Just UnHuman thangs
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Out-of-Placers
A story of inconvenient changes
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OOPs now has a Russian translation which updates shortly after the English pages are posted!
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I’m sure this visit totally won’t exacerbate his ongoing, multilayered, existential crisis, like last time.
I dunno, I feel like Kass is getting a handle on this whole species-change thing, and maybe just needs the distraction from the Yannit thing.
Ok this just happened to land on something I think about. There is NO CHANCE that blanket would be so neatly squared with a person wriggling around underneath it. That must have been draped over him by another person.
Move your leg around, and it scrunches up the corners. Turn over, and it gets all pulled away from one side.
That is an unnaturally orderly blanket.
Or he had a cat.
People with pets who sleep on top of the bed can learn to sleep unnaturally still because they have practice in not disturbing them.
Lying belly-down, Yinglets would have to be double-jointed to get the blanket in that position to begin with.
And Kass’s Shelltoozh pokes holes in de pillow too. It is sharp enouzh to, and sensitive enouzh to not want it resting on de wood of de bed frame. Again, who sleeps like zhis? Is it a human zhing?
Yoo that’s a good point, would be a great detail!
Kass’ snout seems to be overhanging the bed’s frame/wall. Still looks supremely uncomfortable, but the shelltooth is probably not an issue at least.
De perspective is a bit confusing, but de tell is Kass’s eyebrow whiskers. De “bed” is not quite against de wall, as shown in image 1, but pretty close to it. So, if Kass’s snout was outside de bed, her eyebrow whiskers would be touching de wall, and for a Yinglet, zhat is so, so annoying to have somezhing touching zhose while sleeping!
Her eyebrow whiskers aren’t contacting de wall (zhey would be bending slightly if so) so it is safe to say, her shelltoozh is resting on de pillow.
I’d give the distance maybe half a meter or so, which would be plenty of room for the snout to overhang the bedframe. That said, you make a good point regarding the whiskers. In order for them not to touch the wall while Kass still extends past the bed, it would have to be either farther away or the shelltooth would need to be touching the bed in a different, equally uncomfortable way. So yeah, digging into a pillow seems like a plausible answer.
Maybe poor sleep due to insisting on sleeping in the now-unergonomic position they did as a human partly explains Kass’ crabbiness haha
More like 10 cm, or less. It is a scale sort of zhing, as Kass is what 1.4 – 1.6 meters from head to tail tip standing up? De space between bed and will looks to be more more zhan Kass’s muzzle legnzh to me.
As for Her wierd sleeping posture? Yeah, not helping her. Also us Yinglets calling her Laady all de damm time when she clearly prefers to be called he/him to zheir face. Kass has lots of issues, as do we all, but is having to get by while learning de ins and outs of a new body and mental hardware to zhink wizh.
As for de question of how humans got from one world to anozher, it is not cannon, exactly. https://www.deviantart.com/lunarscorpion1990/art/New-Ties-P6-760203458
And yeah, once we got into space, zhe federation guys tossed us into a holodeck, where I am now, along with de ozher Species from Kass’s world. Bad news for you, I suppose as you are parts of de holodeck simulation we live in. But don’t worry, I can’t turn it off, as we’ve been locked out of saying zhings like “Computer End Simulation” or whatever. Zhe damm zhing only responds to federation officers after someone messed wizh de settings once too many times.
So, zhat’s how I got onto 21st century Earzh in a nutshell. And why you don’t exist, but also do exist too. Weird, huh?
I will admit, I’ve been curious about your presence, having seen much of what you’ve had to say during my binge of the story some weeks ago. I take it Willl is much the same?
As for the revelation that I’m simply code running in a computer simulation of 21st Century Earth—assuming, of course, that what you say is true—I’m unbothered. If my own subjective experience, or the simulation thereof, is indistinguishable from the real thing, who’s to say I’m not real in a philosophical sense? At least for me. Sure, there’s the possibility of the simulation being stopped from on high, but that’s so far beyond my control or comprehension that it’s not worth worrying about. For all I know the simulation may have been paused and restarted hundreds of times in the subjective period of time I spent writing this message and I would—and could—never know.
So if I really am just a computer program reflecting on itself as it hurtles through space, why be morose? And who knows? Limits have tested us countless times in the past, only to be broken. Þæs ofereode, þisses sƿa maġ.
Good attitude. We are all at de mercy of forces we cannot control, your existence is just a bit weirder zhan most. And yes, de simulation gets paused for when Starfleet checks on us, or like when zhey added zhat Baxxid to our holodeck.
It is interesting zhat scientists here postulate on de nature of your universe, wizh some making pretty good points, and a few zhinkers saying outright zhat de whole universe is a simulation. https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/could-the-universe-be-a-simulation-the-physics-behind-the-hypothesis
Double-jointed, you say? Have a look at OOPs #63. :þ
Yes, and no. Our spines are VERY flexible! Our limbs, not so much. Much of using our stick-like limbs to zheir utmost revolves around using our body’s flexibility to make up for our limb’s lack of movement. Such as using a foot hand to groom one’s chest and neck fur as an example. Our elbows being so, so close to our bodies prevents us from being able to reach wizhout weird, long handled grooming devices ozherwise.
As for de bed? Gimme a Hammock any day I have to sleep above ground. Love ’em, really. But I live in a burrow, like a discount Hobbit home, and sleep on a doggie bed.
Never mind the blanket; the end is shaped to accommodate a tail. Pet bed? Custom work?
Is not just a unnaturally straight blanket, but who sleeps like zhat? De whole idea of having a blanket is to keep off bity zhings for a Yinglet, and Kass isn’t even doing zhat right. I sleep in a dog bed, and it is supremely comfortable, zhank you. Curling up to rest my head on my tail is how to do it right for a Yinglet. A Hammock works well too, comfort wise. But a square bed? Ick.
