About 1.4 million people live in Talaris, nearly all of them along the East Shore. As everywhere, they are people of every species; what sorts the city’s neighborhoods is heritage, nationality, and money. Most residents call themselves Talarian first and Filipino, American, Japanese, Korean, or anything else second.
Who came, and when
The population arrived in layers (see History of Talaris).
- The founders (1970s–80s): American security and corporate personnel, Filipino political and business families, and a far larger wave of laborers recruited from Palawan, the Visayas, and other provinces to build the island.
- The city-state boom (1990s–2010s): Filipino professionals from Manila, Cebu, and Davao; Japanese and then Korean corporate staff, many of whom stayed long past their rotation; Indian and Singaporean finance and IT workers; Western expats.
- Since the 2010s: Filipinos from typhoon-battered coasts, Southeast Asian migrants in service work, and, since 2024, researchers drawn by cold fusion.
The result is a city that changes block by block, where a Korean barbecue alley can sit next to a Palawan fish market with a room full of Indian developers upstairs.
Talarians carry a pride and an unease side by side. Being “born on the island” is a real distinction, and people born there like to say they turned a strategic rock into a world city. Many of them also know the city exists because an island was, in effect, sold, and that their comfort rests on deals the mainland never voted on.
Language and manner
English and Filipino are the official languages, and public signage is bilingual by law. On the street people speak Talarian Taglish: Tagalog grammar, constant switching into English, and Japanese and Korean loanwords picked up from work, pop culture, and the neighbors. Cuyonon and Hiligaynon are still spoken in Old Town. In mixed offices meetings run in English until they end, and the hallway switches back.
In public Talarians are a little brisker than people in the provinces, closer to Manila or Singapore. Among their barkada they are loud, teasing, and affectionate, and karaoke, shared meals, and complaints about bosses and politicians are fixtures.
Belief
Most Talarians are Catholic, though in the Core less conservatively so than on the mainland. Alongside the parishes, and increasingly woven into them since the 1990s, runs an animist revival in which Japanese Shinto practice and older Filipino belief in anito and diwata met and recognized each other. Neither tradition ever held that a mountain, a river, or an old tree was empty, and the Japanese families who arrived with household shrines found Palawan families who already left offerings at springs.
The revival shows in the shape of the city. Small shrines sit in Old Town’s alleys, at the foot of the waterfall on the eastern cliff, and along the trails up the Andunawan Range. Builders ask leave, usually through a local elder, before they cut an old tree, which is part of why Tranco grew up under its canopy instead of over it, and new buildings often leave a ledge or a corner for a shrine.
Media and music
Talaris consumes anime, manga, Korean and Japanese drama, and American film in quantity, and makes its own: local comics and animation set in recognizable districts, its own streaming dramas, a Filipino-English hip-hop scene that raps about inequality and living offshore, and an independent documentary scene preoccupied with labor, displacement, and the deal that created the city.
The city’s signature sound is HyperDiscoMetal, the blend of hyperpop, disco, and metal that IO Fox’s records made famous (see Music).
Food
The base is Filipino coastal cooking: grilled fish, kinilaw, adobo, sinigang, pancit, and rice with everything. American diners, Japanese ramen and katsu, and Korean fried chicken and barbecue sit on top of it, and the konbini at every station sell onigiri filled with adobo or sisig. Taho still arrives at dawn on foot (see Transportation).
Holidays and sport
- Independence Day, on July 4, marks the day the Basic Law took effect in 1992. It is the city’s biggest holiday and the one Manila likes least.
- The Labor March follows the route of a protest over a construction accident during the build-out. It is tolerated, and heavily policed.
- Basketball is still the city’s game, played on courts under the flyovers, with eSports close behind.