taking half a step forward is better than none at all

Sandtalon on AO3 | Last Dreamer Press | she/xe/they If I don't see an ask/mention, there is a very good chance I'm stuck in the woods again. I'll reply once I'm back!! | Want to support my work? I'd rather you look here: https://gazaesims.com/

[thestuffedalligator]

Human Is is a 1955 Philip K. Dick sci-fi short story where a guy goes to another planet for work and when he comes back to Earth his personality has flipped from an asshole to a sweet, kind, considerate man. Everyone's immediately convinced that an alien has taken over his body, this goes all the way to court, and in court his wife testifies that she's noticed no changes at all and so the charges are dropped.

And then there's a bit right at the end of the story as the wife and the husband are walking out of court:

Jill turned abruptly. "What is your name? Your real name."

The man's gray eyes flickered. He smiled a little, kind, gentle smile. "I'm afraid you would not be able to pronounce it. The sounds cannot be formed..."

Jill was silent as they walked along, deep in thought. The city lights were coming on all around them. Bright yellow spots in the gloom. "What are you thinking?" the man asked.

"I was thinking perhaps I will still call you Lester," Jill said. "If you don't mind."

"I don't mind," the man said. He put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. He gazed down tenderly as they walked through the thickening darkness, between the yellow candles of light that marked the way. "Anything you wish. Whatever will make you happy."

And I. God. There's something there. A soupcon of monsterfuckery. To tell your partner in a moment of intimacy that yes, you're something so inhuman that the lips you're stealing can't speak your actual name. You're a parasite that not only had the ability to burrow under this man's skin and take over his life, but you were so desperate to escape a dead, dry, blasted planet that you did.

And for your partner to then turn around and go "I know, I've always known, and I love you" is just. God I know it's not a great Dick story but something about it is making me lose my mind

[thestuffedalligator]

Also it's explicitly stated that the guy's consciousness is still alive and preserved on the alien planet. Jill is told this and then proceeds to defend the alien anyways, ensuring that her husband's brain is stuck in a jar on a desert planet. You love to see it

[tearsofrefugees]

Clerks smile and 'flip off' security camera while 'sneaking' immigrants out of courthouse: DOJ

Two Utah court clerks have been dubbed "anti-ICE vigilantes" after they were allegedly caught "sneaking" immigrants out the back door of the

[antifainternational]

That's how you show real solidarity!

"After they overheard that ICE was at the courthouse to arrest someone, they improperly accessed court databases to determine who was not born in the United States," a DOJ detention filing says. "They then snuck every suspected illegal alien who was at the courthouse out a back door, where ICE, who was waiting in the parking lot for their target to leave the building, could not see them."

Think about what you can do at your job or in your daily life to resist fascism when the opportunity presents itself!

[genderoutlaws]

fundraiser for their legal expenses x

[bulkhummus]

a roasted brussel sprout can change your life if you let it. open your heart. take my hand. its good, try it. i love a brusseled sprout I love you

[pinklocksoflove]

[adastrabbit]

[sigmaleph]

every day i am thankful to ancient humans for the domestication of the cat. fucking genius idea. agriculture was a good one too btw but you really outdid yourselves with the cat thing

[isagisms]

take my hand 🫴 let's write self-indulgent fanfic together forever

[liberalsarecool]

Cosign.

[burntundertones]

[feminist-space]

[papayafromtv]

conversations overheard through the batkid com lines pt 78 (masterpost here)

*gunshot*

Jason: yeeeeee~ boi! dude, these guys suck.

Bruce: Hood, *grunt, harsh impact* just focus, please.

Jason: wa-wah wah, you’re always so against mid-fight chatter. we’re winning, aren’t we? anyway, what were we talking about?

Tim: *yelp* sHIT- man i hate when the bad guys get creative with weapons. fuck you for bringing hairspray and a lighter, you asshole.

Damian: i believe we were talking about whether Robin was ‘worth it’.

Jason: oh yeah. what’s your verdict?

Damian: well for me? yes. if i wasn’t Robin, then i wouldn’t have been present and capable of supplying this man with a lighter so he could throw fire at Red Robin.

Tim: ROBIN-

Bruce, sternly: Robin.

Jason, over more gunshots: *laughing* ok what about you, Replacement? was Robin what you wanted it to be?

*crashing, groans of pain*

Tim, panting: eh-? oh, no, not even close. i thought i’d get to rescue so many more bullies than i did.

Damian: …what?

Jason: yeah, elaborate.

