Totally Poignant

I write. I nap. I know I put my pen down around here somewhere. Eater of chocolate/drinker of coffee. I oppose pants.

[evolutionstopshere]

This week read a banned book for Banned Books Week.

[dailykilljoys]

[arcticfoxbear]

Humans Are Weird

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. 

[arafaelkestra]

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.

[radioactivepeasant]

Earth being Space Australia Words cannot express how much I love these posts

[crazy-pages]

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.” 

[val-ritz]

“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.”

[wuestenratte]

Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.

[networkentertainment-offici-blog]

“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???!?!?!?”

[arcticfoxbear]

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

[unicornempire]

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.

[reformed-roark]

“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.”

[insane-male-alphabeticalsymbol]

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.“

[elidyce]

I’ve been reading a bunch of these and all I can think about now is aliens finding out about our insane ability to walk away from accidents.

“Human Colony SDO435**, this is Gxanimi survey vessel 3489. We regret that we must inform you that the wreckage of your ship ‘Gecko Flyer’ has just been detected on planet F56=K=. We offer expressions of sympathy for this catastrophe.”

“Shit, thanks for telling us, we’ll be right there.”

“Why?”

“To find our people, of course.”

“… you wish to retrieve the corpses for your traditional death rituals, of course, we understand. We have sent the coordinates.”

“What do you mean, bodies? No survivors at all? There must be some.”

“Official mouthpiece of Human Colony SDO435**, the ship has crashed. It has impacted the planet’s surface at speed. Moreover, this might have happened as much as five vek ago. We do not understand why you speak of ‘survivors’.”

“Oh, there’ll be survivors. There always are.”

“(closes hyperspace voicelink) How sad that they are unable to accept the reality of their loss.”

*

“Hey, Gxanimi survey vessel 3489, thanks for letting us know about the Gecko Flyer. More than half the crew made it!”

“Made what?”

“They survived! A couple of lost limbs and so on, but they’ll be fine.”

“… but that vessel was destroyed! Images have been examined!”

“Oh, well, everyone in the fore-below compartment was crushed, obviously, but the others made it out.”

“… but the crash was vek ago! Excuse we… at least eighty of your ‘days’! How could they survive without a ship? Without shelter and supplies?”

“Well, the wreckage gave them some shelter, and of course the emergency supplies kept them going until they could start growing stuff. It’s actually a nice little planet, they said. Quite a lot of edible flora and fauna. T-shirt weather, in summer, too.”

“What is… t-shirt weather?”

“Oh, you know, when it’s comfortable to go around with only modesty covering over the epidermis. Exposed limbs.”

“That planet is so cold that even water solidifies in its atmosphere!”

“Well, in winter, obviously. But we like that. Listen, our people have been raising crops down there, and that’s usually how we rule a planet as ‘colonized’…. is anyone else using it, or can we call it?”

“Er… we have claimed the warmer planets in the system, but we believe we could come to some arrangement.”

*

It was really nice, the humans thought, how carefully most of the aliens kept an eye out for downed ships after that, once they found out that humans tended to survive anything less than explosive decompression or… well, explosions generally. They’d immediately inform the nearest outpost of a wreck’s location, or even ship survivors back themselves. It was very thoughtful.

They didn’t find out until a long time later that the Gxanimi had put out the word to every species they were in contact with. It was vital that everyone knew the things they had learned about humans after that first encounter.

1. Humans can literally walk away from an impact that renders a space-worthy hull so much scrap and would have actually liquefied a Gxanimi.

2. Humans will eat just about anything not immediately fatal to them - including, in extremis, the corpses of their dead crewmates. In fact, most human vessels keep a list of those willing to be eaten and those whose socio-religious scruples forbid it. They have a ridiculously high tolerance for dangerous substances, and if they can breathe on a planet they can probably eat something on it too. They also have something they call the ‘Watney Protocol’, which requires them to carry live soil samples, seeds, and simple tools that will allow them to start farming their own native foodstuffs on any remotely habitable planet immediately in the event of an accident.

3. Once they’ve farmed a planet, they bond with it. They’ll be polite, but it’ll take significant effort to get rid of them even so.

Conclusion: If a human ship crashes on a planet you like and want to keep, get other humans to come and get them immediately. Remove them yourself if you have to. Even the worst crash can result in a thriving colony in a few vek.

And don’t, for the love of gravitational regularity, try to solve that problem by killing off the survivors. Just don’t. It won’t work and it just makes all the rest of them mad.

[radioactivepeasant]

On the topic of humans being everyone’s favorite Intergalactic versions  of Gonzo the Great: Come on you guys, I’ve seen all the hilarious additions to my “humans are the friendly ones” post. We’re basically Steve Irwin meets Gonzo from the Muppets at this point. I love it. 

But what if certain species of aliens have Rules for dealing with humans?

