Science fiction is full of first contact stories, but is there a such thing as LAST contact?  Decide exactly what that means, and write about it.

It was too late, when the humans came. They were a young species, still exploring outwards, vital and thriving. 

We… were not. 

War had ravaged us, and sickness, and war once again, until our population dwindled beyond the point of recovery. We struggled against that, of course… we used genetic manipulation, and cloning, and even more desperate measures. None succeeded. When the humans came, we were sinking into apathy, only a few tens of us left. We had begun to discuss whether we should commit a mass suicide, or simply wait to fade away. 

And then the young species came, in their clumsy ships, and they asked us why we were so few. 

“We are becoming extinct,” we told them. “We have passed the point of recovery.” 

It is custom to avoid the races that are dying – once a species reaches the point of inevitable extinction, even war is suspended, and the fiercest enemy pulls back. The custom was born of plagues and poisons that could be carried forth from a dying world to afflict a healthy one, but it has the implacable weight of tradition now. After we are gone, after they have waited for the prescribed period of quarantine, there will be a fight for our world. Habitable worlds are few, and this is a good one, with plenty of free groundwater and thriving vegetation. It is a bitter thing to be grateful for the custom that allows us to die in peace, but we are grateful.

But the humans don’t know that custom, and they do not leave. They seem distraught, when we tell them we are dying, and try to offer their aid - but their technology is behind ours, and it is too late. When they realize that they can’t save us, though, they do something that bewilders us. 

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So there’s this huge dudebro in my class, who, yesterday, sat next to me. And I’m sitting there sweating because like… I’m wearing my shirt with the lesbian flag on it, and he’s the most popular jock in school, and always has this look on his face that say ‘I can and will kill you’. He looks me up and down, stares at me for a minute and then goes, “So. Girls in skirts and long socks, am I right?”

To which I nodded solemnly, both out of agreement, surprise and also a healthy amount of awkward fear. He nodded and went, “You get it.”

I said, “Yep.” He fistbumped me, and on went our lives.

Oh! I forgot to mention! I saw him at lunch the same day, and he ran up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, pointed at this super sweet girl who comes to GSA and asked if she’s gay. I told him he should ask her because that’s not my place and he said he would.

I thought that would be the end of it.

Except ten minutes later he came back and told me he found out (she’s bi) and that both of us have a shot. I said “You more than me.” because he’s attractive and popular. 

But this wholesome dumbass looked really confused and asked, “Because I’m tall?’

So this isn’t lesbian/jock solidarity but I thought you guys would want to know-

My math teacher was trying to fix the rolling whiteboard and he just offhand said “This would be easier with a wrench”

And deadass, dudebro said “Hang on” and then proceeded to pull a fucking wrench out of his backpack

Update- after school today he saw me in the library and he didn’t say anything? He just pointed at the book he was holding and I gave him a thumbs up because it’s a pretty good book, and he went “Yes!” Really quiet and pumped his fist and then left

Okay so today he asked me if I know how to help people having a panic attack and I was like yeah? And he smiled at me and then went “cool I think I’m having one”

And I was like what the fuck Colin we’re in the middle of Tech class sit down and we went out in the hall and sat there for a while and he told me about the test he’s stressed about so we kind of went over his study guide and when he was feeling better he kind of like… smacked his head against mine gently? And I helped him up even though he’s almost a foot taller than me and yeah

Today at lunch we walked to the football field and laid in the grass and I told him thank you for being my friend (because I don’t have that many) and fistbumped me and said, “You always looked so nice and chill, how could I not want to be your friend?”

And honestly y’all, I would’ve started crying if he hadn’t sneezed and accidentally smacked me

God, that-

Flora and Miles don’t remember Bly Manor when they’re grown up because their ghosts are gone, and they have a loving family and they’re healed from their trauma despite seeing everything as children,

As opposed to the Crains, who didn’t have any closure about their mom and they were still haunted by their ghosts, and that it affected all of them so terribly that it drove them all back to the house

“I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That’s all. The rest is confetti.” – The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

“You set it up wrong just in the beginning. You said it was a ghost story. It isn’t. It’s a love story.” – The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)

The Addams Family renting out rooms in their huge mansion cheaply to broke college students.

