This isn't the primary reason Gillie wanted Talita to sign for her, but it wasn't helping.
Transcript
Anonymous asked: Gillie, is trying to lip-read Talita any harder than a human speaker?
Gillie: I’ve never been a good lip reader. People talk FAST and mouth shapes for speech are really ambiguous.
Image: Gillie squints at a human speaking a word and thinks "PAY? BIE? MAY? PAID? PIE? MADE?"
Gillie: But I’m even worse with Talita. Not because she’s an alien. Because she doesn’t point her mouth at me!!
Image: Gillie frowns at Talita, who is talking to her with her trunk pointed at her neck.
Ryttyr asked: Talita, why do you keep bending your trunk away from the people you speak to? Wouldn't that make what you're saying harder to hear?
Talita: Yeah… I know I mumble into my neck a lot, but when people aren’t used to seeing centaurs speak, they stare at my trunk lips like they're trying to see all the way down.
Image: Talita says "...Hi..." to a human with her trunks pointing at them. They stare at her trunk lips.
41 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 31”
MutableAlias
i’ll admit it is a bit jarring to see Talita’s “flesh-teeth” at first (they’re not teeth but they help with vocalization), i don’t know if the vocal ridges each have anatomical names diegetically or not
JoB
> i don’t know if the vocal ridges each have anatomical names diegetically
(Apparently not.)
Aleris
I know this isn’t how sound works, but I keep looking at her pointing her trunk to her neck and thinking “Wouldn’t her voice be upside down???”
JoB
˙ʇı ʇ,usı ‘ןnɟɹǝpuoʍ sı sɔısʎɥd
Gar G
Yeah as soon as I read the question I figured that would be the case
Awkward for humans seeing her talk through her trunk and awkward for her having people staring down it…
A Box Of Fox
I have a bit of a confession to make. When the trunk is extended, I get the urge of wondering what it would feel like to grab it…
JoB
… painful, unless you anaesthesize (whichever of you two) first … 8-*
jdeltia
why would it be painful? alien biochemistry?
JoB
I’m rather thinking along the lines of “them’s fighting
wordsmoves!” …Thisfox
Nope. “because a punch in the face often offends!”
Sadly, I suspect she is too polite to retaliate when someone assaults her.
jdeltia
if so, then it doesn’t seem to have been an issue before…
A Box Of Fox
Still, the nose probably doesn’t love to get squoze.
Nick
I remember the moment reading this comic when I realized Talita talks through her trunk and not with her “mouth”, and I just about had an aneurysm geeking out about it.
It’s SO fascinating!! Think about it, humans constantly talk about how dangerous it is that we eat with our breathing bits, but we simultaneously can’t handle the truth of what it’d be like if a being *weren’t* designed with bits that share those roles!
It would be SO COOL to see her talk perfectly while eating a huge mouth full of food at the same time! If that was my introduction to a centaur like Talita, I’d probably think there was someone else in the room that was talking because that would be way more likely to my human-sheltered brain than someone being able to just…do that, because why not? Like, “the relevant bits aren’t inter-involved at all, what are you even talking about? What, are you also unable to clap while standing??”
I LOVE when stuff we take for granted gets completely rug-pulled out from under us. SO cool!!
JoB
> It would be SO COOL to see her talk perfectly while
> eating a huge mouth full of food at the same time!
… well, it’s a lot less obvious in webcomic format, but …
> I LOVE when stuff we take for granted gets
> completely rug-pulled out from under us.
I don’t think that that’s the reason why we immediately take note when someone’s in a hospital bed and being fed through their veins, though … 😛
HAL9000
there’s a fun little (non-spoilery, don’t worry!) animation here showing talita’s trunk mouth and eating mouth doing different things! really helps visualise how she works. theres a few more animations of her speaking there too, if you don’t mind extremely vague future comic spoilers
HAL9000
ah, and one here showing how both her breathing systems can produce sound! (another sort of spoiler warning for the video)
Talita Fangirl :)
I have something really bad xD Sometimes I get the urge to imagine sticking my fingers up Talita’s trunk. I know, I’m like a toddler
un_pogaz
The two questions of the day was:
Inded, it could be a problem.
jdeltia
ooh i just thought of something, do centaurs have a sign language? avians do, bug ferrets obviously do, but we haven’t heard anything about centaurs. if they do have one, do they use their trunks at all? are they used as simply a non manual marker, or are they part of signs?
