College wasn't all bad times for Talita and she eventually formed a strong friend group, but this incident was definitely not a highlight.
Weird knock on effect of the Jovian attitude to vision correction is that glasses are rather rare in Jovia. People with clear eyewear are usually assumed to be wearing fashionable AR screens, and actual corrective lenses are associated with a more severe level of disability than they are in our day.
Transcript
Zaratustra asked: Talita, is there a particular reason why do you think Mel is unhelpful?
Talita: Well... so... Mel used to work as a regent at the university I attended. Their help was how I was able to get a scholarship that covered most of my cost of living. Which is... pretty expensive in a human colony like Nexus Jovia, and which I definitely couldn't afford at 18 straight out of the foster system. I owe Mel a lot. But... In my freshman year I was getting harassed by this group of kids who... I guess were mad I had a larger room than anyone else in the dorm building? Which was so stupid because like— I am large. It was not a large room for me. Whatever. Teenagers are idiots. But I talked to Mel about it because I was hoping they could do something to help. Mel basically just scolded them and called it a day. The next week, I got back from class to find my room lock had been broken and they'd poured over a dozen gallons of acrylic paint on the bed and desk. I ended up being moved from the dorm to a room connected to a faculty building. Because I could never prove it was those specific kids who did it to Mel, I don't think they ever faced any consequences.
Sen asked: Talita, why do you wear glasses? Is corrective surgery not possible on your eyes?
Talita: Oh, these are for farsightedness. By human standards, at least. Centaur eyes are really biased for long range vision. So while I can sometimes read road signs like a kilometer away, I, uh, can't read 12 point font a meter in front of my face. Jovians usually treat vision issues with surgery first and only prescribe glasses when surgery isn't possible or isn't wanted by the patient. In my case, uh... These are kind of annoying sometimes, but I don't think... anyone has done laser surgery on a centaur before... and I don't really want to be the guinea pig...
56 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 8”
Sen
Poor Talita. She’s lived through so much.
One thing I noticed from the time I first saw Talita and now reading it for a long time. Humans get used to someone and weird just becomes normal.
I first saw Talita out of context and tried interpreting her as fantasy/furry character. Due to her alien anatomy she felt really weird and off. But now? I only see fun character that just looks normal. Humans are great at recalibrating what is normal for them.
Quadrell
Isn’t acrylic harmful to centaurs in some way? I think I remember reading about that somewhere but can’t totally remember.
Hunter
Ah, so the reason they didn’t want to tell anything to Mel was because Mel would not only not do enough but might even actively make the situation WORSE. I see.
Martin
Ohhhhhhhhh I get the problem with Mel now. Very nice and encouraging, but a bad listener and almost too nice.
jjsanguine
The idea that corrective surgery would be routine is so wild to me. Maybe I’m biased because I wear them but glasses just seem so much safer than having a laser burn off bits of your eye. Rtts healthcare is much more advanced than what we have but still.
JoB
Same sentiment, I can drop a couple-hundred-€ pair of glasses into the trashcan if I have to, but I’m not so hot on trying the same with my eyeballs. :-3
But I’m also old enough that I have to switch between “reading” and “distance” glasses. I’m not sure how a “whee, *never* have to wear glasses again!” Lasik would prevent that your eyelenses *lose flexibility* with age … ¬_¬
theplushfrog
I assume they either have a biomod that makes it so eyes don’t lose flexibility as easily that is part of standard healthcare, or that they still consider that part of aging to be more disabling than we would consider it today.
evileeyore
They have lens replacement these days, and I mean our current days, not in comic. So I’m sure in comic they have nearly (if not actually) perfected all medical treatments of the eye.
dokki
this page is uncomfortably relatable
Teod
Those panels are done in dark blue, but the first one has a couple of words in pure black. Late fixes?
Jay Eaton
Unlike book pages which take between 8 to 12 hours to draw and have been looked at by hundreds of people before going public, these are drawn in about 10-30 minutes whenever I have the time and undergo no proofreading other than what I can provide. I’m also horrible at proofreading, as comments are quick to remind me.
SIGSTKFLT
Fonts mentioned. Obligatory Atkinson Hyperlegible post.
Sparky Lurkdragon
Mmmm, this sheds even more light on why the “secret” project ruffles her feathers. Poor Talita.
Zarky
43th street lol. I love it. Is that some Jovian linguistic thing?
Jay Eaton
That’s an error but CCW means counter clockwise
SIGSTKFLT
Circles!
40
Can you run with it and make it canon 🙏 like people started saying 1th 2th 3th ironically but it’s been so long that it’s correct now.
ZArky
Aw i didnt think it was an error, I hope you didnt take it as nitpicking, i genuinely thought it was deliberate. And yeah! I picked up on the CCW part! Neat little touch!
Fallingfeather
43th street…
nyakun
I love the faraightedness detail! definitely something that needs to be thought about more for characters with different animal visions/pupils/traits! your catboy or other slit-pupil having character likely isnt too dumb to see the treat in front of his face: cats just can’t see things very clearly that are close up!
i have an oc who’s of a giant race (talkin titan sized) and thus i write in that theyve developed some amount of farsightedness to see the littler races better and to see over greater distances even comparitively to themselves, and mine wears glasses for the same reason!
i love this detail!
