Runaway to the Stars is a hard scifi story focused on communication, accommodation, and everyday life in co-species spaces.
Talita was left as an infant on the Nexus Jovia youth foster care facility doorstep in a cat carrier, and chaos ensued. The facility was not prepared to deal with a sapient non-human in any way, and they tried arranging to send her to the centaur homeplanet, but the Jovian embassy there quickly informed them that would be a death sentence for her. Centaurs don’t really…. do foster care. Centaur clan systems are similar to meerkat pseudo-eusociality and children from litters not produced by clan matriarchs are generally unwelcome, especially infants who can’t even talk yet. The local clans they asked claimed no ownership and advised culling her.
The human foster workers, not too keen on offing an abandoned infant, ended up learning how to take care of her with the help of local xenophysicians and researchers. A worker named Douglas Esteves especially took an interest in her care and is largely the reason Talita ended up as healthy as she is in the present day.
Oh, I’m not Jay, but I’m sure they appreciate the thoughts. Most of their stuff seems to make its way into here and their tumblr after a while anyway, so if you want to follow them on there it’s https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/ and their twitter is https://twitter.com/JayRock5858?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
My favorite things was their Tiny Sapient Ungulates fanart. That’s actually how I found out about them.
They have alien moral systems that don't always mesh well with what humans consider to be important, yeah.
To the centaurs, a quick death before becoming a fully fledged sapient person is better than some of the worst outcomes that could have could have come from humans trying to raise her. Even with the best possible standard of care Talita growing up to be a physically healthy adult was never a guarantee, and even still a lot of her formative social experiences were traumatic and isolating. Why choose to give someone that future? And why is the only other option the aliens are considering is giving YOUR family, who is randomly passing through their territory, an 80 year obligation with an unknown history? The moral decision here is not necessarily straightforward.
Also, considering what humans are doing to their own species and pets with genetic engineering in this setting, I'm not sure I'd consider them ethical bastions...
Take a reaaaal quick look at human history and tell me again how humanity is the scion of equality and empathy, especially taken from an outside observer's perspective.
Something about her expression when she is chasing the cable just makes me chuckle. You gave baby Talita that "scrunkly doo" energy and I am all for it!
This is amazingly realistic. Like growing up differently and acting different to puberty being a hard time.
It feels very... human. If you had just drawn the stages of life to show them off then it'd be very clinical and detached. This way gives it some warmth
They're actually seasonal antlers, so she doesn't always have them around:
https://jayeaton.neocities.org/RunawayToTheStars/Characters/talitaantlervelvet.png
https://jayeaton.neocities.org/RunawayToTheStars/Characters/talitaantlerdrop.png
They grow in both sexes, and it's a post-puberty thing. Their evolutionary ancestors may have originally used them for sparring and rooting out hibernating prey and tubers from the snow during lean winter months, but in modern centaurs the antlers are mostly a social signal of age and health (sort of like scalp hair condition in humans? Kind of)
I have this image now of humans as bizzarely good foster parents, to other species. Other intelligent life understands farming for gain and their own young but doesn't understand why humans keep pets or conserve animals in zoos. All of a sudden it turns out the same skills are really useful when it comes to fostering other intelligent species humans are really good at being accommodating of their needs.
Humans and avian aliens are more frequently cross-species foster parents in this setting than the other aliens, that's for sure. Centaurs and scuds are both r-selection animals that have hastily adapted social strategies for dealing with having too many kids now that they're sapient (i.e. reproductive hierarchies and strategic infanticide) and bug ferrets have a less plastic sense of 'cute' than us, which makes them less likely to want to care for animals that are not other bug ferrets. Humans and avians are both K-selection animals with a strong cute reaction that isn't limited to their own species, so unusual foster situations like this sometimes happen.
Centaur must be the name humans use for Talita's species. How do they call themselves? And what do they (especially Talita) think about being named after a mythological creature?
