Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
You’re angry about men dying in wars? Then protest against wars.
You’re angry about men dying on the job? Then demand safer working conditions.
You’re angry about most homeless people being men? Then demand that society help the poor so no one is homeless.
You’re angry about the number of men who commit suicide? Then protest against the belief that bullying is a natural fact of life. Demand that healthcare for disabled people be more accessible.
You’re angry about “ladies’ nights” at bars? Then demand that men stop lusting after drunk women. That’s literally the only reason why ladies’ nights exist.
You’re angry about circumcision? Then protest against the belief that children are the property of their parents instead of autonomous human beings.
You’re angry about men being the most common victims of violence? Then demand that people stop making fun of men for refusing to fight or for showing emotions other than anger.
You’re angry about men being labeled as dangerous? Then protest against racism, ableism, and homophobia. Men of color, disabled men, and gay men are labeled as dangerous on a regular basis and are frequently threatened because of it.
You’re angry about society not caring when a man is assaulted by a woman? Then demand that people stop making fun of boys for “fighting like a girl”, “losing to a girl”, or “getting beat up by a girl”.
You’re angry when women don’t trust men? Then tell society to stop blaming rape victims for trusting men too much.
You’re angry about society not caring when teenage boys are raped by grown women? Then tell other men to stop high-fiving each other and calling him “lucky”.
You’re angry about no one caring when men are raped in prison? Then protest against the belief that prisoners forfeit their basic human rights. Also demand an end to laws against victimless actions that put them in prison in the first place.
And guess what. You wouldn’t be alone, because those “evil social justice warriors” who you hate so much would 100% agree with you.
do you want to know something?? I always wondered what the hell kind of hairstyle the Ancient Egyptians were trying to portray with depictions like these
and this
until I did my hair this morning and
oh
welp
you can take the noses off our statues but until you find a way to take Egypt out of Africa we’re still going to find ourselves
I’m reblogging this post without all the salty, racist commentary because I’m sick of looking at it. please spread this around again in its pure form for posterity.
What’s funny is that white people thought they were hats/crowns 😂
And here’s some pictures of the Afar people, who still live on the horn of Africa today.
Cool, huh?
Beautiful
People thought it was Hats and Crowns? How could they not see hair?
The same reason archaeologists, upon finding a woman’s skeleton in the grave of a famous Roman gladiator, immediately wondered where the gladiator’s skeleton was: Old Straight White Man™ brand denial.
I really want a science fiction story where aliens come to invade earth and effortlessly wipe out humanity, only to be fought off by the wildlife.
They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.
Imagine coming to a hostile alien world and being attacked by a horde of creatures that can weigh up to 3 tons, run at 30 km/h (19 mph), and bite with a force of 8,100 newtons (1,800 lbf).
By the time you realise that they can traverse water, it’s too late. The surviving members of your unit manage to make it back by shedding their excess gear and running for their lives; the slower ones were crushed to death within minutes.
You later describe the creature to one of the humans you captured, wanting to know the name of the monstrosity that will haunt your nightmares for cycles to come.
The human smiles as it speaks a single word, slowly and distinctly, in its barbaric tongue.
“Hippopotamus.”
This is giving me the biggest, creepiest grin I might have ever grinned
Imagine being the next crew to go down to earth and thinking “it’s fine, we got this. We have the weapons and equipment necessary to deal with bears and *shudders* hippopotamuses. We’ll be fine.”
And at first you are, you’ve learned how to dodge. You’ve learned where their territories are. You know how to defend yourself.
But then one night you are sleeping in your shelter. You’re in a tree covered temperate part of earth. It seems benign. There are been no sightings of the dreaded “hippos” around. Not even any bears. But there is a slight rustle of the undergrowth. You try and ignore it telling yourself it is just the wind.
Then you hear the rustle again. closer this time.
You peer out into the darkness but see nothing amongst the trees.
The rustle again and now you realise you can smell something. It’s musky and slightly foul. It’s the smell of an omen, a warning. But what of? Where is this smell coming from.
