Welcome to the inside of my head! It’s fun in here. I write, draw, and generally create. Expect to find everything from shapeshifters to robots, eccentric wizards to space dragons, with a healthy dose of Humans Are Weird. Let’s have fun with this.
Hello there! Are you looking for the Token Human series, featuring a spacefaring veterinarian during her time working on a courier ship? I post weekly short stories with this tag, and there’s a masterpost that’s up to date as of April 7th, 2025.
Also! I post early on Patreon if you’d like to spend a few bucks a month reading sci-fi shenanigans before the general public. (There’s a free tier too, if you want the stories emailed to you every Monday with no strings attched.)
Also-also, I write novels! Like this one that takes place after the courier era, when Robin is working as a vet on an alien planet (dealing with a crisis of escaped rabbits and troublemaking space poachers). And other books about completely different main characters. Sometimes I put together anthologies with friends.
And then there’s the rest of my blog, which is full of writing-related things, sci-fi, fantasy, Fun Facts and interesting nonsense, and general Tumblr tomfoolery.
I’m having a great time, and I plan to bring everyone else with me.
I want to watch an emergency responder procedural that starts off as normal with improbable disasters every week, but as the series goes on the characters become increasingly aware of how statistically unlikely their local rate of disaster has become, and the country and civilians react accordingly. mass exodus of the rich, influx of meteorologists and other relevant scientists, a local doomsday cult flourishes... the emergency responders are still responding to their emergencies but the show has slipped sideways from straight procedural to scifi as the disasters have to keep ramping up to top the previous disasters. like by the end of season two they're battling an alien invasion, an archaeologist has uncovered an ancient cursed artefact in the catacombs under the town hall and absolutely everyone has ptsd
I love seeing people casually making things today that would be fit for the most revered godkingwizard back in ye olde times. Sometimes living in the future means making really awesome versions of stuff from the past.
HEY DON'T CRY. 8,008 SPECIES OF FROG IN THE WORLD PER AMPHIBIAWEB AND THE 8,000TH FROG WAS DESCRIBED BY TUMBLR'S OWN FROG SCIENTIST DR. Scherz, ET AL., PEACE AND LOVE ON PLANET EARTH ‼️‼️‼️
GLaDOS voice: "Would you like to see some artwork I generated? I've heard from other test subjects that AI-generated artwork produces an uncanny valley response in human viewers because they can't perceive it as fully real. They've told me that it looks absolutely hideous to them, that they can't imagine anything more disgusting than AI art. But, well I've been practicing and wanted your honest opinion. Feel free to let me know how ugly you find this by ranking it on a scale from 'vomit-inducing' to 'eye-bleeding'."
A robotic arm lowers from the ceiling holding a hand mirror up to Chell's face
I was rereading The Token Human stories and I figured I should let you know it seems like one of the older ones is missing from the masterpost- the one where Telly and her siblings take a nap in the ceiling pipes
Thank you for sharing your lovely writing btw :)
No, it's there! (You had me worried for a second.) It's in the first section -- "Kittens in Space," right after "Bargains at the Space Market."
This is a very charming illustration and I do approve of Accidental Latin, but unfortunately, that is not what this (Fake) Accidental Latin actually says. Google Translate seems to think "temu" is identical to "timor" (infinitive, "to fear"), which would then be conjugated in first-person singular as "timeo" ("I fear"). "Temu" is not a word in Latin. So that is a very weird leap on Google Translate's part to turn gibberish into... something vaguely etymologically similar sounding? Hmm.
Next, "die" does mean "day," though nominative singular is "dies," i.e. "dies irae." It could be conjugated "die" if it was in ablative or locative case, but "die ad die" would mean something more like "day to day." "Ad" is in a "to" direction and "ab" is from, i.e. "ab urbis," and ablative case is used to indicate the movement of a thing. In short, "by" is not really a way to translate "ad"; we might want "per" here? (Through, by means of, etc.)
Not to mention, it would be weird to put one "die" at the start and another at the end The verb also usually goes at the end in Latin sentences, just for that extra bit of fun. So yes, in short, this is not actually Latin, and Google Translate is very bad at Latin in particular. Nonetheless, still charming.
Agree, @qqueenofhades, except on the matter of breaking “die ad die” apart. It’s a common structure in poetic and oratorical Latin to jam one phrase in the middle of another. I can’t think of an example exactly parallel to this construction, but I could believe a Roman poet would write it!
