One straightforward answer and one much more complicated one.
Transcript
Threethousandonehundredtwentysecond asked: Talita, do you plan on ever having children? if you did, would you adopt or have a litter physically?
Talita: Me?? No! FUCK no. I don't have any of my shit together enough for ANY kid. But— Are you joking?? "Hey Talita, you're a messed up cultural orphan with a ridiculous cost of living. Ever thought about going out of your way to get knocked up and give birth to SIX MORE of you?" Are you INSANE!?
Anonymous asked: Idrisah and Gillie, do you see yourself raising kids one day?
Idrisah: ...We thought about it… I wouldn’t mind carrying it...
Gillie: If I was typ, we could conceive traditionally, but…
Idrisah: We would have to go through a natal lab...
Gillie: ...And for some reason I don’t trust those much.
Idrisah: Adoption and fostering are also more complicated as parenting options than people tend to think.
Gillie: Yeah, I would feel uncomfortable raising a kid unless I already knew them or their bio parents.
101 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 32”
YCitroulette
can you imagine being the other centaur in that scenario? ‘Hi, I know I’m a bizzare stranger, we don’t have much language in common and chances are you’re, at most, supposed to be in a sexual relationship with your matriarch, but have you considered having a one night (?) stand with me. And then I raise the ~six kids by myself. In space.’
Not sure that pitch would be very effective.
cabbage
The mental image of 6 talitalings running around her apartment breaking everything
Waitwot
lock everything up! pad everything! don’t hurt the skrunklys!
JoB
Right moment to revive some old habits.
“Gotta catch ’em first!“
Hunter
More than entirely fair on both accounts.
Gar G
Yeah I can definitely feel for Talita there
Even if she were to adopt, she’s enough of a mess as is due to her own screwed up life, last thing she needs is to screw up some poor child and having them resent her for it
Vinemaple
She’s very based for being aware of that, and honest with herself.
0xabad1dea
Talita, I think you would do fine raising a human kid, if you somehow got into that situation. I imagine the hardest part would be that you have no way to tell if the food you’re giving them tastes right; human children can be very fussy.
perro
Wouldn’t puberty blockers and E make Gillie infertile? Or is HRT different in the future?
eden
it’s not really a 100% infertility rate, it’s kind of like condoms and birth control in that sense
inkyofthenight
Hm, I wonder how natal labs actually work. Like, are there non-profit and for-profit clinics/groups/organizations? I wonder how different the care/outcomes at either might be. If you went to a hospital, is there a wing within the hospital for the natal lab, or would they be in a different place, or would they be unaffiliated with other medical stuff? Are natal labs always independent clinics/groups/organizations, or can they be run by charities, religious groups, medical schools, hospitals, governments, or large conglomerates like other medical stuff can?
1d4-nadg
No no they are giant capitalist structures offering good and services (designer babies) in exchange for money (a lot). They are responsible for the extreme diversity of the human gene pool, and not always ethical.
Gillie is a cat girl because her dads went to a natal lab and got an offer for a “cat girl + university grant” pack. True story.
Threethousandonehundredtwentysecond
Yes, I am insane. 🙂 But love will make people do crazy things…. Was only a little joking, knowing the situation already- but parental instincts don’t always care about being easy or who feels them! Always good fortune when what you desire is what you already can achieve. <3
Threethousandonehundredtwentysecond
Also, HOLY TOLEDO my question got picked! I believe I sent this question during the first or second Q&A way back in 2024?? I had assumed it had been passed over it had been so long. never give up y’all!
And a personal thank you to Jay for the perfect response and perfect Talita expressions, I am going to be riding this high all week, you are one of my favorite artists and I’ve been following the webcomic updates since the beginning it is literally so cool to see this! I’m going to nerd out every time I see this page on reread <3
K
I am once again reminded that Centaurs come in litters of six or less and it makes me wonder why Talita is a singleton.
