This Character "Ask Me Anything" was a Patreon goal! From November 13th to 15th 2021, people sent me tumblr asks directed at specific characters from Runaway to the Stars and I responded to as many of them as I physically could with short lineart comics.
minicy asked: Question for Sirawiit: Is it harder for you to fly than other aliens due to your gigantism?
Cultures where flight is normal have very different attitudes about it.
Anonymous asked: Shyam have you ever broken/bent/cut off a whisker? Does it feel weird, or is it not much different than the same happening with hair?
Gillie really doesn’t like her whiskers.
matry-el-malo asked: Idrisah, you think is possible to create a device that works as a "universal translator"?
There’s a reason Idrisah and Gillie still have jobs in this setting.
vaor-29 asked: question for Shyam, while on the topic of whiskers! (and sorry if this sounds rude, i'm not sure how else to word it!) did the serve any purpose for the original spacers, or where they also just aesthetic? are yours of any practical use in your day to day life/job right now? if not, wouldn't it be better to cut or trim them off, seeing as it wouldn't be painful and would reduce the risk of them getting caught on stuff?
When they’re really at risk of getting in the way, it’s easy enough to put them back with a cap or headband. They are useful working under vehicles though, they can keep you from banging your head on things.
eridanus-supervvoid asked: Question for Mǐn: What was it like learning to fly? Did it come easily to you as a kid or was there a lot of trial and error involved?
There were fall mats in the designated practice area, but kids will be kids.
Anonymous asked: Question for Bip: What does cyberspace look like and why is it coole
Interfacing with digital technology when you are also digital is a fundamentally different experience than interacting with things as a body. Also, sorry that Bip never actually answers a single question.
elliejaybird asked: Question for Talita: what is something you love about yourself?
The haul truck is 40 tons fully loaded. Pulling things with wheels is significantly easier than dragging the same amount of weight.
Anonymous asked: question for bip: does your uh abrasive personality ever cause you problems?
They’ve found that people keep coming back if you don’t give them everything they want.
Anonymous asked: Question for Bip: have you ever been copied/made a copy of yourself? If so, did you get along with them?
Sapient A.I. reproduce through budding. Bip has only ever made piecemeal transfer copies of themself.
Anonymous asked: question for talita: are there any human foods you can’t eat that you wish you could try?
Human food has the wrong macromolecules. The other sapient aliens can taste simple sugars, but centaurs lost that ability when they evolved hypercarnivory.
Anonymous asked: Gillie, about how old were you when you started thinking about your gender?
It doesn’t come up often now that Gillie is in her 30s.
Anonymous asked: Question for Shyam: I’m autistic too! What are some special interests you’ve had over the years, and did any of them have a particularly large impact on you as a person even after they ended? For example, for me an early childhood special interest in dragons and dinosaurs (and therefore birds) turned into a lifelong passion for birds and bird conservation.
Tigers are extinct in the wild in RttS, as are a lot of other megafauna endemic to Earth’s equatorial region and subtropics.
Anonymous asked: Question for Sirawit - did you ever find out what "updog" was? :D
Continued from another comic. Turii is learning English and Mandarin as part of their business degree, they haven’t covered human livestock animals.
threeleggedbike asked: How do pinkie and brownie feel about their nicknames? As in whats their opinion on essentially being known through a "cutesy" name for anyone who cant pronounce their true names?
I’ll post their sign names at some point, I swear.
Anonymous asked: Question for Turii: What do you think of Sirawit? How did you two meet?
Sirawit is the person making sure Turii doesn’t starve to death or get arrested at international borders for doing impulsive stuff like blackmailing the crew of a non-avian ferry ship into giving them a last minute ride.
soscout asked: Question for Bip! Could you tell us about your mom?Also, how’s ‘being born’ feel like for AIs anyway?
Sapient A.I. in RttS are a long chain of copies that started with a single entity. Despite this, they don’t all get along with each other.
Anonymous asked: Question for idrisah: Do you follow islam? If so, how do determine which way to face while praying?
Terran Muslims and spacer Muslims have some disagreements on worship practices. Religious cosmology can get fuzzy when you live in the cosmos.
Anonymous asked: Idrisah and Gillie, what are your favorite objects in our solar system?
So much for romance.
Anonymous asked: for sirawit. do you know i would die for you
No dying allowed.
Anonymous asked: Gillie why do you hate your whiskers and pull them out??
Laser hair removal would probably work for whiskers, but she also feels weird about getting rid of them forever.
Anonymous asked: Question for Shyam: What is it like trying to deal with chronic pain in a body that you know isn't designed for your world? (coming from someone with chronic pain myself, I can't imagine how it feels knowing you were designed to not be able to function in the place you call home.)