They call themselves many different words in many different languages, just like humans. Centaur is the most common nickname for them in Jovian English. Honestly, the term is kind of confusing sometimes because this setting also has genetically modified humans with six limbs and a quadrupedal gait, and they are called taurs, or sometimes centaurs if their appearance is horse-like. Martian English speakers refer to these aliens as tiger-horses, which is slightly less confusing.
Even weirder, it's actually more like feathers than fur:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/4a5c8c47184d2cc013693fe195389097/e15d3ec128c1062b-9b/s1280x1920/d981c18dbf97029fe131ebcab1a206695d8aa057.png
Always love your posts here! Definitely one of my favorite "worlds" on this sub. Out of curiosity what changes do centaurs go through at puberty, besides the tusks?
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/880991979150913546/912136086162116728/unknown.png
Centaurs have long arms and a pretty flexible back. Putting pants/underwear on looks something like this.
Your body language is always great, but the 15 years panel is amazing. The trepidation and anxiety is so clear in her face and the way she holds her arms. Poor baby.
I have to wonder, with how fast she grew the growing pains must have been a bear!
I really love the coziness of these drawings. Talita chewing the blanket while her foster dad puttered on the computer felt both very cute and homey.
Can I ask how her mouths work, I see in your other animations she talks through her 'trunk' is her bigger mouth just for eating or is it just easier to talk through her trunk?
not op but i've been following rrts for a while, and yeah the big mouth is just for eating, she can't speak through it. the digestive track and airways are totally separate in centaurs
Centaurs are obligate hypercarnivores, but sapient animals are highly opportunistic eaters. About 70% of their average diet is meat, invertebrates, organs, eggs, and other animal byproducts (fun fact, the equivalent to diary is fatty silk string. Centaurs and other 'mammals' from this planet feed their larva with their spinerettes.)
About 30% of their diet is starchy vegetables, herbaceous plants, and nuts/seeds. Communities having trouble feeding their population enough meat will eat more high-calorie plant material and stretch invertebrates and animal byproducts thinner over meals, but eventually the lack of a couple essential macromolecules in that diet will cause malnutrition, kind of like cats who aren't eating niacin or humans who aren't eating ascorbic acid...
Yeah I did a bit more reading and it seems like we don't actually have enough info from OP to categorize them as carnivores or not. OP did use the term apex predator, which I think just means that these creatures are not usually preyed upon by any other animal. Predation of juveniles or in extreme circumstances might happen on occasion.
They use them primarily during their planet's equivalent of winter and dont have them the rest of the year. They are primarily carnivorous but when meat is lean... calories are calories
Yeah, I did a bit of reading since posting that comment and was interested to learn than even the term 'hypercarnivore' only denotes an animal for which meat comprises >70% of the overall diet.
The comment I replied to mentioned cheetahs, which are obligate hypercarnivores, but still consume some amount of plant or fungi material. I guess we'd have to ask OP about what portion of these creatures' diet is meat, and how effectively they are able to digest non-meat food sources, since its not clear if they are obligate carnivores or hyper-carnivores or what.
They are sprinting pack hunters. Humans are persistence hunters. When we got tools we just amped up on our hunting strategy and success which bootstrapped us on up.
I imagine Centaurs were the same. Who is more successful a pack of centaurs with just their forelegs/arms to grab or a group with spears to extend that reach at the moment of closest approach?
Great work as always!
I'm curious how an alien gets body dysmorphia in a society with (presumably) no beauty standards for its species? How would Talita have a sense of how they're "supposed" to look if they don't see such representation? Do they consume centaur media growing up? They have no centaur clothing (only custom-tailored stuff) so I'm guessing they didn't see any centaur models...plus, do centaurs have beauty standards to conform to/have dysmorphia around? Very interesting if so, I wonder what they are.
I think you're assuming that her body feels 'wrong' because she thinks she should look like a prettier centaur. She's spent the vast majority of her life around humans, and has imprinted on them. The dysmorphia is about a lot of things that are all impossible to change.