Ah, that is true. My Latin is of the reading-medieval-documents (particularly charters and/or chronicles) variety, where the sentence and usage structures are often more formulaic and there is less poetic license to move words around. There is obviously far less fixity for word order in Latin, since the conjugations explain how they grammatically relate to each other rather than placement in the sentence. (Coincidentally, this is why I used to say that the best feeling in the world was walking past a Latin classroom and not having to go inside it. Ahem.)
So yes: true that poetical Latin might be more at liberty to split the "die"-s up that far, though "timeo" (verb) is still more likely in most cases to go at the end, which would place them together anyway ("die ad die timeo," "day to day I fear" if translated in strict word order, which would make sense to an English speaker and sound more poetic anyway). Keep in mind, however, that my Latin is a) fairly rusty and b) mostly used for said formulaic legal document reading rather than freeform verse, so don't super-hard quote me on this.
I saw that ablative “die” and that final -u on “temu” and thought of the ablative supine (as in “mirabile dictu”) but as you observe, there isn’t a verb that “temu” could be, and then also, the ablative supine requires an adjective, as far as I know.
But perhaps “temu” is a hapax legomenon (in which case we would need the rest of the text to gloss it) or a scribal error for temeratu, from temero, “I defile or disgrace”. In that case, and in true Tumblr form, I might translate it as “daily I disgrace, in the manner of the day”, with some errors attributable to the scribe.
....oh my god. You might be a genius. Because what else does Tumblr do but daily disgrace [itself, oneself, and/or numerous others] in the manner of the day, and make numerous scribal errors.
I love a good HFY / Humans Are Space Orks post, and I think one element of Humans we’re sleeping on is an instinctual understanding of ballistics.
I mean, I get why it’s not as popular here on Tumblr dot com, given it’s kinda a jock/military adjacent thing, but like. Our ability to just. Pick up a small, firm object, judge its internal inertia and mass by holding it for a bit, and then flinging it with the kind of accuracy and speed Humans are capable of is.
Like there’s another post about how Humans in an alien zoo would probably be breaking out constantly, since we consider escape rooms to be a fun courtship ritual, but
imagine the aliens who are designing the enclosures just so happen to pick up, say, a devoted amateur baseball pitcher. Not even a legend by any means, just somebody who’s practiced with intention. And one day they’re watching her pass some time and blow off some steam by doing some pitching practice and they realize to their mounting horror that this gal can turn literally anything she can wrap her digits around into a ballistic weapon.
Heck yeah, human throwing skills! Before anyone tags me, I haven't written this exact story, but I did write about a certain courier saving the day with a few carefully-aimed Emotional Support Rocks.
And of course there's the mighty human battle cry "Yeet!"
A surprising skill in throwing things is a lot of fun. :D
“I was just going to grab it myself,” Wio said with a lazy twirl of a tentacle. “But then it broke apart into annoying little bits, and I figured HEY, time for training.” Her smile was just as innocent as the skin patterns that resembled a blue-ringed octopus from back home: not very.
I said, “We appreciate you thinking of us when the annoying things come up.” I said it with the appropriate amount of sincerity.
Next to me, Paint was honestly excited. “I’ve been wanting to try the grabber arm again! It’s really tricky.” She hopped in place beside the pilots’ chairs like a cheerful lizardy child. (I had a suspicion she was actually older than me, but Heatseeker ages are hard to tell.)
In the second chair, Kavlae waved her frills and agreed. “It is tricky, because the base design of this ship was never meant for fingers at all. We’re lucky they customized it for the rest of us.” She stood up and gestured at the chair. “Mur, why don’t you go first, then we’ll bring out the secondary controls?”
“My pleasure,” Mur said as he reached his own blue-black tentacles to slide from the third chair to the second. He’d claimed a seat because he got there before Paint and I did. Sometimes that third chair was for observers, sometimes the captain. Today it was for a smug squidlike guy who was clearly looking forward to showing off how easily he could use this particular tool.
Kavlae asked him, “You remember how to open it?”
“Sure do.” Mur tapped a couple buttons and the little cover slid open to show a palm-sized hole in the wall. I was privately glad I didn’t have to stick my hand in there. Despite the cover and the clean state of the ship, it always seemed like the kind of dark crevice that might hold spiders or worse.
Mur had no such worries. When the external cameras put a view of the grabber arm onscreen next to the space junk waiting to be gathered, he went for it. Stuck a tentacle in there as easy as putting on a house slipper, and got to work manipulating the large metal tentacle that reached from the hull, following his every motion.
