You are working the gate in the afterlife and for the first time ever, something the humans built has shown up to be processed. You’re not sure what to do, this… entity shouldn’t have a soul, but here it is in front of you, freshly dead and awaiting the next life.

It’s not as exciting as it sounds, working at the pearly gates.

Sure, it’s satisfying to send the hypocrites and the assholes to hell. And it’s nice to see the ones who thought they were beyond redemption walk through into paradise.

So yeah, it has its perks. But not exciting. I mean, after the first million souls or so they all blur together, you know? You never get anything new. Animals all get sent right on through automatically and there’s nothing other then humans in our jurisdiction. Oh sure, there’s life other then humans. But that’s no my department.

I keep tads on humans on my lunch breaks. You’re a damn fascinating species, better then anything your “television” puts out. Although The Good Place was a little too relatable, I’ll give you guys that.

Anyway, one of my favorite things you guys came up with was the Space Race. I mean, what a nail biter! And it was so tense up until the end. Pity about those Apollo one guys, though. But I heard they got a kick out of watching the moon landing when it did happen.

Course, that sorta died down after a decade or so. Don’t know why you guys quit going to the moon.

And then you decided Mars was the place to be and started sending out all those rovers of yours. Not nearly as exiting as going yourselves, but as you all like to say, baby steps.

The rovers were surprisingly fun to watch. For mindless robots, they’ve got a lot of spunk. So I’d check in every once in while, but mostly I watched Earth. You guys had figured out how to work memes and it was a very amusing thing.

I was half way through a shift when it go here. I have no idea why none of the others I processed mentioned the thing, but death is confusing enough I guess.

It shouldn’t have been there. I want to make that clear, by no law of the universe should that thing have had a soul. You humans are where closer to making actual AI then you are sprouting wings. And you never even tried with this! Its job was to collect rocks!

And yet there is was, beeping up at me.

It didn’t look like a human soul. Or any other form of life that I had ever seen. It wasn’t damaged at all, or even afraid. That was the weirdest thing. You humans are always scared shitless by the time I see you. But this thing wasn’t. Even a little. It was just… curious. Like that’s all I could feel from it. Pure wonder.

I blinked a bit before flipping through my files, seeing if it was a new species or something. I found nothing, of course. Those idiots over in records never give us anything useful.

So I did the only thing I could do. I asked its name.

Now, you humans have come up with so many ways to say the same thing that I’ve had to learn a lot of languages to keep up. The newest was binary, which I never expected to actually need.

It came in handy, since that’s what the thing answered back in.

01001111 01110000 01110000 01101111 01110010 01110100 01110101 01101110 01101001 01110100 01111001

Opportunity.

I remembered that name. It had popped up in new reports regarding a Mars rover that went out of commission, sending the final message “my battery is low and its getting dark.” before dying.

Humanity had cried over it for a solid couple of days. You guys really like personifying objects.

But I had dismissed it as just that. But here it was. Waiting patiently for me to send it On.

I could just opened the gates and sent it through and put from my mind. Make the thing some else’s problem.

I didn’t.

I stood, crossed in front of my desk, and put out my hand to touch the strange soul.

Opportunity didn’t feel human. Nor animal. It felt…. simple. Calm.

I could feel an awearness of the love its chief engineer had felt for it. The pang of missing the workshop back on Earth where it had been built, during long nights on Mars.

It had dreamed. Dreamed of humans making it to Mars and finding it. Of it’s engineer taking it home and repairing it. Dreamed of exploring Earth as it had Mars.

I could purpose, and curiosity in its mission. Lonely as it was, it never doubted its purpose or resented its lot in life. It got to learn, and to see what had never been seen. What more could it ask for?

I could feel one tiny spec of fear. Near the end of its life, it realized it would never go home. Never see Earth or its engineer again. That it would die alone on Mars.

And like all things with a soul it did not want to die. It cried and mourned and begged to live. It was alive! It had a home and it wanted to go home! So badly did it want to go home.

But there was nothing to do, of course. Even its engineer, whom it loved so dearly, couldn’t reach Mars and bring Opportunity home.

