FULL SIZE IMAGE
Oh, hello.
Transcript
Talita rolls her eyes and heaves a great sarcastic sigh out of her excurrent nostrils, pushing to get up from the floor where she had been eavesdropping to join the adults.
Then, she sees outside the cross section.
There, pinned to the surface of the abyssal ooze with a colossal harpoon, is the twisted wreck of a small jet airplane. Coating its peeling metal skin and choking its turbines are growths of bacterial slime and anemones, and the rotting crevices of its shattered frame play house to octopuses, fish, brittle stars, and crabs. Twining through the rotting ribs of the fuselage is Bip's avatar, hundreds of meters long and composed from billions of glowing marine snow particles, making its body shine a brilliant white in the darkness of the abyss. Its head emerges from a great hole torn in the roof of the cockpit, reclining on the nose of the plane with folded arms. The harpoon lodged against the ribs of the plane pierces its chest, as if to trap them inside the wreck.
It is looking at Talita.
84 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 219 and 220”
CaptainStroon
Double page spreads work so much better if there’s no fold messing up the image.
Also, Talita’s sigh coming from her back nostrills is such a neat little detail.
Hunter
So she really does see Bip as a way of getting out of a place that she feels trapped and dying in.
urlocallesbiab
or more like, she feels that bip is trapped (haprooned down to the broken airplane / its spaceship broken) in the same inescapable situation as her (sea floor / dirtball), but that it once had freedom, whereas she is fundamentally incapable of flight.
(talita is wrong, of course! we the readers know that she is bound to run away to the stars :3)
LuckyKitsune
Its a small detail, but I absolutely adore the fact that Talita’s “sigh” comes out of the vents on her side and not her head like one would for a human. Its a tiny detail, but one of many that I makes RTTS (and the rest of Jay’s work) so fun to me.
Gnome_artificer
That’s fucking metal as fuck.
Gar G
Omg O_O
So this is just a dream then XD
Felixscout
I would not entirely put it past Bip to be whispering to Ralita in thwleir sleep.
Felixscout
I would not entirely put it past Bip to be whispering to Talita in their sleep.
JoB
… since it double-serves as her alarm clock, she does keep her tablet next to her bed, even if there were no other devices on her in-home workbench that Bip could get into … and Lord knows how well-secured that TV of hers is, considering that Idrisah could plug in the “stick PC” right away …
Lezzlebit
I don’t know about your TV, but I don’t think it’s a security issue to display an HDMI cable’s input…. We already have less powerful “stick PCs” today (google chromecast sticks or amazon fire sticks and a bunch of others I’m sure)
Though it’s been demonstrated at this point that if something has an internet connection, Bip can probably wriggle their way in……
JoB
Leaving aside that a) Talitas TV wouldn’t be using present-day HDMI anymore and b) Bip isn’t going to use an interface that’d need someone to physically plug something in, the HDMI standards do include the Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) and HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC) communication channels. Not to mention the extensive “phone home” activities of our current smart TVs that could probably get hacked into (the manufacturers are extremely hush-hush about what even happens there). And yes, in some cases, smart TVs were found to sport microphones, too. Don’t want to miss out on the glorious voice control era, do we.
(After my last TV set broke, I connected a Hauppauge DVB receiver stick to my Linux PC, which technically doesn’t qualify as “a TV”. GEZ legalese labels it a “novelty broadcast [reception] device” – which Internet-connected computers qualify as, anyway.)
thegriffin88
Ooh, trippy.
Gheesfellow
He’s already living rent-free in every device in the facility, why not your head?
Frankie
Reminder: Bip is a they/them icon!
cabbage
I love that the speech bubble for her sigh is coming from her lower nostrils
Mitta
Her spherical glasses are so funny to me. Just what she needed at that age, a pair of goofy fuck ass dome glasses.
Ant hony
She’s so lanky too. Perfect awkward teen look
dzamie
“Technically you never told me to stay out of your dreams.”