Another type of ship might have a more fingerlike pinching design, but as Kavlae had said, this ship wasn’t designed for us.
Mur easily curled the grabber arm around the largest chunk of metal drifting outside — leftovers from a crash that hadn’t been cleaned up properly, by the looks of things — and he pulled it carefully to the cargo airlock. Didn’t bang the sides or anything. On a different screen, Blip and Blop waved from the cargo bay when they had it safely cycled through. The airlock’s scanner reported no contamination.
“Ta-da,” Mur said, sounding pleased with himself. He pulled back and pressed the right buttons to close the little hatch again. “Think I can cross this one off the list.”
“Yeah, you’ve got it down,” Kavlae said. “We’ll let you know when there’s a good opportunity for something harder.” She made a note on the digital chart of who had mastered what in the cross-training that Captain Sunlight was having us do.
Honestly, it made a lot of sense to have as many crewmembers as possible ready to step in for the essentials. I was surprised more ships didn’t give everybody a rundown on how to launch a distress beacon, or diagnose a red alert in the engine room, or turn on the basic self-operated machinery in the medbay. I was certainly enjoying the chance to learn it all, and taking lots of notes.
Today was just practice, though. Because some things are easy to understand but tricky to do.
“Righto, somebody else’s turn!” Mur said as he swung down to the floor. “I’m off to lunch.”
“Can I go next?” Paint asked.
I stepped aside and made an after you bow toward the chair, which Paint received with a sunny smile full of sharp lizard teeth. She scrambled up and tapped out a different set of commands.
This time a controller popped out of the underside of the console, moving forward on its own metal arm until Paint positioned where she wanted it and locked the thing in place.
The first time I’d seen it, I’d had to laugh. Somehow I’d been expecting a joystick or a grid of more buttons, but nope. It was a small model of the grabber arm itself, which would follow the shape this one was pushed into. Really, this was the same idea as the hollow one in the wall, but it looked like a funny little toy. According to Wio, the proper term was a “manipulating simulacrum,” or mani-sim. I always thought of the tiny plastic steering wheels you might give a toddler who wants to try steering the car from the back seat.
Paint was more focused than the average toddler. With the controller arm locked in place, she watched the screen while curling the mani-sim into a spiral that almost got a good grip on a warped piece of some other unfortunate ship’s hull. She huffed in annoyance and tried again. Her scaly orange hands were a bit too small for this, even with the adaptive design.
Eventually she got it, beaming as she deposited the chunk into the airlock. “Yes!”
“Well done,” Kavlae said. “I think it’s safe to say you can do it, just not super fast.”
“Right, yes, I won’t be volunteering for something time-sensitive unless I need to,” she said. “Can I try again?”
I didn’t mind waiting for my turn, and the two pilots were in no hurry since our schedule had plenty of wiggle room today, so I took a seat in the third chair while Paint got some more practice. She left plenty of detritus for me to work with when she was done.
“Your turn!” Paint said, unlocking the stabilization so she could push the mani-sim toward me.
I took it and sat up straighter while Paint vacated Kavlae’s chair and everybody shared pointers for me. I had done this before, though only once, and there hadn’t been much time to get a feel for it then.
The metal was cold as I felt it now. Which made sense, of course; Paint’s coldblooded fingers were hardly going to warm it. But it just seemed like all the more immersion into the idea of manipulating the big metal thing that reached into the blackness of space.
The really awkward, unwieldy metal thing. My fingers were longer than Paint’s, but it was a lot to keep track of.
“I need more hands,” I grumbled. “I’ve got to keep this part bent to the side to get around that thing, because I’m trying to curl this part around that thing, and I could try to grab the other bit, but I don’t want to break up the clump of tiny bits because then the visibility will be shot…”
“Yep,” Kavlae said cheerfully. “It stinks. That’s why I usually let Wio do it.”
“Can I — nope.” I tried to get an elbow involved, then my chin. Neither was helpful. “I swear, I should just take off my shoes and use my feet.”
Wio brayed in laughter. “That sounds hilarious; you should definitely do that.”
Kavlae frowned. “Then it’ll smell like feet!”
“And? Surely that can be cleaned,” Wio said, with all the confidence of someone who didn’t have shoes, or feet, or any reason to care what the mani-sim smelled like. “Go on; let’s see if it helps.”
Kavlae sighed dramatically while Paint tittered behind me. What the heck, there were cleaning supplies just down the hall.
