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The penultimate chapter has begun!
Transcript
Chapter 9: Outside, Inside
Talita is shown repainting the centaur text on the outside of the Runaway where the hull patch has covered up the message. She and two electrician worms stand on a hanging crane lift with foam brushes, with the worms leaning perilously outside the railing to reach parts of the text.
Inside the Runaway, Talita takes a photo of the cleaned up interior living space. Bip's avatar coils into the frame on the walls, winking and sticking out a tongue while throwing up a V-hand sign that is obviously a photo graphic of a human hand pasted over their vector arm. Talita smiles, standing in her socks on the exterior wall of the sideways room.
Gillie is shown redying her hair "Ember Orange," with a dye brush in her gloved hand. She is in a stained white tank top with her wet hair brushed into a mound on top of her head, away from her ears, forehead and neck. Her eyebrows are also wet with color.
Finishing application, she notices with sneering annoyance that her mystacial whiskers are growing back in. She opens the rather barren medicine cabinet looking for a tool to deal with them, but the only thing on the shelf is an open medicine box for her prescription of Estradiol—Dissolving Subcutaneous Implants, 0.125 mg/day, "for human use only."
88 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 239 and 240”
shortliest fellow
Wait penultimate chapter?? RTTS is way shorter than I thought!
shorts
penultimate chapter of book one iirc!! There’s still plenty to go 😛
relieved fellow
Oh thank goodness!
Lettuce Vervain
WAIT I ALMOST MISSED THIS ONE!! WE’RE BACK
talita repainting the centaur text made me gasp & feel like crying… waaah
glazeliights
you know, I think its interesting that the top right panel shows talitas vision being focused on her phone, which is right in front of her face, even though she doesnt have her glasses on
foca
oh yeah i didn’t notice that before! i wonder if jay forgot the glasses or if it’s gonna be explained later.
Jay Eaton
Because joke with Bip’s hand being a photo asset is more important to the page than it being a Talita POV shot.
Also, for a strictly accurate hyperopia POV shot, the background would still be even blurrier than the tablet, because her eyes aren’t focused on it. If your eyes are focused on your finger an inch from your nose, you aren’t seeing anything behind that blurry finger in sharper clarity. (In fact, the blurry background is duplicated.) I would rather the entire panel not be a grey smear.
Robin Bobcat
It’s also entirely possible that the tablet display can correct for focal length? Changing the settings normally used to give it a 3D display to instead shift perspective and so forth?
Heck, it’s a *centaur* ship, they might well have had tablets that accommodate centaurs?
Gar G
Is it just me or is the amount of detail here insane? (in a good way)
Vinemaple
Oh, my word, the INSETS… that is such a cool way to tell these little stories, turning four panels into seven, if you count the phone! I think this might solve a narration problem I’m having with one of my comic sequences.
Jay, I just love your panel design. Every page is visually interesting and conveys emotion and tone and vibes, without ever (hardly ever?) diverging from straight lines on a grid. Everyone is slicing up their pages diagonally, but here you are making so much more of an impact on the reader, with just straight lines and right angles and a few missing borders!
TeethBurglar
I have a feeling Gillie is about to pluck her whiskers (scary)
gnome_artificer
Yeah, I feel like I’m on this page and am being called out. I imagine plucking whiskers feels 10x worse than plucking my mustache. Future estradiol might be nice though.
Smooti
I love the detail that Gillie plucks her whiskers for gender reasons, but also doesn’t do laser removal bcz she doesn’t want them gone permanently either. An interesting parallel between that and Talita’s antler dysphoria.
I do wonder, do Gillie’s eyelashes also come out white, and if so does she dye them? Get them tinted? Are there safer means of changing eyebrows and eyelash colors in the future?
These aren’t even questions for the character really I just love thinking about the world being built in this comic!
Jay Eaton
Her eyelashes are white, she uses a staining mascara
hurgaburga
Bip photorealistic hand jumpscare
un_pogaz
We are so back!
Oh, Talita who repaints the script on the patch with Bip, that so sweet. And planel 2-3 when each others take a photo of the interior finished work, so great too.
Eux
PAINTING AND BRUSHING IN TWO WAYS AUAUUAUGH! fuck. this all looks so good. the calm before the storm. gillie’s hair looks super cute swept up like this too. ;a;
planetixin
Gillie what transition methods have you been using? I’m asking as a fellow transfem. [I’m asking about the in-world transition methods]
[] – non canonical text
Jay Eaton
Please submit questions for characters here: https://forms.gle/9Wpu1hh6mZw67YCA7
ToothedMammal
I love that Talita is also fixing up the paint on the outside, it’s something not strictly necessary for the ship to be able to run but it’s so important emotionally for both Bip and Talita.
I’m curious as to what a paint is made of to be space proof, I’ll assume it doesn’t have to deal with rentry heat, but I imagine space radiation would cause regular paints/dyed to fade pretty quickly.
JoB
> I’m curious as to what a paint is made of to be space proof
Likely depends on what color the paint is. Tires are almost universally black because you can dye them with soot, which is particularly UV stable.
Seems like the Runaway’s markings are red, though …
tminusfiveminutes
For that matter, normal paint dries because the oil reacts with oxygen forming a polymer, or by water evaporating and leaving paint behind. There’s no oxygen on Dirtball, and I feel like the paint boiling in the bucket from low atmospheric pressure would cause problems. Epoxy style paint maybe?
godspeed
I am kinda glad I am not the only person who’s first thoughts for this panel were, oooh space paint… How does painting in space work 🤔
Love the composition of these panels, btw. Real eye candy. Almost like keeping a nice smooth stone in your pocket.