Ash
I feel like, for Talita, this wouldn’t be “corrective” surgery, but a surgery to alter how a different kind of eye works altogether. Which I don’t think is the play here. Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m all up for body modding, including this. But if she were to be the first person to get that done… She herself points it out, no thanks to that.
BullCityFats
I have an uncommon vision problem where my resting focus is on a different plane for each eye. If I relax my vision I see two horizons. This is easily corrected with prismed lenses, but surgical correction would require messing around with the extraocular muscles, so no thanks to that.
My optometrist was really excited when she discovered this, which is a lot better than your dentist getting really excited.
SJ
I’ve had my dentist marvel at some of the weird things my teeth have done over the years… can confirm, not the most fun thing in the world. But my dentist is a lovely person who has my permission to write some kind of case study article thing on my weirdness.
I’m also a bit farsighted! Just need reading glasses, though.
JoB
I guess that the million dollar question is: If your eyes have the *resolution* to properly see stuff that far away, how much sense *does* it make to *permanently* alter their focus towards shorter ranges? *If* Talita knew that she’ll be spaceship crew soon (where *really* short distances will prevail among the stuff you *need* to be able to see), that might be a different matter, but.
… which raises another question: Assuming that the centaur pirates were *not* working *on a spaceship* before they presumably *stole* the Runaway, how did *they* deal with their vision issues in the tight quarters of the ship? Did Bip serve as their optometrist, too?
HAL9000
you can see some centaurs wearing monocles, made by centaurs for centaurs, in one of the comics on the site, First Contact. presumably the previous crew had those
Effyis Biblos
A lot of the writing seen inside the ship and the end of last chapter was a lot larger than the equivalent human labels would presumably be, which is probably for this exact reason.
Joysweeper
Poor Talita, she seems to have had a very rocky time.
I got my eyes lasered four years ago now and it’s been amazing. My vision was awful, if I put my glasses on the floor I couldn’t see them. I was so nearsighted that without them I couldn’t read street signs or books. All my lenses were absurdly thick to the point where if they were set down they tended to fall forwards and get scratched. It was so amazing to suddenly just be able to see. What a wonderful sense of control, too, to be able to change something that bothered me so constantly for my whole life.
I expect if Talita got eye surgery she could lose some long-distance acuity even if everything went well, which would be a shame. And maybe in the future they can make lenses that don’t attract every particle of dust and oil in a hundred-foot radius and then smear when you try to clean them!
Hubert
Faculty residence is where it’s at, you get a kitchenette. Hopefully she indulged in some roasted breakfast bugs.
Lilac
I have super bad nearsightedness and I have to wear glasses for it and it’s always getting worse so I have to change prescription every few months.. But I’m kinda scared of the surgery so I’d rather wear glasses.. so I relate to talita sort of!! But her situation is of course probably much more extreme than mine lol. Also eye surgery for Humans is probably much safer and easier done in this futurey universe than in my modern one. Alas……
Lilac
Then again according to the little anonymous profile picture thingies given to people I have been assigned Bug Ferret so it might be Bug Ferret eye surgery than human eye surgery. But also they too probably have really advanced medical technology so the sentiment remains
Peter Jensen
IIRC, bug ferrets shed their eye-casings regularly, so if that’s where you do the corrective surgery, you have the benefit of a mistake not being permanent, but of course also the detriment of having to get it done regularly. But then again, to them this is probably not much different from a human getting a new prescription.
Lilac
ohh fascinating….
Apollo235
Bug ferrets wouldn’t need surgery to correct their vision.
https://www.tumblr.com/jayrockin/713726978155511808/how-would-glasses-work-for-an-avian-or-bug-ferret
(mild body horror)
Feather
The comment in the tags of the original post (the one that post links to) about eye braces not hurting any more than tooth braces is not reassuring!
Solanuma
you could paint a whole basketball court with hat much, i did the math
Heck
Aaand in the end it was Talita who had to move, not the jerks who harassed her. Of course
Glad she did meet good friends in the end, though
eden
mel probably called the problem “solved” even though it was talita who made concessions and was ultimately punished
zaratustra
yay
eden
really mel?? you can’t connect the dots????
evileeyore
It not about “connecting the dots”, it’s about “being able to //prove// who did it”.
You don’t want authority being to punish without proof. Honestly getting this, I’m no longer feeling that Mel is at all terrible, Mel’s hands were tied. Mel should have explained to Talita what the were a;;owed to do about the harassment, not just acted to scold the harassers… also Mel was ten years younger and likely weren’t as experienced in conflict resolution as they may be now.
Basically, younger Mel screwed up once and Talita has held a bit of a grudge ever since. As for Cal’s problem with Mel… “not really paying attention” is a different problem… and unless Cal considers themselves ‘male coded’, Mel has been ‘misgendering’ them (go back to page 14 and give it a reread).