You sit up, but it’s too late. The foul smelling creature is on you. You are hit with 17kg of coarse fur and vicious bites. Long dark claws tear in to you and you are pinned down white the striped creature tries to bite your throat.
It takes some doing but you manage to wrestle free. Blood drips from your wounds and already they itch with the sign of infection. The creature has a bloodied snout, rust rad, mingling with the black and white hairs. It lets out a terrifying growl from the back of its throat and looks to attack again. It’s between you and your knife, so your only choice is to back away.
Eventually the creature gives up and snuffles off in to the undergrowth, down a hole near your shelter you hadn’t noticed before.
When you make it back to your base you once again consult the captive human.
“Badger.” they say, with a solemn nod.
One word: Moose
“Our vehicles are far superior to the local human models, in range, speed, armament, and any other metric you care to name! Nothing could possibly-”
BAMrumblerumblethumpcrash!!!
“That’s called a moose.”
Wolverines.
Also.. dolphins.
The invasion is going slowly. The humans have caught on and are actively destroying information on the planet’s flora and fauna before Intelligence can capture and process it. All that they have are survivors’ accounts. Bears. Hippos. Badgers. Moose. It is becoming obvious this mudball planet is a full-on Death World to the unprepared, and you are so very unprepared.
You lost Jaxurn to a plant. Not even a mobile or carnivorous plant, just one that caused a vicious allergic reaction on contact that killed him in less than a rai'kor. Commander Vura'ko died to an insect bite, a tiny local pest that sucked a tiny bit of her blood and apparently replaced it with a bit of its last meal, which was full of disease. Backwash. She died to bug backwash. And yet you honestly envy them after that… thing you encountered…
When you got back to base the quarantine officer refused to let you inside. They had to roll a containment tank outside to put you in, because you all knew there would be no chance of eliminating the smell if it got into the ship’s air ducts. Smell. You wonder if your nasal slit will ever recover from this stench.
And the smell would. Not. Leave. After incinerating your gear the Q.O. had you use every cleansing agent they could think of, including a few janitorial ones, and still everyone fled the stench if they were downwind of your tank. Desperate to protect everyone’s nasal slits from the smell the quarantine officer interrogated the humans. From them, a glimmer of hope: there was a cure. Somehow the juice of a certain fruit on this mudball was the only thing that could break up the chemicals in the little horror’s spray. Immediately the Q.O. sent a team to recover buckets of the stuff and made you bathe in it. That was hours ago and it didn’t seem to be working, though. All it was doing was turning your blue skin an interesting shade of purple.
Sighing in frustration you wave the med-assist on duty over, who only approaches after checking the wind direction. Annoyed, you flip on the tank`s vox speaker.
“The humans did say it was “grape” juice that removed “skunk” stench, right?“
Every night.
It came for someone almost every night.
Any soldier alone was a viable target for this native monster that moved unseen by any but the security viewers, usually only spotted in hindsight. They were taken as silently as this earth-monster moved. Sometimes they’d find the remains in the morning taken up a tree and hung there, mostly eaten, as if it were a grisly reminder that the monster was still there, waiting unseen, to strike again.
What little they saw of the monster on the vidfeed showed true horror. Yellow eyes that shone with all the light it could gather. It had fangs as long as his grasping digits. Claws half that size formed curved hooks that allowed it to climb up their fortifications with impunity. And in the underbrush, its spots made it almost impossible to see clearly in the undergrowth, if it could be seen at all.
Even the native sentients, the humans, had a healthy respect and fear for it.
The earth natives called the monster a leopard.
It was a constant fear that muddied the senses, and let the monster hunt even more effectively as the soldiers were always on edge. Sleep deprived with fear, it made them even better targets for the monster.
But rumor was that there was worse on this planet. Rumors of a monster like a leopard but larger, and bigger in every imaginable sense. Stripped instead of spotted, which leaped from the underbrush with a sound.
A sound that burst eardrums, paralyzed entire units, and let the monster kill with impunity. While the Leopard wrestled soldiers down and ripped their throats out. This other monster, the Tiger, killed with its pounce alone.
