Running fast and going nowhere.
Transcript
Bip's avatar pops up on her tablet, as if climbing up from underneath the bottom edge of the screen.
Bip: You rang?
Talita: What does the writing on the hull of the Runaway mean?
Bip: That’s written in a logographic signage script shared by most of the nomadic centaur clans. It's a boast about both ship and crew: "We are faster than you!"
Talita: Oh! Haha.
She pauses wistfully and looks at her surroundings. The great blank semi-cylinders of the dry storage units rise up around Talita's cranny of yard space, dwarfed further by the huge dome of the habitat's opaque ceiling overhead.
Talita: Couldn’t outrun everything, huh.
40 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 125”
hessian
ough i had a dream about the human jovian algae rolls and the yeast cheese type. yay for edible rtts speculative food thank you for for feeding us jay eaton
Zarky
Hey Jay.
Thanks. This is one of the most engaging web comics ive read in a long time and i’m always itching for the next update. I look forward to it every time.
Tentament
Talita poggers
Mar
Oh lol if only I had waited to read the next page. STILL COOL THOUGH. I love the framing of the last panel… can’t run away from a crowded Dirtball.
HAL9000
the transcript also helps solve page mysteries 🙂
TotallySomebody
I had a dream about Talita and Bip!!!!! Gehehe
Athelind Llewellyn Long
Two thoughts:
1. It’s downright surreal for those to be running through Talita’s head while she’s running, before she knows what they mean. And from that expression and “ha ha” in Panel 4, I think she knows exactly how surreal it is.
2. That’s another reason why they wind up naming the ship “Runaway”. It’s already named that, in a way.
Varyon
Maybe not that surreal – the symbols used for logographic languages are ones that make sense to the people inventing them as having that meaning. Writing “We are faster than you” is probably going to use symbols that evoke high speeds to the psyche of a centaur. Indeed, at least some of the symbols we see going through her head in the previous page sorta look like they could represent the legs of a centaur at full gallop.
evileeyore
I think Talita is also recognizing that she was just trying to outrun her problems and realizing the futility of of it. Not that she’ll quit trying, but she’s having a “larger than me” connection moment, the Ship is the Runaway and they boasted about their speed, but couldn’t outrun their fate; likewise while Talita would put human Olympic sprinters to shame, she can’t outrun her issues either.
Andy Rios
That’s… kinda sad.
A terrible sort of melancholy.
wingedhorror
Awww, oooh, sweet babies.
bisexual
ohhhhh i’m gonna be sick
Montydragon
Jay Eaton decided to destroy our hearts with this page specifically and I love it. Hope we get more hints about who the ship’s previous crew were. They seem like a wonderful bunch.
MyUniverseinaBox
OOoHhHH the symbolism
This is a reallyyy cool scene.
Bunn
For her to find that out *right after* running like she just did, damn. This whole comic is just so poetic, but here especially for me
Lilac
I love how- well, human is the wrong word…… Real? That is. It’s like how ancient Rome buildings has old graffiti everywhere like “[name] was here” and insults and stuff carved into them. It’s like that cave painting other bear where you can see slightly more crude and unfinished bears next to them and scribbled out because the artist tried multiple times to get it right, or the cave paintings with all the hand prints, including those of little kids. It’s like that newspaper comic from the forties about pushing a pull door and being frustrated. Yknow? That sort of “these people who aren’t here anymore still feel so alive.” God.
Also it’s funny. Shout out to Past Bip Crew yall must’ve been some real ones.
Lilac
TYPOS!! *have **with the bear
grrgh lord mind is too fast for fingers So Sorry
dokki
RIGHT this makes me so emo.
I really wish we could have known the runaways last crew, though it would probably upset the narrative if we did. Maybe we’ll learn more about them as time goes on
what did they laugh about? What drove them to do piracy? What hit them?? Aaaahhh I wanna know so bad
Greebus
It’s interesting how Talita doesn’t really seem to mind showing up shirtless for Bip. Maybe it’s because the camera is angled to only see her face, or maybe she knows they understand that shirtlessness for centaurs isn’t actually revealing anything. Or Im probably just looking too deep into it.
Jay Eaton
Or she hasn’t enabled her camera for the call 😉
Greebus
Ohh lol. That makes sense.
JoB
On the *other* other leg, who’s to say whether Bip really cannot “see” you short of you disabling the tablet’s speakers and microphones as well …
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/using-radar-to-read-body-language.html
Tyrone the Miner
One cannot outrun Fate
Zidane
that last panel… everything about it just hits man
Zidane
just took a peek at the transcript for this page too.. ack my heart
Uh
Her lil ‘oh!’ 💖
creetur
Nice to see them talking more lighter, considering the situation at hand. That little comment at the end made me feel a bit sentimental again, poor Bip :[
gnffs
they were faster than them, just not their missiles.
Taren
Nah, if it were a missile the ship would be in far worse condition. I’d imagine some kind of kinetic round, more likely.
mcbooj
so something like a MAC cannon?
gnffs
That’s atmospheric thinking. A projectile in space wouldn’t have much use exploding, but it would benefit a lot from having a system of guidance and self propulsion, like a missile.
Also, to be pedantic, the archaic meaning of the word missile perfectly includes the projectiles thrown out of kinetic weapons.
mossrabbit
jay has stated on tumblr that space combat isn’t something they’re interested in developing (https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/673757057041793024/) so there’s not a whole lot of space weaponry aside from maybe precision projectiles fired only as last resort, especially since missing means that bullet (literal or metaphorical) would be speeding through space forever until it hits something. i’m neither a weapons expert, a spacecraft expert, or an engineer, but judging from the internal damage not going all the way through, its puncture being directly in the habitat capsule (which WOULD kill the inhabitants), and how they weren’t able to get to the emergency lifeboat in time, i don’t think they were in any sort of sustained combat situation, or else they’d be prepared to evac. either they were ambushed (idk how pirates are handled in RTTS) or it was just a piece of space debris that didn’t pop up on the sensors until it was too late to move.
Claire
120kph is very fast, in fairness.
AnormalADN
“We are faster than you!” aww man…
Matt
Ohh, I love this page! I think it’s the combination of a light-hearted shared joke with people of her kin she doesn’t even know, and the tranquil settling of them being gone. I suppose … similarly to the feeling you get when looking at ancient handprints on a cave painting? A kind of “we are separated by entire worlds, and yet i see myself in the shape of you”?
Rad Internet Stranger
“We are worlds apart but I see myself in you” That might just be the most poetic thing I’ve read in a long time.
BobisOnlyBob
Oh, I think this might be my favourite page yet. Couldn’t quite put into words why at this moment, it’s just struck a chord.
Sen
Bip appearing like a bar keeper behind the counter lending an ear to your worries. So cute :3
I hope Bip teaches Talita some Centaur language and culture. Because then we, the readers, will learn more too.
buam
Talita learning centaur culture through Bip is so poignant because Bip understands her so well (knew to call her a woman, etc) and my god the parallels/contrast between Bip not being a centaur but living with a centaur clan and Talita being a centaur entirely divorced from centaur culture. The exploration of belonging to multiple cultures while being divorced from one or more of them is chefs kiss.
mossrabbit
talita is really hitting all those “mixed race kid raised away from culture” buttons for me. the sensation of knowing it should be familiar but you’re approaching it from the outside isn’t something you ever get used to