Flicking the lights on and off is one of the common methods for getting attention in Deaf culture.
Transcript
Bip: Doesn’t Ixion have some in-house manufacturing?
Talita: I’m in charge of the junkyard, not internal mechanics. I’m pretty sure Tod would notice me using our shop to make spacecraft bits.
Gillie: (ASL) Yeah, also… Even if Ixion doesn’t own the Runaway…
Talita hears approaching footsteps in the hall and begins to visibly panic, but Gillie isn't watching her.
Gillie: (ASL) They DO own all the materials you’d need to repair it.
Talita: Uh—
Bip: Details, details!
Idrisah unlocks the front door with a beep and enters the apartment, holding a large bag of zucchinis and looking at it with a troubled expression. She flicks the lights on and off.
71 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 116”
Sen
Great expressions on Talita as always. And Bip is giving off great cat vibes with the way they are splayed across the screen. And love all the research you did. Like the light on/off trick to announce your presence of you live with a deaf person.
Ruby
Ah, to have the awareness to see disaster incoming but not the boldness to react quickly.
Darth Biomech
They flip the switch _up_ to turn the lights _off?_
Absolutely barbaric.
spwyll
Unfortunately they have still not addressed the problem of synchronization when there is more than one switch for a single light source.
Athelind Llewellyn Long
Talita’s panic reactions are always adorable.
Doof
Idk what’s wrong with all these humans. Frowning at the blessing of zucchini.
Montydragon
Cannot wait for the rest of the chapter to just be all the human characters finding ways to eat the overplanted zucchini. Also, welcome back Idrisah!!
JoB
> all the human characters finding ways to eat the overplanted zucchini
Sliced, diced, shredded, mashed, emulgated, whole, sideways, up the nasal cavities, …
Tyrone the Miner
Oooohhh but there a more options, and one would not have to slice , dice, pulp , mash, fry or boil anything at all..
JoB
Direct stomach insertion by railgun is generally frowned upon. 😛
gnome_artificer
The thought occurs to me that Bip probably has access to a pretty good microphone. If so, they probably know that Idrisah is coming. Some AIs just want to watch the world burn.
JoB
No need for a microphone (and a neural net to interpret the sounds) when you can just keep an eye on the log of the electronic lock on the building’s front door …
“Twenty-five past zucchinigeddon: Unlocked by personal phone #1 of Touati-Sharpe, Idrisah. Note: Device needs recharging. Note: Accelerometer indicates unusually rough handling of device.”
Greebus
LOL @ Talita clenching her trunk in panel 3
Imp!
Enter: Zucchinis.
eden
oh I love how she flicked the lights on and off to let Gillie know she was home…hearts
Lilac
ohhh goddd the secondhand embarrassment is about to be craazzyyy oh loordd
dokki
QUICK!! put a lampshade on talitas head!!
rdm
Idrisah looks around the room. Picks up a wooden spoon.
DasGanon
*pulls lamp cord*
“Click.”
*pulls lamp cord*
“Unclick”
JoB
[since there wasn’t time to grab a piece of string as well, her trunk has to serve as the “lamp cord”]
evileeyore
The whole line here gets a /rimshot from me. Classic, just classic… 😀
Vinemaple
Poor Talita could have touched Gillie’s shoulder to get her attention, but is probably doubly uncomfortable doing so, first for the sake of politeness, but also because she’s always careful not to spook the much smaller Humans!
Pathfinder
Idk what those zucchini did to Idrisah to deserve that look, but it is insanely funny to me, thank you for this.
Vinemaple
Rasheed is forcing everyone (pg. 112) to take home extra zucchini, because they overplanted. Heck, personally, I’d be happy to take a huge pile of perfect little ripe zucchini like that. They’re lovely at that size. It’s the ones that stay hidden under the leaves until they’re bigger than an American football that are the problem.
JoB
> Rasheed is forcing everyone
Then where does the *net* they’re in come from? Granted, *I* do have a shopping bag on me whenever I leave my flat, but I also wear a bajillion-pockets vest to stow all my knick-knacks in in the first place.
Apollo235
Ooh are you a fellow pocket enjoyer??
Kataratakaran
I am imagining a person with all the pockets (cargo pants, cargo vest, cargo boots, the works), but they have gotten too close to the zucchini growers without a bag, so each pocket is occupied by zucchini like some overachieving hamster.