She was more angsty about it in college when she first started dealing with long-term gravity, but she’s pretty over it now.
Anonymous asked: Talita, I notice you place your hand on your throat often when you're speaking. Is that just a nervous tick or does it serve a purpose?
She’s an anxious fidgeter.
Anonymous asked: Question for Talita: Growing up, did you judge yourself by the gender standards of humans? If so, has accepting yourself as feminine been a process for you?
Like a lot of things in Talita’s life, it’s kind of complicated. Talita isn't trans but she is definitely trans-relatable.
Anonymous asked: Question for Talita: From what we've heard, it sounds like you were pretty close to at least one or two of your foster caretakers. Why did none of them ever adopt you?
Foster workers have an obligation to all the kids in their care, not just their favorites.
lot-of-malarkey asked: Question for Sirawit: Did your father identify as a bright/dun as an avian adoptee?
Jing emotes a lot like an avian, i.e. often head tilting and using claw-hand gestures. His design has changed a little since then, but he appears with one of his seasonal partners in an old comic.
Anonymous asked: Pinkie and Brownie: how did you two meet?
Brownie’s “acting family” took them in after their original family died in a decompression disaster that left only Brownie alive. It was an emergency adoption rather than a marriage, since life outside a family is functionally homelessness in ferret society.
Anonymous asked: For Pinkie and Brownie. Have you ever thought about expanding your household with kids one day?
Have I mentioned that bug ferrets regularly live to 200? They have great medical technology, so chance takes them out more than progressive illness.
Anonymous asked: Question for Sirawit: How do you deal with "springtime" in space? It sounds really inconvenient.
The Tiiliitian term for this translates to something like “springless”, the English term for it is asexual.
Anonymous asked: To Talita, I assume kissing is a human trait you picked up from your youth and not something centaurs normally do. Why do you choose to kiss with your mouth rather than your trunk?
Both are nice.
armcontrolnerve asked: Question for Bip: do you ever like to switch up your avatar or is it pretty consistent?
Their bug ferret avatar definitely sees the most use.
Anonymous asked: Question for Idrisah. Do you stay in touch with your sibling at all?
Idrisah’s got some communication woes with other humans. (Her sibling was sadly a victim of plot trimming.) Pay no mind to the coastlines, there.
Anonymous asked: For Talita: What is your favourite food, then?
Dumplings filled with rare steak trimmings, delicious. The dough is made of mashed starchy tubers. Being a large carnivore in living in space is inconvenient enough, but to make matters worse, there’s still not a lot of centaur agriculture off of their homeplanet. They were only contacted around 80 years ago in their radio age.
soscout asked: Question for Gillie! It’s said that you’re “off-model”. What do most catgirls look like, and how do you differ?
Gillie’s a bit more of an even blend than most catgirls.
nocturnaljunipers asked: Question for Idrisah and Gillie, how did you two meet?
They've know each other since they were about 10 years old, and they had some common ground to start with. Idrisah’s parents never really attempted to teach her Arabic or Urdu because they would only make the week-long trip from Jupiter to Earth to visit family in person every other year.
Anonymous asked: Enamored with the signs that Gillie has taught us for bug ferret, centaur, etc. Do you have sign names for yourself or your other crewmates?
There’s a cultural rule that sign names can only be granted by Deaf people. The two here were developed with a lot of help from the effervescent Scoliwings.
Anonymous asked: Question for Idrisah: How did you settle on what gender to present yourself as to avians when in court when speaking avian? (Is speaking the right term?)
The answer is… alien sexism, mostly.
Anonymous asked: Douglas, do you have any funny stories from when Talita was a baby?
He would have just let her eat the bugs, but anything that evolved on Earth is a dietary no-no for Talita.
toothedmammal asked: Talita is always a naked little creature in her baby pictures, I'm guessing she either didn't need or wouldn't tolerate clothes till she got older. Is that accurate?
If you wanna try putting a tiny pair of pants on this thing, be my guest.
Anonymous asked: Idrisah & Gillie, do you like consuming media made by the species you translate for? Or do you prefer media that's by and for humans?
They enjoy a broad variety of human and alien media.
honorarycassowary asked: Chkbrr, Rzzt-tt: what was your childhood like? (Physical circumstances, family size and dynamics, that kind of thing?)
Scuds are the carrier sex of a trisex species, where the other two sexes are planktonic. They’re essentially wind pollinated, so their family structures are a little odd.
Anonymous asked: Question for Talita: Have you ever met another centaur?
Neither party is really sure how to interact with the other.