It's too late for them, Talita. Run.
Transcript
Quackles asked: Talita, do you know the Whop? The viral dance? Have you ever done it?
Talita: I’ve looked at Megaforum in the last 5 years. Of course I know about it. But I’m not like, a human tween influencer, so NO, I haven’t Whopped. I have the wrong number of limbs, anyways...
Idrisah: I’ve seen taur versions! You could totally learn it!
Talita: ...I really think I’m good—
Gillie: (ASL) Yeah c’mon, Whop with us!
Talita: Wh—
Gillie and Idrisah threateningly Whop closer to Talita.
Talita: Ack! No! Stop!!
76 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 14”
Jordan Aster
You can’t stop the whop!
ParadoxicalFrog
So they’re known to do the Whop, but what about the Flintstone Flop?
Hunter
*asdfmovie voice*
EVERYBODY DO THE WHOP! *SLAP*
GG Crono
But can they do the Wenis?
fen
everybody do the wenis! the wenis is a dance! everybody is a genius! who knows it in advance!
Flori
Oh! Oh Kevin…. Ohhhh yikes…..
fishfacedterror
this is making me think of what popular “meme” dances were about in the 1600s and 1700s, since thats what its probably like for anybody in this setting to know what is and how to do the Wenis
JoB
Considering that few people back then were as privileged as to be able to *spread* a meme to other places … :
https://cmbv.fr/en/introducing-baroque/ballet-de-cour
Cobbington
*aggressively whops at you*
JoB
ALERT! ALL LIMBS BATTLE STATIONS! FRENEMY WHOPPROACH DETECTED!
Paroxysmall
I love how Talita’s smiling like she wants to hate it, but the mixed reaction of cringing, amusement and maybe wanting to join leaves her in that pose. or maybe she’s just smiling in utter shock
Athelind Llewellyn Long
Or maybe baring her teeth like a predator in stress mode?
Paroxysmall
yes but her mouth is curving upwards in a smile, yet her trunk says aggression…
bird
Lip corners drawn back/up in a “smile” is pretty much only a human thing. In most other animals (including our close relatives), it’s a “warning” signifying stress and aggression.
NeedsMoreBirds
It reads more like a tired grimace to me.
JoB
… now I wonder: Would the ASL for “the Whop” be a signature Whop move (so that anyone doing the dance would essentially be shouting “The Whop! The Whop!” in ASL over and over), or something entirely different, for sake of clarity?
JoB
Gillie, you may be able to talk while *chewing*
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-page-136/
but *not* while *Whoping*. :-3
·
(And now that it’s been called a “viral” dance, I can’t stop imagining the Whop being a sci-fi microbial threat set to wipe out mankind, zombie fungi style … X-S )
number1whopper_69
all of the internet tech in this has such an… early 2000’s/late 90’s IT desk job workspace banality to it, and tbh i kinda like that. it’s all very practical and square with a healthy dose of extrapolated modern meme culture trends that still somehow manage to maintain a vague air of early net style despite being-i assume-based on more recent entries in the memesphere. it’s like two very different eras of the internet combined in a way that feels oddly appropriate.
Feather
I think in this universe the fusion reactor was invented in the year 2000, and space expansion followed fairly rapidly, which probably lead to a very different development of the social internet. So it feeling like an extension of the early 2000s seems appropriate! I really like how the author’s thought about the constraints of interstellar communication (even with FTL wormholes) affecting technology.
Vinemaple
Agreed, I love how Jay never tries too hard, always keeps it chill with this kind of thing
veltzeh
Talita’s horrified face is priceless!
creetur
Can imagine the high pitched shrill this poor woman made after being bombarded by dancing, you have my sympathies Talita
oodl
Play with us in the space, yow!
Rukki024
Well now we need to see what taur body plan whopping would look like. (I agree with another commenter that it propably would just involve upper and mid limbs, unless there was a special extra step for back limbs as well)
JoB
[puts hearing protection on self, and “We Will Rock You” on the turntable]
Greenjoe
I guess a taur Whop would just be doing the slap on the mid limbs? Though with the body plan of some GMH taurs that might not be possible without having to lean forwards a lot?
gnfs
so what’s the word for “cringe” in the future anyway?
Sparky
Really loving the implication that Idrisah and Gillie learned the Whop together. Truly, this is romance…. do you think they ever whopped each other in the face though
creetur
Oh, most definitely, but that’s part of the romance too
Martin
That last Talita… I love it when she gets cartoony
Fallingfeather
CAN’T STOP THE WHOP
Vinemaple
I can’t decide whether it would be more awesome if the Whop was made up by Quackles just for this AMA, or if it’s from some RttS deeplore on Patreon or a remote corner of Jay’s website or blog.
Marcie
It’s on the Cultures tab on the worldbuilding website with a guide on how to do it
wingedhorror
https://jayeaton.site/RunawayToTheStars/Sophonts/Humans/Culture#TheWhop
Vinemaple
I thought it would be awesome, now I regret asking lol
Mobi-gg
I still love the name Megaforum for a social media site
Vinemaple
What I came here to say. Jay’s future Space Internet is deeply satisfying in its banal, boring, not-much-has-really-changed mundanity. It’s so, so, SO easy to try too hard when coming up with fictional media.
Mobi-gg
what would you classify as trying too hard when coming up with fictional media? (I’m actually curious, cus for a second I thought you meant fictional media in general like sci-fi and fantasy stories, but then i realized you meant fictional media that exists within a fictional world)
AnaKaye
(My Vinge comment is not to say he was trying to hard… I was simply giving another example of extrapolating the concept of social media to a scifi future.)