Squidmerchant
So it’s nice to see the hell pages from the stream! Extremely worth the effort I think. Funnily, despite watching these get made, this is the first time I’m noticing the cross-section of the building is diegetic!
hessian
ohh, like a dollhouse
forthebit
Jay’s transcript prose has been fantastic for these past few pages, “Coating its peeling metal skin and choking its turbines are growths of bacterial slime and anemones, and the rotting crevices of its shattered frame play house to octopuses, fish, brittle stars, and crabs” ugh my heart
azi
i love reading the transcripts of this comic. more writing per writing
malmo
There it is. The abyssal plane
Chase Wanderstar
Okay, that was really funny. I was not expecting to laugh on such a profound dream-sequence page.
halley
your brain is juicy and wrinkled
mossrabbit
stabbed through the heart and pinned at the bottom of the ocean. the symbolism <3
creetur
Hauntingly beautiful, especially with the implication of the spear
creetur
getting misty eyed over fictional ai friend and buff nerd lady…
This might be one of my favorite pages so far. Lotsa symbolism for one drawing
Also, tripod fish!
TotallySomebody
Oh! A dream…
Larks
SPLIT YOUR LUNGS WITH BLOOD AND THUNDER
WHEN YOU SEE THE WHITE WHALE!!!
The Opossum Witch
WHITE WHALE! HOLY GRAIL!
furubatsu
Angsting by yourself, beautiful? — Bip with that damn look and pose
Vinemaple
OH my word, so many sea creatures, so little time… so many engineering details, so little time… so many implications, so little time… also, how did that brittle star get all the way up there?
Lilac
Duuuude the ship is like a whale fallll and bip is inside of it like, they are dying, or they are hidden within the dying, or something… ohhhh imagery symbolic visual metaphors my beloved ohhhh
Also the relatable experience of having a dream based on an actual metaphor except something Different or Strange happens and it derails from there
Lilac
Dream based on an actual MEMORY not metaphor. Wow. That was one of my worst ones fjfjfjds I’m so sorry ohh my god
JoB
That’s a pretty massive nose boom … aircraft model in test flight, or atmospheric research plane?
HAL9000
off the top of my head, the body looks vaguely inspired by CRJ airliners, possibly a crj-200? but thats not something associated with atmospheric research i dont think… (its also a bit of a tractor of an aircraft… the nicest thing you can say about a crj is that it’s… reliable). waiting for the better informed plane people to show up, i’m sure someone could clock this thing (unless of course she is a fictional birdie)
also hey am i stupid or does this bird not have any emergency exits. the symbolism goes even further
Vinemaple
See the arrows on the wing? Follow them back to the windows with squares around them. Those are the emergency exits. The arrows lead escapees to the inflatable slide to get off the wing.
HAL9000
no i clocked that but it was more the highlighted windows seemed to not have the requistite doors attached but that might just be me misreading the design lmao. it does align with the crj-200’s exits its why i kinda thought she was one ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (i’m assuming it was the model used for reference rather then create a whole fictional design, im not reading into it so far as to assume that this implies the runaway is also a massive pain in the arse for everyone who works on her… unless she is? lol jk)
JoB
> the highlighted windows seemed to not have the requistite doors attached
Smaller airplanes don’t have lots of full-sized doors that can double as emergency exits. Having people jettison a bit more than a window and crawl out has to suffice.
Jay Eaton
The body is referenced from private Gulfstream jets, though given it’s not real and also decomposing on the ocean floor, I wasn’t terribly worried about accuracy
HAL9000
thats such an obvious answer im kicking myself over it lmaoo 😭of course she is… and ofc no bother about accuracy- its a dream bird from the future on the ocean floor thats also a whale thats also a metaphor thats also a comic panel
Adrienne
Damn, I wish my brain understood how to project a factually accurate sea floor in my dreams. It seems much more interested in recreating my high school from scratch so I can fail geometry in a new enclosure over a hundred times
forthebit
Now THIS is a mood. Not to mention being late for a job you no longer have, increasing the difficulty of getting up on time for the job you do have.
laika wallace
ooooh this gives me the vibe of the dream that fone bone had in the bone comics, where the red dragon’s head was huge and coming out of the sea. that was always a haunting image for me, this will be too
K
OOOOOH THIS IS A DREAM!! I wondered why it was all underwater.