It had watched one last sunset, and sent one last message.

A goodbye. And a plea to be mourned, if it could not be saved.

I withdrew my hand and looked over the soul. It looked up at me.

For the ones that I send upstairs, I take the form of whoever loved them most in life. I guess in that moment, I was in the form of an engineer at NASA. Opportunity seemed delighted to see me.

“Welcome home,” I gestured to the gates that swung slowly open behind me. “I missed you.”

It beeped out a single phase, 01001001 00100000 01101101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01100101 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111

I missed you too.

Before going forth, to explore the next life.

@marcholasmoth

People with low spoons, someone just recommended this cookbook to me, so I thought I'd pass it on.

I always look at cookbooks for people who have no energy/time to do elaborate meal preparations, and roll my eyes. Like, you want me to stay on my feet for long enough to prepare 15 different ingredients from scratch, and use 5 different pots and pans, when I have chronic fatigue and no dishwasher?

These people seem to get it, though. It's very simple in places. It's basically the cookbook for people who think, 'I'm really bored of those same five low-spoons meals I eat, but I can't think of anything else to cook that won't exhaust me'. And it's free!

tried explaining star wars fandom to my dad and settled on the simile that sw is too big and fucked up to know everything and you sort of have to choose a major like mando lore studies or jedi lineage trees and then we all come together but do not get along just like real academia. anyway what’s ur major

I wasn’t expecting much. Maybe Vader’s baritone with hints of melody. I was *not* expecting it to be a masterpiece, what the fuck, this is a million times better than I was expecting and it’s unironically really good. Turn on that volume button.

all-star skills competition | febuary 3, 2023

... this is true, but also now I am writing the movie in my head. 

It’s about two once-legendary heroes who are dragged out of retirement by a new and terrible threat. Nobody shows up to drag them, they just keep waiting for someone else to deal with it and then they find out a bunch of ‘chosen heroes’ (IE kids) have died and they’re all ‘... well, fuck,’ and dig out their hidden weapons and drag their asses out to do the job, complaining the whole time. 

Then they run into each other and anyone around is all ‘... oh no they were Enemies now they will fight each other instead of the greater threat’ and instead they just grunt a hello and go straight into bitching about how TOTALLY UNFAIR it is that they have to do this at their advanced age, do you realize I still have a dud hip after that one time, oh yeah, let me tell you what that other asshole did to my *spine*, and they’re just standing there complaining like two tired dads who’ve been called out at three in the morning to do something they don’t want to do at all..

Then they go off, rescue the latest batch of heroes, eliminate the threat, then hand over their magic/super/whatever weapons to the kids and are all ‘DON’T MAKE US DO THIS AGAIN’ and go home. Final scene is them both sitting on a porch, drinking a beer and *still* complaining. But now they have each other.

Aliens, dragons, Trump, it doesn’t matter what the threat  or indeed the genre is, it would still be great. 

@elidyce I feel like they need to child safety lock the Chosen Heros(tm) in the back of their car. Casually treat them like the kids/teens the ARE? And after like that first panicked "no! We Have To Do This! They told us only WE can do it!" Moment? They kids are like..... "actually, yes please, Grumpy Adult Authority Man, I WOULD like the burger and juice box now."

They're like ducklings. It's horrifying. Go do a training trip and learn the power of friendship of something, stop eating my food! (They will not. They fuckin imprinted on you grouchy old bastards. This is what you get for be Responsible.) They are like knife weilding racoons.

And like it ends with a panning shot of Chosen One Fight Club Rules(tm). No kids, get out when you can, learn to fucking dodge. Fin?

Either way I'd watch the heck out of it.

Yes, *yes*, this is even better. 

There’s three young heroes sitting in the back of a volvo or an old cart or a grimy old spaceship being harangued for falling for this shit and given nourishing snacks while these two legendary rivals are bitching about their bad backs and aching feet while casually navigating through asteroid fields or troll ambushes or whatever and the kids are all ‘... this is not at all how we thought any of this would go, but I guess we have two dads now?’ 

