An art blog, of sorts.

You’re a daycare worker, watching over toddlers, when the imminent end of the world is announced. It becomes increasingly clear none of the kids’ parents are going to show up as the end inches nearer.

[Audio starts]

“Mom has been texting me for the last twenty minutes. She wants me to come home. It’s a four hour drive, when the roads are clear, and from what I hear everybody is trying to get somewhere right now. There’s no telling if I’d even-”

“Everybody else has left. All the other kids were picked up, the other staff left. They gave me all the keys. I promised to stay and wait for as long as- well. Even if some of the parents show up, I guess some of them won’t, so I’m just waiting. Until.”

[Clears throat.]

“A couple of people came after everybody left. Peter, one of Aidan’s fathers, gave me three hundred dollars for staying. What am I going to do with money? It’s- anyway. I kind of get it. He wanted to give me something.”

[Audio ends]

[Audio starts]

“They’re all between 2 and 4.” Sniff. “They’re so little. Too little to really- maybe if they were older, I’d have to tell them something. But um. I’m just- trying to stay calm and keep them happy and occupied. I think that’s the best thing, right now.”

[Heaving breaths.]

“I normally use this recorder to help me remember stuff. It’s just, uh, habit to talk to it. I don’t know. They’re napping, right now. I’ve got the baby monitor, they know that if they talk into it, I’ll come, so-”

[Sobbing.]

[Audio ends]

[Audio starts]

“Mom keeps texting, so I blocked her. I sent her a text telling her goodbye, first, but. I do. But these kids need me.”

[Sniff.]

“I tried calling their parents again, but I can’t get anybody. It’s just busy signals. I called the firefighter station, 911. I can’t get through to anybody.”

[Shaky breath.]

“I went out into the yard. Um, I think they can play. It’s nice out, and you can’t really see it yet. Little bit of a glimmer, if they ask I’ll just tell them it’s a plane, but it’s nice out and we’ve got hours before-”

[Murmuring child’s voice, indistinguishable.]

[Audio ends]

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From Here To There: A growing map of Manhattan made only of directions from strangers on scraps. 

you ever sit on a bus and suddenly get filled with an enormous tenderness towards everyone else on it

we are all just animals turning our heads towards each other and looking away when the other person catches our eye. sniffing the air when someone gets off the bus and leaves the scent of perfume behind. doing silly faces and making the baby who’s being held by her tired mother smile. smiling at the girl who’s got her hair cut short like yours, then you both looking back at your phones again, then randomly remembering her eyebrow piercing again in three years when you’re sitting on a different bus in a different city. we’re all planning on what kind of dinner we’re going to make once we get home and thinking of our dogs and looking at each others clothes and wondering what kind of lives the people around us live and then we thank the driver and get off the bus and never see each other again. but this is somehow a very sweet thought to me at the moment

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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I love these comics by Nathan W. Pyle.

Here are some more good ones

Okay, I frickin’ adore the Earth Is Space Australia business, so here’s my two cents. Someone did a great post about laughter as a fear response and how freaky that would be to aliens. 

There’s another thing we do when we’re about to go into battle and we’re scared out of our minds. 

So Alien Steve is minding his own business as the new guy on the Starship Incandescent. It’s a mixed ship, about half human, a quarter Silesian, and the rest a grab bag of species, but he hasn’t had any major problems so far. Then the pirates show up and shoot out their FTL drives so they can’t escape, and they’re outnumbered ten to one, and he calculates their odds of survival at very low. The comm link is still active, so they can hear the pirates laughing as they get ready to tear the Incandescent open and vent them all into vacuum. At least the end will be quick. 

And then he hears it. 

Stamp stamp clap. Stamp stamp clap. Stamp stamp clap. Stamp stamp clap.

And Human Steve starts chanting. It makes no sense. Human incantations are for birth anniversaries, or aquatic grooming rituals, or for the ancient rite of passage known as “ka-ra-oke”. This is not a time of celebration. It is a time of preparing for imminent and ugly death by gravity cannon. But every human on the bridge starts chanting, too. 

The pirates aren’t laughing anymore. Human Steve wraps his fingers around the main gunnery controls, and the crew descends as one into battle. 

Teradecads later, his students will beg him for the story of how the Incandescent destroyed the Tyn’x Syndicate. To this day he credits their victory to the invocation of the great Human battle god Queen.

And the damndest thing, Alien Steve will say later, is the way they all knew the chant. Not just knew it, but agreed that this was the right one to use. Because the thing about humans, Alien Steve will tell his student, the thing to remember is that they spar recreationally, and they do it *all the time* and over the most meaningless things. Appropriate chants for a situation are an especially common thing to spar over, and it’s exceedingly hard to tell just how recreational it is sometimes.

(There are reports of sparring sessions that got so out of hand they almost jeapordized entire missions. Alien Steve has a friend whose fur still stands on end in fear at the thought of the human utterance, “Turn that off or so help me God I am turning this ship around.”)

The point is, Alien Steve will say, the humans on that mission had very different ideas about appropriate chants. They were well behaved about it, but Human Janet and Human Steve especially seemed to worship Gods who demanded very different chants. And yet, when Human Steve began invoking the war god, Human Janet was the first to join in.

Humans have been scientifically determined to have no hivemind or psychic abilities, but sometimes Alien Steve has to wonder.

#space australia #if any english-language music survives the exodus from this planet #it’s absolutely gonna be queen #probably joined by abba #of this i am convinced (via kingedmundsroyalmurder)

Loving the idea of earth cryptids/folklore monsters being real only the humans have no idea until after first contact.