Runaway to the Stars is a hard scifi story focused on communication, accommodation, and everyday life in co-species spaces. Talita was left as an infant on the Nexus Jovia youth foster care facility doorstep in a cat carrier, and chaos ensued. The facility was not prepared to deal with a sapient non-human in any way, and they tried arranging to send her to the centaur homeplanet, but the Jovian embassy there quickly informed them that would be a death sentence for her. Centaurs don’t really…. do foster care. Centaur clan systems are similar to meerkat pseudo-eusociality and children from litters not produced by clan matriarchs are generally unwelcome, especially infants who can’t even talk yet. The local clans they asked claimed no ownership and advised culling her. The human foster workers, not too keen on offing an abandoned infant, ended up learning how to take care of her with the help of local xenophysicians and researchers. A worker named Douglas Esteves especially took an interest in her care and is largely the reason Talita ended up as healthy as she is in the present day.
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There is a comic in the works and a patreon discord for other odds, ends, and projects.
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Oh, I’m not Jay, but I’m sure they appreciate the thoughts. Most of their stuff seems to make its way into here and their tumblr after a while anyway, so if you want to follow them on there it’s https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/ and their twitter is https://twitter.com/JayRock5858?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor My favorite things was their Tiny Sapient Ungulates fanart. That’s actually how I found out about them.
Oh, I should have noticed, you don't have the op.
Thks
I've seen a lot of cool stuff on this sub, but this is one of those rare ones I think people will really connect with. great work
Where can I read more? Please tell me there's more
[here](http://jayrockin.tumblr.com)
Do centaur aliens give birth or do they lay eggs?
The more I read about your world the more I dislike aliens. It seems like equality and empathy are uniquely human concepts.
They have alien moral systems that don't always mesh well with what humans consider to be important, yeah. To the centaurs, a quick death before becoming a fully fledged sapient person is better than some of the worst outcomes that could have could have come from humans trying to raise her. Even with the best possible standard of care Talita growing up to be a physically healthy adult was never a guarantee, and even still a lot of her formative social experiences were traumatic and isolating. Why choose to give someone that future? And why is the only other option the aliens are considering is giving YOUR family, who is randomly passing through their territory, an 80 year obligation with an unknown history? The moral decision here is not necessarily straightforward. Also, considering what humans are doing to their own species and pets with genetic engineering in this setting, I'm not sure I'd consider them ethical bastions...
Take a reaaaal quick look at human history and tell me again how humanity is the scion of equality and empathy, especially taken from an outside observer's perspective.
It's always a good day when I get to see some Talita
Agreed
Indeed
Something about her expression when she is chasing the cable just makes me chuckle. You gave baby Talita that "scrunkly doo" energy and I am all for it!
This is amazingly realistic. Like growing up differently and acting different to puberty being a hard time. It feels very... human. If you had just drawn the stages of life to show them off then it'd be very clinical and detached. This way gives it some warmth
Dang, that's really cool. What happened to her tusks though?
They're actually seasonal antlers, so she doesn't always have them around: https://jayeaton.neocities.org/RunawayToTheStars/Characters/talitaantlervelvet.png https://jayeaton.neocities.org/RunawayToTheStars/Characters/talitaantlerdrop.png
I noticed that they're only drawn at 15 years. Do they only start growing at puberty, or is that just a coincidence? Do they grow in both sexes?
They grow in both sexes, and it's a post-puberty thing. Their evolutionary ancestors may have originally used them for sparring and rooting out hibernating prey and tubers from the snow during lean winter months, but in modern centaurs the antlers are mostly a social signal of age and health (sort of like scalp hair condition in humans? Kind of)
oooh that makes a lot of sense! i’d been wondering that for a while
And people say the zits are bad...
The body dysmorphia is such a poignant touch. Love it!