The final shot of the two old heroes with their grumbling and their beer then pans out to show the kids in the middle of a Proper Training Session because apparently nobody’s doing THOSE anymore and the responsibility NEVER ENDS. 

Last line: No, no, hold it *higher*. Yeah, like that. *pause* Now go get me another beer. 

Can we add Lucy Lawless or Michelle Yeoh to this? They are both iconic and age-appropriate action heroes as well.

I think we should add both. They’re both ex-girlfriends of one or both of the heroes (back when they were all young and sitll figuring stuff out), but have now been happily married to each other for at least twenty years. They’ve stayed in touch. Their kids call both heroes ‘uncle’. 

The middle-aged lesbians think it’s hilarious that these two mopey old codgers have acquired a group of young heroes and there’s a Big Family Dinner scene in which they all give each other crap and the young heroes are all ‘... this is absolutely wild and also the best night of my life’. 

90% of the crowd sourced “you know what would make a good movie?” posts on Tumblr are better than most of what’s coming out of the studios, I swear. 

if you dont have me on facebook you are probably not missing out on any posts but the comment section is important too lmao

I went to the Renaissance faire dressed as a warrior.  I had a real sword with me, too.  I was standing (in character) next to a sword-fighting ring, where kids of all ages got the chance to pick up a sword and challenge the champion.  Some woman walks by, with her little girl.  The girl starts walking towards the ring, saying she wants to fight.  But the mom pulled her away hella sharply, and was like, “That’s for boys.”  You don’t want to be a BOY, do you?”    And the girl looked around and saw me.  I think she thought I was a boy; I had my hair in a ponytail, and was wearing a hood.  So she comes up to me and asks me, “Do you think girls can be fighters, too?”  And her mom looks like she’s silently gloating.  Like she thinks I’m going to say no.  So I take off my hood, untie my hair so that it flows freely, and kneel before her.  And I’m like, “Milady, anyone can be a fighter.”  I swear, the look on that mother’s face made my day.

This post was good but then it got better

Okay, this is a slight topic diversion, but in response to the above comment. I’ve volunteered at the CT Ren Faire for years now. For the last 5 or so I’ve worked in the game section, and we have a game similar to the above comment called “Smite the Knight”. I’ve been in the ring before, it’s a ton of fun getting to run around with the kids. The main goal is entertainment. Have a good shtick, keep the crowd engaged, and let the kids have a good time.

In both work and observing, I have learned something about kids. A lot of parents try to get their boys to go fight. Of the young ones that do, they tend to be shy. You get the ones who just swing the boffer swords around with no regard for life, but, mostly, they’re reserved. It’s adorable. I mean, they’re kids.

But the girls. THE GIRLS. Holy crap. I swear, the pinker the dress, the more taffeta and glitter…the more intensity. I remember, the first year I worked there, one girl came in, grabbed the biggest sword she could, and WENT TO TOWN on our knight. Lifted it over head, let out this primal scream and mowed him down. Homeboy is 6′2″, she was FIVE. And once he was in the fetal position (He was fine. It was for show.) on the ground, she stopped, put her foot on his chest, and yelled “I AM A FIERCE PRINCESS!!”. Later in the day when she walked by a couple of us yelled “Ah! It’s the fierce princess!” and she stopped and flexed. It was the best, and I will never forget that girl.

OH MY GOD IT’S BACK YES

This has improved since last I reblogged.

I taught karate for like 5 years, and the girls were always, pound for pound, better than the boys. Even the girls who didn’t really want to do it and were only there because their parents made them were better than like 95% of the boys.

I was playing fiddle at a ren faire, and two little girls were really enjoying our set. After quite some time one of them walked up to me and shyly offered me her star tinsel tiara, because she “didn’t have any money. And this protects you from trolls!” I said “Thanks, that’s really sweet – but what about you? Don’t you need protection from trolls?”

At which point this six-ish-year-old girl whips out her certificate from the axe throwing booth and says “Nah, I’m fine.”

I still have that tinsel tiara. It’s draped over my modem. I figure it’ll protect me from the most trolls that way.

