Writing by Austen Tucker.
June 24, 2026
You don't build the room and then walk in — you walk in and the room decides what it's willing to be. In the Zoo, Cancer is an architect with a door buried so deep she can't tell if it's hidden or just lost. Then the mother-chime rings, cheerier than the rest, and the good girl goes to fetch.
Continue reading →June 23, 2026
The cornfield kid finds a furry IRC channel and a rabbit named Kristi. The first time I ever heard the word "trans" used in a sentence — not as a slur, not as a punchline, just a woman casually mentioning she was transgender. Origin story.
Continue reading →June 22, 2026
They didn't hire a child. A child found the room where the adults were building a door, and made herself useful before they could decide whether stopping her would be mercy or cruelty. By winter, Ana was family.
Continue reading →June 19, 2026
She slipped into the garage to see the test rig moving. Jack's body reacted before the brain did — K-bar in hand, years of muscle memory. Then Anabelle screamed, and the garage became a garage again.
Continue reading →June 18, 2026
The Stonewall finale. The numbers I carry in my body — 30%, 46%, two bathroom doors — and a thought experiment about what would happen if we treated tonsils the way we treat trans medical care. There'd be a fucking riot.
Continue reading →June 17, 2026
The skullcap synced. The body loaded. And for the first time in years, Jack felt like something that could be loved — not a weapon, not a monster. A bunny rabbit in a third-rate simulation of a bar.
Continue reading →June 16, 2026
I make disposable art on purpose. A manifesto on con sketches, e621, Yerf, the print-to-digital flinch, and why fan art has always obeyed campfire logic — not museum logic.
Continue reading →June 15, 2026
The morning after the bus dream, Nate made eggs. Then Viv said four words that started everything: "We could build it ourselves."
Continue reading →June 12, 2026
Before the Zoo, before Fulldive had a consumer name, there was a nightmare about a bus on Guangfu Road — and two people who knew how to hold the body back from where it had been.
Continue reading →June 11, 2026
Letters to my younger selves at 11, 15, 19, and 22. It's not a fetish. It's not a fetish. It's not a fetish. And the Halloween at Wabash where I finally felt the sun kiss my cheeks — and dove right back under.
Continue reading →June 10, 2026
A flashback to the woods where stepbrother Jake first stumbles on the secret. Then Coney Beach goes off the rails — and Xander meets a boy in the crowd who reminds him why the costumes mattered in the first place.
Continue reading →June 9, 2026
Pride month opens. Year by year from 2009 to now — Olly's in Indianapolis, the parade I got pulled into, the wedding-dress shots for Obergefell. And the night my sister sat me down with an armful of makeup and a mirror that ended boy Austen for good.
Continue reading →June 8, 2026
Two kids hide in a closet from their parents' arguing and find a hope chest behind a false wall — and inside, they find the thing they need most.
Continue reading →June 5, 2026
A week of radio silence. Then Vivian texts twice. Mouse. Mouse, come up. He comes up. The walls of the Zoo are covered in him — and someone has pinned a postcard to a mousehole, signed 1 OF 8. — J.
Continue reading →June 4, 2026
The people getting real value from AI aren't the ones with the best prompts — they're the ones who moved through four predictable stages as fast as possible. A map for getting unstuck from prompt obsession.
Continue reading →June 3, 2026
A koi under a vent. A chalk arrow along the rafters. DRINK ME. A purple shark in a cathedral of capacitors and copper traces. Then a for-loop he forgot to protect, and a meeting in the wreckage.
Continue reading →June 2, 2026
Every AI productivity study is a photograph of a river. By the time you develop the film, the water has moved.
Continue reading →May 29, 2026
A studio inside the walls. A jar of buttons labeled MAYBE USEFUL and another labeled EMOTIONALLY SIGNIFICANT BUT USELESS. Three helper-agents, eight postcards, and one shaky question: do you want her to find you?
Continue reading →May 28, 2026
AI didn't reduce the demand on your best engineers. It redirected it. 6.5% more code reviewed. 19% less original work.
Continue reading →May 27, 2026
A thimble of water at the bar. Nate, again, with the Snakesim offer. Vivian's cane tocks the floor. Then Jamie's reply blooms in the air: WHO IS GEOFF AND WHY IS THIS SO PERFECT.
Continue reading →May 25, 2026
"Hey, you're the vending machine kid, right?" The other side of the encounter from Cold Boot — Geoff in the lobby, helmet under one arm, LET US OUT button pinned crooked to his satchel.
Continue reading →May 22, 2026
A moped held together by duct tape and chewing gum. A UPLOAD IS A HUMAN RIGHT flyer in the pannier. A vending machine that becomes a fortress when you're small enough to see it that way.
Continue reading →May 21, 2026
Why I use AI when the people coming for me already do. A blind trans woman's case against confusing refusal with resistance.
Continue reading →May 20, 2026
A mouse on the floor of a 12x12 cube, three brushes behind one ear, finally lands the shoulders. Vivian, on comms, tells him to stop polishing. Then: how do I get this to her?
Continue reading →May 19, 2026
I've been the target of enough moral panics to write the field guide. Here's how to run one successfully — and a warning that you'll be worse off if you do.