This is the kind of thing Lopin could teach, but would Kass dare ask Lopin for sleeping instructions? It could be worse, like Beizel trying to offer sleeping *lessons*. But nope!
Is so, but at least Isher’s blood is out of her fur, so someone helped Kass bathe and get dried before sleeping, zhat mystery person probably did de blanket too.
The diplomat dreamt · beneath the dark
sky set with sapphire. But then turned the cycle
to unwelcome waking. By this cursed, weird
body-not-born, his racing brain
betrays his soul · bolst’ring his change.
Lost humanity · erodes all hope
for a normal life · as he once lived.
The Enclave calls, and he must answer,
for sake of kin · and friend in kind.
I love your writing style, but I wonder if it might work even better as prose or blank verse than in the poetic structure you’re using. Just for the sake of illustration, with a couple of suffixes adjusted:
“The diplomat dreamed beneath the dark sky set with sapphire. But then the cycle turned to unwelcome waking by this cursed, weird, body-not-born, his racing brain betraying his soul, bolstering his change, lost humanity eroding all hope for a normal life as he once lived. The Enclave called, and he must answer, for sake of kin, and friend, in kind.”
It’s probably already hard work, but if you could carry that style for whole pages of blank verse, unbroken by poetic devices, or even build up whole paragraphs of prose like it, you might discover something really powerful. I know art critics are the bane of artists, and I don’t want to discourage you from developing your poetic style, but the best prose is as rich and as rhythmic as good poetry, and I want to encourage you to give it a try as well.
In a nutshell, what you’re doing with alliteration and rhythm is delightful, and I’m rooting for you to find the perfect frame to set it in.
I appreciate the comment! For the last month or so I’ve taken a strong interest in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse, something I’ve been casually interested in for many years—hence the name—but only recently started looking more deeply into. Coincidentally, I found OOPs at around the same time and thought it’d be a fun way to practice the form by writing a poem for each page as they release. I’d considered going back and doing one for each comic, but I didn’t want to spam the feed and it’d take an eternity anyway lol
As for the structure, the breaks help measure the rhythm and where the alliteration is meant to land. The most stressed syllable on the first half of the line defines the alliterative subject and the second stressed syllable of the second half of the line must agree with it—this is my own twist, as traditionally the first stress of the second half-line is the one that must alliterate. Each half-line is also supposed to mix up the rhythm, which I did an admittedly mediocre job at in this particular poem. Far too much use of the Type E pattern (strong weak weak strong).
I like your prose take on it, though! I think I’d have trouble keeping track of my alliteration and rhythm in a prosaic or free verse style, but seeing it in the form of a paragraph definitely helps me notice some weirdness in my phrasing and punctuation that I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. Even if I don’t switch to free verse or prose, it may be worth double-checking my work in that form during the editing process.
But yeah, thanks for reading! I always appreciate constructive critique and seeing people’s thoughts on my work. 🙂
hehe kassen booba >:)
Suddenly wondering if the Yinglets are actually native to this planet, and not from some other planet with a different day-night cycle… Not sure how that meshes with my other theories about what actually happened here…
…why did this show up as a reply…
Doing pretty well for a Raccoon, really.
Oh, it’s more than just that. Think about the species we’ve seen. Nothing else is quadrupedal, much less mammalian. And why else would everyone’s favorite mystery object be converting biomass to yinglet? It smacks of either medical or terraforming tech, but there’s no reason for human colonists to be carrying around something keyed for that outcome. It’s far more likely they crashed there first, and then humans had their mishap later. Even things like the patriarchs with their unusual instant affinities calls to mind an engineered, scorched-earth recovery plan(sort of like Orks, but more yinglety). And of course, there’s the way the title keeps being called back to for additional onion-layer peelings.
Suddenly wondering if the Yinglets are actually native to this planet, and not from some other planet with a different day-night cycle… Not sure how that meshes with my other theories about what actually happened here…
Eh, de entire universe gives us de middle finger daily, so an odd sleep schedule is de least of our worries. As for us being from somewhere else, we have de “Majestic Lesser Yinglet” to prove we evolved on zhis planet, or at least some asshat thought it’d be funny to bring our retarded cousins along when zhey transplanted us.
Could ask de same about Humans, as being tall, furless apes does not groove wizh de ozher types of critters out zhere, no? Especially finding zhey live on ozher worlds like Earzh.
What if *nobody* is native to this planet?!
I zhink de noted Earzh Author Anne McCaffery did a book on zhat, called Dinosaur Planet, where some ET’s loved dinos so, so much zhey adopted zhem as pets before zhe KT extinction. Is a maybe for our homeworld being such a zhing, but if so we clearly came from de Lesser Yinglets in recorded history on Kass’s world. If someone grabbed de lesser yinglets from some hellhole world, maybe?
On Earzh, humans evolved into several sentient species, when zhen went to war and only de species we know as human today survives, wizh a small portion of Neanderthal remaining to show for zhe true world war zhat took place. So, why didn’t humans here do the same to all de ozher species? All I can zhink is de Humans are latecomers to de party compared to say de Indrel. Not zhat de Humans aren’t into conquest, as Kass loosing her homeland shows, but zhere are clearly multiple sapient civilizations on de planet, sharing space wizh a known zenocidial species like humanity is (zhough zhey would have to travel to Earzh to know zhis).
I think the most likely sapient species to not be native to this planet is actually humans. Though with the existence of hybrids and technology that can change humans to another species there is definitely pretty strong evidence that they share some form of genetic lineage with the rest of the planet.
As far as Yinglets, though, I think they just have a polyphasic circadian rhythm like cats do on Earth. I’d be very concerned about a planet that had a day/night cycle of only a few hours, especially in terms of habitability.