Ah, Talita's mandibular eyespots are going to hatch soon! (joke) (not what's happening)
Transcript
Mel: They’re liquidating a competitor. Sold us a bunch of perfectly functional prototype vessels for pennies. To scrap! What a waste, right?
Talita: (sweating profusely) …Yeah! Such a waste!!
She ducks out of the office and stands in the hall outside, hand on her chin and deep in thought. Suddenly, the dark spots on her lower jaw begin to itch. She grimaces in annoyance, scratching.
Talita: Dammit. Again? Already?
Back at admin, Idrisah types on her English-Tiiliitian keyboard in her cubicle. She looks dead tired, with dark circles under her eyes. Cheevwut approaches her.
Cheevwut: Idrisah.
Idrisah: Cheevwut?
50 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 127”
Zuorai
Mel’s upper arms… I am Using my Eyes
cobbington
Same
Redacted
Idrisah looks like the dad from Coreline
TotallySomebody
Now she needs to turn into a pumpkin
ToppodaFoxxo
Oooh I don’t know if this has been pointed out before but its interesting to see keyboards still have the qwerty setup- I can see that staying as an ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ situation but its still interesting it’s stayed this long, considering its just a holdover from typewriters afaik.
40
Alphabetical order is just random shit left over from like 6000 years ago. It’s easy to keep what we all know.
JoB
… if those prototypes are “perfectly functional”, mightn’t it be easier to move Bip’s mainframe (plus some of the centaur stuff, for Talita to look through later) over from the Runaway? Or can AIs get “homesick” … ? 😉
evileeyore
They’re prototypes. They may not be perfectly functional. Also, it’s Bip’s ship, Bip’s house, Bip’s body. Etc. Sure, maybe Bip might agree that swapping would be easier… but…
SIGSTKFLT
Bip: This one is mine! There are many like it but this one is mine!
malmo
Unlike the Runway, Ixion legally owns these ships. Presumably.
JoB
Doesn’t make a *legal* difference whether you take one *whole* or scavenge parts from them, though … maybe losing the administrative cover *off* Dirtball (as outlined on page 115) makes a full replacement impractical.
arf
Antlered Talita [to work crew]: I *warned* you that you didn’t want to see me when I’m mad!
JoB
[uses the centaur analogon of ventriloquism to make lightsaber sounds whenever she moves her head]
·
(… isn’t infrasound, like she can make out of her excurrent nostrils, said to be able to induce “a general feeling of dread” in humans?)
evileeyore
Talita infrasonically humming Darth Vader’s march…
Tyrone the Miner
Got me there. I would run…..and good luck with that considering the Olympian Hero level accomplishment stuff going on at page 123…..Say…Can Talita climb trees ? Any trees around? No??
….Lamp post?…Really tall Zucchini ?
JoB
> ….Lamp post?…Really tall Zucchini ?
·
Wrong approach. Try living the rest of your life in some crawlspace in one of the buildings that has *not* been converted from avian to human building codes.
·
(But if you insist, there *are* “trees” – not all of them from the Terran ecosphere IIUC, hence the palmate quotes – lining the edge of the habitat dome:
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-pages-27-and-28/
)
Hanroz
Huh, I wonder how they lucked out in getting this stuff. Someone must’ve made an error somewhere?…
evileeyore
Cheevwut wut! One of the two best avians is surely here to brig- ah… improve Idrisah’s day right? Definitely not going to add even more stress upon her? Right?
Tune in next time for this and more dun-dun-dun!
Ruby
They’re itching to come out
JoB
By the itching of my pedicles … trouble’s brewing in the cubicles!
(Yes, I would have preferred the second half to say something along the lines of “… that *must* all be orchestrated by someone!”, but my rhyme-fu ain’t strong enough, it seems.)
Claire
And now, back to your regularly scheduled tusklers.
gnome_artificer
Junji Ito writing additional chapters of Uzumaki over here
Fallingfeather
Oh, Idrisah. You look………………………….
evileeyore
She’s too tired for all this nonsense… and the nonsense yet to come.
Hunter
Ah, so Talita’s tusks are about to start growing in again, soon?
Origamigryphon
Antlers. They’re not teeth. :3
Dicemonger
I gotta mention my appreciation for the alternate symbols on Idrisah’s keyboard, which I assume mean that it can be switched to use a non-human alphabet.
JoB
Tiiliitian, to be precise; see the page’s transcript.
iisaw
Neat detail of Idrisah’s rug hanging there!
Gheesfellow
Soon a swarm of tiny Talitas will burst out of her chin. Trust me, I tried to become a nurse once, it’s standard stuff.
TotallySomebody
Completely standard stuff for sure.
Apollo235
Ok I MIGHT be imagining this but I’m pretty sure over the course of all the pages you can see the roots of Talita’s antlers going from slightly concave, to flat, to slightly convex!
Uh
Mel’s expressions are so :3
creetur
Idrisah looks so exhausted nooo..
Vinemaple
I seriously don’t want to know what happened at the Touati-Sharpes’ apartment after Talita left… not after seeing this.
Sen
Someone’s been making sure Idrisha has enough to do. Praise job security!
Julius
Talita having her yearly period just when all this space pirate crap stars 😔
eden
actually centuar period cycles get thrown out of loop when not on a planet with a consistent seasonal cycle. I think I remember reading somewhere talita grows her antlers randomly, a couple times a year. maybe triggered by stress?
pekania
I feel ya Idrisah… exact same circles under my eyes rn
Lilac
its tusk time…… also poor idrisah looks so tired I hope the whole Situation(tm) isn’t wearing down on her too much
Guest
Antlers, actually!
Bramble
Ah yes, the classic “my body waits until the least convenient time possible to do something normal and harmless but deeply annoying.”
Arcstone
Oh yeah, on the subject of the whole tusk thing: Are there certain times of year talita just straight cant use space suits because of the tusks, or are there specially designed helmets she can switch to that accommodates them?
joseph
considering she built her entire suit herself… either yes, she’s made one, or no, she hasn’t. i would assume she has backups.
theplushfrog
I wonder what would happen if she were to trim/file the growing tusks so she didn’t need a new helmet.. I would assume it could damage future growth and cause issues, but I don’t know much about how tusks/antlers grow.
Jay Eaton
She has antlers. Antlers are a seasonal bone growth that develops under a layer of skin and blood vessels. Attempting to file down a growing antler would be like trying the file down your elbow.
JoB
> Attempting to file down a growing antler would be like trying […]
… be careful what Internet trends you might unleash with that … :-3
Arcstone
Tik tok elbowless challenge when?
the Packbats
…plan “Fix the Runaway with spare parts from the scrapyard” is back on the table, team!
Amanda/OwlBear
tantlers (tusk-antlers) are going to sprout