You can read a lot more about this version of humanity and their weirdness on the website (at the "World" link in the header bar), but be warned that the human biology page has nudity. The other aliens are also nude on their biology pages, but internet commentators mostly seem to be bothered by clothesless humans for some reason... especially when they don't match an extremely specific range of body types. I find drawing uncanny anatomy and a wide range of body types fun and challenging, though.
Reminder that you can submit questions for the characters over here for the inter-chapter AMA.
Transcript
LOG 2.1 Humans
Caption: Due to the Pleistocene extinction event, humans only have one remaining natural species in their genus. However, their history with genetic modification has created new human species, colloquially referred to as GMH (genetically modified humans). “Humans” are thus described as a genus of related animals, like avians.
TYP HUMAN
Image: An ordinary human.
TYP WITH ARTIFICIAL TRAITS
Image: A human with green hair and slightly pointed ears.
BIOMODDER
Image: A human dressed in holographic, black, and white alternative clothing. Their skin is ink-black and blue, and their hair is bright orange, red, yellow, and black arranged in defined colorblock areas. They have fur in their hair colors on their neck and shoulders. Their ears are fin shape with bright colors matching their hair, and their eyes have red scleras and yellow irises. Their bone structure is the same as a typ human's.
TAILED SPACER
Image: A small human with dark reddish purple skin, auburn hair, supraorbital and genal whiskers, and very long prehensile tail. Their feet have thumbs and their body proportions include a long flexible spine and arms and legs of approximately the same length.
CETASER
A large human with defined grey and white countershading, neck gill slits, more body fat, webbed hands and broad webbed feet, a raptorial stance, and thick dolphin-like tail with a dorsal fin.
MAGPIE BRIDGER
Image: A small human with a pair of winged limbs positioned over a pair of short but otherwise ordinary human arms, a deep chest, a feathered tail, and thin digitigrade feet. Their feathers are black with white patches.
DRAGON
Image: A human with blue and copper scales, large ram-like horns, claws, dorsal spines, digitigrade feet, and reptilian tail with a club at the end.
TAUR
Image: A hexapodal human with a human-like foretorso and an ungulate-like rear torso and rear four legs. They have white fur and hair, deer-like feet, a long tufted tail, horse-like ears, and single horn on their forehead.
ANDROTHERIAN SPECTRUM
Anthro-type and catgirl-type
Image: A couple sits with their child between them. The anthro-type has a dog-like appearance with tan fur all over her body, a fluffy tail, floppy ears, a very short snout, and black wet nose. The catgirl-type has an ordinary human appearance other than their cat-like calico colored ears and tail. The child is somewhere in between the two, with a single floppy ear and partial fur coverage.
Caption: After the popularization of GMO pets and livestock, the Overton window on human modification was shifted by financially powerful gene lab institutions who stood to gain from a designer baby craze. GMH children were especially popular as a status symbol in pre-WWIII United Martian States culture. Though the hyper-capitalist UMS government did not survive the Climate Wars intact, the natal lab institutions did, and pre-natal human alteration is still considered relatively normal in the modern day. Not that there isn't a lot of political fighting over legality and regulation— made more complicated by the fact that humanity's extreme genetic variability now means many parents need natal lab intervention if they want to have genetically similar, healthy children.
Naturalized Artificial Traits
- artificial eye colors
- piebaldism
- pointed ears
- artificial hair colors
- iridescent hair
- artificial skins colors
- stripes
Caption: Most modern clades of GMH were originally created by the designer baby industry, or by scientific communities seeking to create humans hardier to the conditions of space travel and a changing Earth. Groups of reproductively compatible humans large enough to form stable populations are referred to as “clades”. The largest clade is “typ” humans, which includes non-modified humans and those with minor artificial traits like pointed ears, skin patterns, and unusual colors. Typ humans with these naturalized artificial traits are not usually classified as GMH for the same reason a non-modified human wouldn’t be classified as GMH for undergoing gene therapy for cancer treatment, microgravity tolerance, or other routine medical purposes. The distinction is entirely constructed, since all of them have undergone some level of genetic modification.
Bio-modders are a separate phenomenon from GMH, as they undergo elective cosmetic surgical and gene therapy changes as adults, while GMH are altered before they are born. Mods for adult bodies are much more limited than pre-natal alterations, but medical technology is slowly catching up.