Bruce: i need somebody on my six, Robin get over here. Hood, can you and Red Robin get to the hostages?

Jason: yeah yeah- sh, hold on. whaddaya mean save more bullies?

Tim: well… *gunshot* jesus- *punching sound* you know, it’s like that common trope in teen superhero movies? the bullied kid gets powers, becomes a hero, and then in-mask rescues their high school bully from a villain to show that they are stronger both physically and morally. i wanted that moment, but i never fucking got it, and it really pissed me off.

Damian, slightly strained: you are a very strange boy, you know that?

Tim: shut up, you literally grew up in a cult.

Jason, amused: *snickering* are you- so are you saying you got bullied in high school?

Tim, bland: yeah. lotta people thought i was a peeping tom because of the camera hyperfixation, so ‘peeping Tim’ was a common nickname back then.

Jason: *cackle*

Damian, absently: ‘thought you were a peeping tom?

Jason: *cackling harder*

Tim: *outraged* NO?!?

Bruce, hissing: no names in the mask—we are in the middle of a mission!

Jason, still laughing: calm down, me and peeping Tim over here are alone, we haven’t made it to the hostages yet.

Tim: SHUT UP. I WAS NEVER A PEEPING TOM, OH MY GOD, I JUST LIKED TAKING PHOTOS OF VIGILANTES DOING COOL FLIPS IN THE AIR-!

Damian: i have seen photos of Hood shirtless during his Robin days.

Tim: *sputtering*

Jason: *laughing even harder*

Tim: how is it my fault that this idiot got his top splashed with acid mid-photo?!!?!

Jason: i take it- i take it back, i’m no longer surprised you got bullied, this is awesome.

Tim, whining: shut up!

Damian: honestly Red, a single nickname does not seem that bad. i have witnessed much worse. i have done much worse.

Tim: oh no, i got beaten up a bunch too.

Jason: tracks.

Bruce: Robin, what do you mean you’ve done much worse?

Damian, completely serious: it’s Gotham public school, Father. it’s kill or be killed.

*a beat*

Bruce: …you don’t go to public school.

Damian: …i don’t? it’s a school built in a public area, isn’t it?

*another beat*

Bruce: ok, you don’t know what a public school is.

Jason: Red i hope you know i’m literally never letting the peeping Tim thing go, like ever.

Tim: honestly? not the worst name i got called. i skipped a couple grades and made the mistake of carrying a briefcase once.

Jason: …so?

Tim: i got called Young Sheldon so much that the school counseller thought i’d transitioned and Tim was my deadname.

*another beat*

Jason: *abrupt breathless cackles* OH MY- OH MY GOD THAT’S SO GOOD- *choking wheeze*

Tim, dry: yeah thought you might like that.

Jason, still losing it: WHERE’S MY- FUCK I NEED TO TEXT DICK- *more wheezing*

Tim: i hate having older brothers.

Damian: you did literally give him this yourself,

Tim, whining: -i know! i forget how much of an asshole they both can be.

Damian: so you never got to save any bully from a rogue?

Tim, forlorn: no. one of my old bullies ended up working for Scarecrow, though?

Damian: *interested hum*

Tim: yeah, but apparently he got drunk and sucked on a pipe of fear gas thinkin’ it was helium. had a panic attack and broke his legs jumping into Gotham harbour.

Bruce: i would like to circle back to Robin claiming to be a bully.

Damian: i only beat up those who deserve it!

Bruce: son, you shouldn’t be beating up anybody. you don’t have the right to decide who deserves to be physically assaulted, you should know this.

*a long stretch of silence*

Damian, blandly: uh-huh. your knuckles are bruised. *pointedly* did i do a good job watching your six?

Jason: *quietly snickering again*

Bruce: …that’s… dif-

Damian: no you took too long. you lose.

Tim: he’s right, that is how that works.

Bruce: … *sigh*

Jason: yo, shelly, i found the hostages,

Tim: Jason i swear to god-

[papayafromtv]

i want this dynamic of dick with jason and literally every other batsibling.

like, as a treat, could we have an au where jason gets adopted but has a very antagonistic relationship with dick, to the point where dick outright yells at jason that he hates him and hates having brothers, and so out of spite and wanting to piss dick off jason just keeps. bringing back more brothers to get on dick's nerves.

they get into a screaming match about how much dick never wanted a younger sibling and the next day jason runs to the nearest house and convinces the first kid he finds there to join the family specifically so tim can sit across from dick at the dinner table that night and jason can give him the most spiteful/falsely innocent smile possible when bruce announces that as tim's parents are out of gotham for the rest of the year he'll be the kid's acting guardian, and dick just has to watch him and bite his tongue.