“We’ve been through this,” Group Leader 455 snapped. “The dissection of an Earth life form will help the scientists make weapons to combat the rest of this planet’s hellbeasts. And these are domesticated. Harmless.”
The troops were not-quite-looking at her in the way troops do when they don’t want to be seen to contradict a ranking officer, but can’t quite muster a correct Expression of Enthusiastic Assent. “The name of this species,” she pointed out, “is synonymous with dullness and slowness in the language of the Earth barbarians.” Well, one language out of several thousand—these creatures needed Imperial guidance more than any other world on record—but there was no point in confusing the rank and file.
More not-quite-looking. 455 bubbled a sigh and consulted her scanner. “That one,” she decided. “Alone in the separate pasture. Scans suggest that it’s a male, which means it’s probably weaker. Possibly it’s kept isolated so that the females don’t eat it before mating season. And yes, I know some of you are here on punishment detail, but you’re still soldiers of the Imperium. This squad is perfectly capable of handling a lone, helpless, pathetic male cow.”
I’m enjoying this immensely. Wait until the aliens try Australia for size…
It was a strange creature Tar'van glimpsed at on the vast island known to the humans as ‘Australia’.
“I would warn you not to fuck with us, mate.” Their forced guide, a prisioner, had warned with a chilling grin upon capture. “If you think a moose is bad, wait until you tango with a red back.” To this day Tar'van fears the creature known as the red back, and what horrors it would bring.
The prisioner turned out to be of little help,the stubboness of his people causing them to refuse the danger that the captured human warned of. Tar'van recalls a moment when one of his squad members approached a creature know as a dingo, insistent they had seen these creatures before and they were tame. They barely escaped with 5 of the original 7 members of his squad.
Another moment Tar'van recalls was the brutal mauling they witnessed by the hands of a creature called an ‘Emu’
“Don’t feel too bad,” the prisioner mocked. “We lost a war to the Emu’s as well.”
Now with only 4 members of their squad left, including themself, Tar'van had learned to listen to the prisoner, to be wary of the simplest of creatures. This human was of the sub-species of ‘Zookeeper’ after all.
The ‘Zookeeper’ looks off to the distance, where the creature is.
“It’s a kangaroo, leave it be and you’ll be fine.” Tar'van nods, a human signal of acknowledgement if they are correct. The human smiles a bit.
“That creature cannot possibly harm us.” Tar'van’s squadleader protests. “It is so docile. I will aproach it and bring back it’s head to show this human is a fearmongering liar.”
The human reels back, a look of disgust crosses their face and anger passes through their eyes.
“Fucking do it mate, I dare ya.” The human hisses. The squad leader puffs up their hoinn gland, a sign of pride to their species, and aproached the so called ‘Kangaroo’.
“This will be unpleasant.” A squadmate mutters as they watch their leader raise their fist and bring it down on the creature. The ‘Kangaroo’ looks a little stunned by the impact, before it raises itself upon its strong tail and uses its powerful heind legs to launch their squadleader backwards through the air.
Their squadleader lands upon the ground, unmoving with black blooded oozeing from them. It appears Tar'van is the squads leader now.
“I don’t know what they expected.” the human says, smugness filling their tone. “Kangaroos are fucking shreaded. 8-pack and all.”
Tar'van steps forward to the human, whom inches back in a sign of fear as Tar'van pulls their blade from its holster, and in their first act as leader, frees the human of the bonds around their hands.
“Please,” Tar'van bags. “Get us back safely.”
@kryallaorchid, you guys really lost a war to emus? Why was it necessary?
oh, mate, you never mess with the emus.
(Jesus christ. Dont get us started on kangaroos)
They had faced Emu’s. They had lost one in the battle but had experienced them. But this was no emu.
Looking to their guide, they all stare in horror as his face changes from calculating to fear. Pure, heart consuming horror as he stares at the large bird. “Cassowary…” They mimic him in fear. Squawking the horrific name as another joins the first in the mad run towards them.