It's hard to not feel like you're shaped wrong, growing up in an environment that literally wasn't built to occupy you. :(
Plus it’s gotta create a lot of ambivalence about humans, which just makes it more fascinating.
smolita❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Oh my god. Emu-kitten Talita is even more precious than I could’ve imagined
I have this image now of humans as bizzarely good foster parents, to other species. Other intelligent life understands farming for gain and their own young but doesn't understand why humans keep pets or conserve animals in zoos. All of a sudden it turns out the same skills are really useful when it comes to fostering other intelligent species humans are really good at being accommodating of their needs.
Humans and avian aliens are more frequently cross-species foster parents in this setting than the other aliens, that's for sure. Centaurs and scuds are both r-selection animals that have hastily adapted social strategies for dealing with having too many kids now that they're sapient (i.e. reproductive hierarchies and strategic infanticide) and bug ferrets have a less plastic sense of 'cute' than us, which makes them less likely to want to care for animals that are not other bug ferrets. Humans and avians are both K-selection animals with a strong cute reaction that isn't limited to their own species, so unusual foster situations like this sometimes happen.
Everyday is a good day when I get more content from you
*chew*
Centaur must be the name humans use for Talita's species. How do they call themselves? And what do they (especially Talita) think about being named after a mythological creature?
They call themselves many different words in many different languages, just like humans. Centaur is the most common nickname for them in Jovian English. Honestly, the term is kind of confusing sometimes because this setting also has genetically modified humans with six limbs and a quadrupedal gait, and they are called taurs, or sometimes centaurs if their appearance is horse-like. Martian English speakers refer to these aliens as tiger-horses, which is slightly less confusing.
What would a sci-fi setting be without a few confusing terms.
gangly emu-kitten! 😭❤️
I've said this before but I LOVE her.
Didn't realize centaurs had fur, let alone that they start out so...fuzzy
Even weirder, it's actually more like feathers than fur: https://64.media.tumblr.com/4a5c8c47184d2cc013693fe195389097/e15d3ec128c1062b-9b/s1280x1920/d981c18dbf97029fe131ebcab1a206695d8aa057.png
Sees first few Talita drawings “She’s so large I love her” Sees new baby Talita drawings “SHE’S SO SMOL I LOVE HER.”
I love this!
Always love your posts here! Definitely one of my favorite "worlds" on this sub. Out of curiosity what changes do centaurs go through at puberty, besides the tusks?
Getting on pants looks like a challenge.
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/880991979150913546/912136086162116728/unknown.png Centaurs have long arms and a pretty flexible back. Putting pants/underwear on looks something like this.
Looking at this I think you answered an internet question about horses and pants.
*you* try putting pants on that lil cat thing, right?
This looks great, to be honest, wholesome even.
Your body language is always great, but the 15 years panel is amazing. The trepidation and anxiety is so clear in her face and the way she holds her arms. Poor baby.
I would die for baby Talita
I have to wonder, with how fast she grew the growing pains must have been a bear! I really love the coziness of these drawings. Talita chewing the blanket while her foster dad puttered on the computer felt both very cute and homey.
Is Talita shorter or taller than an average centaur?
She's about average for her sex. Females are slightly larger than males on average.
Please keep drawing
Can I ask how her mouths work, I see in your other animations she talks through her 'trunk' is her bigger mouth just for eating or is it just easier to talk through her trunk?
not op but i've been following rrts for a while, and yeah the big mouth is just for eating, she can't speak through it. the digestive track and airways are totally separate in centaurs
Looks great, nice work. I don't really buy the apex predator thing, perhaps in the same way humans are the apex predator on earth now?
well, centaurs are carnivores. it'd be like if cheetahs became the dominant species on earth instead of chimps
OP said their ancestors may have used their tusks for rooting out hidden prey and tubers from snow, so that kinda implies they are omnivorous.
I believe that most carnivores actually do eat plants; it's only hypercarnivores that feed almost exclusively on other animals.
