If you're curious, Bip didn't pick up instantly because they are simultaneously controlling many RC vehicles and had to pause a couple tasks to free processors for conversation.
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Transcript
The tension in her body cracks like gunshot, her teeth slamming together with a loud SNAP. She convulses forward, curling into her pillow, gripping the back of her neck. A groan below human hearing range leaves her excurrent nostrils, sending with it a shudder travels up her spine and sets her teeth chattering.
Suddenly, the tablet speaks.
Bip: Do you want to talk about it?
Talita's shivering stops in surprise. Her face prickles in embarrassment, and she pulls off her askew glasses.
Talita: You saw that?
Bip: I picked an awkward time to connect.
92 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 264”
Sabella
“It’s kind of a jerk but it cares” is such a good trope and Bip embodies is so delightfully. Good beep.
NightOwl
Bip is so good at human conversation, I forget they’ve got a wealth of cultural experience with centaurs. Here’s hoping they can help Talita process what she’s going through.
Silly/Billy
Just wondering, how strong is a centaurs bite force?
AmbroseTV
at least enough to snap bones, as shown by talita earlier in the comic finishing off her eid gift
Mitta
Im willing to bet close to that of a hyena’s. They eat bones and shells
c Senaru
Could even potentially be higher, she’s quite a bit bigger
Kencf0619
Ooof.
cramie
i keep trying to figure out but i cant really tell what exactly talita is doing here. what exactly is snapping…?
Lezzlebit
Those are her teeth snapping together, the transcript provides some extra context for what’s going on
aves
She’s crying! The comic “Teenage Heartbreak” (under World -> Characters -> Talita) shows her crying in a very similar, albeit less intense, manner.
Cody, The Rat
From that comic: “Teeth chattering and infrasonic groaning is a typical centaur alien stress response.”
Eosapien
Pretend you are really frustrated, now open your mouth and then clench your jaws together really hard.
Boyshorts
In regards to the Gwailer clan possibly being able to hear her meltdown: I’m hoping that the need for double-soundproofing to accommodate centaur hearing was accounted for. I mean, surely they would anticipate that a matriarch and her entourage are going to need some privacy, right?
Boyshorts
*Their entourage, apologies.
JoB
Hmmmm considering Talitas tale of unaddressed noises within her own homes, and how Mel merely asked her for schematics (page 14), I wouldn’t bet on that … On the flip side, if the clan were to immediately have donned (in-ear) hearing protection upon entering the habitat … but on the other other hand, infrasound isn’t necessarily perceived by ear …
(“not-intentionally-P”SA: I’m currently seeing mostly “503 Service Unavailable” responses from this website, which apparently started around 4 AM UTC.)
Rad Internet Stranger
I’m crying with you, Talita!!!
Jackal
With centaur hearing how it is, I wonder if Verengt or any of the Gwailers are hearing this. I suppose some naïve part of me is hoping that after some time to cool off after the (perceived) threat, Verengt will maybe work out what happened and reach out to talk things through. I don’t wanna give up hope that they can reach a mutual understanding and respect, even if the circumstances will still force Talita to run away (where to? Not the slightest idea)
Pocoloco
If they can hear her then I doubt that will do much to dissuade them of the ‘mad hermit’ stereotype of lone centaurs. From their perspective the first few hours after they land a ripped loner just behaved threateningly towards their Matriarch, acted like she had no idea what they were talking about when they asked if she was going to bite them, and then ran off and had an absolutely distraught wailing breakdown. If you don’t understand Talita’s side it’s bewildering and probably a bit frightening.
Bip, you better pull a rabbit out of a hat here!!
Gar G
Damn….
poor girl
Hroðvitnir
I was literally just thinking “this comic is so cool, surely some of it has been printed” and BAM, almost-kickstarter! 🥳
halley
god i wish i could do that with my teeth. unfortunately, enamel
Daredevild
Oh dear my last comment was right. That really looks like it would hurt one’s teeth and jaw…
I’m glad that’s Bip’s first response, I hope they’ll talk about it 🙂
Daredevild
Replaced my beautiful colon parenthesis with an emoji…….
Muse
i think if you do it backways it usually doesn’t emojify it….. (:
1d4-nadg
only one solution: add a nose 🙂
Eosapian
I didn’t think I was right about here trying not to scream on the previous page, I hope Bip helps her through this!
Eosapian
ment, her* not here
Appleeatinggoat
OH MY GOD I WAS SO RELIEVED I THOUGHT SHE MIGHT BITE HERSELF
Gabe
YES BIP the only person who understands human and centaur cultures!! they could def give talita the rundown of centaur culture she needs to know to avoid another misstep, but the question is if her anxiety and identity issues would make her avoidant about learning it 💔 she resisted so much ab learning asl for so long and tho she’s managed to get over herself to accommodate gillie, this is a pretty massive step up from that
Origamigryphon
Small transcript typo: “sending with it a shudder travels” should it be “a shudder that travels”?
Rose
YES!!! BIP!!! HELP OUR GIRL!!!
Michi
Oooh, Cyrano de Biperac. They clearly know how centaur culture work having been part of a clan. Why not jump into Talitas headset and guide her through the intricacies.
AnaKaye
“Cyrano de Biperac”
*snorfle* *chortle* *guffaw*
Well done!
Towhee
Ah it was Bip! I’m glad they picked up ;u;
Probably gonna have a little “oh shit” moment when she says what happened tho. Maybe they can help Talita find a way to properly apologize for her accidental social flop??