The only ones to survive was the native guide and Tar'van. The guide was carrying the soldier over his shoulder as they made their way back to the settlement. Tar'van was a wreck. Periodically alternating between rocking in complete silence and whispering broken words in horror. When they consulted the native all he said was “Its spring…. Magpie season…”
“Listen up, troops. This armour upgrade has been tested both in the laboratories of the best Imperial military scientists and in the field. We are impervious to the stings of any insect on this hellhole of a planet, striped or not! We can brave the perils of its wildlife, and conquer it at long last! Revenge for our fallen companions! Glory to the Emperor!”
“Excuse me,” the native Terran guide speaks up in a tired tone, and the squad’s cheers die on their lips. “This is Japan. You haven’t seen what–”
“Silence, worm! No sting can penetrate this plating!”
The guide tries to warn them once again, merely earning a blow that throws them to their knees. The troops set out, morale high, certain in their ability to brave the wildlife now and thirsting for vengeance against the non-sentient native species. One soldier thumps his fist against a tree. A hollow sound follows.
In an instant, the soldier is the centre of a storm of the striped insects. At first, no one pays it any mind. Their little stings cannot penetrate the new plating, after all.
But then the soldier falls to his knees, and the squad stares in horror as the insects enclose him in layer upon layer of their own bodies, all moving. The squad’s medic yells a warning at everyone to stay back, watching the readouts of the unfortunate soldier’s armour on their diagnostic screen with undisguised horror. The insects aren’t even stinging. They simply keep moving, one atop the other, and the soldier’s body temperature is slowly rising until he drops to the ground, quite literally cooked alive. The insect swarm takes off, unharmed save for the ones that were crushed when the trooper fell.
Finally asked about what happened, the human sighs. “Japanese honeybees. They do this to wasps, too.”
“How?” You ask. “How has your species dominated this planet?”
The human bares its teeth. A smile, they call it. Something humans do when they are happy. Yet you can’t help but think of all the creatures with the their large fangs and sharp teeth. (What kind of species uses a threat signal as a sign of happiness?)
“Persistence and ingenuity.” The human answers, still smiling.
It doesn’t matter that this one is your prisoner. Humans, you decide, are as terrifying as their planet.
“And scattered about it … were the Martians–dead!–slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, had put upon this earth.”
– HG Wells, The War of the Worlds,1898
I’m picturing aliens going up against a hoard of Canadian geese, or a swan.
I think at that point they’d just give up.
Or fire ants
No one even MENTIONED snakes yet…
This thing gets better EVERY FUCKING TIME I SEE IT.
“Let us try the creatures that the humans keep for domestic companionship”
“Is that a miniature tiger?”
“Why does this human own a small pack of wolves?”
The aliens ask their human captive why small wolves live with them.
“Oh, you mean dogs? Yeah, they’re the only animals that can keep up with us.”
The aliens look at each other in fear. “What do you mean?”
“Oh well that’s why you guys ‘won’ is because humans aren’t super fast or strong. I think my middle school biology teacher called us pursuit predators? It means we evolved to hunt things by following them at walking pace until they had to stop to sleep and then catching up to them then. Dogs are the only animals that can keep up with us. Did you know one time a pack of wolves tailed a herd of caribou for three days straight?”
“Uh… okay, what about these small round things with big teeth?”
“Omg dude no if you give a hamster enought time that little fucker can chew through concrete :)”
The aliens wonder if the surrender of humanity was a trap.
Somebody do sharks or sea creatures next. Giant squids would wreak havoc on their ships.
rebloging because Hamsters are the most demonic critter on the planet for real. also, hummingbirds. Humming birds will attack /owls/
I’m not much of a science fiction fan but, this is beautiful.
Please give me more I’m begging you all.
