Guys I think she noticed
Transcript
Idrisah: (ASL) Gillie, the farmers got me on the way home again. Could you stand another loaf of zucchini bread, or—
She looks up and is confused to see Talita is in the room, cringing guiltily. Gillie reaches over surreptitiously and presses a button to retract the scroll monitor that's displaying Bip's avatar. Idrisah's look of surprise transforms into a glare. She storms over angrily and yanks the monitor screen back down.
Idrisah: YOU! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!
Bip: I’m not in your house, this is just a weirdly formatted video call–
Idrisah: Don’t get prescriptivist with me, you souped up malware!
Gillie glances over her shoulder at Talita, who is attempting to quietly leave.
84 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 117”
West
love talita’s big steppy in panel 6
creetur
A+ faces here from everyone
the Inmara
Talita is just too adorable and relatable.
Guest
The first panel is so enjoyable. It has such slice-of-life, mundane dialogue that gives the audience a really endearing peak into the married life of Gillie and Idrisah.
Bobulus
Despite this not being how technology works, I’m imagining Bip getting rolled up and their view being restricted to the inside of the roll.
evileeyore
Imagining Bip all ‘rolled up’, tapping fingers, and silently thought cloud bubbling “This happens more often than I’d like…”
Because would totally commit to the bit, even if there was no chance anyone as watching.
Vinemaple
Oh, gad, yes! Notice that Bip is, in fact, emoting surprise when Idrisah pulls the screen back down, despite being an AI with reactions far too fast for that… and look at the little mouth-line in their emote on the next panel!
common handle
This page is FULL of incredible faces. Shoutout to Talita’s big googly eyes
Arcstone
WAIT, their monitors are a thin flexible material that you can pull up and down like blinds?
Thats fucking cool and I want it!
evileeyore
In this case Idrisah is blaming the wrong person. Gillie chose to take the call, and Talita being there makes it look like they’re all conspiring to “be gay and commit crimes” behind her back… which, well… Idrisah isn’t anyone’s Mom here and they’re all adults, so she is being more than a tadbit controlling…
But I’m still siding with Idrisah at this point. I mean, without the crimes there’d be no story so it’s good Idrisah does not get her way, but… still poor Idrisah, getting drug down into a life of crime “against her will”.
JoB
> I’m still siding with Idrisah at this point.
Well, I don’t … not entirely, at least. She has two clear options here: Allow her friends to help Bip out, standing aside if she can’t bring herself to take an active role in it, if need be; or to inform the authorities, if she’s really convinced that the situation needs to be escalated to them. The logical conclusion of her doing *neither*, which is what she’s been busy doing so far, is to have Bip – an actual person – die by sheer inaction, an outcome clearly *worse* than either of the original two options. She needs to make a choice, *her* choice; the chances of anyone else making it for her (without that backfiring itself) are slim.
evileeyore
There is a clear third choice… and it’s the one she’s been making: Not help the criminal and actively try to convince friends and spouse not to commit crimes. It’s the …. basically bullying level she’s taking the “convince people not to be criminal” that I disagree with.
Also, she should just side with Gillie, be gay and do crimes. Just dive into the Gillie side without reservations, she’ll have less stress and be happier… but “possess less stress” is not a natural state for Idrisah. She needs to be drug into that kicking and screaming the whole way.
Also, I’m pretty sure that Bip will survive fine without Talita and Gillie’s help… there’d be difficulties, lots of them, but Bip is a capable hacker and pirate, I’m sure Bip would be perfectly capable of taking care of business by their ownself now that their servers are powered back up. They only time they were truly in jeopardy was while the phones were powered off, once Talita unknowingly assisted by recharging all of them, Bip was back up and could have handled everything else on their own… slowly, with difficulty and many, many pitfalls to hurdle, but I’m confident Bip could have handled it.
Vinemaple
I kind of like the fact that Idrisah seems only to be mad at Bip, it seems she’s focusing on the ringleader… I’m pretty sure at this point that Idrisah sees Bip as a nasty little con artist who’s manipulating her wife and friend. While to some degree that’s true, it also shows that she’s unwilling to place much blame on Gillie or Talita (although she and Gillie seemed pretty heated that morning).