Don’t eat their food. If human food passes your lips/beak/membrane/other way of ingesting nutrients, you will never be satisfied with your ration bars again.

Don’t tell them your name. Humans can find you again once they know your name and this can be either life-saving or the absolute worst thing that could happen to you, depending on whether or not they favor you. Better to be on the safe side.

Winning a human’s favor will ensure that a great deal of luck is on your side, but if you anger them, they are wholly capable of wiping out everything you ever cared about. Do not anger them.

If you must anger them, carry a cage of X’arvizian bloodflies with you, for they resemble Earth mo-skee-toes and the human will avoid them.

This does not always work. Have a last will and testament ready.

Do not let them take you anywhere on your planet that you cannot fly a ship from. Beings who are spirited away to the human kingdom of Aria Fiv-Ti Won rarely return, and those that do are never quite the same.

Basically, humans are like the Fair Folk to some aliens and half of them are scared to death and the others are like alien teenagers who are like “I dare you to ask a human to take you to Earth”.

[dalekteaservice]

We knew about the planet called Earth for centuries before we made contact with its indigenous species, of course. We spent decades studying them from afar.

The first researchers had to fight for years to even get a grant, of course. They kept getting laughed out of the halls. A T-Class Death World that had not only produced sapient life, but a Stage Two civilization? It was a joke, obviously. It had to be a joke.

And then it wasn’t. And we all stopped laughing. Instead, we got very, very nervous. 

Keep reading

[katiedoylewriter]

LOVE IT!!

[laurasilvermanlovesbooks-deacti]

#WordsForChange

“Alton Sterling was a 37-year-old black man that was fatally shot by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana early Tuesday. Alton Sterling, a father of five, lived out of a shelter, selling CDs in front of a food mart to get by. He sold CDs for years, earning the nickname “CD-Man.” There has been a minute long video recorded by a witness of Mr. Sterling’s death that has caused outrage in the community and on social media. Selling CDs to get by in such a divided world should not be punishable by death.” Jay Coles

The murder of Alton Sterling was a horrific tragedy - perhaps more horrific, these murders happen all the time and don’t get caught on camera, or get caught on camera and somehow the officers don’t land in jail.

A lot of us want to help but feel like we can’t. What power do we have? What can we do beyond showing support on social media and rallying for change in the streets - rallies that often get dismissed as “riots” and targeted by the media as the real violence.

Well, we do have power. Our power is in supporting those who have the platform to enact change. Our power is in supporting those who have been affected by these tragedies. Our power is in using the abstraction of words to create concrete change.

So - how do you help?

Search the hashtag #WordsforChange on Twitter.

Authors, writers, and readers are going to begin posting giveaways under this hashtag. The giveaway might be a book of your choosing, a query critique, that ARC you’ve be pining after, or something else. The rules will differ a bit for each competition, but for the majority of them, if you win the giveaway, you must donate any amount to one of the approved funds below to collect your prize. If a giveaway is particularly desirable, the user might ask that you donate first as an entry, and then they will choose a winner from those who donate.

ANYONE can and is encouraged to give away something. Again, it can be as simple as the winner receives a book of their choosing.

Here are the currently approved places to donate. PLEASE message me here or at my email ([email protected]) if you have more recommend places. I will continue to update the list as I receive recommendations:

Family:

Alton Sterling Family Scholarship Fund: *ALL* funds raised will go to Alton Sterling’s family.

Organizations:

Release the Breaks: Making strides to uplift, encourage and inspire young Black Men to, “BE Different, BE Great, Never Stop.”

Black Lives Matter: Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.

Politicians:

Rep John Lewis: “We’ve lost too many of our friends, too many of our children and our babies to gun violence. We must act, and act now. #goodtrouble.”

Rep Cedric Richmond: “The shooting of #AltonSterling is a tragedy. His family and the ppl of BR deserve answers & that is what we’ll seek.”

Rep Karen Bass: “Prior to serving in Congress, Congressmember Bass made history when the California Assembly elected her to be its 67th Speaker, catapulting her to become the first African American woman in U.S. history to serve in this powerful state legislative role.”

[katiedoylewriter]

Rock The Vault: Celebrating The Urban And Rural Setting Thesaurus Duo

Rock The Vault: Celebrating The Urban And Rural Setting Thesaurus Duo

As we storytellers sit before the keyboard to craft our magic, we’re usually laser-focused on the two titans of fiction: plot and character. Yet, there’s a third element that impacts almost every aspect of the tale, one we really need to home in on as well: the setting.