“All right, fine,” I said. I kicked off both shoes and reached around the controller to pull off one sock, then the other. “You’re all lucky I haven’t been walking all over on deliveries in some hot climate today.”
“You get to clean it,” Kavlae told me.
“Yep,” I agreed, dropping the last sock and unlocking the controller arm. There was no way to make this dignified. I adjusted the height to where I could get at it with all four limbs, then I Did My Best.
It still wasn’t great. The detritus floated away at the slightest touch, and glittering flakes of broken stuff made the view iffy. But it did help. I pressed the lower part into place with my toes and curled the top into a careful grip with my much more dexterous fingers, and I managed to grab what I was aiming for. Paint applauded when I did.
Wio thought it was the funniest thing she’d seen in ages, nearly falling out of her chair while laughing at the sight of somebody with only four limbs trying to use them all on the same task.
“Congratulations,” Kavlae said when I shoved my catch into the airlock. “Now how much cleaning is that going to need?”
“Not too much.”
Still laughing, Wio declared, “It is absurd that your feet smell bad, just because you cover them up all the time. Do you really need the shoes that much?”
“Well, maybe not onboard,” I admitted with a glance at Kavlae, the only other shoe-wearer in the room. “But I definitely wouldn’t want to leave the ship without them.”
“And it just feels wrong,” Kavlae said. “Full clothes, on the job, but no shoes? Pshh, garbage behavior. Something you’d expect of unwashed bandits with no sense of pride.”
Paint put in, “Or someone who just wants to manipulate more controls at once?”
Kavlae frowned at her. “That is a wildly inefficient way to do it.”
“Probably depends on which controls,” I said as I unlocked the arm and pushed it away.
“None of these are made for feet!” Kavlae declared, spreading blue-skinned hands to wave at the control panel. “They’re barely made for fingers!”
Wio said, “No, you could probably do some of this with feet.” She sounded like she was just arguing to get a rise out of her copilot, and enjoying every moment. “This doesn’t take much dexterity, and that could be pressed with anything. Oh, and the slider for wormhole scans! Super easy.”
Kavlae argued back on principle while I gathered my shoes and socks. I didn’t bother to put them on. “I’ll be right back with the cleaner.”
Paint looked at my bare feet as I left, raising one browridge in question. I just smiled and hurried down the hall to fling my shoes and socks into my quarters, wash my feet, and gather a couple cleaning scrubs.
“I’m back,” I said over a discussion of propriety and social standards. Kavlae and Wio didn’t even look up. I sat down again and cleaned the mani-sim thoroughly while only Paint watched. Then I put the scrubs on the floor and deliberately pressed the button sequence to retract the apparatus with my big toe. “All done! What’s next? Should we do a wormhole scan?”
Paint giggled. Kavlae stared at me. Wio burst into laughter again.
I said, “It’s fine, I cleaned them. With soap and everything.”
“Good enough for me!” Wio declared. “Can you reach that slider? Wait, lemme see if you can turn a sensor dial.”
I could, in fact. Wio was delighted. Kavlae sank into her chair like a teenager who didn’t want to be seen with embarrassing family members. Paint stood close and suggested other awkward things to try.
It was uncomfortable and challenging and hilarious, made entirely worth it by the antennae-tilting expression on Zhee’s face when he clicked by in the hallway later, with silent judgement in every angle of his insectoid body. Wio just laughed louder. Zhee left before anyone could try to explain.
~~~
Good news! Volume One of the collected series is now available in paperback and ebook form! (Check your local store, or this handy link hub.)
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These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.
Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.
The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).
ok sorry to double reblog BUT I just looked him up and he does these fantastic videos where he breaks down HOW he actually mimics the other artists’ styles. Like for ed Sheeran, he explains how he brings his voice forward in the mouth, while Adam Levine sings in the back of the mouth, stuff like that. It’s SO COOL, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually break down how to do this sort of thing, as a skill, instead of just treating it like a neat trick they just happen to be good at.
https://www.tiktok.com/@justinjmooremusic
The baby beards are a different color than adult beards! Just like the way baby hair color can change with regular human infants. I can think of a couple examples from my own family.
And I can also think of all the entertaining possibilities where fantasyland is concerned.
Baby dwarves have beards as wildly-colored as any anime character, because they match the family's favored gemstone! Clippings from each child are kept in the family vault. Infidelity scandals are dramatic. Hair dye is a suspicious thing to own.