XV
Very glad I learned about and caught up with this comic yesterday! I can’t wait to join everyone for the ride into the stars 😀
the Inmara
This page nearly made us cry, when we realized that Gillie’s new look is specifically to show off her cat features. She’s changing her life so she doesn’t have to hide them anymore.
When we came out and transitioned, we swore that we would not remain in the closet about anything else ever again, and it has turned out that that’s been harder than we anticipated. The whole plural thing has been a hell of a journey. So, seeing her take this step is poignant for us.
the Inmara
Because, that doesn’t just look like dyed hair. It seems shorter, too. Right? Are we misreading that?
XV
if she’s dyeing her hair, it might just be pulled back at the moment, since her concerns with being stared at for being off-model wouldn’t go away if they moved to a more populated area. but maybe one day she’ll be in an environment where she doesn’t have to worry about being judged for her appearance anymore. 🙂
Genko
It could be, or it could be pulled back temporarily to avoid getting dye everywhere
Jason Myers
I believe she is actually about to be plucking those whiskers, if I remember correctly.
edenmachine5457
.plurality 🤝 (if this doesn’t reply to the right thing i will lose my mind)
1d4-nadg
🤝
Viridian
🤝
raydfil
WE’RE SO BACK WE’RE SO BACK AAAHHHH!!!! YAY YAY YAY!!
edenmachine5457
.hmmmm… “container”. should narrow it down but not enough to outright tell you where it is
edenmachine5457
.THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A REPLY TO ANOTHER COMMENT HOLD ON
DOSRG
i LOVE the detail that gillie’s HRT is in subdermal implants with a self applicator- one of those tiny details that implies the future timeframe so tidily as something that makes PERFECT sense to have advanced in that way
Tentament
You can get subdermal implants for birth control right now, though they’re not self-applied.
cain
you can also get subdermal implants for estrogen and testosterone, but also not self-applied. the self-application is the real advancement here 🙂
Arcstone
I’m guessing those are for whiskers?
1d4-nadg
If that’s your question: HRT stands for hormone replacent therapy, commonly used in menopaused women, men with testoterone defiencency, or trans people who want to medically transition – as Gillie did.
There was an AMA earlier that said that if she was typ, her and idrishah could have a kid the easy way too 😉
Arcstone
Yeah, I’m not really part of that whole side of society, I dont know these things. Only happy to learn though.
Thank you for educating me.
Lilac
What does “weeringeul” on the hair dye box mean i wonder, is it just like a brand name? Also talita looks so happy in the panel inside the second panel omg
Light_In_The_Fog
Apparently wearingeul is a korean pen ink company?? idk
MutableAlias
i think it must be a reference since Jay likes pens and ink, iirc they mentioned it on stream?
wingedhorror
Yeah, fancy Korean pen and ink company. Also the Korean phrase “to write” (as in “writing a story”).
Maybe a company already specializing in pigments decide to expand their market in the future. 🙂
Vinemaple
I KNEW it sounded Korean. A little glimpse into the Runawayverse beyond Dirtball, where many American corporations and brands are gone, and consumer products come from a more diverse range of places, right?
Also kind of interesting to think of Weeringeul, or at least their name, surviving over the centuries and still in the business of selling color, and ways to apply it. Kind of like Fuji reinventing themselves as a broad-based consumer chemistry company after the rise of digital photography.
Lilac
Oohh cool!!
Felixscout
Wait, this is the last chapter? Aw man…
Lilac
Penultimate means second to last though, so not yet!!
PhasmaFelis
I think it’s the penultimate chapter of book 1. There’s at least 2 or 3 books planned, I think.
Redacted
🫵🫵🫵RAT SPOTTED🫵🫵🫵
Light_In_The_Fog
Where??!!!! I can’t find it??
Light_In_The_Fog
Found it!!! It took me a while, its so smol
Vinemaple
Cool to see people are finding the rat online. When they were drawing it, Jay doubted anyone would, but said it’d be visible in the printed book. It’s pretty clear on the full-size image!
Rose
same!! this is the first hidden rat i’ve found ^^
HAL9000
the tiny bipworms helping paint the runaway… awww
Stampowl19
The writing on the hair dye reminds me of those fancy inks! There’s a company that is named really similarly 🙂 is it a word that means “color” or something similar maybe?
Thisfox
Oh yeah, I have that same shortsighted fuzzyscape around my phone screen, Talita.
BugFurret
Wait, the penultimate chapter… Is the comic ending after they all jump on the Runaway?
Jay Eaton
this is the first of four planned books
the Inmara
ooh
Vinemaple
I know right
IncompleteMachine
i am so glad there will be more
Heather
Ooooouuugh repainting the centaur script on the outside of the Runaway over the hull patch…….. i’m gonna lose it. Someone survived this! We are still faster than you!
Entguarde
OOUUUUGHHH do you think bip helped her write it…
Heather
OOOOUUUAAAAAAAAAAGGGGH
HAL9000
bip is painting it! look close, you see the bipworms on the platform with talita holding brushes
FunkyTrashCan
Makeovers!
blythe
dying her eyebrows?? 😭 kids please do not do this at home (or at all)
Adrienne
Maybe it’s safer in future times? One hopes!
Jay Eaton
haha yeah it’s not a good idea don’t get hair dye in your eyes kids (suppressing a flashback to dyeing my eyebrows and eyelashes with conventional hair dye in college)