51 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 77”
Darth Biomech
Considering how biomodding lifted off, how about the more “classic” transhumanism? Are cyborgs a thing? Are they being prejudiced against?
Jay Eaton
Non-diegetically, I feel like cyborgs are done to death in scifi and I wanted an excuse to draw more strange anatomy. Diegetically, augmentation tends to be invisible implants (bug ferrets often have these), exosuits you can take off, or lower tech temporary prosthetics. The thing about guys with robot arms is, in this setting they just can grow you new arms with your DNA. More people opt for that than heavy cybernetic replacements that take much longer to adapt to and can involve invasive implants that your body may reject.
tiramisu
Is there any existing lore page on where the internal organs are on human taurs?
Talita Fangirl :)
https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/749610605227458560/
eden
OOF one day when natal labs start to hit down for whatever reason a LOT of populations are going to be rendered functionally extinct.
K
What was the Pleistocene Extinction Event? Was it a mass human die off on Earth?
Are different Human types such as Tailed Spacers and Taurs and Cat Girls considered subspecies or different species all together?
Proxy
That was the real-life extinction event when a lot of critters like mammoths and such went extinct, along with early humans, leaving our species as the only member of the genus!
Jay Eaton
The Pleistocene was hard on a lot of megafauna, including genus Homo. All of our natural evolutionary relatives didn’t make it and a lot of Homo sapiens died as well.
Different human types tend to be considered subspecies but this is more of a politics thing, since going by the backup definition of species, anyone who couldn’t have children with a typ is a different species than a typ. But also, “species” is a convenience category with wiggly boundaries that only gets more ambiguous when you add genetic engineering, so, shrug.
Sparroque
I love this future version of humans. I think cosmetic and functional gene manipulation is just so practical and exactly the sort of thing humans would get into. Id be curious if any genetic modding is used on earth-native animals for similar reasons. And Im interested in the social implications of being modified before birth for a specific functionality (like tailed spacers born in gravity wells)
eden
oh yeah, the whole craze started because of designer pets! (you can also see a pet dragon in the backround of a comic featuring five-year-old-talita! what I’m worried about are the swaths of any jovian society being potentially rendered functionally extinct when natal labs start shutting down for whatever reason. most of these clades (particularly anthros and catgirls) can’t produce children on their own and cross-clade procreation is basically impossible. plus, it’s SUPER extensive so if you’re poor you’re basically screwed out of having kids. (gillie is actually the product of her parents going through a natal lab testing program. she’s a catgirl because that was how they could afford to have her)
sparroque
Ah, I see I missed the entire middle paragraph ;_;
Yello
Love this graphic. Really into how you describe all sophonts as if you spoke to aliens.
Jorpus
Do you think that all of the people in RTTS are wearing 21st century styled outfits is because they’re going through an old school fashion revival wave?
Jay Eaton
It’s because I have difficulty designing original human fashion and dislike a lot of clothing futurism tropes. If you want a diegetic reason sure we can go with that.
silverspoon
in this setting I’d be pissed if I was born a typ human when there was a possibility to be born a hecking dragon. Or like, being born one species when I’d find another one much cooler. I guess I’d get into a heavy modding, but it wouldn’t be the same
silverspoon
I’m also kinda lowkey sad that my avatar icon is a human. Man, I don’t want to be human
also, by the way, I’m being lighthearted
1d4Nadg
try messing with the first letter of your username 😉
$ilverspoon
Testing to see if my avatar changes
$ilverspoon
Oh it did! Thanks!
samkee00
That’s what I think every time. IIRC there are even flighted dragon GMHs. I’d feel even sadder than I do now that I’m not a dragon
Redacted
Golden retriever lady had my heart
Redacted
*HAS
bwooom
too late, we lost her 🙁
Liza
That taur looks so done with everyone’s BS
zaratustra
taur is the only one that noticed they’re taking a picture
Zidane
I love the taur’s little pink shoes lol
Origamigryphon
I am extremely biased toward that dragon person (I wonder if you can tell why)
Dizzy Dee
Honestly, your human/GMH designs are one of my favourite parts of this series. Not even just for the wild anatomy: I love being able to look at their different outfits and poses and the way they interact with each other and glean little bits of their personalities just from these brief doodles. Like…yeah, they’re tailers or mermaids or literal dragon people, but they *feel* like real, everyday human beings I could meet on the bus or at the grocery store.
