Oh.
Transcript
Gillie: (ASL) Why??
Gillie looks back to her phone angrily. Idrisah walks closer, looking apologetically between Gillie and Idrisah.
Idrisah: Talita, it's a language that was never intended for your body. We won't judge you if you struggle to pick it up.
Talita: I’m going to judge myself.
Gillie sneers.
Gillie: (ASL) For what!? Not being human?
Talita cringes as if she'd been struck.
She makes an admission as heavy as it is small.
Talita: Yes.
27 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 179”
zofifi
Girl! Aww 😭 Girl!
Kayjack
So all centaurs have a seasonal antler growth. Does that come with any emotional/psychological changes for either sex as well? Is this like a particularly bad time of the year to be going through this emotional strain for Talita? I know they are mainly for social signaling and not fighting but is their any vestigial heightened emotion response that accompanies it?
oh6
Yikes, straight to the point there, Gillie.
ttt
its called Deaf bluntness. it’s a cultural and context-rich communication style designed to give information as quickly and honestly as possible to others who are frequently stripped of that information and context by hearing society. as a result, Deaf culture is straight to the point and doesn’t value hearing culture’s longwinded or delicate ‘politeness’, which can come off as walking on eggshells to Deaf people. it can be culture shock for hearing people to encounter it!
Marcie
The fact that they’re linguists might work against them. Talita doesn’t know if they see her as a friend or a potential science project. Is this an attempt at deepening their friendship, or are they gonna turn around and write a paper about her?
pelya
What even friends are for, if not for writing research papers about their struggles to learn their friends’ language?
Robin
Such potent body language in all these recent panels
Ave Zancuda
Beautiful
Apollo235
Jay, please give this woman a hug
NTLS
Okay wait a really cool detail is that the textbox casts a shadow on talita. i know this is an emotional moment but i thought that was cool
Sparky Lurkdragon
YES!! This has been my favourite part of this whole sequence since the Patreon reveals.
ttt
talita is also talking to a xenolinguist who speaks a language her body can’t produce. except talita has way worse baggage she needs to address and hasn’t for decades due to not having the emotional tools she clearly needs.
but yeah this kind of thing would be addressed in humans with therapy, medication, and normalization by meeting with others. but talita has resisted meeting other centaurs, *centaur-compatible food* is hard to come by let alone medication developed–which it probably hasnt been, considering how strict centaur society seems to be–and who knows about therapy, if talita has done it or if its helpful for centaurs. i wonder if movement therapy or accellerated resolution therapy or EMDR would be helpful for a centaur’s neurological/psychological makeup.
also note: no wonder gillie hates the app. she keeps having to look at it instead of being able to read body language and the careful microexpressions talita makes. that must be horrible, cutting off another channel of communication for her. i’d also feel gross pointing my phone at somebody all the time, especially if there were nothing i could do about it. it’s not like gillie can suddenly learn to hear or talk aloud.
Vinemaple
I keep forgetting that Talita and the Touati-Sharpes are “work friends,” even when they’re usually so easy around each other. We’ve heard in AMAs (suspiciously convenient ones) how Talita is stuck at that point I always get stuck with in my IRL: “Is this person really going to be my friend, or am I about to get hurt again?”
I guess I want to see them be besties so bad, that I overlook how they’ve never shared as much as they’re sharing now, because of Bip.
un_pogaz
I think it’s hard to explain in such clear-cut terms just how much dysmorphia work hard on Talita.
Really looking foraward of Gillie’s reaction to this revelation. And if Idrisah have already some pieces of this puzzle, I don’t think she ever imagined it would be that bad.
Vinemaple
I just realized (sorry, morning coffee brain) that the Touati-Sharpes interact with aliens all day, every day. It’s their job to deal with the cultural and linguistic gaps. It’s possible they haven’t yet internalized what growing up as the only one of her species, among Humans, has affected Talita.
HAL9000
and they’ve never interacted with a centuar other then talita before, so they have no idea just how deep her socialisation/species issues go. they dont realise she isnt a “normal” centaur
Zidane
love the detail of the speech bubble casting a shadow on talita in the last panel
Vinemaple
This is also one of the most alien poses we’ve seen Talita drawn realistically in. The twisted neck, the sideways eyelids making her nicitating membranes look like nicitating membranes, her facial integument all ruffled, her hand looking more than usually strange and clawlike, her trunk curled fully back over her closed mouth so it’s unclear where her voice is coming from, the extra detail in her nostrils… even the reflections in her eyes seem to remind us they’re protected by oil instead of mucus.
This is one of the most powerful things one can do, when one can draw the same character in such a wide range of detail. An artist can really hit their audience over the head with an emotional beat, this way. It’s the other side of the silly Idrisah faces. I’m so jealous, I’m still trying to figure out a *standard* way to draw my Qhantchiki.
Teod
She really really needs a hug. Regular hugs even. When was the last time she’s been hugged?
Vinemaple
It feels weird to admit this, but I think hugging a crying Centaur would feel really nice. I guess the object ought to always be to hold the person THROUGH their crying, and not to MAKE them stop crying, but I would still feel weird for enjoying the vibration rumbling through my entire body.
blythe
Im with gillie here ngl
sure it’s an explanation but almost certainly not a good reason to not try. if theres human signs adapted for *avian* hands a centaur can do it
Adrienne
Even going to a different country and learning to speak a language that pronounces words in ways you never have is intimidating… so I can only imagine what it’s like to be raised by a species where it’s physically impossible for you to ever fit in completely with anyone 🥲
K
I’ve seen in side comics where she’s not been allowed to participate in activities with other children due to being a centaur and instructors worrying about her strength. Now we’re seeing the effects of exclusion and living in a society that was literally not made for you. I want to give Talita a hug 🙁
Greebus
I like the shadow of the speech bubble on Talita’s body.
boxesofboxes
Op, there it is. We all knew it, but now the ladies do, too.
eterna
oooooouh the shadow under the speech bubble, all that space around a single word. the weight
Arcstone
Someone hug her. :c