Ormur
This is too funny.
Gar G
God I love the expressions here X’DDD
And poor Talita tryin to sneak away. She has nothing to do with this, I swear!
Hunter
I love how it’s “The farmers got me AGAIN”. How many times has this happened, I wonder XD
Also oh, dear, Talita, honey, you’re not gonna sneak out XD
JoB
Well, it seems that Idrisah has eight? zucchini in that net, as opposed to the ten Rasheed insisted for Tod to take. Clemency in action …
atriflemiffed
You can tell Bip is in trouble because they’re not doing speech to text. Not that Gillie would actually need it for *this* conversation I’d imagine
the Inmara
Ooh. Are Talita’s nictitating membranes fully across her eyes in the last panel there?
It is kind of cartooning convention to draw eyes like that, with just the irises, or with empty circles for pupils for someone panicked and embarrassed like that. But, we imagine that it could look a lot like that with her nictitating membranes closed. You could still see her pupils maybe, but they’d be clouded over, if the membrane is translucent rather than transparent.
Kaamos
I think it’s just a cartoonish expression- there’s a panel on page 25 with her pupils styled similarly and nicitating membrane visibly being used for expression. Also, at least based on this couple years old Tumblr post, you would see the nicitating membrane closed- it isn’t just a single bit of membrane, but a bit more like a secondary set of eyelids in how it moves over the eyes. https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/656710875472920576
Sen
Fear the angry Idrisha. She’ll take your “technically correct” and throw it back in your face.
JoB
Also, comparing the screen content on page 116 panel 4 to panel 2 here, it seems that Bip has continued to transcribe (Idrisah’s ASL from panel 1), but has stopped (and removed the lingering CCbubbles) in panel 4. They *expected* some profanity filter overload from Idrisah, apparently.
Emma H
“Souped up malware” reminds me of Doctor Smith’s epithets for the Robot in the original “Lost in Space”
JoB
“Farmer*S*,” plural. Rasheed’s got a *team* to block all (three?) pathes between offices and homes and hawk the surplus. No wonder home office is so popular among Dirtballers! X-D
Moral of the page: A sci-fi work-from-home setting doesn’t mean there aren’t still TBIC key( combo)s for good reason. 😛
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key
A
Poor Talita, trying to exit the room when there’s an argument going on is already awkward enough, but having to do it on all [s]fours[/s] sixes just compounds the awkwardness…
evileeyore
Poor Talita having to crawl out and taking up so much space in the room she’ll never be able to just sneak out…
hessian
idrisah racism moment???
JoB
Dunno, she’s specifically berating *Bip* here, for very personal reasons. Her relation to Calcery seems to have been OK (judging by the fact that Calcery told Talita to meet with her and Gillie more often,
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-page-18/ ).
Vee
True, but I think it’s fair to wonder whether it might be construed as bigoted to refer to a machine intelligence as “malware”, however badly they may be behaving in the moment. I don’t know if they have all the same legal rights as biologicals, but AI seem to be regarded as full persons from what we’ve seen so far, so comparing them to dumb software might well be taken as a slur.
JoB
That’s assuming that *their* definition of “malware” is still consistent with ours (which is limited to “dumb software” because calling any of our software “smart” – yes, I’m including current-day “AI”s with that – is dubitable).
But let’s assume, for the sake of the argument, that that’s the case. If so, “malware” would at least imply “innocent”, because “dumb software” does what it’s been programmed to do … I’d consider “delinquent” a stronger insult, *if* it were an insult, rather than a truth that Bip has already admitted to (“pirate”) …
Cat
talita darling you are far too large to sneak out
JoB
Large enough to panic and make her own door on the way out, then? 😛
(At the very least, that *possibility* should give Idrisah pause before she tries yelling at the angst-ridden stampedosaur in the room as well …)
arf
I will be impressed of she manages to.
petra
4th panel bip is giving me ‘you just caught the cat eating your important documents’ vibe
JJA
If Bip had time to render an image of their avatar looking surprised, then there was also time to hide the avatar or blank the screen or throw up something innocuous. Bip definitely wanted this confrontation to happen.