Anyone gonna talk about Rabbits yet? I have one and honestly, it looks cute and all, but those little demons will bite and claw you and you won’t see it coming
I’ve seen this several times now and I have to add to it because I love it so much enjoy:
They’d all been assured that this terran island was non-dangerous. They had few large predators, the climate was temperate and mild, and was comparatively small compared to many of the “countries” they’d been to so far. Kowixx had trouble believing this however. So far, it had been proven time and again that to assume safety on Earth was a death sentence. Xer squad leader believed that this place was safe however, and that meant they had to follow. The leader had been fighting on Earth for two months now; for soldiers sent to this hell planet, two months practically made you a veteran.
Soon, however, Kowixx was proven right. They landed on the beaches first, after an hour of travelling over cold ocean; the only way that they could approach as their airborne ships couldn’t survive the colder temperatures in the Northern hemisphere, and it was supposedly “winter” this time of year. Kowixx could only dream of being back on their moderate, non-extreme planet, thousands of jur’wens away. From the second they started marching up the sand, which easily caved beneath their feet, tall, spindly human structures were rising out of the sea mist. A shudder going down xer spine, Kowixx was sure they were being watched. Even more so when a dull grey shape glided down from the sky and landed in front of the squad leader. Xe ordered a halt and the men stopped. It seemed non-dangerous at first. Grey and brown, a rather dull looking creature with ridiculous webbed feet and a dark beak. It moved closer to the squad leader, as if inspecting. The squad leader wasn’t going to take any chances. Xe pulled xer weapon from xer side and fired. The creature screeched, its noise ear-piercing, its wings flaring up at the sand beneath it melted.
Immediately, its cries were repeated a hundred fold from above, and more of the hideous things began diving out of the sky. Keeping their heads down, they all tried to run, Kowixx muttering a prayer for xer life. Vicious sharp beaks bit and tore at the soldiers skin, the large grey beasts dropped more and more out of the sky, almost invisible in the mist if not for their demonic screeching. Some of them even crashed straight into the soldiers, with their full body weight, thorn like claws ripping at armour and hideous squawking hurting their ears. One poor soldier collapsed in the sand and was immediately set upon by four of the great things, screaming with bloodlust.
Eventually they made it to safety, sheltering in a human building. They captured a lone human later, and asked it about these creatures. This island was supposed to be safe?! What were these new monsters? The human didn’t quite get it at first, and then realised. “Ah, a seagull. They probably thought you had food. When you shot at them you pissed them off.” The squad leader frowned “so, we should’ve fed it?!” The human laughed, an awful sound after that experience. “No, if you’d have fed it they would never have left you alone. You can’t win against seagulls. You just have to run and hope they don’t catch up to you first”. The squad leader demanded to know if there would be any more of these beasts. The human looked away from xer, and focused on Kowixx. Kowixx felt xer heart double take as it said coldly “seagulls are everywhere here.”
If there was one thing
that Baerhwan had learned about this hellhole of a planet, it’s that
now matter how dangerous the thing directly in front of you looked,
there was always something even worse somewhere else – and if you
were really unlucky, “somewhere else” was five yards away and
getting closer all the time. He still had nightmares about the killer
bee incident. According to one of their human guides, honey bees were
considered to be a symbol of cosy, rural domesticity; it was only
later that Baerhwan had discovered that they killed more humans each
year than any animal other than humans themselves.
It was for this reason
that Baerhwan glanced at his superior with concern about xir mental
well-being.
He could understand the
admiral’s decisions. Naktok had seen almost a third of xir invasion
force decimated by the local wildlife – more than in the entire war
with the Lumati - and half of the survivors would be in psychiatric
restructuring for the next several years. So the decision made five
weeks ago to activate the Limsaq Protocol – something only done
once before in the entire history of the Imperium – made a kind of
vague sense. Nevertheless, Baerhwan had an uneasy feeling that the
plan wouldn’t go smoothly.
