#cellfolk

[cyanogen-miasma]

let me cook

I thought I should complete the sciences trifecta and make some biological characters

I've always had a fondness for "people get shrunk and explore inside someone else's body" storylines because of the fun ways people re-imagine the inside of the human body

I've had various ideas for my take on this trope but I'm going to start here with this silly critter I'm calling an "animalcule" (which is an archaic word for various microscopic animals - in this universe a plant cell would be called a plantacule, fungal cell is fungicule, etc. unicellular organisms are just referred to by their actual names. all these are collectively referred to as "cellfolk"). This one is a keratinocyte. I'm tentatively calling it 'Kera'. Kera gets lost inside the Self (the body it lives in) when a puncture wound from Outside causes it to get swept away in the blood. It manages to avoid the fate that usually befalls a keratinocyte and goes on wacky adventures with various other animalcules within the Self.

[cyanogen-miasma]

said podocyte arms dealer, its name is Odo

it got tired of its job in the Bowman's Capsule and went rogue, now collects and sells kidney stones in exchange for ATP

podocytes are another one of my favourite cell types, silly fellers

[cyanogen-miasma]

this is inspired by that textpost that's like "dude your [unexpected microbe] just fucking bit me but I can't remember what the microbe was so I can't even try to look up what it was. I found it in a collection of posts with the theme of talking like you own a dog but the 'dog' is is an unexpected organism very far removed from a dog. if anyone knows what I'm talking about please help

[cyanogen-miasma]

*coughs* whatever go my gametes

this is very not to scale as the ovum is a lot bigger than the spermatozoon.

ovum is also opaque compared to the spermatozoon due to its thick jelly coating

spermatozoon is a rare two-tailed sperm, but the crooked acrosome is more for character design reasons, its acrosome canonically is alright

their names are Ova and Erma respectively (waow I am so creative lol)

spermatozoon is kind of one of my favourite type of cell but this is something I can't say in public without getting weird looks because it's *gasp* involved in sex

[cyanogen-miasma]

this is the lymphocyte, I will be tentatively referring to it as 'Lim'

lymphocyte animalcules have weapons which represent their unique antigens. Lim keeps its antigen wrapped to avoid causing harm to cells around it.

[cyanogen-miasma]

I gave it hair lol

and since it's a skin cell it can have some melanosomes as a treat

pretend the organelles are in there

[cyanogen-miasma]

what if one of the cell characters was a self-reactive T lymphocyte who escaped from the thymus before it could be destroyed lol

it has a pet bacteriophage

[cyanogen-miasma]

I imagine there's a podocyte in the kidney who is an arms dealer in would-be kidney stones

Lim frequently uses its service because it still wants to protect the Self even though it is self-reactive, and a shard of calcium oxalate surely makes for an effective weapon