I am not in the habit of reblogging a post and slapping an “it got better” on there BUT I SAY GOTDAMN

the thing you gotta understand about little girls is that they’re under so much pressure and have so little leeway from adults, that given half a chance, they can and will throw hands with total abandon.

When you realize that all the adults that told you growing up that rough housing and shit was for boys and too rough for little girls, that really they were trying to stop you from realizing early on what kind of raw primal power you had hidden under that tutu for fear that once you realized the truth your parents would no longer be able to contain your power…

I’ve got a 3 year old niece and I’m already convinced she’s going to be an MMA fighter…

@gothicgallbladder @imfemalewarrior

As soon as I’m able I’m actually gonna try out sca fighting stuff so this is literally gonna be me someday lol

-FemaleWarrior

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Here, put this candy in your annoying mouth and shut the fuck up.

They’re like adult pacifiers

Same thing was done in Brighton where people were given kitkats as they leave nightclubs because you need both hands to eat them, plus obvs eating.

Other cities would also have mounted police on horses patrolling the streets. Nothing to do with needing to add police presence, they realised drunk people see a horse and go “Ooh Horsies” and stroke the horse. It would distract people from fighting in queues for taxis.

I have witnessed the horse thing in action! for a short amount of time I went clubbing regularly, and being the only person who hated the taste of alcohol I usually just ended up observing the behaviour of the native drunk wildlife, like some sort of Jane Goodall of inebriated students. It was educational.

By far one of the best nights was out in Cardiff, and when we left the club there was, indeed, a horsie and the absolutely immediate, instinctual response of the first dozen people to leave the club (and therefore the first to see this) was to form a group around the door to tell everyone who was leaving the whole pack  going shhshshhsh there’s. there’s A HORSIE don’t. don’t make a noise don’t scare the horsie :’( and everyone leaving the club INSTANTLY quieted the fuck down like even the ones who were fight-me-im-drunk drunk got calmly surpressed by their friends and redirected their energy. Many people did go and pet the horsie who was clearly very well trained and the whole thing was thoroughly impressive and really very moving :’D

It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.

I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.

How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?

Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.

HOLY SHIT THEY EAT CAPSAICIN FOR FUN

YOU GUYS I HEARD A HUMAN ONCE ATE AN AIRPLANE.

A HUMAN CAN KEEP FIGHTING FOR HOURS EVEN AFTER YOU SHOOT IT

humans are a proud warrior race with a pantheon of bloody gods: Ram-Bo, Schwarzenegger, etc.

REMOVING A LIMB WILL NOT FATALLY INCAPACITATE HUMANS: ALWAYS DESTROY THE HEAD.

WARNING: HUMANS CAN DETECT YOU EVEN AT NIGHT BY TRACKING VIBRATIONS THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE

WARNING: HUMANS CAN REPRODUCE AT A RATE OF 1 PER SPACEYEAR. DESTROY INFESTATIONS IMMEDIATELY

THE HUMAN MOUTH HAS OVER THIRTY OUTCROPS OF BONE AND POWERFUL JAW MUSCLES.

HUMAN BITES CAN BE FATALLY INFECTIOUS EVEN TO OTHER HUMANS

WARNING: HUMANS CAN AND WILL USE IMPROVISED WEAPONS. SEE CLASSIFIED DATA LABELED J. CHAN.

HUMANS CAN PROJECT BIOWEAPONS FROM ALMOST EVERY ORIFICE ON THEIR BODY. DO NOT INHALE

OH GOD THE HUMANS FIGURED OUT DOOR HANDLES OH GOD OH GOD

More seriously, humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life. Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness - but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.

(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)

Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:

In essence, we’d be Space Orcs.

I do hope you realize I’m going to be picking up this stuff and running with it right? 

Our jaws have too many TEETH in them, so we developed a way to WELD METAL TO OUR TEETH and FORCE THE BONES IN OUR JAW to restructure over the course of years to fit them back into shape, and then we continue to wear metal in out mouths to keep them in place. 

We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analouge traps. 

And by god, we will eat anything. 

