While the common Martian English exonym for bug ferrets is "gateworms" calling them just "worms" is... eh... not super PC. Thanks grandma Ranni.
Transcript
Talita: There was a mix-up and an active ship got incorrectly added to a bulk scrap order. The original owners requested it be sent back to them.
Ranni: Oh?? But under the SIMS profile, Ixion is listed as the title owner…
She pulls one of her monitors closer to check the information.
Idrisah: It's– uh– we had difficulty getting wormhole customs to process it otherwise.
Ranni: Haha! Figures. Those worms sure love to micromanage their holes.
Idrisah cringes but continues smiling nervously.
Idrisah: Ahahaha! Yeah!
Ranni: I’ll clear the vessel for launch. Take care, dears. And Talita, tell Killian he needs to call his moms more often!
Behind Ranni, Evelyn enters the room, taps Paul on the shoulder, and reveals she has freshly baked cookies in a clamshell wire mesh tray.
62 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 251”
Gheesfellow
A character with low charisma rolling a Natural 20 be like
S0glet
Polyamorous grandmothers just monkeying around in the background as they tend to do. Love the detail!
Fallingfeather
Dang, that’s…. TECHNICALLY not a lie either. Well done, ladies.
Liza
Yeah, calling bugferrets “worms” sounded very slur-y to me
Borbo
i mean we call them bugferrets
worms would be on that category to compare them to
Chiyana
I love Cheevwut’s little face in the first panel, and all the panels really.
Zidane
loving that cheev head tilt in panel 3, they know somethings up
Phasma Felis
Nah, they’re just stretching to stay in-frame
Quad
Space grandper polycule cookies!!!! Oh how I wish I was there… I love to see Cheev peering around. Talita and Idrisah are lucky they prolly won’t tell.
Ruby
Talita rolled an 18 on persuasion and thus gave Idrisah a roll with advantage.
I also get the feeling that Cheevwut has rolled very high on an insight check .
guest
they call her Racist Ranni
guest
they call her Grandma Microaggression
Ellindsey
mmmm, space grandma cookies.
JoB
The cookie deliveries need an entry theme …
RC
I know that Ranni’s nationality is given as Jovian on the character page, but I’m wondering if her allusion to the Martian English name for bug ferrets could mean that she’s originally from somewhere in Mars orbit. Or maybe she’s just aware of the name and thought it worked better in a pun about wormholes.
LeBonk
Cheev probably suspected something might be up before this, but I bet Idrisah’s lack of reaction to the slur really settled it for them
Adam
When did someone say a slur? I’m sorry, I don’t know enough lore
Teod
Calling bug-ferrets “worms” is a bit offensive, as the page description points out.
Although I personally find it a fitting pun, considering that they operate wormholes. I wonder if it would be more offensive or less offensive if they weren’t elongated and didn’t live underground.
Septemberdale
Probably more offensive, honestly. If someone called me a penguin because I walk upright and like to eat fish I’d just laugh.
Chase Wanderstar
“Not super PC” as opposed to something like “a nasty thing to say” implies that “‘worms” for gateworms is more towards the “epithet” than “slur” end of that spectrum, but yeah, that kind of flippancy is still rude, especially in a professional setting.
indubitably
idrisah does react tho, the transcript says she cringed but kept smiling anyways
Tumorhead
I love the space grannies!!! Don’t call them worms tho 😭
Lilac
Just like every facial expression on this page is so good like every single one
thistle
Ranni can micromanage my holes any day. who said that.
TawnySoup
DISASTER NARROWLY AVOIDED!!! Pheeewww….
Mica
Leaving aside the many, many other interesting things on this page, I really love Ranni’s zero-G jewelry. Those earrings wouldn’t make NO sense in gravity, but they make a lot more in a situation where they can float freely.
PhasmaFelis
Also the zero-G cookie sheet in the background!
Archieve
Glad that misunderstanding is all cleared up, now Talita can do her due diligence in seeing this legally active vessel returned to it proper owner, would be weird for it to leave unmanned afterall.
Ave Zancuda
Those are some fancy cooking gloves
Tentament
Trying to explain to a bug ferret that we called them “wormholes” before they showed up in our solar system and tugging at my collar like a cartoon character.
Chrysalis
This is an admirable bit of fibbery, but more importantly, SPACE COOKIES from the SPACE COOKIE IRON
Chrysali
Seriously, I love this story, I love these characters, but seeing an author work out an entire system for baking desserts in zero gravity and then just include it as an incidental little background detail is what I absolutely adore most.
gigithebear
can’t believe we have to cancel our grandma
MyUniverseinaBox
LAUGHING FATYFFWDTYTFDW
Filiya
I really like their honesty 😆
TeethBurglar
Thanks for dropping the racial slur gramgram ❤️
Heather
Talita’s expression in that panel is killing me
Vinemaple
I bet if you called Ranni on it, she’d explain that it was a pun, not a slur, and would die on that hill.
Enai
It is a good pun, and can one actually racially (as in, a stand-in for real world racism, like with the slave trade and books like “The Bell Curve” arguing that anybody not white is actually less intelligent than white people, and all those atrocities) against a species that has, by all accounts, the superior technology (wormholes! artificial ones, even! which the Bug Ferrets put wherever they please!) and as a result arguably the position of most power in the galaxy?
