Karen and Todio (Patreon)

In classic me style now that I have committed to working on one short story, I am already thinking dreamily of the next one. In the vein of Terranaut and Airsled, I really want to do pre-space age stories for each alien race in Runaway to the Stars. This includes humanity's whole deal... I'm appropriating a story and characters I first developed in high school for a story tangentially about AI robotics and the first genetically modified humans, but mostly about antics and and romance.

There's more of this story (The Scientific Method) in this ancient tag dating back to 2011, but tl;dr Todio is the intern of an AI robotics engineer named Louis. Louis hates the guts of Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a genetic engineer and the primary designer/clone/mother of Karen, the first GMH created in the USA. While their respective supervisors argue, Karen and Todio become flirting friends.

I like that they are both androgynous in opposite directions, because this has also been true for most of the relationships I've been part of, lol. Despite being nonbinary myself I still find nb characters like Todio tough to design. Balancing visual signifiers of masculine and feminine traits to create an impression of being neither is tricky to do in art (and in life...)