NotOkapi
I can’t remember any specific mentions, but almost certainly so! Though I assume the more popular sign languages either are tactile or designed for use at distance given how far-sighted centaurs are.
theplushfrog
Centaurs can track motion very well, so I wonder if their sign language would be more about the kinds of movements rather than the position of fingers? Or perhaps it would use more of the full body than the face due to being farsighted? It’s interesting to think about.
Septemberdale
So basically communication by dancing. An interesting idea! They have been compared to bees somewhat often for their reproductive hierarchy…
Curona
I’ve got money on their distance sign language being similar to the earth naval flag signaling they do between ships.
JoB
> like they’re trying to see all the way down
“Say, do you know what parallax is?”
“… yes, why?”
“Because it means that you cannot see that, even if I were to inhale a flashlight. My trunk’s insides do not widen toward my face like the outside does.”
Thisfox
I expect what they are doing is a combination of lipreading and fascination with a thing not human. I doubt they are actually trying to look up the trunk, but the angle is really bad for it to seem like anything else, and it is polite to look at the face of a person you’re talking or listening to…. But Talita has a whole lot of face to look at, and it’s very high up. I understand peoples voices better if I look at their mouth, and I have okay hearing in one of my ears. Talita has very excellent hearing according to canon, and probably has never considered getting more understanding from looking at the mouth of the person she is talking to.
SheTheTDE
I suddenly know exactly what Talita sounds like. Well not exactly I don’t know her accent but I know her voice. Talita in my mind sounds like Jane Lane covering her mouth because she likes this particular goup of weirdos more than she’s ready to admit.
eden
I always imagine peridots voice if her nose was pinched shut
SheTheTDE
I dunno Peridot devinately has more energy than Talita. Lets split the difference and say Sadie.
Mitta
To me she’s always sounded like Hollyhock from Bojack Horseman. Maybe its the horse factor, maybe its the fact that they’re both dorky women in their own way. Just make Hollyhock’s voice more nasally and thats how she sounds in my mind
Vinemaple
“My eyes are up here” is a real problem all over again, when your facial disk is as long as most people’s entire torso…
jdeltia
i KNEW she curled up her trunk cause it looked strange to people! i noticed she doesn’t curl it at all when she’s with shyam in the short comics, but does with everyone else. i mean, whenever i see her with it uncurled, i can’t decide which mouth i’m “supposed” to look at
JoB
While Talita is far better at motion tracking than us typ humans, I’m rather certain that most of us would not focus (for long) on the closed unmoving one.
jdeltia
true, it’s not as strange to determine which to focus on in the animations where she’s talking. the comics are different though since they don’t exactly move
jdeltia
also, it’s not like the esophageal mouth is conveying NO visual information… she uses it a lot for facial expressions in the same way a human would
JoB
… yeeeeaaah, not so much faced with total strangers like us undead relics from the pre-WW3 past, I guess … 😉
(At that level, we’d also have to include her nictitating membranes into the datasource mix, wouldn’t we?)
jdeltia
sorry, could you reword that? i’m having a bit of trouble parsing what you said 😛
jdeltia
do you mean she doesn’t show facial expressions when talking with strangers?
JoB
Well, less of them, at any rate. We tend to be more restrained around people we don’t know well, too.
And with the second part, I meant that when a human facing here were to watch not only the “talking mouth” but also the bigger one for additional cues, they should have their eyes wander to Talitas eyes as well, reducing the frequency of their focus on the chompers again.
IncompleteMachine
I think that’s part of the problem, and unfortunately a little moving mouth-trunk would look kind of funny to most people who aren’t used to it XD.
JoB
My, I have no idea what you’re thinking of there … 😀
Enai
What has been seen … Cannot be unseen
0_o
.
I didn’t think I was missing anything by never watching TV and using firefox and ublock origin to squash pesky ads. Turns out, I was missing something: Disturbing body horror TV spots.