Talita enters the dollhouse. Idrisah decorates like a grandma.
Transcript
Gillie taps her phone to the entrance of apartment block 2 to unlock it with a beep. Talita looks back nervously, then ducks low through the human scale front doors after Gillie. Gillie unlocks the door to apartment 138 as Talita waits awkwardly on all sixes, head nearly touching the ceiling. Behind them, Yao leaves xer apartment in a fluffy black bath robe holding a weed pipe and is shocked to see Talita in the hall. Talita glances at xem with a mortified look. Finally, Gillie enters the apartment, immediately taking off her ear clips, and Talita walks in behind her. It's a cozy space decorated with antiques, houseplants, Arabic and Tiiliitian calligraphy, a ceramic chicken next to a candy dish, fish shaped gluggle jugs (one of which is serving as a flower vase), and a hanging arabesque lantern. The dining table is covered in clutter and an unfinished jigsaw puzzle, and an embroidered throw blanket hangs on the couch.
79 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 113”
Arcstone
Talita giving some adult walking into a kids tree house vibes there.
Carmenifold
lovely ceramic chicken…………..
Hosp
Doesn’t it hurt Gillie to have her ears pinned down constantly? Cartilage is such a fragile thing, even having my headphones on for a couple minutes too long can trigger a migraine, how does she keep her ears down all the time?
Stitcher
I may not be as tall as Talita, but I can relate to her pain regarding the x and z axes. My shoulderspsn is nearly 2ft across snd I’ve got a particularly stocky frame on top of being barrel chested. Combine thst with only being 5’5″ (165cm), and just about everything is at elbow height snd primed for being bumped over if I’m notsuper careful and hyper aware of my surroundings.
Gar G
Nice place she has here!
Though now I’m wondering how claustrophobic human dwellings must feel for Centaurs. Like I imagine that after a while it starts getting uncomfortable for them
(Kinda reminds me of the Andalites from Animorphs. They too are centaur aliens and have evolved to run across open plains, so they hate feeling crowded or confined. Centaurs probably don’t have it as bad tho)
Stitcher
Looks pretty bad.
creetur
Gluggle jug (fish with the flowers) on the table my beloved..
dokki
oooooh everything. Everything is so good. Your ability to draw places that are lived-in never ceases to amaze me.
Man its weird seeing talita on all 6s like this. From this perspective and because of the ceiling height it’s like she’s actually quadrupedal and not a centaur at all!
Even if talitas just huge the ceiling really does look pretty low, I wonder if idrisah has ever bonked her head on that ceiling boob light
Jay Eaton
Idrisah’s six foot (182.88 cm) and the ceiling is 2.5 meters (8.2021 feet). I think she’s safe. We’re looking at the room from Talita’s eye height so it appears pretty cramped.
HAL9000
okay i am deeply confused about their work schedules.
Jay Eaton
Don’t worry about it. I’m not.
Rubicon Art
I remember watching you draw the clutter on stream!
Zarky
What clutter?
Rubicon Art
The gluggle jugs specifically!
Birdie
I love the little detail of the way that yao’s hair parts kinda weirdly around the back of xer horns
Montydragon
Love that the puzzle is an avian doing aerial ribbon-dancing… Perhaps puzzling is an activity all the sophonts enjoy doing together.
TeethBurglar
Oh! Is that some Tiiliitian calligraphy by the door? I wonder if Gillie has any bugferret nicknacks to match her wife.
JoB
From the cat figurine and the ornate patterns on the bookspines and the watchamabox, I’d guess that the cupboard’s middle open shelf is hers. (Idrisah having the reach to use the top shelves of cupboard and “coatspace”.)
(The box reminds me of a sewing basket, but those wouldn’t have their lids propped up a crack …
https://media.cdn.kaufland.de/product-images/1024×1024/b6059926d313777e1d6e380c7629578b.webp
)
Jay Eaton
It’s an antique wooden rehal box.
JoB
… then I was also wrong about that shelf being reserved for Gillie, I suppose … 😐
bitty
ha, the way talita looks in the hallway and going through the door is so funny x3
also the chairs! i have those chairs. they seem to be really common and sturdy, dependable ones at least!
hessian
bwah. their house looks just like my muslim family’s place. the calligraphy and patterned rugs are a really nice touch. also they have a very similar napkin tray LMAO but thats probably just the grandma vibes
iisaw
I love the _thought_ put into all the little details, even something as simple like the wear marks on the building’s entrance mat and the pipe in the planter!
godspeed
Love how they have non edible plants on this tiny rock in space.