Continue reading →May 19, 2026
Something enormous is happening to work, and it arrives in clerical bites — boring enough to dismiss, big enough to reshape a life. A disabled knowledge worker on AI, four quadrants of adoption, and the fear of being early to the wrong skills.
Continue reading →May 19, 2026
On living in the uncanny valley, the women who taught me how, and why none of this scares me anymore.
Continue reading →May 15, 2026
A trans girl on an edible at a Boystown club gets pulled into a slow dance by a catgirl from somewhere else. By morning there's a scroll, a key, and a question worth answering.
Continue reading →May 15, 2026
A knock at the door. No one there. Just paper, ink, and a drawing of a shark — and a name on the dedication that ties the whole night together.
Continue reading →May 15, 2026
Jack notices the flinch. Vivian names what’s behind it. By the end of the night, Jamie isn’t sure if she’s okay — and learns she doesn’t have to be.
Continue reading →May 14, 2026
We're not getting an Act-3 rescue. The system wants us hopeless, alone, and dissociated. Here's how to live and love while the long fire burns.
Continue reading →May 14, 2026
If you give me agents, a CMS, a publishing pipeline, and one free evening, I will eventually try to write my own word processor. On Novel T, scene-aware drafting, and what an agent-native writing tool actually looks like.
Continue reading →May 13, 2026
Anabelle leads Jamie to a beach that smells like salt and tangerines, tells her to take off her corporate skin, and walks her into the surf. What’s underneath has been there all along.
Continue reading →May 13, 2026
The bar applauds when Jamie comes back. A spiky teenager slides half her cursed soda across the counter — the first thing anyone’s offered without asking for something back.
Continue reading →May 12, 2026
I'm 92,000 words into a novel nobody's read and three months into leading AI transformation at a 200-person org. Both look bad from the outside, which is how I know they're the same work. On long-arc discipline, the Dune shield, and why patience beats velocity.
Continue reading →May 11, 2026
“So when were you gonna tell me this was a fetish server?” Anabelle has explaining to do. Jamie has truths she hasn’t said out loud in years.
Continue reading →May 10, 2026
My first 1000-view video on YouTube was a chicken-fried possum lawyer from Toontown Chicago, a thing that would have lived entirely inside my skull five years ago. On cheap iteration, the wall it knocks down, and why slop is just practice with the lights on.
Continue reading →May 8, 2026
There’s no sun on the server. Just rain, jazz, a tavern that reveals itself like memory, and a missing logout button that nearly sends Jamie running.
Continue reading →May 7, 2026
The administrative layer between finishing a piece and publishing it was enough to stop the whole machine. Here's how I rebuilt it as an agent-driven pipeline.
Continue reading →May 6, 2026
A kindness to a vending machine becomes a stumbling encounter with a neighbor named Geoff. By the time Stinky Pete has finished cataloguing her vitals, Jamie has only one move left: plug in.
Continue reading →May 5, 2026
His name was Captain Webster. He sent letters. Then the letters stopped. On the email-list mentors who taught a Midwestern kid that writing could be a community, the twenty years of silence after the infrastructure died, and the publishing pipeline I rebuilt to find the hallway again.
Continue reading →May 4, 2026
Jamie works in a virtual cubicle farm where the sun isn’t real and her boss is named Stinky Pete. Then her coworker slides her a card with three words: “I’m about to change your life.”
Continue reading →May 3, 2026
An introductory poem for the It Takes a Zoo series, by Jumpin’ Jackrabbit (1973–2040).
Continue reading →April 23, 2026
I spent the past three years in blissful maker mode, learning everything I could about AI tools. Not because someone told me to. Not because my job required it. Because I *love* learning new things. I love that feeling of being just competent enough to glimpse the edge of a new world. The firehose still feels like a gift. I got roasted for it. It hurt more than I wanted to admit.
Continue reading →April 21, 2026
For a long time, the story I told myself about work was simple. Get better. Learn more. Become more useful. Refine your taste. Refine your craft. Build skills nobody can take away. I still believe in craft. I still believe in skill. But I do not think that story is enough anymore.
Continue reading →April 20, 2026
The market model is dying. Not because anyone attacked it. Because the tools changed. What replaces scarcity?
Continue reading →April 13, 2026
If preciousness is market logic, what does a non-market logic of art actually look like? Pass it around. Let it change shape.
Continue reading →April 8, 2026
I like staying in the moment. There's something about the present that feels permanent, untouchable. That if I have food in my belly and music in my life, I can be happy.
Continue reading →April 6, 2026
Where did our obsession with singular, precious authorship come from? The lone genius myth is an economic invention.
Continue reading →March 30, 2026
On AI, Labor, and the End of the Moat
Continue reading →March 30, 2026
I've had more names on the internet than I've had prescription strengths. That era is over
Continue reading →March 26, 2026
My name is Carl and I work at Floor Mart. I always have worked at Floor Mart and always will work at Floor Mart, forever and ever, amen.
Continue reading →March 19, 2026
Sighted people use the world around them to help them remember thing. When you can't do that, your brain builds something different. Something that might actually be better in some cases.
Continue reading →