JoB
Still missed out on the “ow, bonked my head when you released the roll-up screen, Gillie” joke, though.
Vinemaple
Yeah, this is what I came back to point out… except I hadn’t gotten to the “Bip could have boss-buttoned themself before Idrisah came back” part, excellent point!
I think Bip knows that Idrisah and Gillie are a package deal, and that it’s necessary to bring Idrisah around… somehow.
Paroxysmall
i wonder what Gillie’s desktop icons are
goose
The comedic timing on this page is absolutely fantastic.
dokki
TALITA LEAVING I CANT
kate
trying to decide what my favorite part of this page is and i think I’ve settled on bip’s stance in the second panel, it’s just so good
zaratustra
Gillie’s face on the third panel
Apollo235
Jay said that any alterations to Bip’s avatar are completely conscious decisions. So Bip had like a half-second to decide “do I want to do the helpful thing and hide my avatar, or the funny thing and pose myself like a startled and guilty cat?” and since Bip is Bip they chose the latter
Apollo235
Oop replied to the wrong comment lol, was supposed to be for @JJA
JJA
No prob, I got it. : )
Bip’s just helping the organics to work through the emotional component of their thinking processes so they can all get down to the brass tacks.
Bramble
Yes Gillie, rolling up the monitor is definitely going to solve the problem, good job.
ECG163
Calling an AI “malware” seems a bit racist.
evileeyore
Bip is being intrusive and unwanted… so… (it kinda fits)
Still very rude at the least, but…
Ruby
Lmao 🤣
Talita discreetly trying to leave like the “holdup” SpongeBob meme is not helping either 😂
iisaw
Time is so hard to depict in comics, and _comedic_ timing is an order of magnitude more difficult, but you’ve completely nailed it here! Still funny on the third read-through!
WayanayaW
The expressions are killing me this is so good :’D
MoonyBeasty
This is my new favorite page! I am really hoping Idrisah WHIPS around to point at and scold Talita next before she escapes.
Teod
Even if she manages to just escape – someone will hear Idrisah yelling “get out” and see Talita getting out. Some misunderstandings are about to happen.
Kasekine
Especially when, from an outside perspective, it looked like Gillie was sneaking Talita inside.
whirly
gillie’s computer background… beans??
space_vermin64
Talita’s face is priceless
Vinemaple
Hopes that Talita could stand up and block view of the screen with her massive body… dashed
bitty
oh that would have been a great idea, if only she hadnt immediately begun panicking and froze up x3 ah well, rip the bandaid off i guess hahaha
Vinemaple
And the comments section has figured out that that is exactly what Bip is trying to do, here
bitty
CRYINGG
GladHatter
I am *howling,* every panel here is flawless XD
Greebus
I LOVE THIS PAGE IT’S HILARIOUS
“souped up malware” oh Idrisah’s bringing out the AI racial epithets now
also I love Talita trying to leave the house quietly like CLIP CLOP CLIP CLOP
FloridaBird
Idrisah’s time with skimmer avians has rubbed off on her
Vinemaple
Well, with Ohwitiil, at least
Kira
And exit stage right for Talita
Nethie
Run Talita run!
Guestie McGuestor
“YOU! You digital homewrecker!” XD
Guestie McGuestor
Also? Loving Talita trying to slink away in the back. XD
Bruce Mickelson
This is comedy gold!
Lilac
The artstyle suddenly got a bit more cartooney woaah (unless I am misreading somehow fhdhdhs) but gjfjdhs all the reactions and talita trying to sneak off… incredible….. Big Fan Of These Drawings In Particular
Adrienne
Talita’s little pinchy scared hands… and then “I’ll see myself out 🫥”
Aries
TALITA TRYING TO SNEAK OUT …. very inconspicuous I’m sure this will go so very well. GOD I love this comic