Mara Lynn Johnstone

“Space tourism is finally common and you are returning from your first spacewalk. Your guide looks at you in disbelief as she realizes your suit was torn open the whole time”

marlynnofmany

Jack Sparrow from this post: “Hm. Let’s just keep that between us, savvy?”

gotta love an immortal pirate riding ships into space like he once rode them across the sea writing prompts jack sparrow pirates in spaaace

Faceoff

Ever get cognitive whiplash going from one group of aliens to another? You’d think I’d be used to the variety since I’ve spent so much time bopping around the galaxy, but some things just catch you by surprise.

It was a simple difference. I’d been talking with my smallest crewmates while we walked into the space station, trying not to loom over anybody or step on a tentacle in close quarters. The hallway between our corner of the docks and the central concourse was a narrow one. Then Coals realized he’d left something on the ship, and Paint volunteered to go back with him to help find it, and Mimi took a side corridor off to the public bathrooms, with a comment about checking how the local mechanics handled sanitization fields.

It’s possible that he even meant that. As long as he didn’t steal any parts for our ship, I was more than happy to let the octopus alien’s bathroom time be his own business.

I was thinking that, still slouching a bit after waving goodbye to Paint, when I turned a corner and was suddenly the smallest person around.

Keep reading

my writing The Token Human humans are weird haso hfy eiad humans are space orcs culture clash in spaaace

gallusrostromegalus

I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.

It's right-handed

I am right-handed

There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly

I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.

There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.

I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.

A homo erectus made it

Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.

Who were you

A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?

Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?

Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?

Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?

Who were you?

What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?

What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby's head when a stranger holds them.

Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?

Or has it always been divine?

Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?

Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.

The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it's done.

Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?

I'm not religious.

But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn't partaking in the divine

I don't know what is.

gallusrostromegalus

This is the axe

My knuckle rests exactly in the triangular plane just above the orange intrusion, and my thumb on the plane with the white patches.

How many hands held it just like that?
How many generations was this passed down?
Were you lost? or did you fall into disuse when technology improved?

Do you still desire to be held?

bjornkram

This was the axe that made me ugly cry in the museum. It was created half a million years ago by either Erectus or Heidelburgensis, and was passed down from person to person, long enough that somehow a neanderthal picked it up, and passed it down to their family.

It has now felt 3 generations of human species hands, it's smooth but still sharp except where the very tip has been broken off, but it shows that this axe was loved and taken care of. And it is still being taken care of! It was used to teach archaic children to build, to carve meat, to break bones, and now it is being used to teach us about all those people who came before us and put their hands right where we put ours.

The fact that @gallusrostromegalus and I put our hands on the same place and felt the same rush of emotions only days apart is amazing, but its not new. People loved this axe, it belonged to their loved ones and it's full of all those emotions. And if there's anything to take away from humanity, new and old, it's that we love a good rock.

gallusrostromegalus

Hello! You and I never met, but I feel like we've held hands now, the same way that we held hands with everyone else who's held that axe, and I think that's lovely :)

we DO love a good rock humanity the long thread of history rocks prehistory people have always been people

late-nite-scholar

harvocel

snastries (snail pastries)

princesspeach5

[ID: Art of snails with various food items on their backs instead of shells, divided up by rarity. They are labelled with each food as follows. "Common:" bread loaf, macaron, muffin top, cupcake, chocolate dollop, donut. "Uncommon:" pie slice, cinnamon roll, woopie pie, swiss roll. "Slugs:" (these don't have shells and instead just resemble each food) croissant, sus twist, bagette, éclair, churro. "Rare:" reverse sundae (with an upside down ice cream cone), wedding cake. Cupcake has sprinkles on the body, sus twist has two heads, and wedding cake is wearing a bow on its head, and the cake topper is two snails kissing. End ID.]

marlynnofmany

Behold: the wizard’s gift for the goblin wedding party

nitewrighter

justactgaussian

So I've seen the whole 'Math's Saddest Love Stories' (asymptotes that drift ever closer but never meet etc.), but I think we're missing the potential of Math's Funny Love Stories.