talia literally never planned for damian to be sent to live with his father so early in life, it's just that jason walked out the compound on his way back home, remembered the tradition, did a 180, and then grabbed damian so that he could force dick to deal with yet another younger brother. dick is literally so stressed out.

listen. dick was pissed when tim showed up, but by the time jason comes back with damian it's less anger and more just genuine stress. like. he knows bruce's capabilities. he knows that younger ones tend to look up to nightwing more than anyone else in the community. he knows that any child that 'bruce' takes in is just going to be another kid for him to worry about and care too much for and look out for, not even because bruce isn't doing moderately well as a parent but just because there's something about older brother figures that seem more approachable than an adoptive father.

and jason fucking knows it.

they're in an eternal battle of jason encouraging bruce's adoption addiction and dick desperately trying to stop jason from bringing any more children anywhere near the manor for his own mental healths sake.

it gets to the point where dick will call jason a fatass over the phone while jason's walking down the street, and jason will instantly hang up the phone, turn on his heel towards the nearest school, and just start yelling over the fence 'ANY OF YOU GUYS NOT GOT PARENTS?'

duke was just trying to eat lunch but this random man started calling over and when duke put his hand up the man asked if he wanted a new family with a free inheritance included, and like, normally duke wouldn't touch that kind of weird shit with a ten foot pole, but he did recently figure out he has a bunch of insanely cool meta-human abilities so really what were the chances this guy could actually hurt him? 2% chance it actually works out, 98% chance he gets a cool story; no downsides. he's in.

steph got adopted literally because while tim and jason were hanging out in jason's room, dick went in to ask a question and didn't shut jason's door on the way out. the second he left jason turned to him and demanded 'don't you have a friend whose dad is a rogue? get that woman over here right now.'

i think maybe cass just showed up in jason's apartment one day, because she remembered him from when jason worked with david cain a few times in the league of assassins and when she ran away from him she decided jason was the most trustworthy person to go to for refuge, and i think jason probably had to bite his cheek awkwardly at her just like 'ok listen i'm gonna help you and usually i would take you right over to batman to sort all of this out, but i kinda have a system i need to uphold here, so you might have to hide out in here until my older brother pisses me off, if you're alright with that. we have a game night tomorrow planned and we're gonna play monopoly so like, i guarantee you won't have to wait very long'.

dick genuinely starts tweaking over the possibility of jason having children in reserve for when he steps over the line after they end up having the game night at jason's apartment and two hours in dick buys the last green property that jason had been gunning after for forty five minutes and refuses to sell to him and jason glares at him for fifteen seconds before just straight face hollering 'OK YOU'RE UP, GET IN HERE' and another fucking child just melts out from the shadows of the hall to ask how to play.

[fox-bright]

Years before the covid pandemic began, author Naomi Kritzer wrote the charming, emotionally genuine short story "So Much Cooking," which was a pandemic log through the eyes of a cooking blog. The premise is that the author is a home cooking blogger raising her kids, and then a pandemic hits--and bit by bit she's feeding not only her own, but her sister's kids, some neighbors' kids, and so on, in a situation of pandemic lockdown and food shortages.

It's very good, and was prescient for a lot of the early days of the covid pandemic. I found myself returning to it often in the first couple of years because of how steadfast it was in its hopefulness.

Last year she wrote a novelette, "The Year Without Sunshine," which attacks a similar problem in a similar way; instead of pandemic, this one is about the aftereffects of a distant nuke or a massive volcano explosion (it doesn't say), which has churned a great deal of dust into the air, causing massive damage to society and agriculture. The story covers one neighborhood, pulling together to keep each other alive--not through violence, but through lawn potatoes and message pinboards and bicycle-powered oxygen concentrators.

I recommend both stories. They're uplifting in a way that a lot of what I see lately isn't. They're a bit of a panacea for constant fearmongering about intracommunity violence and grinding hatefulness. We can be good to each other, if we try.

[servantofclio]

These are both excellent stories, and I also heartily recommend her story "Better Living through Algorithms."

[mikkeneko]

[mona-ex-machina]

If you were really my friend you’d do this highly unethical experimental surgery on me

[animentality]

[studyofwhump]

First line ask game!!

[There are three things one wants to hear the least in an engine deck: "oh no," and "are we out of fire extinguishers," along with the worst option of all.]