The setting is so much more than a painted backdrop, more than a stage for our characters to tromp across during the scene. Used…

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[katiedoylewriter]

The constant refrain of and and and... (#IWSG)

The constant refrain of and and and… (#IWSG)

The other day, I was going about my business, doing the usual picking up of the house and I became suddenly overwhelmed. In every single room, there was noise. Loud noise. Sometimes a few different types of noise. Music or videos or a TV show or all of it all at once and I. couldn’t. handle it. I demanded–quite forcefully–that everyone turn it down or off, I’d prefer off. Everyone did, either…

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[katiedoylewriter]

#IWSG: Working Through It

#IWSG: Working Through It

Every year I have to watch out for a downward spiral around this time. There are several factors at play to do with failed friendships and lost loved ones that make this time of year hard for me. Every year is different in how much I’m affected depending on how much is on my plate. Right now, we’re getting a conversion done to our garage that will turn it into a bedroom/bathroom suite. This…

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[katiedoylewriter]

The Case of the Disappearing Katie

The Case of the Disappearing Katie

As soon as I typed that title, I immediately thought of The Cat Who… books. My grandma used to read them constantly. As far back as I can remember, she had shelves and shelves of books. It makes me wonder if the love of reading is hereditary=) But, that’s all beside the point of this post.

It’s fitting that my last post discussed depression and then I up and disappeared for two months. To be…

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[micdotcom]

Did you know there were riots last night in Denver? A dozen people were arrested. Local news called it “disappointing.” Because hey, sports fans will be sports fans. Right?!

America’s ugliest double standard rears its head yet again.

[scribbleowl-deactivated20181204]

i bet if there were fathers in the picture this shameful behavior wouldn’t happen

[vaspider]

I love you.

[lucykshaw]

It’s hard not to feel humorless as a woman and a feminist, to recognize misogyny in so many forms, some great and some small, and know you’re not imagining things. It’s hard to be told to lighten up because if you lighten up any more, you’re going to float the fuck away. The problem is not that one of these things is happening, it’s that they are all happening, concurrently and constantly. These are just songs. They are just jokes. They are just movies. It’s just a hug. They’re just breasts. Smile, you’re beautiful. Can’t a man pay you a compliment? In truth, this is all a symptom of a much more virulent cultural sickness — one where women exist to satisfy the whims of men, one where a woman’s worth is consistently diminished or entirely ignored.

Roxane Gay, 

What Men Want, America Delivers

(via jointhegirlgang)

[katiedoylewriter]

#IWSG: Creativity and Depression

#IWSG: Creativity and Depression

About a year ago, I talked about depression. It was a difficult and necessary post. As such, I thought it important to discuss again. No one has the exact same experience as anyone else, but the act of expressing your own problems can help others with similar problems in some way shape and form.

A year ago, I was in bad shape. My depression was spiraling and I was at a point where I could either…

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[katiedoylewriter]

A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life

This is a normal weekday during the school year.*

6:30 am – Wake up and count my spoons. This usually takes about 20-30 minutes. I get out of bed, sit at my desk, and get on my phone to check my social media and email while my body slowly lets me know what I can and can’t do that day.

7:00 am– Wake up the kids. This is a process of bribing, begging, commanding, and Mommy Voice-ing my way into…

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[katiedoylewriter]

A Look at One Stop for Writers

A Look at One Stop for Writers

There are times in every writing career where the act of writing is as easy as pulling the teeth of a hibernating grizzly just before spring. It’s at this point that writers usually start questioning their career choice. Wouldn’t it be the bee’s knees if there were something out there that could help during all of this? Wouldn’t it be the cat’s pajamas if there was something that made writing…

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[katiedoylewriter]

Fast Meals for Deadlines: Bean and Cheese Quesadilla

Fast Meals for Deadlines: Bean and Cheese Quesadilla

One of the many things writers face when on deadline is hunger. It’s a terrible, terrible thing. You have words to write or fix! You don’t have time for hunger! But your brain needs fuel to function. So, a compromise is in order… How about something quick, easy, and delicious to make your tummy and your brain happy?

Bean and Cheese Quesadillas

Ingredients 1 can beans 1 can corn 1 jar salsa 1 cup…

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[katiedoylewriter]

Most Anticipated (by me) Books of 2016

Most Anticipated (by me) Books of 2016

A whole slew of new and awesome books are coming out this year and I thought I’d share some of the books I’m most looking forward to.

In no particular order…

 Beyond the Red by Ava Jae

About:

Alien queen Kora has a problem as vast as the endless crimson deserts. She’s the first female ruler of her territory in generations, but her people are rioting and call for her violent younger twin brother…

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[katiedoylewriter]

Recent Reads

It’s been far too long since I’ve done one a Recent Reads! I’m going to try to make it a monthly feature, so there won’t always be this many books… Though I can hope, right? ;-)

For those new to WRL, Recent Reads is when I go over the books I’ve read recently and leave a mini review. (And this is where you think, “Duh, Katie. Duh.” And I’m all like, “I know.” *nods*)

Anyway, ONWARD!

INKED by Eric…

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