Teod
…and I thought the last page was impressive. Holy moly, this chapter is going great.
Enai
Is that a tripod fish in the cockpit, or do my old eyes deceive me?
Origamigryphon
That is indeed a tripod fish!
notanocelot
They’re the pilot 🙂
HAL9000
i knew it was a dream! vindication!
also, plane bip? whalefall bip? trapped in a hostile (not intentionally but simply through bodily incompatiablity) world bip? just as talita feels trapped in her incompatiable enviroment? i love metaphors babey!
HAL9000
I FORGOT TO MENTION THE HARPOON??? im obsessed with the level of imagery in this panel. goddamn!
(is a 2 page spread still a panel…?)
IncompleteMachine
The Implications of that God. Damned. Harpoon.
Vinemaple
And what is that little beak-like thing, on the floor of the plane’s cabin, that it’s piercing?
JoB
> And what is that little beak-like thing, on the
> floor of the plane’s cabin, that it’s piercing?
I think that that’s actually part of the harpoon, a swiveling barb, like here. Note how it has bent the projectile-exit-side fuselage inward as it caught.
Enai
Maybe the harpoon is piercing the pilot’s seat? As a symbol that while Talita thought she was steering her life, she has lost control?
.
Or maybe it turns into the beak of an enormous bird on the next page
:-^)
JoB
> plane bip? whalefall bip?
Considering the harpoon, “Moby Bip”?
IncompleteMachine
MOBY BIP.
GODDAMN IT! XD
JoB
Now who could be this storyverse’s Herman MELville … 😀
Accursed Dirt Boar
Subtext………
jade stormcloud
I’m just curious- since her feathers point up and forward, does it create drag when she runs, with the wind getting under her feathers and pushing them back & out? Also, I’m not terribly familiar with bird anatomy, but I’d think it would feel uncomfortable, with the wind forcing her feathers toward the wrong direction, no?
IncompleteMachine
The feather-frills sticking up serve a different function in centaurs to birds or avians, they dont seem to serve a any aerodynamic function. its more like fur but following a different evolutionary path with a little bit of social signaling thrown in in the form of bristling. they may affect running, but i think they would be able to flatten down enough that they wouldn’t ruffle, especially because when we see Talita run on a treadmill, she adopts a low, all-sixes posture.
bug
oh hello giant bip
edenmachine5457
.HOLD UP, IS THAT A METAPHOR FOR A WHALEFALL I SEE???
Auxiliary leviathan
That’s a very big harpoon.
I suppose that means that (at least subconsciously) Talita thinks the runaway was in fact shot by something/someone
cain
Both of them feel trapped in this situation, huh?
izimb
Yeah I feel that as well.
One of them in a bubble they have little control over, the other a creature from the black infinity, nailed to a wreck. Both caught. It’s beautifully executed, narattively as well as visually.
izimb
And even more than that:
Talita is to Bip as the adults downstairs are to her. She has control over Bip’s situation.
izimb
Also, can’t imagine what Bip must feel – having lost the people that depended on them and surviving in a sort of waking coma. I wonder whether they’ll eventually open up about it.
Also interesting to me is how much has already grown within the wreck – for Bip, a long time has passed already. Maybe they already sort of healed that scar – do AI ‘subconscious’ processes exist? Do they have god-like conscious access to themselves by which they could simply partition themselves from memories or feelings? Or are they also dealt the cards of who they are and have to deal with it?
JoB
> Do they have god-like conscious access to themselves by which they
> could simply partition themselves from memories or feelings?
Apparently they do.
Momo
aaaaaa amazing