The students digging it because the craziness and the bugs are pretty much the same as any other dorm house. Also, Morticia and Gomez treat them all like visiting cousins, not like tenants to abuse and exploit. 

One of the tenants is a creative writing major and Gomez and Morticia house them up in the tower because of the quiet and the inspiring view

They’re supposed to be working on a typical coming-of-age story but after living with the Addams for just a week the project is becoming a horror-Gothic-romance

They go to their room after classes one day and find Thing correcting the grammar errors in the manuscript with a red pen 

and yeah, the students pay roughly market value for their rooms, but that doesn’t stop gomez from shouting “capital idea!” and handing them wads of cash when they tell him about their weekend plans or what they’re researching, so they basically end up living there for free

In the same vein, half the them have to turn into exceptional fencers, because Gomez just doesn’t give a shit, and if he sees you in the library, its fucking Sword Fighting Time. 

Fester and Pugsley find out one of the college students is trying to get into chemistry and woo boy, there has never been a faster study of how to counter various acidic chemical reactions due to “water” balloons in campus history. 

Morticia and Grammy are keeping the horticulturalists on their toes with their Black Tulip/Rose hybrids, which can flick their barbs a foot away from their stem system. But it’s fine, one of the kids has managed to breed Aloe with the anti venom. 

Lurch makes sandwiches for everyone who’s too much of a coward for Grammy’s cooking. Any music major will find him looming over them, utterly stone faced as they practise until they finish, when he’ll smile, and slowly applaud. 

And the spookiest thing of all

Wednesday and Thing will find your thesis. They will critique it in every way imaginable. 

There is no escape. 

I especially love the idea of Gomez spotting a student in the library, throwing a sword at a startled student, shouting, “En garde!” and lunging at him/her with a sword of his own.

Student (later in life), when asked how she jumps from quietly doing research to handling a sudden influx of ER cases so quickly and easily, says, “When you have to snap out of deep concentration on biochem to fight for your life then get back to biochem without losing your train of thought…you learn or you die.”

This has made me laugh so hard-

concept: a death god that is actually surprisingly supportive and on the side of the good guys, supporting actions and promoting policies that will lead to the kingdom growing and thriving instead of being destroyed, because the more the kingdom grows, the more people there are, and the more people there are the more people will eventually  die, and when you’re an immortal god of death, you know there’s no need to rush. you’ll get them all in the end

i like how the responses on this post are cleanly split between “hey this is a great story idea i love it” and “this is absolutely terrifying”

Yes. A Death that is kind, and patient, and inevitable.

A Death that need not fight against you, that will often fight for you, because why not? It will gather you home eventually. Why not enjoy you first?

A Death that treasures those who fight it most ardently. That loves healers and defenders and survivalists and necromancers and mad scientists and immortal gods. That lets them pour everything they are into fighting it, denying it, adoring every desperate scrap of strength and will and brilliance and raw determination poured out against it. That catches you when your strength is done and all your will and brilliance run out, that gathers you close beneath a warm, dark cloak, and whispers well done, oh child, you were magnificent, well done.

A Death who will not seek to hasten an inevitable end, who will chastise those who seek to hasten it for others in Death’s stead, who will slowly and patiently plot and sow and siphon away from the great monsters of the world. Because who are they to hasten Death’s domain, who are they to deny Death its time and its place, who are they to cut short these vital glories that illuminate it so? Who are they to presume upon its will, that is so much larger and so much longer than theirs?

Who are they to call, and presume that Death, of all beings, should obey?

A Death that is not a hunter but a gatherer, who is always and eternal, who loves you, and can afford to wait. A Death who will fight for you and defend you, who will place its hand upon those who would speed you to its embrace, who has no need to rush you, only to greet you when you call.

