Was driving with my grandmother and in broken English she says “no eyes… no nose… no face. Don’t trust.” To which I looked around wildly in search of this omen of ill portend.
do you remember years ago, on this site, when people would send each other asks just to send asks, when people would send each other compliments and rate each other's themes and would do follow forevers and reblog reblog reblog, and do little ask games and people actually participated in them and people would do regular fanfic recommendation lists, like every week, because they were avid readers of their fandom/ship's fics and there would be less ship wars (not always) but mostly people focused on the things they loved and had fun doing instead of being miserable, when people would do snippet fridays, sharing little looksies into whatever fic they were writing and people would compliment and reblog reblog reblog reblog, and people would comment on fics on the regular if they even so much as enjoyed it just a little bit, and oh, when people would reblog, reblog, reblog, the things they liked
Season 1 Scully being so smitten with Mulder that she asks him if he has a girl coming over to his hotel room…honey that man does not know any girls besides you. She still hasn’t figured out he’s a loser yet 😔
i like working at plant store. sometimes you ring up someone and there's a slug on their plant and so you're like "Oh haha you've got a friend there let me get that for you" and you put the slug on your hand for safekeeping but then its really busy and you dont have time to take the slug outside before the next customer in line so you just have a slug chilling on your hand for 15 minutes. really makes you feel at peace with nature. also it means sometimes i get to say my favorite line which is "would you like this free slug with your purchase"
@holyknuckled you get it. lterally what are we here on earth for if not to occasionally impose gastropods upon unsuspecting customers. this story is delightful
The first ship that arrived was pretty matter of fact about its fate. The pilot introduced himself as Eric, then told us he was part of the first sublight resupply attempt in modern history. He then gave me and the ground control team his bad news.
“So,” he said. “Without real time telemetry, we weren’t even sure which half of your orbit you’d be in. That’s half a solar system’s worth of wiggle room. Decelerating enough to survive contact with your low orbit would take me two weeks, which, you know, it looks like we don’t have. That means that in order to get the second ship in before you lose orbital control to the Kresh, I’m gonna have to make a sacrificial flyby. Ten to the negative four torr is good enough for a lot of things, but at point-seven c it’s gonna be like sandblasting a soup cracker. Good news is that all the expensive toys are in the next ship, so this really ain’t costing you more than a ship and a pilot.”
“You knew,” I said. If they put the expensive toys in the second ship, they knew that the first was likely a sacrifice. No one smart enough to handle orbital physics would miss that.
“I did,” he replied. “But someone had to go first.”
That was, of course, a lie. No one had to go first. No else had had, at least. When our connection to the FTL network was lost, we’d understood that as the end of our reinforcements. Doing resupplies via sublight was just too risky. It was a testament to Earth that it had accepted the risk and continued anyway.
“Is there anything we can do for you?” I asked. This man had come here to die for us. I wasn’t sure how much I could give, but what I had was his.
“I do have a few requests,” he said. “First up, I need as much high-orbital data as you got. The whole lot.”
I began directing tightbeam resources to him immediately. It was an easy resource to exchange - it wasn’t like there was anyone else out to talk to anymore. When we lost FTL, we found ourselves very, very alone.
“Second,” he said. “Right, I know I’m gonna sound like a princess right now, but I have been stuck in this stupid tin-can for almost two-years now, and I seriously overestimated how much I like synth music. If you have anything that’s analog - I don’t care what kind of string or drum or brass you play, but I’d kill to hear something without a beep in it.”
I jumped my own queue in the tightbeam, and added a short playlist that I ripped from the local web. Human Music, it was labeled. 3 Terabytes. I prayed there was something on it that he’d like.
“And third,” he said. “Third. The uh, next pilot is pretty mad at me. Turns out this will just be one of those things left unfinished. That’s all death really is, I guess - a lot of unfinished things. Let him know that he was right: He is a better pilot than me. But tell him that wouldn’t have made a difference here. Bad luck beats skill, and this luck was shit.”
