She's been tricked! How devious!
This is the end of the chapter, next is a log page.
Transcript
Talita stares off into the distance, calculating Gillie's math question, then looks back to her.
Talita: (ASL) About... (binary sign) Nine??
Gillie, still grinning, keeps the eye contact.
Gillie: (ASL) It’s nice to look at your face when you’re talking to me, nerd.
Talita blinks in surprise and then breaks into a shy smile, trunk curling upwards and cheeks fluffing slightly.
Talita: (ASL) …Thanks.
Idrisah: (ASL) Wanna try fingerspelling next?
Talita: Sure… I’ve got time.
68 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 186”
Mallow
TALITAS HAPPY TRUNK SMILE IS SO CUTE 😀 (wait hold on now I’m trying to figure out how to make centaur emoji) :~ :J 😕 =J iJi ji :=~ :=J
Appleeatinggoat
me and a friend did something similar. we ended up using ^J ^ and °J °
Gar G
Heh heh!^^
This was so wholesome <3
Sen
Flustered Talita is so cute.
S0glet
Omg omg porcelain chicken!!!! MY FAVORITE BACKGROUND CHARACTER!! YEAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Teod
Are the chapters getting shorter? 1 and 2 were both 30+ pages, not even counting double sided ones. This is page 22 of ch6 I don’t mind variation in chapter length, but I hope it’s not a long term trend. Although 6 isn’t a huge sample size, so maybe I’m worrying over nothing.
Jay Eaton
Don’t worry about it because the book is already completely written and sketched, this isn’t actually serial literature. The chapter lengths turned out shorter in the middle of the book for whatever reason. The 10th (last) chapter is the longest one at 40 pages.
un_pogaz
What makes me laugh is that Talita has just straight forward answered to a mathematical calculation where the majority of people answered “You’ve got kidding me, right?”
As a result, Nerd is an accurate qualifier.
eden
I don’t really understand that though, I mean it was all pretty simple you just did it one step at a time, and I’m bad at math!!
HAL9000
its more there’s multiple ways to do it that all give you a different answer, you can do it as given to get 9.09 or you can do it in order of operations which would give you 28.18. in both answers you’d get a recurring decimal, which is pretty hard to sign, and the 2nd answer doesn’t work for base 16 (which in retrospect kinda makes it obvious that the equation was intended to be performed as spoken not as written)
|i|i
i really don’t think order of operations is the way to solve a spoken-word math problem. order of operations is a tool specifically for decoding condensed visual equations; speaking aloud implies you’ve already decoded it. i would never read out an equation in the order of operations way, i’d always “translate” it to be straightforward. expecting the listener to juggle numbers around in their head instead of taking them as step-by-step instructions is very counterintuitive to me. is this a regional thing, maybe? i can’t imagine it comes up very often for most people so i’m not sure there’d be an established convention in the first place
JoB
> is this a regional thing, maybe?
·
I definitely don’t have the short-term memory to transform Gillies challenge purely in my head, but as a mathematician, if I gave an answer and then realized I didn’t follow (the equivalent of) PEMDAS to get it, I’d immediately consider it wrong.
·
(For that reason, I’m likely to grab a piece of paper and write down the challenge, if not the entire computation, if at all possible. And when presenting a challenge myself, I might add “unnecessary” parentheses to clarify that I do not mean it to be solved left-to-right. Reordering them to the point that they can be solved left-to-right … hmmm, I’m not sure that that’d always be viable …)
rabbit
> i’m not sure there’d be an established convention in the first place
There is one that I know of in spoken English: “30 minus 5, quantity times 4, divided by 11” is unambiguously 9 and a bit.
> Reordering them to the point that they can be solved left-to-right … hmmm, I’m not sure that that’d always be viable …
Well, if you can convince everyone you talk to to learn RPN…
JoB
> Well, if you can convince everyone you talk to to learn RPN…
·
Both me and my father had programmable Hewlett-Packard calculators (with me programming his, of course, but he bought it sans my input) and I’m still using Unix’s “dc” command line tool to this day. I shall improve the “convince” part with blunt instruments, since you insist. 😛
·
However, while RPN is evaluated left-to-right, it does not avoid the potential need for an O(n) deep stack to push intermediate inputs+results onto.
arf
We have a communications breakthrough!
(Shades of ‘Arrival’?)
Ruby
Aw, this is very nice. I’m glad that they’ve sorted it out.
$ilverware
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
galmetallic
gillie calling talita a nerd like she isn’t one herself lol
Stray Cat
And just like that, they Communicated, to figure out how to Accommodate each others’ needs, to improve their Everyday Lives.
.
Wow, that sounded less corny in my head.
But yes, hopefully this serves as a reminder: just because a conversation starts on a bad note doesn’t mean it has to end on one. Adults can actually talk about interpersonal problems, and their causes, in a reasonable manner. And it’s through talking that, maybe, they can figure out solutions to these problems.
.
Hats off to Jay for this scene; I’m impressed at the comic’s willingness to tackle complex issues without making them simplistic. Hats off to them for getting sensitivity readers (one of whom helped with writing Gillie). And hats off to those sensitivity readers for their help.
hessian
this yeah!!! the sensitivity readers did such a great job, thank you all!!
Kitty
I think this may be the cutest Talita yet!
Also, Gillie is so smooth, socially. She is SUCH a vibrant person.
Imp!