JoB
> Ooh are you a fellow pocket enjoyer??
Dunno about *enjoying* the pockets (and the weight added by their contents), but it’s quite useful to take along all the stuff you might need on the way but don’t want to try to remember packing every time you’re walking out the door, simply by grabbing that vest and putting it on.
> each pocket is occupied by zucchini like some overachieving hamster
“Please, please, PLEASE don’t let him get the idea to ‘borrow’ me the whole CART … !”
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-page-112/
Apollo235
> and the weight added by their contents
The weight is the fun part! It’s free pressure stimming
Feather
IME the *first* pile is exciting, the second and third piles are fine, and the fourth tends to inspire exrpessions like Idrisah’s no matter how perfectly small and delicious they are…
evileeyore
The zucchini existed beyond her threshold of enjoyment.
Some (possibly many) people don’t like eating the same thing day in and day out. Even I, the type of person who’d happily eat the same meal day in and day out taking enjoyment in knowing what meal I’ll be having ahead of time, do sometimes like something a little different.
But honestly, I’d love (almost) zucchini everyday. I used to buy a pair of fresh zucc on my way home as I used to have a Harvill’s Produce could stop in and pick some up for cheap. The market is gone and it’s too expensive now to be doing fresh veg everyday, so I do frozen broccoli instead.
Chrysalis
Don’t worry Idrisah, we’re just having an innocent aboveboard conversation with the rogue AI about how it doesn’t matter who owns things
TotallySomebody
I like how the light switch is flipped the wrong way. It implies there’s another somewhere in the house that also controls that light and was flipped the right way.
Vinemaple
Yes, a three-way switch. They’re already common in North American houses, providing the convenience of being able to switch on the same lights or devices from entrances on opposite sides of a room or hallway.
It’s also satisfying to me to see that the old 20th-century Leviton-style lever switch has remained a common light switch for Human accommodations, even more than 100 years after those stupid showy rocker switches were introduced!
JoB
You can see that the entrance (and the light switch besides it) are to the *left* of the couch on page 113. Page 114 shows another door of the room behind its *right* side (though there doesn’t seem to be a switch there), so having a multiway switching
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiway_switching
installed is sensible.
John
I really enjoy the Deaf representation in this comic
m.scrimshaw
That’s the face of a woman who isn’t entirely sure how she ended up 8-10 zucchinis
Trees
Ha!
Tyrone the Miner
She was forced by an angry mob! They JUST have to get rid of the things!
creetur
It’s always cool to see how the other sophonts senses are different from humans. It would be nice to have hearing that good.
Trees
So it would seem the only reason they have to do any of this on the Q.T. at all is because of Bip’s presence, right?
If Bip had not been there could Talita just have floated the idea of repairing the Runaway above board to the Dirtball staff and then they would just have a working spaceship?
Wait! If Bip just plays it cool and pretends to be an ordinary pile of non-sentient phones perhaps they can still do it that way.
That sounds so cool but you just know the terrible bird boss or some other management would find a way to ruin it for everyone.
Greenjoe
If Bip hadn’t been there, there wouldn’t really have been any reason to repair the ship at all, and I imagine it would just have been cut up as any other ship that was brought down there.
Trees
I mean any reason beyond having your own (almost) free working spaceship!
Even just the feeling of being able to go to your friends after work and ask if they want to ‘go hang out in our spaceship’ seems worth the trouble. So cool.
I will concede that if Bip hadn’t been there Talita and co. may never have had cause to discover the Runaways ‘finders keepers’ legal status that makes this whole plan viable in the first place…
But it really seems that whoever found the Runaway never realised how good a condition it was in or that it could be fixed by someone with the right skills. Some kind of Little Girl from Space, perhaps.
JoB
> go to your friends after work and ask if they want to ‘go hang out in our spaceship’
As long as that “work” happens on Dirtball, with going into space proper and back requiring the (comparably expensive, I guess) services of the launch loop, that’s not likely to happen. Except when “our spaceship” is just a makebelieve thing like a kids’ tree “house”, still rotting away half-buried in the regolith …
(… and even *that* is assuming that the two office-dwelling friends have personal vacuum suits that they can take for a walk for a couple hours without blocking anyone’s regular EVA …)
Trees
Come now, people don’t get to hang out after work with their friends in their very own working spaceship with a defeatist attitude!