dokki
absolutely love the outfits on display for each of these humans. They feel so real! I love the almost dissonance you feel from seeing someones flashy skin, fur, horns, whatever- and relatively normal everyday clothes. The cetaser, taur, and magpie bridger have my favorite fits
whirly
i love this page, i love all these human designs
Guest
YES! MY FAVORITE FREAKS!
Red
I wonder if Talita wears modified taur clothing based on this? I know she is a lot taller and also has lungs in different places but it could be easier than finding centaur clothing in space
Peter Jensen
Yep, human taur clothing is a decent starting point, but always needs tailoring because limbs bend differently, and of course she needs to have unblocked excurrent nostrils:
https://jayeaton.site/Art/RttS/AMA/3/1.png (character AMA #3)
Fallingfeather
*points* the biomodder has… YUGIOH HAIR
Rad Internet Stranger
That biomodder is really purdy
I wanna be their fren..
egg
Ya know, since learning about this story and, more specifically, learning about humans in this setting, I wonder if anything happened to the Furry Community cuz of GMH. like would it get stronger?, would it fizzle out BC anthros are straight up humans?, would any modern furries be judged or shunned? The socio-politicalness of it all <3
Jay Eaton
Furry as a subculture is ancient history in this setting. There are a handful of semi-related subcultures in RttS but they do not wholly resemble the modern furry fandom, and tend to be either active transhumanists, or fans of specific kinds of speculative fiction.
Zany Selkra
Interesting to know! I also wondered what the alterhuman/otherkin community would be like in this setting. I imagine different from the modern real world in some way. I wonder if there’d be typs who are “tailed spacerkin” as an example.
AnormalADN
Will those informational pages be in the printed book? I love them
Jay Eaton
That’s the plan.
hal9000
is anyone else getting malware flags on the site now? i don’t think its legit lol just wondering whats causing it.
anyway, love these guys! i remember the original stripy people art. i’ve always loved Jay’s takes on funky humans- I started following back during Cel Trei Creaturi, and Idlewood’s Colibri & Scientific Method’s Karen is what initially drew me to their stuff lol. great to see the improvements!
AnormalADN
My antivirus has always given me “suspicious connexions detected” alerts when I visit this site 🤷 dunno what it’s about either
Jay Eaton
I’m not sure what’s causing some people to get malware/unsecure connection flags. I’ll consult with my web guy and try and pinpoint the problem.
hal9000
If it helps, the specific thing my malware guard is throwing up is “Malware URL :
runawaytothestars.com.dream.website”
Doesn’t affect the Neocities site, just this one
Peter Jensen
That’s an interesting URL. A bit of searching indicates a possible wordpress/dreamhost misconfiguration. runawaytothestars.com.dream.website 301 redirects to runawaytothestars.com, which again 301 redirects to http://www.runawaytothestars.com. Looks like there’s at least one page element that refers to the .dream.website URL, when looking at source.
Teod
Wait, is that JoCat? Ah, no, the ears are orange…
Apollo235
Lore bumper pages time WOOT WOOT!!
There’s gene-therapy to prevent bone loss from microgravity for humans, and in other material its shown that tailed spacers have trouble adapting to full gravity. What’s preventing a similar gene-therapy treatment from hardening their skeleton to withstand full gravity without chronic pain issues?
1d4Nadg
I’d assume that, if medical cost is no issue, it means that doesn’t really work. As far as I understand, the chronic pain problems are related to how their spine is made, not the hardness of their bones.
They have 2 extra vertebrae among other micro gravity adaptations, and that’s really not the kind of things you can fix with genes therapy. You’d need to have the desired genom before birth for that to work. And I’m pretty sue those vertebrae are not the kind of things you surgically alter either XD
0xabad1dea
is the typ human wearing a “would they wear pants like this or this” meme
Zuorai
Oh my god they ARE
Guest
I’m so glad we have Gillie as a character to see what an “off-model” GMH looks like.