Vinemaple
@Mobi-gg: Ugh, I guess I could claim that most fictional video games in novels and films tend not to hit like a real video game… The best that I’ve seen are “WTF?! Human Farm” from the computer game GNOSIA (which is ironically a parody of this tendency) and some of the games mentioned offhand in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.
Or I could direct you to most fake commercials from any fictional media, they tend not to seem anything like real commercials.
I guess none of this is *entirely* fair, as a fictional product usually has to be a cleared brand (https://youtu.be/uShxeyGQrEQ?si=XhuenaoSPowuqIqT), and real-life marketing tends to have most of the best branding copyrighted and in use for real products, severely limiting the field for fictional branding.
My apologies for not being able to give a better explanation, I admit this isn’t very clear or specific.
AnaKaye
Kind of like the way Vernor Vinge did it in A Fire Upon The Deep. Usenet was popular at the time of writing, and Vinge carried that same idea forward into his universe, making it a galaxy-spanning thing.
IncompleteMachine
I need to read vinge – i know hed appeal to my love of transhumanism – but i to your point about extrapolating: i think its worth remembering that the thing that likely wont change much is human behaviour specifically. vikings where shitposting on the walls of the Hagia Sophia and inside caves long before the internet was a thing, and frankly a ‘viral dance craze’ is just a popular dance. even if in the future we end up with psychically linked mindstates woven through the cosmic noosphere via psionic space magic, we’ll still be sending each other memories of our favorite green space cats.
Quillpaw
[whops menacingly towards you]
PineCat
I love love love the expressive silliness in this page! And as someone who is also chronically behind on trends by choice, I have made Talita’s exact response to many a friend trying to get me into it LMAO
Vinemaple
Too true. I want to give Talita a bug hug and a pat on the withers right now.
Rubicon Art
Man, can centaur rear onto their hind legs? And if so, how long can they hold it? I can’t imagine it’d be very comfortable, but I know Talita is like Mega Hench, so I wondered if she should do it… I guess it almost matters how their backs bend.
betsumei
In the first AMA (https://jayeaton.site/Art/RttS/AMA/1), Talita said her balance isn’t good enough to walk or stand on her hind legs, and the joints aren’t built to support that sort of weight.
Common Handle
There’s a qna that talks about this somewhere! I think it said her hips can’t support all that weight, but she COULD theoretically stand all the way up for a few seconds to get something off a tall (very tall) shelf or something.
Common Handle
oh dang. Ninja’d
Greebus
Is the whole internet just a super-Reddit now? Truly a dystopia…
Jay Eaton
Megaforum is a human social media site, not the whole human internet. (Start including other aliens’ web communication, and that’s the exonet.)
Greebus
Ooooh, the exonet! I wonder what dances bug ferrets are embarrassing their friends with.
Hanroz
I want to experience the exonet. Please, please, please 🙏
Trees
I think setting eyes on whatever loony-toons night terror the Bug Ferrets probably have for an internet might immediately kill me like it was the fucking Ark of the Covenant.
JoB
Ehhh, I *do* remember the “Interplanetary Internet” SIG back when they were pondering how it’d work with inter*stellar* links. Didn’t come to fruition, though, and the IPI SIG of today is a newly-founded one limited to our solar system. (The old-timers reached the conclusion that such communications would have to *carry along* some form of payment for its own store-and-forward requirements, and essentially hoped that the contemporary research into “micropayments on the Internet” might solve that, but as we know today, all we got is accounts-and-credit-cards-backed Paypal and way-too-volatile cryptocurrencies and such, and “web pages” that necessarily cost dollars to access instead of fractions of a cent.)
·
Our “Internet” of today officially *is* said to span *two* planets by now, though:
https://science.nasa.gov/planetary-science/programs/mars-exploration/mars-relay-network-mrn/
But the Mars Communications Orbiter project – a satellite in a *high* orbit around Mars, *exclusively* serving as a communications relay and thus cementing the notion of “Mars is connected” – was cancelled due to budget restraints.
WHOP
WHOP! WHOP! WHOP! WHOP!
Arcstone
This makes me wonder if theres any dances centaurs could do, but humans cant due to differences in body structure.
Hell, theres probably at least one for every sophont. Imagine the bug ferret mosh pits.
Kasekine
I’m just now picturing Talita line-dancing and it’s hilarious. She even has a cowboy hat in my imagination!
JoB
Why would they do a *line* dance when they have enough limbs each to join hands into a 2D *grid* … ? 😉
Flori
EVERYBODY DO THE WENIS
Apollo235
THE WENIS IS A DANCE
Rosario2003
EVERYBODY IS A GENIUS
Rubicon Art
WHO KNOWS IT IN ADVANCE
Trees
THE WENIS IS A DANCE
Robin
Love seeing Idrisah go gremlin mode
Vinemaple
Idrisah, you don’t want Gillie and Talita to spring pun traps on Sirawit, but you’ll join Gillie in the Whop? What are your RULES?
AnormalADN
This is so funny hahaha
TotallySomebody
YEAAAH WHOP WITH US!!!
tyrone
Come ON! you can do it! We believe in you Talita!.
Do the Taur double “whop” ! Or would that be the Whoop ?
TeethBurglar
Imagining Gillie signing mid Whop is so funny
Teod
The cringe fads still exist in the future. That’s comforting. And cringe