-chaotic-tired-cat

(this has been sitting in my inbow to almost 2 fucking years to the day I'm sorry but here)

Content warnings: explosion, space whump, fire, minor character death

Hull integrity failing. Breach imminent.

The message on the intercom kept repeating through the speakers without pause. Alek kept his hands out to his sides, bracing him from slamming against the walls as the ship shook around him. He was nearly at the engine room entrance, already feeling the heat of fires against his skin. The ship lurched and he stumbled forward against the sealed door, the gray metal already hot to the touch.

Hull integrity failing. Breach imminent.

Alek overrode the safety lock on the door and forced his way into the engine room. The place was already ablaze, fire blanketing across platforms and cables as sparks from ripped grids flew in the air. Flames were already stretching over the shielding of the ship’s central core despite the onslaught of fire extinguishers around it. The engine room’s fire suppression system wasn’t working as the fire worsened. He heard shouting, and could see some of the crew surrounding the core trying to fight the fire. Others were still trying to bring the suppression systems back online. A few helped pull injured crewmates out of flaming wreckage.

Hull integrity failing. Breach imminent.

He ran down towards the chaos, nearly slamming into one of the engineers as the ship rocked again. The light of the fire burned into his eyes as he ran towards a downed platform. Yelling and screaming drew him to a few people pulling someone out from under a metal slab. He came by their side, grabbing one end and lifting it as they dragged the person out, then another. Both of them were bloodied and covered in debris.

Hull integrity failing. Breach imminent.

“Is there anyone else under there?!” Alek saw one of the helpers was Xu, who nodded as his question was responded with a ‘no.’ The two of them helped one of the injured crewmates to their feet, each slinging as arm over their shoulders as they guided them out from the wreckage. The others followed suit. They kept their feet moving against the shaking structures around them, not stopping to look back as they ran back through the engine room entrance and down the corridor.

Hull integrity failing. Breach immine—

There was loud sound behind them, an explosion, and suddenly wind whooshed past Alek’s ears with incredible force, pushing him, Xu, and the other crewmates back towards the open engine room. There was screaming, a gripping cold that seemed to reach deep into their lungs, and then as quickly as it happened, it stopped. The air returned to normal, the sound was gone, and all of them collapsed to the floor.

“The hell—?" Alek pushed himself up and looked back at the entrance. A blue screening shone over the space between the corridor and the engine room, a pressure shield maintaining the atmosphere throughout the rest of the ship. He and Xu stood up, feet still unsteady from the rocking of the ship, and peered out through the door frame.

“Oh my god…” The flames of the raging fire were gone, in a twisted way leaving the ship’s engine core safe. Through the lights of the remaining intact bulbs, the outline of the massive breach in the hull was visible. The atmosphere of the engine room was gone, leaving the shredded metal of the wall eerily still. The remaining crew that had stayed behind were nowhere in sight.

“No…” Alek felt the descending dread falling on him as the crew with him and Xu came to see the carnage. None of them said anything, as if frozen in body and tongue where they stood. The small force field was the only thing preventing them from getting sucked out into space, a meager protection against a failing ship.

Another explosion sounded and the ship lurched, throwing all of them against the sidewall. Alek gasped from the impact, pushing himself back to his feet as he felt a hand grab the back of his shirt and pull him away from the door. Xu pulled him over to help their injured crewmate back to their feet, all of them moving as quickly as they could with the floor shaking beneath their feet. The alarm above them changed its tune.

Warning: hull breach. Evacuate now. Warning: hull breach. Evacuate now.

“We have to get to the escape pods!” Alek shouted through the blare of warnings and klaxons.

“The pods are on the ship’s port side, that whole section is gone!” Xu’s voice was barely audible, but Alek understood him well enough. If the escape pods had been destroyed, how were they going to get off the ship? All of them had to think of something quickly as their legs carried them hastily through the corridors.

“Attention all hands,” Ganex’s voice suddenly replaced the alarm’s repeating mantra, “Deploying emergency corridor cutoff in fifteen seconds! Move to a secure barring and brace for impact!”

Impact? Alek didn’t have time to think about what that meant. As soon as the emergency handlebars ejected from the walls, everyone rushed to the sides and held on tightly. Alek and Xu stayed close together, keeping their injured crewmate close as their grip was still weak. The ship still rocked around him as they waited for safety measures to deploy. Alek tried to keep breathing, tried not to let the terror of being sucked out into space or being flung through the ship like a ragdoll keep him from losing focus. But even as he held on for dear life, his voice couldn’t help but break into a scream.

The longest fifteen seconds of his life.

[kosmogrl]