A Death who is kind.

And patient.

And, before all and above all,

inevitable.

Beautiful

There is a reason they wield a scythe, not a sword. They harvest what is ripe, not take what is still strong.

RHODEY BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION WEEK ↳ 6 Moments: Rhodey + “I’m about to end this man’s whole career”

Governor: Lieutenant Kelly, where’s Commander McGarrett?

Chin: Doing stuff.

Governor: Then where’s Detective Williams?

Chin: Trying to stop McGarrett from doing the stuff.

Governor: So where is Officer Kalakaua?

Chin: Stopping Williams from stopping McGarrett from doing the stuff.

Governor: If they’re doing all that, why are you here and not with them?

Chin: I have to keep you distracted so you can’t stop Kono from stopping Danny from stopping McGarrett from doing the stuff.

Humans Are Weird

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving. 

To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.

Earth being Space Australia Words cannot express how much I love these posts

Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”

Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”

Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”

Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.” 

Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”

Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”

Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”

Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.” 

Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.” 

“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?” “Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.” “What, the molten rock?” “Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–” “You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?” “Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”

Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.

“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?” 

“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”

“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”

“… well, actually…”

“… what?”

“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”

“…”

“…”

“…what?”

“we sent-”

“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”

“y-yeah”

“and they didn’t… die?”

“Well the first few did”

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”

My new favorite Humans are Weird quote

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”

aka The History of Russia

aka Arctic Exploration

aka The History of Alaska

Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:

1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.

2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)

3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.

4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)

5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.

“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?” “Those worthless rocks? Yeah.” “80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”

This would be an interesting read if this was a book.

Like, an alien invasion is about to start and the book is a chronicle of how the aliens couldn’t handle both humans in general and the range of environments and ended up being destroyed through the eyes of one of the aliens.

Like a caption from the book would be something like

“So we sent a recon team to this place called Russia, but all we’ve heard back thus far is about the temperatures, giant monsters with fur the humans call “Bears”, and that once again, we have been reminded of how heavily well armed almost ever human settlement is.

Thus far we have lost more than a good chunk of our forces through experiments gone wrong, unsuccessful fire fights, and above all else, the humans seem to be more worried about these strange variation of their species calling themselves “Clowns”.

I don’t know what a Clown is, but sounds as if it is the dominant faction of this planet, and considering we only just found out humans practically poison themselves with this thing called beer and only get stronger and more violent, I don’t ever want to encounter such a being.

I believe this invasion was a mistake.“

I’ve been reading a bunch of these and all I can think about now is aliens finding out about our insane ability to walk away from accidents.

“Human Colony SDO435**, this is Gxanimi survey vessel 3489. We regret that we must inform you that the wreckage of your ship ‘Gecko Flyer’ has just been detected on planet F56=K=. We offer expressions of sympathy for this catastrophe.”

“Shit, thanks for telling us, we’ll be right there.”

“Why?”

“To find our people, of course.”

“… you wish to retrieve the corpses for your traditional death rituals, of course, we understand. We have sent the coordinates.”

“What do you mean, bodies? No survivors at all? There must be some.”

“Official mouthpiece of Human Colony SDO435**, the ship has crashed. It has impacted the planet’s surface at speed. Moreover, this might have happened as much as five vek ago. We do not understand why you speak of ‘survivors’.”

“Oh, there’ll be survivors. There always are.”

“(closes hyperspace voicelink) How sad that they are unable to accept the reality of their loss.”

“Hey, Gxanimi survey vessel 3489, thanks for letting us know about the Gecko Flyer. More than half the crew made it!”

“Made what?”

“They survived! A couple of lost limbs and so on, but they’ll be fine.”

“… but that vessel was destroyed! Images have been examined!”

“Oh, well, everyone in the fore-below compartment was crushed, obviously, but the others made it out.”

“… but the crash was vek ago! Excuse we… at least eighty of your ‘days’! How could they survive without a ship? Without shelter and supplies?”

