RttS Reader Questions 28
Posted on October 2, 2025 by Jay Eaton

The tail on the speech bubble there looks (to an avian) a bit like a lip corner. Or, if the whole thing is interpreted as a super cartoony earless head, the tail is a neck.

Transcript

Adrienne asked: Talita, Cheevwut, and Ohwitiil: Do you also see "faces" easily in objects the way humans do (ex: an electrical socket looks like a gasping guy) or is that not really a thing for non-human sophonts?

Talita: Two dots and a "mouth" has always looked like a face to me. I guess centaur faces aren't that different in layout than a human's? Or my brain's been pickled by human media. I dunno, I'm not a psychologist…

Image: American electrical outlet.

Cheevwut: Oh yeah, it's different for us.

Ohwitiil: Yes, this only looks like a human if you think about it for a while... it's missing so many features, and the "eyes" are so tall…

Image: Speech bubble icon with ellipses.

Cheevwut: What I always get tripped up by is stuff with three dots in a row. The "busy typing" symbol in human text chat programs has always looked like a little dude to me.

Ohwitiil: It does feel like being watched. When I first started using English chat programs, I thought it meant the other user was looking at your message.

RttS Reader Questions 28
Posted on October 2, 2025 by Jay Eaton

The tail on the speech bubble there looks (to an avian) a bit like a lip corner. Or, if the whole thing is interpreted as a super cartoony earless head, the tail is a neck.

Transcript

Adrienne asked: Talita, Cheevwut, and Ohwitiil: Do you also see "faces" easily in objects the way humans do (ex: an electrical socket looks like a gasping guy) or is that not really a thing for non-human sophonts?

Talita: Two dots and a "mouth" has always looked like a face to me. I guess centaur faces aren't that different in layout than a human's? Or my brain's been pickled by human media. I dunno, I'm not a psychologist…

Image: American electrical outlet.

Cheevwut: Oh yeah, it's different for us.

Ohwitiil: Yes, this only looks like a human if you think about it for a while... it's missing so many features, and the "eyes" are so tall…

Image: Speech bubble icon with ellipses.

Cheevwut: What I always get tripped up by is stuff with three dots in a row. The "busy typing" symbol in human text chat programs has always looked like a little dude to me.

Ohwitiil: It does feel like being watched. When I first started using English chat programs, I thought it meant the other user was looking at your message.

63 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 28”

  1. Corbin

    When I see a faucet, it looks like a face. Or at least, it looks like scrat from ice age. Would a faucet look especially face-like to centaurs?

    1. JoB

      Some more than others, I guess …

  2. Solidago

    This comment section is awesome.

  3. Carmine

    This is really a cool detail. That’s such an interesting question and explanation!

  4. IncompleteMachine

    i am going to attempt a Centaur emoticon

    (; ¦ 😉
    \ /
    J
    …too elaborate….

    1. IncompleteMachine

      damn it, it didnt work
      try again

      ( ; ¦ ; )
      \ ¦ /
      J
      see if that works

      1. IncompleteMachine

        damn it, it ignores the spaces if the’re’s nothing else on the line 🙁
        . ( ; ¦ ; )
        . \ ¦ /
        . J
        final try

        1. IncompleteMachine

          shit. oh well.
          thanks for joining me on this journey everyone XD

        2. jdeltia

          i think that’s pretty good!!

        3. the Inmara

          Trying for the simplest sideways construction: 8>↩

        4. the Inmara

          Dammit, why did it have to replace that character with an emoji?

  5. Random Internet Stranger

    :>=

    ⬆️ antlered centaur

    1. jdeltia

      move it around a bit…
      =:>
      …and you get a Bip! or a scud!

  6. Gar G

    Probably human media, but I love that last bit, since I was wondering what their equivalent would be

  7. Shin

    Unrelated but I kind of love Cheevwut’s bandana

  8. HAL9000

    So avians see the typing bubble as 👀? hell yeah.
    (ooo) *looks intensely at your message)

  9. MyUniverseinaBox

    Haha! The avian thing is so clever. I love that.

  10. Stray Cat

    I think emoji can be posted? So:
    💬

    1. JoB

      Careful what font/device you’re using it on, though …

      “I’m thinking like an avian”: 💭
      “You … you blockhead!!“: ⚂
      Bad hair feather day: 🗯️

      (Hmmm, can we get those [font size=”24″] in larger [font size=”+3″], maybe … ?)

      1. JoB

        (… nope. :-/ )

      2. jdeltia

        hmmmm, do you guys think there’s still unicode or a unicode equivalent? there’s social media and messaging so the motivation for a standard would be there… it already seems hard enough to encode every language on the planet, let alone in the galaxy. i’m sure trans-species unicode consortium meetings get hectic 😛

        1. jdeltia

          hey it emojified my emoticon!!!! *>:(*

        2. JoB

          Humanity on its own has no reason to step down from Unicode again; it’s the first attempt to allow computers¹ to support all relevant kinds of “scripture”, and successful enough in that mission not to get labeled worse than its historic precedents (as in, “codepages” or “charsets”).

          Of course, the RttSverse had a multisophont society (bug ferrets and avians) before First Contact with humanity, so it’s very much possible that Unicode got wholesale replaced by some even better (for the now three species) system.

          Having that said, Unicode does have known limitations. It has basic assumptions like finite alphabets, glyphs being placed in a somewhat linear manner on a 2D surface, lack of a temporal dimension (read: no support for all-out paintings, probably none for South American quipus, and no videos / scrolling text bands); it currently doesn’t cover font or color selection (though I guess that at least colors shouldn’t be too hard to incorporate), and if we think about sci-fi in general, we might want/need support for scent etc., or cultures that actually don’t do “writing” in our sense but whose oral traditions we want to record / send around.

