READER WARNING: The comments are inevitably going to spoil this if you haven't read the lore website...
Sorry the last couple pages have been going up hours late, I'm behind on transcripts and been struggling to catch up because busy+burnt out=late for everything.
Hardwood from trees and most animal byproducts are rare luxuries (and by vast majority, imported) in space colonies like Jovia. Talita isn't an appraiser but she can tell some of the wooden furniture in here is the real deal, not hard myla (mycellial lattice, a common organic building material made from the mycellium of a GMO oyster mushroom strain).
Transcript
Talita opens the top drawer of a large chest curiously, while Bip's avatar snakes around the walls near her.
Talita: Are you really getting rid of all of these… …personal possessions?
Bip: Objects are meaningless without the people who valued and used them.
She frowns, holding up an old, beat up manual book.
Talita: I’m not sure I agree… it seems wasteful.
She holds the book out arms length, squinting to try and read the text without glasses.
Talita: In your position, I’d consider at least selling some of this.
She reaches deeper into the drawer and touches something soft, tugging out a thick, plush fold of it with her hand. It appears to be a large blanket of tiled, fuzzy triangles. Each triangle has simple stitched designs and knots in the center, forming simple patterns and symbols. Talita pulls it closer to her face and realizes with sudden astonishment that she's touching a real organic material, not faux velvet.
Talita: …Wait, is this real leather?? It must be worth a fortune!
62 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 208”
halley
the clothes shes wearing look so comfy. like full-body joggers
Rhi
Oh you fucking genius juxtaposing this saving of the antler velvet by culturally in tune centaurs vs Talita viewing the velvet as an itching annoyance, tearing at it and throwing it away because to her, someone who’s a cultural orphan, it has no purpose.
You fucking genius this is so good.
Eux
oh yes i was hoping we’d get more looks at all the ITEMS and OBJECTS!!
hessian
[SECONDING THE COMMENT SECTION SPOILER WARNING]
i see why this chapter is named antlers!!
tyrone
I was missing the point (I do not follow anything or anyone on any SOME)
but your “Antlers” made the light go on…Its a clan-idol. Best way I can describe it.
the **** of all previous (most Long dead) and until that point still living Centaurclan members **** sewn together to form a clan idol, nice.
Well. some of us has cremated parents&spouses on the mantelpiece.
Rubicon Art
The schedule for this comic is crazy quick, Jay, if you need to drop to twice or once a week instead of three times, that’s entirely reasonable.
KishiKai
Seconded – if you’re approaching burnout, you should take a few weeks off before it gets worse, then maybe return with an easier upload schedule
Sparky Lurkdragon
The pages for the public webcomic were drawn well in advance. On Jay’s Patreon, their schedule is “when it’s done” and they’re a couple of chapters ahead of the public comic.
thegriffin88
For real, except for Explosm which has more than one artist all the comics I read update once a week.
Jay Eaton
The burnout is not due to drawing webcomic pages (the update schedule of the public site is not reflective of the actual rate at which I’m drawing comic pages, the first page went up here after I’d already drawn half of the book) it’s some unrelated life events that have added to my daily task load and made it harder to keep up. Transcripts are something I ordinarily do in batches in advance of the comics posting, but I’d fallen behind and was having trouble catching up. I finally found the time and queued the rest of the chapter last night. I’m not really looking for sympathy or advice, I just wanted to let invested readers know it was a human error and not a website one.
thegriffin88
Oh okay, well you’re the only person I’ve actually seen post their scripts! I…mine are only legible to me. 😅
Jay Eaton
The transcript is written after the pages are drawn lol, entirely for the benefit of visually impaired readers and readers using machine translation. In the process of writing a comic I don’t normally make cohesive scripts beyond dialog, and those are mostly for the benefit of editors. Dumping my brain on paper usually happens in the form of comic thumbnails.
1d4-nadg
I noticed the comics getting a bit late, but I thought it was wordpress acting up again. Please please please take the time you need, don’t burn yourself out on this. We will wait.
(or maybe ask for help with the transcripts? I’m sure some of us would love to help)
thegriffin88
Well don’t kill yourself for out sake, Jay.
Hey, in case you get this (I’m not comfortable brushing dust off my tumblr account) What about GMO animal farming for fiber and dairy? I’ve got this headcanon thing I’ve been workshopping to add griffins (it’s all on Bluesky, same name) and crossed an alpaca and a yak on Mars. Griffins live in giant habitat bubbles in the Martian Free States. It’s not enough to supply the population but it’s not nothing.