“Well, the wreckage gave them some shelter, and of course the emergency supplies kept them going until they could start growing stuff. It’s actually a nice little planet, they said. Quite a lot of edible flora and fauna. T-shirt weather, in summer, too.”

“What is… t-shirt weather?”

“Oh, you know, when it’s comfortable to go around with only modesty covering over the epidermis. Exposed limbs.”

“That planet is so cold that even water solidifies in its atmosphere!”

“Well, in winter, obviously. But we like that. Listen, our people have been raising crops down there, and that’s usually how we rule a planet as ‘colonized’…. is anyone else using it, or can we call it?”

“Er… we have claimed the warmer planets in the system, but we believe we could come to some arrangement.”

It was really nice, the humans thought, how carefully most of the aliens kept an eye out for downed ships after that, once they found out that humans tended to survive anything less than explosive decompression or… well, explosions generally. They’d immediately inform the nearest outpost of a wreck’s location, or even ship survivors back themselves. It was very thoughtful.

They didn’t find out until a long time later that the Gxanimi had put out the word to every species they were in contact with. It was vital that everyone knew the things they had learned about humans after that first encounter.

1. Humans can literally walk away from an impact that renders a space-worthy hull so much scrap and would have actually liquefied a Gxanimi.

2. Humans will eat just about anything not immediately fatal to them - including, in extremis, the corpses of their dead crewmates. In fact, most human vessels keep a list of those willing to be eaten and those whose socio-religious scruples forbid it. They have a ridiculously high tolerance for dangerous substances, and if they can breathe on a planet they can probably eat something on it too. They also have something they call the ‘Watney Protocol’, which requires them to carry live soil samples, seeds, and simple tools that will allow them to start farming their own native foodstuffs on any remotely habitable planet immediately in the event of an accident.

3. Once they’ve farmed a planet, they bond with it. They’ll be polite, but it’ll take significant effort to get rid of them even so.

Conclusion: If a human ship crashes on a planet you like and want to keep, get other humans to come and get them immediately. Remove them yourself if you have to. Even the worst crash can result in a thriving colony in a few vek.

And don’t, for the love of gravitational regularity, try to solve that problem by killing off the survivors. Just don’t. It won’t work and it just makes all the rest of them mad.

absolutely love the Martian homage with the Watney protocol

“Hey Vlox?”

“Yeah Kkreptkk?”

“Have you noticed anything weird about the humans lately?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, ever since Dinod went and sent the rest of the survivors of the Marlin 17 crash on X200904B the way of their brethren, the humans we’ve encountered seem… different.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know how we were told that the show of teeth was a display of friendliness and not aggression?”

“Yeah, that was in the datapack.”

“Judging by the way they keep charging us ten times the previous rates or saying that they can’t do business at this time with anyone associated with Dinod, I think that’s stopped applying.”

bard is a combat class which is true bc I’ve never met anyone in marching band that didn’t want to throw down

playing tuba in marching band means you can power walk 2 miles backwards on your toes in 16 minutes whithout bending your knees while carrying a 35lb blunt metal object with your arms held at right angles and blasting every extra gulp of oxygen you can spare without asphyxiating to make sounds loud enough to deafen the dead in an an act of pure unchristian violence, your bard is the party member who will teach you how to kill god by example

Poor Annabeth Chase. She is completely surrounded by knuckleheads with magical swords. Like first she meets this dumbass fish boy whose sword turns into a fucking pen. Then some angry goddess makes a fucking deal and trades this dumbass fish boy for a dumbass lightning boy whose sword turns into a golden coin. Fi ally after she gets her dumbass fish boy back she finds out shes in fact RELATED to a dumbass nature boy with a sword that turns into a necklace and talks.

“You know what the first rule of flying is?” Serenity (2005) - dir. Joss Whedon

i just want her to be happy🧡✨

i present the most important video in the galaxy

we support and love the waddle

I painted Raven Cycle characters by Maggie Stiefvater for Shelflove crate 

hope you guys will like it 

Ronan

Adam

Noah

Gansay

Blue