          So, Unicode may already cover Klingon 😉 , but I don’t exactly see the bug ferrets walking away from their beloved multifocus TV mayhem, or the RttS humans from their video fora, for it. (I’d guess that Unicode nonetheless is very much able to properly represent bug ferret square poems, though; the concept of “stacked lines” can be stretched to fit those, as long as you have the equivalent of a fixed width font.)

          ¹ As in, storage, transmission, displaying, and printing (the latter two essentially covering “output”), all across the single/multi-user/machine combos. The glaring persisting Achilles heel is input; having some “foreign” character be input with cryptic key combos that differ between physical keyboards, language the keyboard is “set to”, and OS is not a satisfying solution.

  11. gnome_artificer

    Reading up on the mobility in Avian eyes, it sounds like there should be some expressions possible to capture with emoticons. While all eyes are semi independent, the rear eyes in particular are usually focused separately from the front 4. So perhaps something like -(•°°< for a wink.

  12. blythe

    <…〕

    1. boxesofboxes

      (•••>
      (•••)< ?
      (•••▷
      avian emoticons….

      1. SheTheTDE

        (•••x•••)
        (•••V•••)
        (•••A•••)
        front facing avian emoticons.

        1. JoB

          Too bad that the Unicode standards for hieroglyphics haven’t been fully implemented by any platform yet, cartouches would be handy here …

  13. jdeltia

    cmon brain… see the elipsis bubble as an avian… grrgg……

  14. Ent

    ngl it’s nice to see ohwitiil just being chill! even if they hate cheev lmao

  15. Flero

    I see the type A/B power outlets have taken to the stars.

    1. JoB

      Nexus Jovia emerged from the Martian Free States, which started out as a U.S. colony, so it’s at least plausible.

      I wonder how Talita would react to a Chinese compound wall socket (right), which the China-borne Martian factions around Mount Olympus likely still use …

      1. Ashta

        Holy shit literally looks like centaur face

      2. Rob

        I did not know the standard Chinese socket was the same as the AU/NZ/ARG one!

  16. EnchantressEmily

    What a cool detail!

    1. Ashta

      Holy shit literally looks like centaur face

      1. NotOkapi

        Which comment did you mean to respond to friend?

  17. 1d4-nadg

    This is the page that made me go from “wow, I love those little fictional birbs” to “THEY ARE REAL AND HIDDEN IN JAY’S BASEMENT”

    1. creetur

      (••• )

      1. Light_In_The_Fog

        This better become an emoticon around here (•••<)

        1. 1d4-nadg

          Each time I conclude a message with …
          Assume an avian is watching you …

        2. JoB

          ⠇

        3. creetur

          (•••o-)

  18. Light_In_The_Fog

    This has made the typing bubble infinitely better for me

  19. Eux

    fantastic. wonderful.

  20. Boolah

    (chanting)
    LITTLE GUYS!!!LITTLE GUYS!!!!

  21. Zuorai

    A LITTLE DUDE TO XEM …

  22. Ave Zancuda

    Ah!, I’d wish to see how do Avian artists abstract features while doing a less complex drawings of themselves or a human

    1. Rose

      I don’t know if this is quite what you’re looking for, but the author has posted about this on their tumblr!
      https://www.tumblr.com/jayrockin/745619374143094784/your-recent-post-with-the-doodles-made-me-curious?source=share
      [If you don’t want to see potential spoilers, then don’t look at the rest of their blog]

    2. Flori

      Finally found the posts that answer this question!
      https://www.tumblr.com/jayrockin/177773167563/somebody-bought-a-coffee-for-jay-eaton-how-do

      https://www.tumblr.com/jayrockin/177773546818/also-since-ive-looked-into-my-crystal-ball-and

      https://www.tumblr.com/jayrockin/745619374143094784/your-recent-post-with-the-doodles-made-me-curious

      1. Vinemaple

        Thank you! Links into the depths of Jay’s Tumblr (2022 and earlier) are always such a joy! I don’t know how to get there except for scrolling down for about an hour…

        1. Skadoosh

          Use the browser, go to the blog, click on the three dots to open the menu, choose archive, pick the year.

        2. jdeltia

          did you see the one with the anthropomorphic rtts aliens? seeing bipedal talita makes me feel… strange…

  23. Vinemaple

    Jay, this… this is beautiful. The bit about the lip corner really gets me… I mean, it’s not a detail of Avian faces I’ve ever noticed, of course there would be somethign like that that’s visually important to them!

    It’s also really cute that Talita doesn’t mention that she puts googly eyes on her personal equipment…

  24. Adrienne

    Yooo my question got picked!! This makes my whole day 🙂 Thank you! I thought about just asking Talita but now I’m super glad I asked the Avians too because that’s such an adorable answer

    1. Claire

      Honestly, one of the best questions imho

    2. OhGollieItsOllie

      I’ve never commented directly on the comic site but I am now just to say this is such an amazing question, thank you for this good food.

  25. ArBe

    Ooh, wonderful question and a great answer. I hadn’t considered this side of perceptual/cultural biases at all!

  26. Claire

    OH THATS SO VALID! I totally see how that’d trip up Avians… I wonder what other typography ends up with accidental connotations.

    1. creetur

      Capital “I” might look like eyes to bug ferrets (..in other fonts, it’s hard to show here) when I think about it

      1. Claire

        Erm.. is that L like Llama, or i, like Iowa?

        1. JoB

          Uppercase “i” like in eye-beam. 😉
          (Shape of bug ferret pupils, see the “Vision” paragraph in their biology page in this website’s “World” area.)

  27. pitviperofdoom

    I am loving this exploration of alien pareidolia.

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