different, which already throws a major wrench in socialisation. but that is a good idea… matriach talita starting her own clan of misfits lmao
theplushfrog
I would assume from Talita’s social anxiety, she would be concerned about making a social faux pas by doing so, especially if she claimed to be the Matriarch of the clan she started, considering she doesn’t have any children (and seems not to want any), has no entourage, or any Centaur workers under her in this new clan.
If she pretended to be a worker of a fake clan, the other Centaurs might ask where the others of her clan are or their territory or something else, which would lead to more lies and fake stories, which would probably stress her out even more.
That said, from the website ( https://jayeaton.site/RunawayToTheStars/Sophonts/Centaurs/Culture#TheClanless ) and the fact Talita has very odd facial expressions to other Centaurs, they likely think she is mentally ill and pity her, or they think she’s a bandit and mistrust her. There’s really no winning here for her.
Lilac
I super like how the centaurs appear mammalian but act a lot like bugs in many ways i think it’s cool and awesome
Lilac
plus then Also have feathers a quality of Neither Mammals Nor Bugs. I Love Creature Design
furubatsu
AND their babies are more like bug larvae than like, baby mammals. Jay really went off in the speculative alien biology with the Centaurs
Light_In_The_Fog
frrr they have such skrunkle