The couple whose destiny is an infinite cycle of breaking up and getting back together again:

Oscillating rapidly in and out of each other's life for a while before drifting apart in opposite directions:

Drifting ever closer, until you finally meet and go fuck that:

One who drifts slowly closer to the other, until they acutally meet and decide to make a very sharp turn in the other direction:

Whatever hellscape of contrived coincidences these series of infinite near misses are:

marlynnofmany

Who needs a new fanfic challenge?

writing prompts

thatjellywalker

marlynnofmany

I found a piece of onion skin that looks like a mermaid tail, and that feels like half a story idea about a fairytale where someone tries to call up fantasy creatures in the river. What would a tiny onion mermaid look like?

thatjellywalker

Saving the various tagsssss

marlynnofmany

Here she is, if anyone needs a visual. She’s small enough to fit in the birdbath.

(Which just brings up new ideas, of course. I’m sure she’d get along fine with the robins and turtledoves, but be an unholy terror for the crows when they arrive to wash their stole pizza crusts there.)

(Those are the onionskin mermaid’s pizza crusts now.)

finally someone to help me keep it clean I'll bet she can convince the turtledoves to stop pooping in it too I wonder if a birdbath would be like a hot tub after the chill of the river I wonder how far she can leap from the water if she gets enough of a head start might be tricky to get back to the river afterward time to grab a crow by the legs and hope for the best! writing prompts mermaids onion mermaid

pi-slices

Transmit.

Source: pislices.ca

I don't know what this is other than a story idea the techno song currently playing on my headphones suggests that those columns are at a rave perhaps they are worshipping the glowball maybe it's singing they sure look like they're hopping in enthusiasm slow-motion enthusiasm I'm sure this is everyone's first thought on seeing it naturally writing prompts art

shadesofmauve

bendingsignpost

gritty realism in my shows? no no, you misunderstand

I want nitty gritty realism in my shows

I do not wish for fantasy that is Dirty and Sad. I wish for fantasy where beleaguered accountants and politicians do battle between territories via manipulating prices on various treasure types, all in the attempt to boost their rich foes past the Dragon Threshold and get burnt alive when the dragon arrives to claim their stuff. Show me the ramifications of a Summon Food spell on farming. Show me the Counterspell arms race.

Gimme that sweet sweet serotonin of micromanagement

bendingsignpost

Examples:

Family law:

A careful series of adoptions retroactively make you the seventh son of a seventh son, abruptly granting you magic.
Your older sibling is genderfluid and you are only a seventh son of a seventh son sometimes.
A great disowning goes down and entire mage alliances are abruptly nullified as the second generation mages lose their magic.
If marriages are bound by magic, can they be dispelled without the consent of the spouses? If someone objects at the wedding, do they cast counterspell? Do marriages between spellcasters count as pacts, making each the warlock and patron of the other? If you are married in a church and your god dies, does that annul it?

Mining:

The prices of gems are driven up by their magical uses as spell components
Mining safety regulations vary EXTREMELY depending on what kind of magic the materials can absorb
Mines for non-magical materials have way worse safety gear and wages; unions between different sites are tumultuous and easily undercut but also full of abrupt plot twists when new materials are discovered in a previously non-magical mine
never take off your helmet and NEVER put it down in the mine, lest it abruptly be replaced by a mimic and eat your head when you put it back on

Farming:

Entire crops/farms dedicated for spell component growing over food/clothing. Maybe that's fine during normal times, but during a famine? Seriously? Summoning food via those spell components is well and good... unless you're a starving family without magic
magical pesticides = magic mutant bug arms race
transmuting soil vs crop rotation
Fantasy livestock. What absolute monstrosities have been tamed for labor, meat, or leather?
local support groups for adoptive parents of Secretly Royal Children (a remarkably rampant issue)

tinierpurplefishes

T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon gets into some of this in her fantasy works. The latest one involves a magical device that turns seawater into salt and pure ice, and how it's about to disrupt the economy of the entire continent. Digger has a bunch of little bits about how magic and mining interact (usually poorly). It's always a side thing, never the main plot, but these sorts of things do come up and get thought thru.

marlynnofmany

Ursula Vernon is an inspiration to all, and we should all be following in her footsteps, asking the unasked questions about standard fantasy worlds!

writing prompts thwart those tropes