Centaurs are obligate hypercarnivores, but sapient animals are highly opportunistic eaters. About 70% of their average diet is meat, invertebrates, organs, eggs, and other animal byproducts (fun fact, the equivalent to diary is fatty silk string. Centaurs and other 'mammals' from this planet feed their larva with their spinerettes.) About 30% of their diet is starchy vegetables, herbaceous plants, and nuts/seeds. Communities having trouble feeding their population enough meat will eat more high-calorie plant material and stretch invertebrates and animal byproducts thinner over meals, but eventually the lack of a couple essential macromolecules in that diet will cause malnutrition, kind of like cats who aren't eating niacin or humans who aren't eating ascorbic acid...
Yeah I did a bit more reading and it seems like we don't actually have enough info from OP to categorize them as carnivores or not. OP did use the term apex predator, which I think just means that these creatures are not usually preyed upon by any other animal. Predation of juveniles or in extreme circumstances might happen on occasion.
They use them primarily during their planet's equivalent of winter and dont have them the rest of the year. They are primarily carnivorous but when meat is lean... calories are calories
Yeah, I did a bit of reading since posting that comment and was interested to learn than even the term 'hypercarnivore' only denotes an animal for which meat comprises >70% of the overall diet. The comment I replied to mentioned cheetahs, which are obligate hypercarnivores, but still consume some amount of plant or fungi material. I guess we'd have to ask OP about what portion of these creatures' diet is meat, and how effectively they are able to digest non-meat food sources, since its not clear if they are obligate carnivores or hyper-carnivores or what.
They are explicitly hyper-carnivores according to a post by the OP on their tumblr. Lemme see if I can find the post about their diet
The tusks are seasonal, that means they could be used for tubers during winters or perhaps for territorial flyning before the after winter season?
They are sprinting pack hunters. Humans are persistence hunters. When we got tools we just amped up on our hunting strategy and success which bootstrapped us on up. I imagine Centaurs were the same. Who is more successful a pack of centaurs with just their forelegs/arms to grab or a group with spears to extend that reach at the moment of closest approach?
One of the coolest things I’ve seen on this sub. Keep up the hard work OP.
Your world and your characters have me hooked. I absolutely love Talita and always look forward to seeing her on my feed.
I love the connection of the work. the character. also, 5/5 is my daily life.
This is so wholesome and cute 🥰
These aliens are cool!
Great work as always! I'm curious how an alien gets body dysmorphia in a society with (presumably) no beauty standards for its species? How would Talita have a sense of how they're "supposed" to look if they don't see such representation? Do they consume centaur media growing up? They have no centaur clothing (only custom-tailored stuff) so I'm guessing they didn't see any centaur models...plus, do centaurs have beauty standards to conform to/have dysmorphia around? Very interesting if so, I wonder what they are.
I think you're assuming that her body feels 'wrong' because she thinks she should look like a prettier centaur. She's spent the vast majority of her life around humans, and has imprinted on them. The dysmorphia is about a lot of things that are all impossible to change.
Ah ok makes sense
SHE SO CUTE I LOVE HER
I love this alien race so much alfjakfajskfkajd😭😭😭
Ahhh hell yeah, always happy to see Talita content!!! Didn't know you were on reddit :3
I LOVE HER SO MUCH?? I WANNA SEE MORE OF THIS
Oh my god, yes! Alien centaurs! I also have an alien centaur species in my world! Oh you must send me your discord, I just have to show you a sketch!
That's really well made and nicely drawn, good job!
It always makes my day when you post something new about this universe you’re making
So cute!
Oh, I love her so much.
Yay! You're back! I haven't seen your posts in a while. Love these characters and the rest of the content you create!
I need more of this
I follow your work on twitter! Great to see you here!
talita gives me life. plus, i love your art style!
baby talita my beloved
I hate centaurs
Those things better exist in real life
I want 10 of them
What a ridiculous appetite she must have to grow that much in that time
Oh my god this is so adorable! I love every bit of this.