I’ve been checking everything you’ve written down so I don’t break your world, I might die if I did that. *Animal Crossing worrying animation*
Enai
Yes, please take care of yourself. Burnout is horrible (don’t ask me how I know) and when sufficiently severe even very good therapy may not ever allow a return to baseline (seriously, don’t ask me how I know).
Vinemaple
You’ve had a huge year, Jay… and hiatuses happen to webcomics. Take care of yourself. We’re hooked enough to wait. We know it will be worth it. Maybe don’t schedule the start of book 2 just yet?
thegriffin88
Yeah Three in a Tree’s off for two months because they’re moving. It’s cool, I’ll be here when they’re back.
Lilac
Huh, I was thinking Talita wouldn’t want to keep any of this to herself because of the whole estranged from her own culture and everything, but maybe she may want at least something seeing how little interest bip has in it now… if it were me, I’d want to keep it all for sentimental value, not sell it, but everyone has different perspectives I suppose. I do wonder what bip’s reaction to this next page will be- i mean, I presume they do like money, seeing as they used to spend a lot of time acquiring it illegaly. I’m so curious…..
Lilac
*IN this next page not To this next page dhhfdsgds
thegriffin88
I think she wants to know but it’s so hard for her to talk to other Centaurs because she’s clan-less and they just don’t understand foster care it’s completely foreign to their mindset as a culture.
But…if she became a Sun chaser Centaur of the clan Runaway….
Morbidipea
It’s not just that… she has the wrong body language. She’s been conditioned to imitate human body language, which (per centaur culture/explanation pages on Jay’s tumblr) reads as VERY wrong to centaur-raised centaurs.
Matt
As someone with a pretty severe mycophobia, the thought of the future being largely made of mushrooms is pretty unpleasant haha
JoB
> READER WARNING: The comments are inevitably going
> to spoil this if you haven’t read the lore website…
… nah. There’s no point discussing that before Talita opened the bookmarked page.
Vinemaple
wait… the BOOK?
Ruby
Oh dear, Bip is either going to be really miffed or really amused by her reaction 😅
Matt
I would more expect Talita to be really miffed and/or surprised at Bip wanting to throw it away, once she learns about its importance!
zims
I just found out what that leather is a couple days ago and now I’m sad and mildly horrified. Talia please don’t say it’s worth money, if nothing else it belongs in a museum.
zaratustra
how did you not know – oh, i guess not everyone lived through the 80s.
zaratustra
oh, i thought you said you didn’t know what leather in general is made of. I should go have some coffee.
Anonymous
It makes sense that, as an AI, Bip would care more about the people rather than the objects itself, but Talita (and most biological people) would prefer to keep the items rather than throw them away because they actually have the physical ability to bring new value and use to them. A neat contrast in mindsets!
Of course, some people hold on to objects of loved ones and intentionally don’t give them new use, leaving them untouched as a form of mourning…it’s possible that AIs other than Bip do like to hold onto objects of their loved ones even if it’s “irrational” for an AI to keep hold of things it has no use for.
Vinemaple
I think Bip is objectively wrong, in that objects can tell us a great deal about the people who used them, after those people can no longer tell us about themselves. They live on in what they made, and how they used things.
But I also think Bip is saying this because they’re trying to fight off their grief and focus on their survival.
Paroxysmall
the monocle stored next to the books vs Talita squinting to read
She’s using all 8 eyelids, do her nictitating membranes help focusing much or is it just instinct? Also sorry to hear you’re fighting burnout and work
eden
bit of both! social conditioning is a thing man
Hubert
Grief and heavy boxes… I think Jack Gilbert wrote about that.
K
AAAAH SHE FOUND THE VELVET LEATHER!!!! (this is all so sad these people died and all that’s left of them is a faded memory)
Vinemaple
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Don’t say what it is don’t say what it is don’t say what it is DON’T SAY WHAT THE BLANKET IS!
Logan
“Omnipotent [——s(?)]tation Manual”
Oooooooo that hand in the way is killing me! And Bip is looking right at it!
Greebus
It looks like the second word is “print”, based on my best guess of panel 3
griffyn
my guess: omnipotent space station manual.
maybe like hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, but 2300s version? its such a neat detail regardless!
JoB
The beginning of that middle line is legible in the first panel, looks like it’s “Printstation” …
un_pogaz
Oh. *Oh*.
When Talita will understands the implications, I bet she’ll immediately use it to eat something fresh and new, even if it means sleeping in front of the printer.
Also, quite a big luck that the previous owners were Centaurs, non seulement they probably be quite thorough in terms of the number and variety of foods available, but above all Talita won’t have to do a lot of research, adaptation, and adjustment to make it work.
Truly, the alignment of the planets that the universe creates so that Talita, Idrisah and Gillie leave Dirtball is incredible.