The Limsaq Protocol was
simplicity itself: a team would be sent back into the planet’s past,
and would alter the biosphere to make it more amenable to the various
species of the Imperium. It was rarely even considered, since the
consequences were hard to predict. The only other planet this had
been done to was Limsaq, which had originally been home to a
particularly vicious, expansionist and xenophobic species, the Schloq, who had been threatening several Imperium colonies and two
sourceworlds. A team had been sent back, and the Schloq (along with a few parasite species dependent upon them) had
been wiped out, reversing the extinction of several hundred of Limsaq’s other species
and ending the threat for good. It was a comparatively minor change
to the planet’s biosphere, and had resulted in a wholly new,
unpopulated and easily colonisable world.
Naktok’s plan went
rather further. Xe hoped to wiped out this planet’s native life
entirely, and replace it with species from other worlds – create a
whole new biosphere from scratch. Unfortunately the process would
take several tens of millions of years to work. Even with the use of
temporal hop-pods, the logistical undertaking was immense.
Naktok believed xirself
to be infallible and indestructible - a common flaw in xir species - and strode boldly and purposefully out of the hop-pod, ready to begin the process of destroying the local wildlife.
But when, just a few seconds after exiting the temporal hop-pod,
Naktok was bitten in two by a set of jaws that looked disturbingly
like those of a crocodile, only much, much larger, Baerhwan was not
as surprised as he might have been at an earlier time in his life.
This was Earth, after all. Of course it had fifteen foot tall, forty
foot long carnivorous reptiles with teeth longer than a human hand.
What else could there possibly have been, a hundred million years in the
past?
can tongues in fanfiction stop fighting each other for dominance, let them come home from war
it’s really fucked up because the guy who did that study found out that tongues only do that in captivity and that wild tongues are actually much more sociable with each other
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.“
And in that moment, all I can think of is that one line from Halo 2, about an intercepted distress call.
Dear Humanity, We regret being alien bastards. We regret coming to Earth. And we most certainly regret the Corps blowing up our raggedy ass fleet!
I’m sorry are you telling me that you all scrolled past that post on Alaskaand yet Australia is still considered the death continent???
All we learn is how to avoid snakes and spiders which boils down to kick things over before you pick em up, watch your fingers, make lots of noise to scare the snakes away. Oh and I guess safe swimming - swim between the flags, swim sideways out of a Rip, don’t swim alone.
And you freaks in Alaska are learning how to navigate by the stars and animal tracking.
No, no, no. Where *I* live is perfectly normal. It’s *you* who experience the deathworldness of Earth.
Everyone always wants to talk about Hook or Pan. Everyone always wants to debate which one is good and which is evil - who we’re supposed to follow and who we aren’t. The Peter Pan mythos has pretty much shrunk down to nothing but Hook and Pan (Hook, SyFy’s Neverland, Pan, OUAT, etc). Occasionally Tinkerbell factors in (Hook, Disney’s Tinkerbell, OUAT, etc). There’s one character, however, that always gets sidelined - which is puzzling since they are the main character of both the play and the book. That character is, of course, Wendy Darling.
Peter Pan is Wendy’s coming of age story. Wendy who decides to run away from home. Wendy who realizes that she must grow up - and that there’s no shame in that. Wendy who sees Peter as deficient and sees Hook as empty and decides that, no, she doesn’t want to be a part of that. Wendy gets the adventure she’s always wanted and she turns away because she realizes that it’s lacking. She’s the only one who truly sees the hollowness of being young forever. Barrie even says “You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than other girls.”
People always debate on who the hero is. When they learn that Peter could be horrid they assume it has to be Hook. Of course, the answer is that neither of them are the hero. Wendy is the hero of the story. You’re not supposed to be like Peter, who kept every good and bad aspects of being a child and can’t tell right from wrong. You’re not supposed to be Hook, either. He let go of everything childish and loving about him and became bitter and evil. They’re both the extreme ends of the scale. You’re supposed to fall in the middle, to hold onto the things about childhood that make it beautiful - the wonder, the imagination, the innocence - while still growing up and learning morality and responsibility. You’re not supposed to be Hook. You’re not supposed to be Peter Pan.
You’re supposed to be Wendy Darling.
Hi!!!!!
I just want to point out this amazing eBook where Peter Pan IS Wendy Darling. Because trans representation is amazing.