(My personal headcanon is that she was born to a non-matriarch female and it was a last ditch effort to save at least one of her children though I don’t think how Talita ended up in her circumstance will ever be confirmed or denied)
blythe
she mightve just fallen off her mother or something. she made it to pupation, if she was meant to be culled they probably wouldve done it earlier.
where she was dropped off wouldve implied that whoever surrendered her knew she was a kid and not a pet, but centaurs are a) uncommon and b) wouldnt care enough for just one tiny baby. maybe it was a smuggling situation? perhaps even an accidental one? not sure how thatd work. stowaway centaur baby and whoever found it thought it might be less legal trouble to drop it off at an orphanage. but surely there was camera footage?
im sure they wouldve gone through and seen any records of centaur clans traveling through NJ at the time and possibly contacted them as well. honestly this is just one of those things we have to take for granted as its not the focus of the plot
Thisfox
I said exactly the same thing a few hours back, below this post. It does look a little like a smuggling plan gone wrong, or something, but either way, she DID have 5 sibs. Perhaps all of them died at the same time, but if so…. it’s interesting no one remarked on five little centaur corpses. They couldn’t just be put in the recycler, or buried. That’s not how space stations work.
JoB
> That’s not how space stations work.
That’s assuming that whoever she’s been with before would somehow have been restricted to Nexus Jovia, which is at least not how the centaur diplomats typically seen there are supposedly treated. Effectively restricted from operating any airlocks of the station, even.
(… and then there’s the keyword “hypercarnivore” and the open question whether a culture that’s borderline OK with infanticide would have a taboo on cannibalism as strict as ours, but I’m pretty sure that neither will ever be confirmed in canon, anyway …)
JoB
All we know is that only one of that species of hypercarnivores ever came out of that pet carrier … >:->
Vinemaple
D U D E
Thisfox
Yet again another indication that Centaurs come in six packs… and Talita is a single. I am eternally curious about where the rest of her six pack went. To other groups? Sold into slavery? Back to the home planet? Fostered with a clan? I do wonder.
AceiestArtist
Jay has stated repeatedly that they’re never going to elaborate on Talita’s pre-human adoption backstory, but from what little we know, it’s likely that she was an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy, and the general centaur response to unwanted kids is, unfortunately, infanticide. So… any potential Talita siblings are probably long dead.
Atuada
Centaurs don’t do foster care or else Talita wouldn’t be in the situation she’s in. They tried to contact other centaurs when she was discovered and they recommended culling her.
Thisfox
Yes. I know. So did her littermates not make it to imago stage? “tend to cull them if they aren’t wanted by another clan” indicates they do occasionally foster. The Jupiter colony is a big place. Do the humans really only have one foster unit? Incredible if so. Good for them. But my point still remains: Centaur kids don’t come as singles.
Planetfall
A six-pack of pupae! Noo… I’m now imagining six pupae in a beer cooler with all their little necks in one of those 6 pack rings. But they are all smaller than beer cans so they can get out just fine. The little giraffe tribble hybrids!
SNUFFGURLL
Arhhh Talita.. it’s a completely understandable position for her to have as well, (not that anyone needs a reason to not have kids) given she wouldn’t be able to provide centaur cultural context for her children either, and this would probably make her feel like a bad parent even if she wouldn’t be. Also cost of living. Yikes. I wonder if she’d adopt human children? Though like, as was already mentioned, adoption is really complicated.
As for Gillie and Idrisah, I also completely understand, because like… yeah! Personal and ethical concerns.
I do think all of them would make good aunts.
aves
Would Gillie be able to conceive traditionally, even with another catperson? We know she was on puberty blockers as a kid, which would halt the maturation of her testes, and assuming she’s been on HRT since then, I’m not actually sure that she would be fertile. Though, idk, maybe Nexus Jovia has finally unlocked the secret to modular HRT, so you can pick and choose the effects you want haha.
NotOkapi
Even now that’s not a 100% infertility ray, anything is possible with how wacky the human body is, but to quote the Human biology page on the World site: “However, there are a number of typ humans who undergo elective surgery as adults to become unisex, i.e. able to produce both sperm and eggs. Surgically unisex humans vary a lot in morphology depending on the aesthetic preference of the individual, but they tend to have a blend of the typical physiological traits associated with the basal sexes.” So yeah it’s gotten a lot more pick and choose-y, even if not perfectly so. Based on what Gillie says here I have my suspicions but how she’s chosen to modify her body is between her and Idrisah.
