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.
90 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 251”
anon
Ranni is so adorable!
Trees
Well done, deception achieved, ladies! Now all that remains is to kill Cheevwut.
florence
NOOOOOO 😭😭
Cugz Arui
yes…
Momo
man, tailed spacers (who do live in microgravity) must age amazingly, what with gravity not constantly pulling on their face skin!
LizardWizard
the fact that wormholes travel is managed by “space granny polycules” is peak creative fiction to me.
you can even see some cuteness happening in the background
CandyCotton
That could have gone so bad if Talita wasn’t a quick thinker. I worried for her though, with all her friends leaving and now having to deal with a new temp crew.
Hydrurgus
Gate-Worms, Guardian of Wormholes
milk4evertoasted
Paul!!! Pls share the cookies! I want one too!
Solidago
Talita is a better liar than I expected. The interspecies facial recognition barrier probably helps a bit too. As for Idrisah, hopefully video call is a bit lower res between Dirtball proper and the orbital station. Can’t imagine there’s much lag or Ranni would have just voice called. When Cheevwut asks, blame the panic on Talita’s new crew, or about-to-quit hastiness, and perhaps the delicate spiderweb of lies will still hang in balance. :’) This has been a very fun scene.
JoB
Hmmm, considering that there’s no (usual) convection in zero-g, chances are that these cookies will stay too hot to touch for a good while longer than we are used to … :-3
Solidago
How about this: space ovens go through a cooling cycle after the heating cycle. 😛 Though I suppose Evelyn wouldn’t be using oven mitts if that were the case.
NightOwl
Do I detect a triple-side eye from Cheevwut in panel 3?
Gar G
Omg I see it now!
Pooka
That’s grandmother for “I don’t know why you’re lying to me, but I now have plausible deniability and this is probably going to be funny.”
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
mossrabbit
eh, feels closer to calling your american coworker a “yankee”. not a slur, just rude, especially considering bug ferrets have massive political and social power over a lot of other sophonts
Jason Myers
The ‘yankee’ thing actually bugs me a lot- without the cultural context of baseball, I sound like a loon, but the only people in the states that we still call ‘yanks’ or ‘yankees’ are fans of the baseball team of the same name. As a Red Sox fan (their direct and eternal rivals), it drives me up the WALL when foreigners call me a yank- No Buddy, Eat My Shit, Fuck That Team. It’s even worse when southern us-americans will do it (sore fuckin losers) because historically, THEY’RE yanks TOO! But THEY have the baseball cultural context to know better. It’s exhausting. Don’t call people ‘yankees’ and especially don’t call them ‘yanks’, the latter is genuinely fuckin rude, the first is just annoying specifically to a Red Sox fan.
Jay Eaton
I think that for most people, the baseball team is not the primary director of the word’s usage? Yankee has an interesting history as one of those exonyms where the definition becomes more and more specific the closer you get to the epicenter. There’s a quote attributed to EB White that goes:
“To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.
To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.”
Though, “WASP Vermonter” might be more accurate, for that last one. Ironically, the New York Yankees would not be TRUE yankees depending on who you ask. And many US Southerners get confused or offended when called a yank, given their regional definition tends to be drawn by the Mason-Dixon line… I have seen them arguing with people outside the USA about it online many times.
Sorry for rambling, I find this kind of thing very interesting
JoB
> I think that for most people, the baseball team is
> not the primary director of the word’s usage?
The term appeared in other nations (specifically, Canada) in 1835. The team renamed itself in 1913, and its sport is highly US-centric. By that time, the horse of internationally redefining the term’s meaning hadn’t just left the stable, it was more like exploring other planets …
Bug
As an English bloke I know nothing about your baseball beyond “it’s a professional sport that involves bats and a small ball and possibly helmets”. I personally wouldn’t call a USAmerican a Yankee because I don’t like being even mildly rude, but when I hear someone talk about “Yankees” it’s always about USAmericans in general, not a specific subgroup. I found your comment and Jay’s reply really interesting, I hadn’t known there was such nuance/debate.
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.
anon
I didnt realize they were making cookies until your comment, that’s so cute
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
LeBonk
Probably she’d normally react more, is what I’m saying.
The Hollymonster
I think Cheev would, if they found out, keep things secret, simply because they’d gain a whole new respect for Idrisah and Talita for doing crimes before they did. (I doubt they’d be as surprised by Gillie’s involvement, assuming they’re familiar with her too.)
the Inmara
Yeah, Cheev is probably like, “I know what these are. These are shenanigans! And they just gave me enough plausible deniability to be in on them. All I have to do is be quiet.”
But, they might raise the stakes by asking a testing question before deciding whether to risk being an accomplice. It wouldn’t be a wise thing to do if they really want to sit back and observe, but the right question could work the same way that Ranni’s inquiry just did. Add stress and reveal a bit more, without tipping too clearly that they’ve caught on.
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.
Fogblitz
OH MY GOD LMAOOOO
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.
Ceaseless Song
I can’t seem to reply to Varyon, given it’s the fourth comment in a chain.
Anyways I think that’s a really interesting point though I believe the answer is somewhere in between. I mean, yeah categorically, racism is prejudice based on race like, homophobia is prejudice based on sexuality, whatever whatever. But power will absolutely inform the *severity* of the remark. As a queer person I will endearingly call my queer friends the f-slur and, while that is categorically homophobic the power is balanced and so it’s silly more than anything. And yeah, the history of the terms use is also pretty important, which ties into power. Yank and Cracker are not nearly as impactful.
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