The fact that the Runaway is not in space and would be difficult and/or expensive to get into space is the opposite of a problem if the goal is to hang out in it after work (with your friends). As for it being too far away that’s easily remedied by all the automated cranes and massive gauge railway that conveniently runs right up to the dome. Talita could have her working spaceship delivered to the dome just in time to hang out in it after work (with her friends).
And even if there was not some kind of docking hatch or air filled umbilical tube I would consider a short EVA to be entirely worth it if the reward was getting to hang out in a working spaceship (after work (with my friends)).
zaratustra
If a spaceship ends up on Scrap Yard Planet, it’s presumably because no one had an interest in buying and refurbishing it.
Trees
I think in the Runaway’s specific case it seem more like ‘no one looked closely enough at it to notice it was actually worth fixing’.
They didn’t even take the ridiculous dragon’s hoard of expensive phones before they sent it to Scrap Yard Planet. More fool them.
Vinemaple
I think Bip made it out of the phones. It’s been a day or two since Talita restored power to Bip’s memory banks.
But Bip is also in a lot of other places, too, right now, at least virtually…
JoB
> It’s been a day or two since Talita restored power to Bip’s memory banks.
I doubt that. Gillie wanted to see Talita “after [this day’s] work” on page 100, which is what we’re seeing now, and Talita finished that task only on page 105.
Gar G
Ah was wondering why she did the lights XD
I thought she did it reflexively, expecting the lights to be off and then realizing they were already on
Apollo235
I wonder if Talita recognized the footsteps as specifically being Idrisah’s
Gar G
Probably not, likely just heard someone approaching
Rubicon Art
I dunno if my weak little human ears can tell the difference between my family, I bet Talita can tell it’s Idrisah.
JoB
Can you still do that when they’re carrying some extra weight of zucchini, and anger-stomping all the way because it was *forced* onto them, though? 😉
Apollo235
I had a friend who was decent at recognizing footsteps, but according to him I have a distinct walk so that probably helps
Phlosioneer
I see where this chapter is going. We’re going to repair the Runaway with zucchini.
Claire
You’ll never run out!
TotallySomebody
Repair the Runaway with garbage, stock it full of zucchini, and get to the nearest place where you can fix it better and hope you don’t blow up!
evileeyore
Why does this feel like a bad run in Ostranauts?
“Aw man, it’s just an airlock with a bin, well, what’s in the bin… Wow, so many zucchini, I guess I won’t starve on this run at least…”
JoB
It’ll be a huge zuccess. 😛
Peter Jensen
Imagining one of those videos where people “repair” stuff ramen and super glue, only it’s zucchini and … more zucchini.
bitty
ah, talita has great subsonic perception, able to hear Idrisah’s footsteps before entering the door, so cool!!
also Idrisah with the cucumbers!!! girl thats a lot of cucumbers, better start eating them right away lol. i wonder how much Gillie likes them? im also loving how well gillie has hit it off with bip, how cute their budding friendship is, built on roping their group into shenanigans~
bitty
omg, sorry for double comment but i just noticed that Idrisah turns the lights off and then on – normally they’re off when she gets home im guessing… i thought her concerned expression was towards the large amount of cucumbers but she probably is thinking something like “oh do NOT tell me Gillie is home conspiring with that AI…..”
Kaamos
She’s actually flicking the lights to get Gillie’s attention! Like the caption under the page explains, it’s a common way of getting attention in Deaf culture (since obviously, you can’t just call something out aloud…)
JoB
Well, you *can*, but your neighbors will likely be miffed that they had to come over and tap Gillie’s shoulder in your stead to make the yelling stop …
bitty
ahh thanks for the correction! a reminder to myself to read the transcript a little closer heh
HAL9000
i dont know if its a great example of subsonic perception considering most people without any hearing conditions can hear someone walking down the hallway, but Talita does have owl’s ears so she’s definitely better then a human
Jay Eaton
If nothing else she definitely has more acute hearing than Gillie
bitty
fdsks💀
evileeyore
/deep sigh… rimshot… droll look
bitty
thats true in many cases, like hollow apartment hallways, though maybe not in every location? i was mainly taking cues from the comic page with the footstep graphic – although the transcript says she hears and doesnt mention subsonic perception so i could just have jumped to a conclusion lol!