3D racquetball is a zero-gravity sport that takes place in an enclosed dodecahedron-shaped court. Also, Jovia's currency is just called dollars (JVD) and in modern USD this bet is closer to 30 dollars.
Killian's pronouns are he or they. He doesn't have a strong preference for which you use. As unisex humans, tailed spacers tend to play it very fast and loose with gender and most are not terribly committed to any roles, behaviors, or personal aesthetics bisex humans associate with sex and gender. Tailers also often form "coteries" which are groups of 3 or more married adults. "Per," is short for parent, and is used by children of a coterie to refer to any of the adults married into it, though some tailers refer to their birth parent as "mom" and their sire parent as "dad." What's funny about that is for tailers, it's relative... if they had a sibling who was birthed by their dad and sired by their mom, that sibling would flip the terms, referring to the parent that gave birth to their sibling as "dad" and the parent that sired their sibling as "mom."
Transcript
Zuorai asked: Tod and Killian, do you two hang out outside of work? What do you like to do for fun?
Tod: Oh, sure. Occasionally.
Killian: Pff, occasionally? You invite me over practically every night.
Tod: Just when 3D racquetball has a new match. Which reminds me. You still owe me 5 dollars for Enkhee's loss.
Killian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. ...I'll pay you back if Rosenbaum's still winning tonight.
Tod: Uh huh.
Anonymous asked: Killian, is it common in your time for women to have traditionally male-associated names?
Killian: Why are you asking me?? I'm a tailer, I don't understand the whole song and dance typs do about gender.
NOTE: Tailed spacers are a unisex clade, i.e. simultaneous hermaphrodites.
Killian: My per named me Killian because my grandper was named Killian. I've heard typs call it masculine.
NOTE: NOTE: "Per" is a diminutive for "parent," and can refer to any married adult in a coterie.
Killian: That works fine for me, when I have to pick a team I prefer being one of the boys.
20 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 9”
Gatinto
would different kinds of modified humans end up triggering eachother’s uncanny valley effect?
Curona
Speaking of parents…what do infant tailers look like? Typ human newborns tend to be a bit fuzzy, so are tailer babies super fluffy as newborns or about the same?
And, somewhat related, is it considered rude or racist to compare tailer humans to earth monkeys/apes?
Green Heron
‘Can’t answer the first one, but I think Jay has said before that when Tailers were first created, they were called “Simians” but nowadays that term is a slur, so yeah, it *is* racist to compare them to apes.
Ruby
Tailers are the main population of Mars’ space station, right?
dokki
Killian I love u Killian <3 I love these bros
TotallySomebody
IM SORRY BUT “GRANDPER” 😭 THAT SOUNDS SO DEEP-SOUTH-ACCENT (i.e: “I went an saw my grandper yestirday”)
A Box Of Fox
No it don’t, not all that much.
Ardzruni
Possibly stupid question, but how is “Per” pronounced? Is it rhymes-with-pear as in “parent” or rhymes-with-purr as in “person”?
eden
I like to say it as “pear” or “purr” like a cat purring noise without the actual purring
Jay Eaton
Depends where you are. Some dialects drop the “r” and give it a long “a” sound (“peh” or “pay-uh”) and some pronounce it more like the “per” in “as per my last email…” Most Jovians are in the latter category.
Napkinkat
“pay-uh” gave me the cursed idea of a tailer with a heavy Maine (Boston could work too) accent 💀
Lilac
I love how this comic continuously shows the strange space people are still just regular people. So So much
Liza
Killian’s adorable. And yeah as pointed out in an earlier comment, he does not comb his whiskers.
Paroxysmall
Speaking of which, how does that happen? I’ve never seen rumpled whiskers irl, are they just thinner or less stiff for Killian/tailers in general?
Jay Eaton
I think he fidgets by pinching them.
Septemberdale
That sounds vaguely uncomfortable.
Jay Eaton
Oh, I mean pinching in the middle, which bends them. Not tugging on the innervated base at all. Though, skin/hair picking habits frequently are painful… and yet people do them anyways…
theplushfrog
I’ve definitely had cats who occasionally had “rumpled” whiskers. More common with cats who have curly whiskers, which always look a little crazy, but some cats only have a couple curly whiskers and the others are straight, which gives the appearance of a bedhead-ish look at times. Perhaps Tailer’s whiskers are halfway between human facial hair and typical whiskers in stiffness, hence needing the combing?
evileeyore
I had a cat whose whiskers grew in rumpled. Her brother used to chew them off her face, we eventually broke him of the habit, but by then her whiskers stopped growing in straight and grew in with kinks and semi-curls.
JoB
Speaking of sports transmissions and Jovian currency, how expensive *is* a wormhole “cable” subscription to get to watch a match with minimum delay (couple hours, I guesstimate)? Or is Tod just getting a ration-it-yourself stack of VHS¹ delivered every quarter or so?
¹ Venerable Hypermodern Storage 😉