JoB
I’m not sure that I would trust an “omnipotent printstation” to be sanitary enough to use as a food printer right away. That’d be a bit like using a paint+plaster guy’s brushes with the food coloring you want to use on a cake …
Also, if Talita really proceeds to using equipment that the centaur crew adapted themselves, Bip’ll have to guide her through that baby step by baby step. Even if the crew wrote documentation, it won’t be in English. (Not even franglais tordu.)
Origamigryphon
Oh man, there’s also a monocle in there that she could use right now, since she doesn’t have her glasses on…
Zerooooo
Am i crazy or does talita have a little dent on her face where her glasses usually go
Jay Eaton
Yes :^)
MoonyBeasty
I absolutely LOVE that tiny detail so much
Athelind Llewellyn Long
I LOVE this detail. I LIVE this detail. After half a century in spectacles, I’ve got a pair of those behind my ears, and little dents on either side of my nose, as well, and I’ve never heard anyone else ever mention such a thing.
Vinemaple
Oh my GOODNESS! Thank you so much for pointing that out! My eyesight is so bad I’ve never noticed that!
This comic is SO GOOD…
TotallySomebody
Ohh!!! I know what that is!!! (Before I knew you were making an actual book I just read the lore pages and one-shot comics over and over again ahahah)
Logan
Lolol me too. I love rebrowsing the lore site! Plus there’s usually an update or corner I haven’t explored yet :3
Raydfil
ohhhh talita. i know she grew up with humans. i feel like i’m still only realizing how little she knows about her culture at all. to go from just priorly throwing out her velvet to realizing that she’s holding possibly the only organic remains of the centaur group and that they preserved and treasured a thing which she only ever knew as a nuisance is going to hit her so hard. poor girl. i wonder if bip is going to explain what they are.
Raydfil
or rather- not Her Culture. the culture from which she originates from.
Vinemaple
Not even HER culture, just her species… Talita doesn’t have any meaningful connection to ANY Centaur culture, and as an orphan, has little chance of gaining one, a point that the Humans in her life have always had trouble understanding.
Egg
Oh god is pleather still a thing in this setting? I suppose so considering raising cattle and other leather producing animals would be difficult in space, I just hope they created a biodegradable and sustainable version of pleather in this future
Also Bip has an interesting approach to grief.
Skadoosh
They probably use genetically engineered mushroom or microbe leather, stuff like that.
Jay Eaton
Petroleum is not nearly as cheap and easy a resource in orbit of Jupiter as it was on Earth in the 20th century (and there’s also much less of it on Earth in the 2300s) so plastics have to be synthesized from agricultural products. They still have indispensable uses in food processing and medical science, but the cheap fake leather option in Jovia would also be a form of myla. Completely biodegradable but generally treated with (pretty nasty…) chemicals that make it take a very long time to disintegrate. Definitely less plastic than typical pleather and recycled leather products in our modern day.
mossrabbit
i could see leather also being made from ‘printed’ hides. food printers can synthesize ‘meat’ by assembling molecules, so hypothetically, one could TECHNICALLY print out a sheet of skin-like organic material and tan it/treat it. but i have a feeling any kind of organic printer is going to fail to capture both the texture and the durability of real hides, so itd probably be the leather equivalent of homemade papyrus made with paper scraps. same with any kind of bone-based material; we just havent come up with anything thats as good at it at the things its best at
Skadoosh
You could also grow skin cell cultures in nutrient solution and take them out once they reach the desired thickness. Like a kombucha SCOBY, but made of gmo animal skin cells.
Michi
What is happening on Titan in your universe? The moon is covered in hydrocarbon. For a society wormholing through the galaxy, mining a moon in your solar system seems easy pickings.
Peter Jensen
IIRC, in this setting Earth is still battling the effects of catastrophic climate change, so there’s probably some cultural resistance to the idea of importing massive amounts of additional hydrocarbons that eventually likely ends up as more atmospheric CO2.
But also, the transportation issue solved with wormholes is just one thing. The practical problems of “mining” a cryogenic world are probably … significant. Whether it’s worth it depends on what it’s competing with. And we’re not comparing with hydrocarbon extraction on current Earth, which is still ridiculously cheap (there’s a reason oil companies make a lot of money). Biologically derived plastics today are not *that* much more expensive, so I can see that economically replacing extracted hydrocarbons for essential plastics needs.
Marcie
They do technically have the ability to delete memories that are taking up space…
Or, less depressingly, maybe being able to perfectly recall the time they spent with someone makes it easier to move on from their death? One can only hope
Vinemaple
Bip asking about the lifeboat makes it seem like they were offline when the crew died. Although maybe that was just 831-phones Bip not having access to the memories, I don’t know.