Jack
I have seen alot of different bio-kid obsessed logic but “I would feel uncomfortable raising a kid unless I already knew them or their bio parents.” Has got to be the strangest reasoning Ive ever heard. I cannot make sense of it. Also surely there are natal labs in this universe that are no muss no fuss and just give you a “”normal”” baby, versus the weird/irresponsible one that produced Gillie. I wouldnt even of thought Gillie was to far off a typ human to have much fertility difficulty to begin with. I just imagined she’d make a slightly-hairier-then-normal baby haha
Light_In_The_Fog
a) I feel like feeling weird about having a random child you have no prior connection to and being like “hi im your parent now” is reasonable. I could see Gillie seeing it like blind dating. Even though some people can make those relationships, its not for everyone.
b) iirc natal labs are like really expensive? Thats why Gillie is a catgirl when (i think) both her parents are typ, its cause a company was like ‘hey if you promise to do these things for us then we’ll cover the cost of you having a kid’, so having a kid whose genetics are only influenced by what Gillie and Idrisah want is prolly too costly.
c) Catgirls and similar GMHs aren’t typ, prolly cause their spinal structure is different to accomodate a tail, they’ve got different nerve stuff for their ears & whiskers (if those are selected for), and prolly other stuff.
aves
Androtherians are a distinct clade, and aren’t part of the typ gene pool, which has been established for a good while. I imagine the gene editing involved to completely alter how ears develop is pretty significant, and adding a tail that doesn’t just look like a terrifying hairless monkey tail would also be a challenge. As far as natal labs go, I don’t think there are separate labs for producing typ babies vs GMHs – if I remember right, Gillie’s dads were originally planning to just have a typ baby, but there was an incentive program for GMH kids at the lab. And even if there were separate labs, I certainly wouldn’t blame Gillie for not trusting any natal lab, considering how significantly “off-model” she ended up being.
I do agree that the “I wouldn’t feel comfortable raising a kid unless I knew the parents” reasoning is kind of weird, though. Like… it’s a completely valid reason, I suppose, but I’m curious about the thinking behind it and how she came to that position.
wingedhorror
Our culture is still pretty entrenched in the “never let the child know they’re adopted” & “hide all information about the adoption” kind of thinking. Historically too, since most kids were given up by people society deemed “unfit”, it’s still felt that no consideration should even be given to the bio-parent. However, modern scientific studies have repeatedly shown that those attitudes are unhealthy psychologically and emotionally for both the adopted child, the parent(s) who gave it up and even the adopting parent.
It isn’t “bio-kid obsessed logic” it’s the acknowledging that there *is* trauma involved in the adoption process, including in infants, that lingers into adulthood if it’s never addressed. Adopted children, and everyone else involved, are expected to just suck it up, accept it, and move on like everything is normal about it. Living in the *future* Gillie clearly is aware that proper adoption isn’t like selecting a fish from a pet store, that the emotional needs of other people (including those of the child AND the bio-parent) are involved.
There are some organizations trying to drag adoption out of the dark ages and provide more support for everyone involved in the adoption process and also make the studies more widely known to demonstrate that there needs to be an openness in the whole process, and that acting like the kid, even from birth, can just be taken from a parent (when its proven that bonding occurs moments after birth) and passed off to a literal stranger is somehow a normal thing that doesn’t require empathy, open communication and therapy.
Joey
I can see the concern, I’d like to adopt someday, but when you look into it there is an alarming number of essentially human trafficking situations or otherwise questionable aquiring of the children. It is unfortunately a for profit industry where I am and that always causes problems. I’d want to know I’m not adding to the market/deman for human trafficking or prejudical application of child protection laws that take kids from minority families who they wouldn’t take from a white, Christian, non disabled, cis-het family for the same reason. If I personally know the circumstances then I can trust I’m not actually being accidentally complicit in something like that.
My mom was adopted so I always had a positive view of the whole thing. But she was adopted by her aunt, and had a really smooth process all in all. Doing more research of late. Yeeeeeeaaaahhh, there are some ethical concerns with how the industry is run definitely. Still pro adoption, adopted families are valid. But it needs to be overhauled and I don’t blame people for opting out due to ethical concerns.
0xabad1dea
you’re probably imagining adopting a newborn baby, but that’s an edge case in practice (especially in the modern world where preventing unplanned pregnancy is much easier than in the past). most children in need of adoption are old enough to speak and often already in school, and have an established family background, culture, religion, etc – hence adoption being complicated and often painful for all parties. so it makes sense to me that Gillie, who all things considered is quite statistically unusual, does not think it would work out well to bring a *random* non-baby child into the household. the very first hurdle would be that such a child wouldn’t know sign language!