One of my favorite things about this comic as I’ve read is the body language of all the non-human characters!! How they express emotion in their own unique ways. My favorite is the fluff Talita gets on her face when flustered
Seghs
Oh no. Infrasound (assuming her noises are that low in frequency) can travel REALLY far. I wonder if the other centaurs can hear her crying 🙁
Muse
i’ve been wondering about that too! i just don’t have a good mental map/memory of where they’re staying in relation to her so i don’t know how viable that is..
florence
I NEARLY SCREAMED YES HELLO BIP I LOVE YOU BIP HELP HER
Arcstone
DIGITAL NOODLE TO THE RESCUE! ✨✊🐍✨
Vinemaple
Oh, thank STARS Bip finally picked up. And is saying the right things.
I’m still confused by how many readers don’t seem to understand that Talita was CALLING Bip… I wish I could call Bip, frankly!
Curio
It’s got to be a relief to have someone on call who will just … know exactly what emotion you’re showing, without having to calm down and explain or talking people through it beforehand.
ribbit
Hehe. Autistic?
Curio
Hyeah … <:(
Genko
Merry Bipmas to all, and to all a good Bip! Or a morally grey one, depending on your code of ethics.
gnome_artificer
Definitely a chaotic alignment at the very least.
Lilac
Oouhhh poor talita but also bip just showing up in the middle of it is really funny sorry dfghgfsg
Tyrone
yeah….Bip has an uncanny ability to turn up juuuuust at the right time….
I will file him under “Benevolent manipulator” until further….But still : Thanks.
edenmachine5457
.bip is they/them btw!
Tentament
If Bip had a file extension, it would be .bip
JoB
… that would be rather ironic …
Fishyfish
Talita actually called Bip, hence why they seemingly appeared as Talita started crying! They couldn’t answer immediately because they had to free up processing space.
deathbypixelz
BIP THANK GOD. HELP HER PLEASE
Archieve
Good Bip is still contactable, now Talita can hopfully start loading all of her things discreetly onto the ship soon. I get the feeling Talita is still going to tough it out the for the remaining of the week but hopefully she will have enough hope of escape to get through it without serious injuries to herself brought on by mental exhaustion and anxiety from feeling trapped on Dirtball.
Maned Wolf
>trapped on a space base and losing it mentally
HI BOB!
Boolah
For all man kind????
Hi BOB
Fantia
Oh it was Bip. ❤️
I have to say, when I initially started following your work all the way back when this was still concepts on Tumblr, Bip was the character I was least connected to. I didn’t necessarily dislike them, but I also didn’t care about them as much as the girls. This is very quickly changing, I absolutely love how they’re charactererized! For lack of better words, they are so human too, and I love that.
I hope they can help out Talita – they know Centaur culture well, while also seemingly being very aware on Talita’s unique situation. She really needs some quality reassurance after all this.
zephyr
bip! bip will fix this situation, though that depends on their definition of fix…
cypr
BIP SAVE US. SAVE US BIP
un_pogaz
Wow, things turned out better than I feared. I had imagined that Talita would completely break down from sheer panic attack and become vocally unreachable, and that our dear souped up malware would need to hack in panic Idrisa’s phone to warn them about the situation and request their help.
Turn out that Bip talk was enought to get her out of this one.
Now, is time to friend talk therapy time. Still easy use of sarcasm of Bip part to defuse a situation, but I’m honestly curious to see what they’ll say about this situation.
Vinemaple
I was afraid that Bip wasn’t going to connect. When a Talitaverse sapient AI’s “phone number” just rings and rings, one begins to wonder if they’re unwilling or unable to answer the call.
I didn’t read Bip’s comment as sarcasm. In my opinion, it’s consistent with the way Bip talks when they’re putting aside the mischievous-snarker persona for a moment to say something genuine, that they feel is more important than their social mask.
but it’s hard to work this stuff out from just a few panels and just a few lines of dialogue… one of the unique features of following a live-updated webcomic!
MonstieMunchies
thank god bip is here i was starting to enter bip-withdrawal
Bug
SAME
Tentament
Whenever Bip’s not on the page, all the other characters should be asking “where’s Bip?”
Redacted
Side note but I love the halftone being used for the scaly texture of the teeth, really appealing way to draw that in this art style.
FuzzySpiderPawz
Yaaaaay more bonding with Talita and Bip incoming (I think)
Archieve
I’m pretty sure your right, we’ve seen from the group hug that Bip will be appropriately supportive when things get serious.
AccordYeen
okay. okay. this is good. Bip is uniquely knowledgeable about centaur culture, having been the ship-born AI of an exclusively centaur-crewed vessel. They can talk Talita through these things. BUT. MORE IMPORTANTLY. They can team up with Idrisah to ABSOLUTELY RIP INTO MEL for this bullshit. Give Mel an entire “Reason You Suck” speech, complete with diagrams and a powerpoint presentation.
Hurgaburga
Yes. 100% yes to everything
JoB
> Give Mel an entire “Reason You Suck” speech, complete
> with diagrams and a powerpoint presentation.
I’d advise to also bring in Gillie, the local expert on BF-level communication parallelism (and overload).
(What was that apocryphal story about “The Mythical Man-Month” again, a team telling their supervisor that “we bought ten copies for you, so that you can have it read in one tenth of the time”?)
Vinemaple
Oh, wow, read your link, and, STARS, I wish software, and other projects, were made that way!
Felgraf
And circles, and arrows, and a paragraph in the alt text of each one!
Rdm
Sheriff Odie approves.