So glad the employees can decorate their home, just like they could on earth.
Love the space tulips.
(And Yao’s Muppet face.)
Bright
From a purely utilitarian POV, more plants = more oxygen, so anyone running a HAB or a space station probably has incentive to encourage houseplants. Probably makes the air inside buildings feel less recycled and provides morale boosts- you really don’t want people going stir crazy when the vacuum of space is like a couple thick walls away.
JoB
I would agree with that *in general*, *but*: This particular habitat (see page 27 f.) has its agri installations plus a ring of large plants along the perimeter, and used to house ~1,500 avians, while the current population’s oxygen consumption probably equals that of only a couple hundred avians. And at least for humans, *too much* oxygen *is* a thing …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity
Translunary_Animus
“Oh fuck its my temp don’t notice me don’t notice me oh god oh fuck xe noticed me” going on in the 3rd panel
Fallingfeather
Battle of the muppet faces…
Lilac
The awkward eye contact moment in panel 3 is so real
40
The :3 in the picture 😭
gigithebear
hehehe i LOVE the detail of all the hoodies right by the door so idrisah can quickly put on something to cover her hair when they answer the door
Spugpow
So they still pronounce the word coffee the same way in the future, I see I see
Chaos
I love how I recognized the fish jugs right away. So much detail into making these environments look like real, lived in homes! A partially done puzzle on the table is so relatable too.
Zuorai
The IPA coffee mug is my favorite part of this
Marcie
the IPA coffee mug 😭
Egg
Something I have been thinking about a lot, is this place technically a company town? Like is the living place owned by the same people running the mining operation? If so, knowing how historically company towns are rife with ethical issues it makes me wonder how this place is running with seemingly very few problems. I assume in the future they just have a bunch of super strict regulations, or maybe this place is directly owned by the goverment or something but I’m rather curious about what sort of regulations they have in place to ensure places like this don’t turn into absolute nightmares.
Dicemonger
Hmm.. I’m thinking the primary issue with company towns is when the company controls the prices of essentials, so they can siphon your pay back into their own coffers (and ideally all your pay). And then there are issues with what rules the company might want to impose on the inhabitants (like the company town with no alcohol) in order to induce productivity / avoid unions.
For the first part I’m thinking it might be more like how I imagine oil platforms or (ethical) shipping companies work today. Living arrangements and essentials are simply included in the job. This might impact your pay, but it might actually impact it in an upwards direction, since you are basically agreeing to sign away decisions on living arrangements and food to the employer, and agreeing to live isolated from the rest of society.
So the employees that stick around are racking in cash, making them less dependent on their future employment.
For stuff like you right to expression, unionization and leisure time and such, that is where I imagine that there might be some solid government regulations. Or maybe just solid employment contracts.
This all of course just being personal ideas on how it might work, and assuming that we are living in a relatively nice future, and not some dystopic corporatocracy.
the Inmara
Good question. But we wonder.
Is it running with seemingly few problems, though?
I mean, maybe it is. But maybe also, the story is just not highlighting a lot o the problems because they aren’t immediately relevant, and there’s limited time and space to show them.
Still, the comic so far has been showing the irritating things that Talita has been putting up with, and reason she may want to leave. And people have been complaining to each other. But maybe that’s not quite as bad as one would expect from a company town?
Could also be that the demands and rigors of living in space have made it so that a lot of the things you’d see in a bad company town down here on Earth can’t happen there without the whole place collapsing and being uninhabitable. And the other kinds of restrictions you’d expect are a serious safety concern, so the residents put up with it because it’s a matter of survival.
Uh
👁👁 to 👁👁 communication in the third panel
Bear-on-a-tricycle
Oh, I love their apartment! So cozy looking. I love all the little details. It looks like there may be a thrift store somewhere. How fun would it be to shop at an intergalactic thrift store! Fun little trinkets from various planets!
Since the title of this chapter is zucchini, will there be a zucchini hidden on each page? I spotted one!
Also, it looks like access to the apartments is done with electronic key fobs? Don’t they have to worry about nefarious hackers hacking into the system… other than Bip?
feesh
i think nefarious hackers usually have bigger things to worry about than a 60-person work town in what’s basically Antarctica lol
JoB
> it looks like access to the apartments is done with electronic key fobs? Don’t they have to worry about nefarious hackers hacking into the system
RFID-based doorlocks *can* be secure (proper cryptographic protocols and tamper-resistant chips / security environments), *if* you check commercial offers thoroughly for that (looking at you, Mifare!). But to give credit where credit is due, *if* Dirtball had a problem with locksport folks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locksport
the building-affixed parts (transceiver and the motor moving the actual lock, both needing electric power) would promptly get moved out of the door leaf and into the frame, if not even further onto the “safe side”.