Jay Eaton
Adoption is logistically and emotionally different than making kids from scratch. I think it’s reasonable to be prepared for one and not the other. Biokids are typically harder on the body, require more infant care, and can be a dice roll when it comes to personality/needs/medical issues. Adoption usually involves older children with some degree of trauma, preexisting needs, and preexisting relationships with one or more bioparents and previous fosters. Maintaining those preexisting relationships is often very important for the health of the child, and it’s much easier if you are already part of that social circle– that’s what Gillie is referring to here.
Also, neither of these responses are completely forthright. What Talita isn’t saying is that she’s extremely self loathing and dysphoric, so pregnancy/nursing (not to mention the prerequisite acts) are pretty much a nightmare scenario for her. She is not in a mental space where she can reliably look after a dependent, much less six. What Gillie and Idrisah aren’t saying is that they weighed their available motherhood options and decided that they would rather prioritize their careers unless a very specific childcare scenario drops in their laps. But they are somewhat conflicted about this, and feel that choosing their careers makes them appear callous or selfish, so you’re getting the “our parents asked about grandkids again” rundown.
Boxthing
For give me for asking, but what does “typ” mean?
Jackalope
If I remember correctly, “typ” here pretty much refers to standard, largely non-modified humans!! There’s more info on humans in RTTS here >> https://jayeaton.site/RunawayToTheStars/Sophonts/Humans/BiologySFW << !!!
JoB
In essence, “not genetically modified” (themself, or by way of an ancestor).
TheOneAndOnlyVoid
An unaltered human. A cat girl genetically modified human cannot reproduce with a typical or typ human. There are also artificial traits that typ humans can have that and still be genetically compatible with non artificial trait having typs.
SeveralPigeons
Short for “typical”. A non-genetically-modified human, as I understand it.
Arcstone
Oh so gillie is transfem?
I see.
jdeltia
no gillie’s cis, but her catgirl genes mess up fertility stuff
Light_In_The_Fog
No Gillie is trans! She talks about it in a couple other AMAs i think and she’s got a trans flag above her computer when we see her talking to Bip. Also her hypothetical sperm is literally drawn on this page lmao
jdeltia
WAIT REALLY?? that’s awesome i love that : D
Arcstone
Somehow I never picked up on it.
DasGanon
I’m like 60/40 on if it’s a Trans flag or a Lesbian flag but it’s hard to tell because grayscale.
(I think it’s Trans if only because it looks like it’s symmetrical? The best look at it is page 114 I think)
MutableAlias
Gillie with colored trans flag can be seen here if you don’t mind character spoilers:
https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/tagged/The-ages-are-relative-to-when-Shyam-is-introduced-in-the-story-Talita-is-32-in-the-book-I’m-currently-working-on
zaratustra
It’s not something she often comments on, but yeah. https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/668064201637543936/gillie-why-do-you-hate-your-whiskers-and-pull-them#notes
aves
Gillie is absolutely transfem, yes. Even if she were a typ human, two cis women can’t generally conceive naturally – plus, the little sperm in the sperm/egg diagram even has a :3 face. That’s about as clear as you can get, I think. (Plus, it’s been confirmed elsewhere, but like… even without that, this is pretty cut and dry haha)
Tuli
I’m very sure Gillie is transfem; in the FAQs about canon voices it says “Gillie and Idrisah both went through estrogen puberty (Gillie after puberty blockers) so they have that vocal register”
Mitta
As advanced as this world is I like that it is still flawed and not some sci fi utopia… theres still a backdrop of ethical questions and implications when it comes to all these clades of humans existing. Entertainment companies bribing parents to make their kid into a catgirl is ludicrous. But being made unable to conceive without relying on those very natal labs and (im assuming) spending a ton of money is just really sad to me. Theres also the irony of humans taking on the forms of all these animals when their actual homeplanet biodiversity is pretty much nuked at this point. This comic is always giving me something to think about.
Lizard
I’d say that makes it more realistic, you gotta just deal with the realities infront of you. Medical dependency because the tech isn’t perfect, needing to shop around with medical needs in mind, controversy about how the tech works and discourages people. That’s stuff that invariably crops up with enough biomedical advancement.