Klingons and Krogan and Orcs ain’t got shit on us

can we talk about how pursuit predation is fucking terrifying

it’s one thing to face down a cheetah, which will slam into you at 60 mph and break your neck

it’s another thing to run very quickly to get away from a thing, only to have it just kind of

show up

to have it be intelligent enough to figure out where you are by the fur and feather you’ve left behind, your footprints and piss and shit, and then you think you’ve lost it and you bed down for the night but THERE IT IS

WAITING

WHEN YOU WAKE UP

and you split! again! but it keeps following you. always in the corner of your eye. until you just

die

we are scary motherfuckers ok

I know this is an old post but I also want to point out that we’re extraordinarily adaptable. We’re not inherently good at running, but through training we can match a horse on a 25 mile marathon. We’re not inherently strong but through training we can be strong enough to pull trucks. We’re not inherently good at using hunting weapons but with training we can achieve crazy high hunt-to-kill ratios.

We’re not inherently good at flying starships fighters but with training….

We’re not inherently good at battle on unknown planets but with training…

Also we don’t even need to directly train at these things. We can simulate them in abstract ways and become better at them.

Even practicing something in our mind will genuinely make us measurably better at it. Plus we can multiclass and change class essentially at will WITHOUT losing all the benifits of previous training. If anything it stacks.

Plus we pack bond at the drop of a hat. Even an idea or concept can activate it.

We’re not just space orks, we’re extremely-hard-to-kill space-ork super-adapters that will fight and die for a concept.

But we can also build and create for the same idea.

If you get a human believing in your idea and they’ll do extraordinary work and will bring in others who are even more specialised at that thing. For better or worse

JURASSIC PARK (1993) Dir. Steven Spielberg

the special relationship is as strong as ever, lads

random bitter aspiring authors on "writing advice" blogs: Don't make your main characters super special mary sues. don't make them better than other people or more interesting. your main characters should be boring average guys with the personalities of wood pulp

the Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh was objectively the best man ever. He was the hottest, sexiest, most gorgeous hunk of pure manly awesomeness that ever lived and he used a sword that weighed 120 pounds.

The lesson here is that your main characters can be as special, overpowered, and unrealistically skilled at everything as you want, as long as this has the purpose of driving the plot via all the problems they cause (because they're an egotistical nightmare and a gigantic raging asshole).

The second lesson here is that no matter what randos on writing blogs say, people like stories where the characters are unique and iconic. Or at least they remember them.

(I have a theory that the stories that form long-lasting fandoms, and/or are recognized and referenced frequently in pop culture, are stories that have the same sort of "iconic" elements that are long-lasting in folklore and mythology. I think superheroes are particularly well suited to lasting centuries/millennia into the future because they're just so simple and memorable conceptually.)

Hi my name is Gilgamesh Hammurabi Ziusudra Euphrates Ishtar and I have the same heroic build as my lordly ancestors (that's how I got my name) with bulging muscles and chiselled features moulded by the goddess Aruru, and icy blue eyes like the limpid waters of the Great Flood, and a lot of people tell me I look King Enmebaragesi of Kish (AN: if u don’t know who he is get da Kur out of here!). I’m not related to Ishtar but I wish I was because she’s a major fucking hottie. I'm a demi-god but I'm not immortal. I possess extraordinary strength. I'm also a king and I rule a city called Urduk, where I force my subjects to erect lots of ziggurats (I'm known for my cruelty). I’m a Sumerian (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly animal skins. I love the forbidden Cedar Forest and I slay and skin all my beasts from there. For example today I was wearing a skin made from the Bull of Heaven with a matching sheep hide skirt, gold armlets, a carnelian headband, and black combat sandals. I was wearing black kohl eyeliner to ward off conjunctivitis. I was walking outside the twin peaks of Mount Mashu at the end of the earth. I came across a tunnel which no man before me had ever entered, which I was very happy about. Two guards that were giant scorpion monsters stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

This is objectively genius writing but the size of the audience that can properly recognize its brilliance is so small

I'm just glad to be part of it

here, have an extremely wholesome tiktok to detox your dash

100 goals / 500 goals

🎶 does it ever drive you crazy just how fast the night changes