.
For sure one can so abuse Centaurs, who had only (~~only~~) invented electricity when first contacted and who are mostly employed as menial laborers and in some cases literally trafficked (hello, Talita!) and for whom apparently a number of demeaning stereotypes exist (Dom fearing Talita will literally maul someone), but Bug Ferrets? Sure, “worm” is insulting, but it feels like calling a white USian “Yank” or “cracker”. Yeah, it’s probably not kindly meant, but literally no word you can say to them has the effect of “mind your place, inferior human” like the n-word would have to a Black person.
Varyon
There’s a line of thought that racism* is “power plus prejudice” – that is, prejudice is only racist when the perpetrator is part of a racial group that is in “power” in some way (typically socioeconomic power) compared to the victim. Under this line, and using the modern US as an example, a white man who spat on a black man because the latter was black would be racist, while a black man who spat on a white man because the latter was white would not be. As this is about which racial group each is part of, this would hold true even if the black man were markedly wealthier than the white man. In that case, Ranni’s comments here wouldn’t be possible to be racist*, because bug-ferrets are in a position of power compared to humans in general and tailers in specific.
Personally, I don’t subscribe to that line of thought. As far as I’m concerned, prejudice and similar against someone because of their race is racism, regardless of which group is overall more powerful. In which case, Ranni’s comment here could indeed be considered racist*. Personally, I’d give her the benefit of the doubt, and not just because I love puns (I do), but because she didn’t seem to have any malice with it (there’s also the fact I suspect bug-ferrets wouldn’t really care about being called “worms”).
*Racism isn’t quite the right word here. Honestly, speciesism probably isn’t either – arguably, typ vs tailer prejudice would fit better as speciesism. Considering the difference between humans and bug-ferrets is above the Domain level, you’re arguably looking at something like Superdomainism. Calling it cladeism (cladism?) would be easy and would apply in all manner of cases (typ vs tailer, human vs bug-ferret, etc). Of course, language being what it is, just continuing to call it racism even when it’s between lifeforms with no shared ancestor is entirely possible.
Vinemaple
Oh, stars… Jay, go ahead and delete my comment before this gets out of hand
quinn
I love how the second-to-last panel feels intentionally cramped and uncomfortable, with Idrisah’s cringing expression and Talita’s face awkwardly blocked by the word bubble. Gets across that using the word ‘worm’ to refer to bug ferrets is, uh, not ideal without outright stating it. Really funny bit of miniature worldbuilding
Also LOVE the design of that low gravity cookie holder
Adrienne
Physically I am at the office but mentally I am with the space grannies eating space cookies in space 🙏🍪🧓🏾
Redacted
Also I just went back to look at the info page for the orbital grandmas and noticed that Evaline’s name spelling and pronouns changed in the transcript. Was this an intentional change?
cabbage
Gramma no!
cabbage
I replied to the wrong comment pls forgive me
Enai
I think the spacers, being literally bigendered, have a different relationship to pronouns than typ humans do.
Lee
augh! the cosmic oven mitts! grandma-to-grandma 0-g cookie transfer! You make studying the backgrounds so rewarding : )
Lezzlebit
So glad the transcript exists, otherwise I would have no idea they were baking space cookies
Redacted
Makes sense they wouldn’t be suspected of doing anything shady, Talita and Idrisah have worked here for years and they have good reputations. It’s only natural that they’d take them on their word.
Vinemaple
This is why I maintain a squeaky-clean persona and record.
rainynais
phew !!
Redacted
Y’know, it’s interesting to me that this far in the future, the stereotype of technologically illiterate elders wouldn’t really be true anymore, at least not with the kind of tech that older folks tend to struggle with today. Man, imagine being able to browse your grandma’s social media from when she was 15.
Light_In_The_Fog
Saving hundreds of years of social media must take so much space… I wonder how that stuff gets managed
creetur
Crisis averted… now it’s time to deal with the next one
hurgaburga
thank goodness Talita was able to improvise
hopefully cheevwuut doesn’t say anything
Ruby
Cheev will say something but after the call, because letting Idrisah and Talita know that they’ve managed to BS they way through just enough to enact their shady plan but not enough to fool them is the funnier outcome.
pitviperofdoom
Clever move on Talita’s part; her answer is very nearly the truth! There was indeed a mix-up in how the ship was listed, and the original owner (Bip) did request its return! And Idrisah’s answer is also technically true; they would have had a LOT of difficulty if they hadn’t done it the way they did.
They’re just leaving out all the, y’know. Illegal bits.
bookwormbin
The autism skill tree of lying without technically lying because otherwise your brain hurts ahaha. I once got excused from work because I had to “take a relative to the doctor.” My boss was very sympathetic, but was unaware the relative was my family’s elderly dachshund who needed some glands expressed at the vet’s office.
Peter Jensen
The best lies are 99% true, after all.
16BitPotato
Talita dropped into an amazing poker face in record time.
XtraStudios
Thank goodness that went well