Vulcans: Our scientists have questions about the small nocturnal portion of your population that drinks blood and appears virtually immortal. Is there a name for this sub-species?

Humans: THE WHAT?!?!?

Sight is a bullshit power and I’m starting to think it isn’t even real.

I’ve been obsessed with that one post where people speculated “What if sight was really uncommon in the universe so other aliens treat humans ability to see like it’s some magical power that doesn’t work half the time for stupid reasons?”

I imagine the alien “see” with echolocation, so they don’t bump into things but their range is very limited.

people talk all the time about “primal instincts” and it’s usually about violence or sexual temptations or something, but your humanity comes with a lot of different stuff that we do without really thinking about, that we do without being told to or prompted to

your average human comes pre-installed with instincts to:

we are chalk full of survival instincts that revolve around connecting to others (dog-shaped others, robot-shaped, sometimes even plant-shaped) and making things with our hands

your primal instincts are not bathed in blood- they are layered in people telling stories to each other around a fire over and over and putting devices together through trial and error over and over and reaching for someone and something every moment of the way

My god this is beautiful. Such a refreshing change of pace to the constant glorification of instinctual human violence.

Humans are cool and good actually it's just colonialism and capitalism that you're mad at

We're made to tell stories and braid each other's hair and build things and fucking help people and we're just as much part of the earth as all the other living organisms on this bitch y'all just made guns and money and decided the world is something to conquer welcome to my tedtalk

Human vs Animals

Every year, in a small Welsh town, there is a race between riders on horseback and runners on foot. Evidently he above subject came under some discussion in a bar, and a bet was made, which resulted in a challenge people have recreated every year since. The race features dozens of horses versus a similar number of runners, and while a horse usually wins, it is always pretty close, and SOMEtimes, sometimes a human runner wins.

The race is 22 miles long. It is shorter than a standard human marathon. This is so that it is fair to the horses. A typical marathon is 26 miles long. A healthy distance for a horse to undertake in a single day for the purpose of travel is between 20 and 30 miles, but only if they walk at least part of the way. The years a human runner has won the race, the weather has been hot, as heat also favors human runners.

Interestingly, if the race is only ten to fifteen meters, 30 - 45 feet, a human can also win against a horse, which takes longer than a human to get up to full speed.

This fact of human capability for pursuit hunting and distance running is also part of why we have partnered with dogs for so much of our time on this planet. Dogs and wolves also engage in pursuit hunting, and sled dogs in particular can run miraculous distances due to some very interesting biological processes. 

Interesting

Well, that’s surely something

You know what I want to see more of in sci fi? Aliens who deviate from their species’ “norm.”

Like, queer aliens, but queer in alien terms; like, aliens whose typical family unit is a trio comprised of three different gendersexes, but sometimes aliens will form trios that only have two different gendersexes, and they still produce viable offspring, but only of the two parent gendersexes, and that carries a social stigma because each gendersex is supposed to play a separate role in the family unit. 

Aliens for whom it is the norm to change gendersex upon reaching a certain age, but sometimes (possibly due to a genetic anomaly) it doesn’t happen, so those aliens either a) continue to present as a juvenile gender despite being a stage 2 adult, b) present as a stage 2 adult despite their physical characteristics, or c) undergo medical procedures to change their body artificially, though the technology in that area is still imperfect.

Or disabled aliens who have prosthetic tails/fins/wings/tentacles/etc. Aquatic aliens who can’t hold their breath for an accepted amount of time and so have to carry around atmosphere tanks. Aliens with degenerative conditions that are slowly losing their infrared vision. Aliens who lack their species trademark color-changing camouflage skin. Aliens who are allergic to common foods on their own planets and are frustrated that interplanetary restaurants don’t take that into account when listing which menu items are “safe” for which species.

Neurodivergent aliens who are not connected to the hivemind, who do their best to blend in and guess what they are supposed to be doing, but who are cast out when they are discovered, only to have their numbers build up enough that they are able to build a society on their own using communication aids such as verbal or manual language. 

Aliens who are just different in small ways, like generally all three eyes are different colors, except that rare genetic quirks sometimes cause two or even all three to be the same color. Aliens born with five fingers instead of four. Aliens who are more coordinated with their prehensile toes than with their hands, which is inconvenient when most products are designed to be used with hands, but they manage. Aliens born with vestigial wings instead of just residual bone nubs. Aliens born without horns or tusks or spines.

and okay, so I’m basically arguing for more diverse representation of aliens, but like, if our default mode of thinking is to assume that all members of a species are a certain way, then what does that say about how we view our own species? that only ones who follow certain norms qualify as “human”?

or whatever maybe i just think that thinking about this sort of stuff is cool.

um incredible I love this

people talk all the time about “primal instincts” and it’s usually about violence or sexual temptations or something, but your humanity comes with a lot of different stuff that we do without really thinking about, that we do without being told to or prompted to

your average human comes pre-installed with instincts to:

we are chalk full of survival instincts that revolve around connecting to others (dog-shaped others, robot-shaped, sometimes even plant-shaped) and making things with our hands

your primal instincts are not bathed in blood- they are layered in people telling stories to each other around a fire over and over and putting devices together through trial and error over and over and reaching for someone and something every moment of the way

Cooperation > Competition

Competition is good but ultimately, we have to stick together

It’s a long read but worth it @every-n-anything @cazador-red @medic981 @the-armed-utahn

I read this in Peter Wellers voice for some reason. Damn good writing.

I didn’t know r/HFY was so active

I just read Prey, and it was really good too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/3yi82b/oc_prey/