Chiyana
I don’t think Talita holds a grudge against Mel. She’s mentioned before that she owes Mel a lot, explicitly here and in other pages, and seems fine interacting with them in general. She just doesn’t trust Mel to help regarding things like being harassed, because from her experience, Mel has made it worse, AND they weren’t able to help after things escalated. Talita went to Mel to help with harassment, and Mel’s response was to “basically scold them and call it a day”. It’s up to you how much you take Talita at her word that that’s what happened, but that’s how Talita interpreted it. As a result of Talita reaching out and Mel’s response, the harassment escalated to the point that Talita had to move, and Mel’s response to that was… nothing. Talita was told since she couldn’t prove what happened, and she says pretty clearly that SHE was expected to provide the proof, there were no consequences to her harassment. No mention of Mel trying to help determine who had done it, to help Talita find proof or keep an eye out for further harassment, just an expectation on Talita to provide proof and when she couldn’t, nothing.
I don’t blame Talita for being wary about going to Mel with issues after that. She’s pretty isolated as the only centaur in a culture with very few accommodations for her, and the risk of escalation is scary. Maybe Mel has gotten better over the years, but I don’t actually believe that from what we’ve seen of them in the text (all of this prefaced with I don’t think Mel is a terrible person, I just don’t think they’re a particularly good manager). Things we’ve seen explicitly in the text aren’t much admittedly (because this story isn’t about Mel), but we have seen things referenced like the fight between Cal and Mel (and since the bug ferrets refer to Cal as ‘he/him’, or technically ‘he/hin’ I don’t think Mel’s misgendering him), Mel making plans behind Talita’s back and not telling her what they are (which from context clues we assume is bringing in centaurs as new temps, and I do understand why Mel might think that’s a good idea, but it shows again that Mel doesn’t actually listen and doesn’t think to ask Talita about her feelings/interactions with other centaurs to understand how there might be some issues), Mel calling Ohwitiil and Cheevwut on their explicit days off to talk about work (which is just bad manager behavior in general, don’t call someone on their day off about work unless it’s an emergency).
I don’t think this is ‘Mel screwed up once and Talita holds a grudge’, I think it’s Mel handled a situation of harassment towards Talita badly and didn’t protect her in the fallout from how they handled it, Talita understandably doesn’t trust Mel to help her with instances of harassment going forward, and Mel has a pattern of behavior of just not being a great manager. This doesn’t make them a terrible person or even a terrible manager overall, it just means they have their flaws and biases that other characters respond to.
Amanda/OwlBear
you know what, vis-a-vis glasses and being a laser surgery guinea-pig, that’s fair
I’ve just recently started having to wear glasses, but for nearsightedness, only really need them for driving, and it’s taken a bit of getting used to
fancybone
This is definitely one of those “some disabilities are cultural” things. Centaur society hasn’t really needed *good* near vision – their writing and reading system is mostly tactile, so being very farsighted isn’t a disability for them. (We can revisit this once most of their society is in a higher technological age, I guess – it’ll be hard to deal with things like electronics and other small things!) But in the human world, nearly everything we have is built around being able to see things in your hands clearly.
I wonder if Centaur personal technology will have tactile inputs and outputs, sort of like braille readers. Hell, it could just be fully tactile with vibrations, instead of even needing to raise or lower things – sort of like being able to rapidly understand morse code.
Hubert
Oh yes, refreshable tactile displays! Maybe centaurs have their own type of abacus, too. Now I’m wondering if centaurs put ribbons in front of paned windows/doors, or do they just use greased paper… I could nerd out about this forever.
Elle
Replied to the wrong comment dang!
DasGanon
The Centaur Farsightedness thing makes sense why the two Nomads have big monocoles on strings (and not just as an aesthetic look either!) in the First Contact side comic.
Montydragon
I wonder if all spacer centaurs have magnifiers for various things. It seems like it would be needed if you’re living on a tiny little ship!
Krasudreal
So these aren’t CORRECTIVE glasses, these are magnifying glasses that she uses to see things close by, that she can take off to get her normal vision back.
Got it.
Jay Eaton
Yeah basically lol. Talita is framing it oddly because of the way she is.
Apollo235
Damn, I understand bigotry is inherently irrational but I truly can’t fathom being THAT bothered by someone else’s presence
fancybone
I’ve had people scream at me from their car because I dared ride my bicycle in the street. You know. Where I’m obligated to, by the law.
Adrienne
Probably the same people who think “If rights are truly equal, we shouldn’t have a designated parking spot for people in wheelchairs!” as if the spot isn’t there in the first place so people with certain disabilities can equally go shopping without having to worry about if it will be too physically demanding
Gigi
People literally kill each other for the crime of existing, so it doesn’t seem that far fetched to me.
Apollo235
Oh I’m not calling it far-fetched, apologies if it came off that way! Its an absurd reality of our world, and unfortunately something we will in all likelihood deal with forever
cassette
for talita i really love my glasses, and yours are really cute!
Elle
People will sometimes see a person’s accommodations as special treatment and be pissy about it