Vinemaple
It makes the world feel so much more real, and it allows stories set in that world to ask far more interesting questions!
Apollo235 (is now 22)
It’s delightful that this page about having children came out on my birthday
dokki
TALITA SAYS FUCK
…not to mention the emotional burden of having to cull them
veltzeh
Waaaaait. What if there was another case where a centaur kid was abandoned? Could Talita maybe adopt them, provided she had her shit together enough then? 👀
Or maybe she could adopt a human child. But yeah, don’t see that happening!
Vinemaple
I dunno, I think those are both perfectly straightforward answers!
And I will leave the rest of y’all to do the ranting and fuming about the social stigma of being childless, and how much of an unfair, fossilized relic it is.
Lilac
Gfddhds that second talita drawing is really good
Vinemaple
Also the first Idrisah-Gillie drawing, it’s so, “We’ve answered this so many times, which version do you wanna give them THIS time?” but all done with the eyes…
Curona
Is Gillie saying that being an “off model” or non-typical catgirl makes her infertile, or that she doesn’t want to potentially pass on her “issues” to a child?
Kumquatq
As a person with several health issues its why I also don’t want to have biological kids i don’t want to curse them to a life of constant surgeries its so expensive.
aves
I mean, it’s not like Gillie is chronically ill or anything? She experiences a lot of inconvenience from being off-model, and her being Deaf may be a heritable condition depending on the cause, but I don’t know if that’s something she would take issue with. Like, I definitely get what you’re saying, as someone who’s got multiple heritable chronic illnesses myself, but we don’t know how many of Gillie’s “issues” are actually ones that would pass down.
Does make me wonder now, though, what the hypothetical offspring of her and an on-model catgirl would look like… we don’t know enough about catgirl genetics to fully speculate, sadly, but I’d love to see the cursed mix-model kid lol.
Zidane
I’m fairly sure that because she’s a catgirl that means shes not genetically compatible with a typ human like idrisah, regardless of whether or not shes off model.
Sparky Lurkdragon
I think she’s saying that since Idrisah is typ and she isn’t, it’s likely that their genes are not compatible enough to interbreed. Androtherians are a separate clade from typ humans.
Joey
Even being on model would still take her out of the typ gene pool, she’d be in a clade wth other similar cat girls and wouldn’t need intervention to have children with them, but not typs. As it is not sure she’s in a gene pool with anyone. Thus needing the lab. Which she doesn’t trust due to her dad’s experiences with the one that was shady around making her.
Skadoosh
Idrisah and Gillie could also use a typ sperm donor, assuming they don’t mind if the kid would only be related to Idrisah.
That wouldn’t require gene editing by a natal lab.
blythe
that still poses the same problem Gillie mentioned, about not knowing the donor personally.
Theres also plenty of reasons to not trust sperm banks in handling them as much as natal labs.
Ive considered this for myself but the ultimate risk is getting permanently tied to a person who I may not want to be tied to.
aves
I wouldn’t be surprised if natal labs are also the primary locations you’d go to for using donated sperm, IVF, all of that – sort of a catch-all “medical procedures to have kids” deal. There might be smaller sperm clinics in areas that aren’t big enough for a full gene-editing lab, but I’d imagine Gillie wouldn’t trust those much more than she’d trust the labs anyhow.
Joysweeper
Or one of Gillie’s relatives. It wouldn’t have to be a stranger! But you do have to have a pretty specifically good relationship with someone to ask that of them. Especially a parent!
Darth Biomech
Hm, I have a more meta question, if you don’t mind those, but in those AMAs, how often do you have to think of an answer on the spot, rather than dispensing knowledge or using it as a motivation to flesh out a pre-existing vague concept? Especially when it’s questions focused more on worldbuilding rather than aimed directly at the characters themselves.
When somebody asks me a question about my setting I don’t have an answer for ready, I always feel so embarrassed and even sometimes ashamed, like “why didn’t I even think about that on my own”? The simpler the question, the stronger the embarrassment. °~°
JoB
(The main reason why I did not second Eclipse’s request for a 3D model of the Dawn is the risk that I’d keep pestering you for more detail until I can build a working hyperdrive from the blueprint … 😉 )
IncompleteMachine
what is this setting of which you speak? i must discover new special interests damnit!