Awww what a nice way to end off the chapter!! The bonds grow stronger, and i have a feeling that in a little bit of time, Talita will need all the support she can get…
BravoLimaPoppa
I love it!
Mazatl
This is so terribly sweet the way the interaction progresses it’s so genuine and organic I love them 😭
cinna
What a sweet moment… 🥺
TawnySoup
Ooouuuhhhhh, my heart!!!! 💖 That genuine little smile and the realisation she’s actually kind of enjoying talking to Gillie this way 🥺 WAAAH!
Appleeatinggoat
I love how Talita trunk smiles here
makes me wonder why, since she has a human tooth smile most of the time
Origamigryphon
Some things are just instinctively hardwired. She also does the angry s trunk when agitated
The Opossum Witch
Even blind people smile and frown, and deaf people laugh aloud. some things are innate
the Inmara
Some people have a hard time smiling in the way that their dominate culture does it (such as showing teeth). For us, it feels stilted and wrong, when other people seem to do it naturally.
To us, that kind of smile is definitely learned. But we still smile in our own ways, usually.
At least, that’s our experience as autistics.
Vinemaple
I don’t think we’ve seen Talita really *happy* before! Doug said in an AMA that as a toddler she picked up Human social cues like a sponge. It’s a little performative, sure, but it’s also second nature to her to emote with her nicitating membranes instead of her “creepy” sideways eyelids, smile by adjusting her toothed mouth, and demonstrate attentiveness by staring at you with eyes wide open. At the same time, she can’t always control her feathers, she laughs like a Centaur, and sometimes, under high emotions, she lets her trunk come up. So it’s a little of both. You could say that emoting with her trunk instead of hiding it is a little bit like “unmasking.”
Trash Ax
I love that when Talita’s feathers on her face ruffle up It’s sort of mimics The hatching marks that a lot of artists do to represent blushing!
40
I’ll think stuff like this too and it’s so funny because, “Wow! It’s like how art is!” and then I remember “Wow! Almost like an artist decided to do it that way and centaurs aren’t actually a real thing guys!” 😭
Momo
waaahhh 😭❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
bunnomaly
trunk smile trunk smile
Proxy
TRUNK SMILE SPOTTED!!!!
blythe
makes me wonder if such expressions are instinctual. huh. are human smiles instinctive or learned..?
enemy
Its been said before theyre learned, like how talita’s eyelid expressions are too! I imagine growing up with humans made it a strong habit, though
JoB
> huh. are human smiles instinctive or learned..?
·
Smiles change over the first couple weeks of a newborn’s life, but they do some sort of smile early enough (first day) that you could, I suppose, call smiling in general an innate behaviour.
(source)
godspeed
Yeah Human Babies smile to strengthen our bond to them. It’s not a social smile that serves a purpose adult humans use them for. Toddlers often use smiling as an appealing gesture, to calm down situations they don’t like or want to escalate. If you told your toddler not to do something and they do it and smile afterwards when you scold them for it, they don’t want to be cheeky, they smile so you mimic the social smile and stop making the situation uncomfortable.
Vinemaple
So lovely to see her trunk curled forward in a fully genuine smile!
Greebus
I love how Talita can’t help but smile!
Origamigryphon
And that ray of positivity shines through the negative emotions still lingering around her
cr0wf34thers
OH THEY’RE SO CUTE
TotallySomebody
Yaaay!!
Mr. Skeleton
Yaaay!
Zuorai
THE FRIENDSHIP…………
qoala
Yay, comfy and cute Talita
Septemberdale
I’m still curious about Avian counting.
Peter Jensen
Well, there *is* usually a Q and A section after the log pages, so …
JoB
[all 24 Avians on Dirtball form a chorus line to demonstrate the unary “head count” system they prefer over counting with their usually-PDA-holding fingers]
[riots erupt after a reader suggests to upgrade it to a binary representation by means of head bobbing]
tehto
this is so cute
AnormalADN
AWw
Fallingfeather
A BREAKTHROUGH!!
Vinemaple
And just like that, this is happening. It feels so good to be right about something *good,* for once!
Solidago
CUTE
VariousGameMasteries
Talita loaf!
Tumorhead
Talita loaf!!
zeekubeast
trunk smile!! trunk smile on talita!!!
Chrysalis
That moment when you realize that you’re already doing more of the hard thing than you thought you were.
HAL9000
well that resolves the decimal problem i guess, just estimate it :p
also resolves the problem of whether you should take a spoken (signed?) equation as it comes or to do it in order of operations
HAL9000
anyway, this is a genius way to get someone used to the idea of sign and make them feel more confident with it. Gillie’s got some good interpersonal skills
godspeed
Yeah and she chose something that’s unique to Talita, her upbringing and her way to interact with the world. Signing numbers in binary is familiar to Talita, so this felt probably less alienating to her than she feared.
I guess Gillie has put some thought into it cause she wanted to shape this experience as positive as possible.
JoB
> also resolves the problem of whether you should take a spoken
> (signed?) equation as it comes or to do it in order of operations
·
“Resolves”, LOL. I’m pretty sure that they (society as a whole) still have heated discussions about it. With the non-involved being grateful that The Fantastic Future™ has provided for a couple light-years of DMZ between the participants. 😛
ObeyTheSnarf
Teared up a little, ngl. This is so wholesome!
yay
<3 <3 <3
Duke1337-o
Ha! Gillie fooled her out of her hand shyness with arithmetic! The fiend! The scoundrel!
Marcie
Awwwww