I’ve said “I hate this” so many times on this website, and never actually meant it, because “I hate this” is just shorthand for ‘this is an example of a meme given a twist I wasn’t expecting with intent to surprise’. Which is, in of itself, a meme on this site. God damn it.
But this… This is something else.
The rapidity of a meme’s introduction to its zenith to its decline is so rapid that in ten years, you’ll need a damn twenty-page manual to explain this. It’ll be as unfunny and hard to explain as jokes in Shakespeare plays, except even more inexplicable because fuck, at least Shakespeare’s jokes are usually about anal or fucking your mother, good wholesome sex jokes we can all get behind.
For the love of fuck, how do you explain loss.jpg? How do you explain gun?
….I THOUGHT THIS WAS A YMCA REFERENCE
it is a YMCA reference - that’s one of the 6 memes being represented here
ok let me see if i can break this down easily. YMCA is the easiest place to start - the song itself has become a meme over time with people changing the lyrics to reference other pop cultural events. so YMCA is meme one (1)
this first lyric replacement (”take the breadsticks and run”) is a reference to the tumblr meme ‘stuffing breadsticks into my purse’. i think everyone remembers that one so i wont bother to explain it. that’s meme two (2)
“man door hand hook car door” is a meme of its own, a creepypasta from i dont remember when. it was a terrible stupid retelling of the generic ‘stuck in a car while hook handed man tries to kill us’ story so the stupid title caught on for memorability. that in and of itself is meme three (3)
‘gun’ is… yeah i dont know how to explain gun. long story short you add gun to the end of a phrase instead of what you expect the last word to be. its shock funny. its everywhere but its popular to add to “man door hand hook car door” for.. some reason? gun is meme four (4)
and the thing is, this four meme combo is something thats gone around before. meme combos are, itself, a meme. which means taking this meme combo and mixing in another meme actually becomes meme five (5)
which leaves us at loss.jpg. loss.jpg was a terrible bad comic supposed to be about some tragic event, but it was presented so poorly literally no one takes it seriously, and for some reason recreating the four-panel setup has become popular. so thats meme six (6)
(but i need to add that this is the greatest version of loss.jpg i think i’ve ever seen. the initial ‘young man’ lines up with the guy bursting through the door, and the shock meme ‘gun’ matches the shock scene of the woman in the hospital and idk if OP even thought about that but it makes this just so much better)
I wasn’t going to reblog this, but @pagesofkenna‘s comprehensive meme-by-meme annotation is a thing of beauty and should be shared.
average tumblr post contains one meme, this post, which contains six, is an outlier and should not be counted
it might also just be a coincidence due to loss.jpg’s format but the whole white minimalist four-panel setup is also suspiciously reminiscent of those early 2000’s rage comics
I was getting a political compass vibe too
tag urself im man door hand hook car gun
This works better than I thought it would.
This was in my senior project
I’m not sorry.
EIGHT MEME COMBO
FATALITY
We have officially created a new language
I just had to do it to em
THIS FUCKING THREAD I’M GONNA CRY
I LOST IT AND MAN DOOR HAND HOOK CAR GUN AND DIDN’T EXPECT MORE I’M SOBBING
M E M E T E N
OwO?
W o w
You know I had to
I hope you know this is the most cursed addition to my post, and I love it
THIRTEEN!?
SOMEONE EDIT THIS FROM THE ORIGINAL PHOTO SAYING “this one does not spark joy” TO THIS VERSION SAYING “this one sparks joy”
well i added my contribution : )
why—
IM SCREAMING
This is the most elaborate meme I have ever seen and damn am I concerned by how it makes sense.
“You’re in your 30s, but you still understand all this meme stuff?” “Oh yeah, sure.” “Can you explain it to me?” “I absolutely fucking cannot.”
Update: he finally got the cat to the vet to see if she had a microchip
I was already on board with his sweet wholesome open-to-love-and-nurturing heart but I was fully unprepared for getting to that last tweet and seeing how off the hook HOT dude is