West
the snail salt & pepper shakers….
Common Handle
Oh those are absolutely adorable. Snalt and snepper shakers 🙂
JoB
Dunno about the latter, but I imagine the former slow-charging every human coming near it, hollering “REVENGE! LET’S SEE HOW MUCH *YOU* LIKE GETTING SALTED!!!”
(… hmmmm would reprogrammed electronics from a musical birthday card fit underneath the base … ?)
40
Snesbians…
Willard
Gosh, I LOVE the use of perspective in this page!!!!!!!!! Normally we would see a lot less of the ceiling making it visually clear that the taller character is above the reader’s line of sight, but here the reader is on the same level as Talita and we get to essentially see things from her perspective, making our fellow humans the short ones!!!!!!! I love this so much, such great composition!
TotallySomebody
I like the Grandma Interior
0xabad1dea
I love the “Creature encountering a Creature and neither says a word” thing going on in the hallway
un_pogaz
Damn, it’s always impressive to see a reminder of how tall Talita is comparing to human.
I can well imagine and understand her annoyance at the ransacking of her student apartment mentioned in the Reader question: it was a vital amenity. I understand as much when she mentioned it, but now it’s painfully obvious that she can’t live in a human-sized apartment.
Peter Jensen
Now imagine her squeezing into a human-sized dorm room! Those things are usually pretty cramped as it is.
JoB
[imagines the perpetrators getting squished into a corner as she does]
JoB
Zucchini detected? Or is that supposed to be a carambola? 😉
I’m a bit surprised to see what seems to be torn, single-use paper or plastic packaging on the table. Those should be unusually hard to make/recycle in a small replica ecosystem like Shikaviil Port …
Third set of horns/antlers we see on Yao. How many sets *did* xey haul along to xer new job?
AnaKaye
My guess is that it’s made of an easily-recycled bioplastic sheet that’s printed in much the same way as Talita’s food is printed. Use it, send it back into the system and it gets turned into agricultural nutrients or just into new packaging or whatever.
Birdie
The label on it reads as a shipping label to my eye, so it could be a package mailed in from somewhere else
JoB
Hmmmm, like, the gift Gillie and Idrisah brought along on page 41 ff. … ?
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-page-41-and-42/
Peter Jensen
Actually, I think this is the 4th set of horns we’ve seen. There’s this page (forward pointing, curving down, then up), reader questions 6 (antlers), page 84+ (backwards pointing, goat-like), but I was just now reading back an earlier part and on page 53 the whole temp crew is in the background, and xe seems to be wearing yet another style (curving sideways out and then in, somewhat resembling cartoon devil horns).
And I get it, if you’re spending to get those implants in the first place, spending a bit more to have options for different situations/moods makes a lot of sense.
Claire
That’s.. a LOT of gurgling fish jugs. Especially for a deaf person, who cannot hear the gurgle.
Is… is she trolling her guests??
K
she might just like the shape of the fish jugs, there’s always a chance she chose appearance over their actual function given that it was technically useless to her
Claire
That’s fair, but also she seems the kind to wish to troll her guests like that
Tyrone the Miner
In Space…no one kan hear a fish fart….
https://www.science.org/content/article/farting-fish-keep-touch
Certainly a deaf Sophont joke upon the unprepared!
Besides the Fish Jugs, that ceiling lamp is there at its own peril!
Jay Eaton
Idrisah is the one collecting them.
Amanda/OwlBear
looks nice, kinda homey, not at all a bad living space
wonder what the jigsaw is of
JoB
If the front of the box is any indication, it’s a depiction of Skimmer sky weaving.
https://jayeaton.site/RunawayToTheStars/Sophonts/Avians/Culture#Media
Amanda/OwlBear
ooh yes that seems likely
Hubert
Legal ganja for dirtball?
Jay Eaton
Cannabis is legal but smoking it isn’t. So technically Yao is still breaking the rules.
Rem
Really love how the lower angle of these panels emphasizes how tiny and claustrophobic a “normal” human space is for Talita, and the one panel from Yao’s perspective also emphasizes how HUGE she feels from a human perspective. Really smart composition!
Guest
I wonder if those gluggle jugs are reproductions or genuine antiques
Jay Eaton
They are antiques but, produced well after our time. Idrisah likes collecting kitschy old things.
Tentament
Talita’s a centaur, not a duck 🙂