I promised, and he went silent after that. We could see what data he was analyzing, and the short answer was all of it - everything from atmospheric density to troop positions and his own ship’s blueprints. He knew he had one shot at this, and that if the price wasn’t paid here, it would be paid by whoever came next.
--- --- --- --- ---
Ground control didn’t get a verbal warning that he’d entered atmosphere. Just a ping. A little here-I-am, whispered in the dark.
After that, we could keep track with visuals alone.
He hit the outskirts of the exoatmosphere in his first pass, burning bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. He caught the sparse particles like a kite, trying to shed enough speed to hit actual low orbit. Automatic telemetry updates gave us the grim news for the ship: Thermals were holding up decently, but the ablative was wearing out fast.
The entire descent brought us more than two hour’s reprieve. The Kresh hadn’t expected to see a resupply, but they knew what one meant: Get it now, get it fast, or deal with a stream of new troops. They could buy themselves ten days' time by shooting this one ship down now.
That was an eternity during a siege.
The first loop lowered the speed by about a twentieth of light. The pilot responded by pulling the ship in tighter, trying to preserve more ablative plating by trading off with thermal. Seven fighters were close enough to fire off heat seekers. I don’t think the Kresh had ever anticipated shooting down a craft coming in that hot - the missile's decoy avoidance countermeasure actually made it steer around the thing, chasing down loose pieces of shrapnel. Cooled fragments, still hotter than an engine should be at full blast. The simple mistakes bought it enough time to enter pre-orbit, and the fighters had to stop their pursuit. They weren’t willing to die to stop the ship.
Our man, on the other hand, was already committed to that course.
A third loop followed a fourth. Ablative coating went from 65% integrity, to 30%, to 5%. Telemetry scans were exceptionally detailed - the pilot was making the flyby count. The last message we got from him was simple:
Are you EMP shielded? he asked, not even bothering to encrypt the text stream. He didn’t have time to process more than that.
Yes, we replied. We knew what he was thinking, but it was still a shock to see it. The fusion torch that was driving his ship flared hot, burning through the nozzle and feeding directly into the craft’s deuterium supply. The reaction went super critical, and the resulting neutron pulse set off everything in the ship with a z-count higher than iron. Three continuous seconds of EM interference screamed through the comms as the hulk burned brighter than the sun.
The explosion itself wasn’t powerful enough to reach the Kresh ships still in high orbit, but it made enough broadband radiation to blind both sides LADAR. The man must have been a hell of a pilot - half the shrapnel went down and burned up as it entered the standard atmosphere, sacrificed to move the other half past lagrange. Standard evasion would’ve made the pieces easy to dodge, but with LADAR down, all the Kresh could do was sit still and cower as the wrath of a dead man riddled them full of holes. Our best ace had managed to shoot down seven ships before this before getting shot down himself. The wreckage of the freighter took down six.
--- --- --- --- ---
The second ship came in stealth. One second, we were holding attrition in high orbit, the next, something the size of a small station came ripping through the atmosphere.
It did the same trick as the former - swapping between ablative and thermal loads, coming down at a speed that the Kresh fighters didn’t even try to match. Armies could be built in years, but skills like this took decades.
Telemetry connection was established almost as an afterthought. The way the ship casually ate through ablative armoring made my eyes water, but the pilot himself seemed pretty non-plussed.
“You’re down to fifteen percent coverage. You need-
“What I need,” he said, “is to see the previous ship’s telemetry as soon as I land. And I don't need your help landing it.”
He cut off my chance to reply by flicking the channel off. We watched, and we wrang our hands, but sure enough he came in six minutes later with 4% of the ablative left.
I met him on the landing pad. Under normal circumstances, we’d have needed twenty-four hours for the craft to cool enough to even approach, but we’d had cryo ready just in case. Three tankers of nitrogen, and the loading area, at least, was cool enough to touch. Safety would have to take a backseat to speed here - we needed the supplies fast.
But those both would take a backseat to a promised conversation with the second pilot. He was out of the craft as soon as the air was cool enough to avoid scalding his lungs, picking through the workers to try and find who had the telemetry data.
I found him first. The drive went into his hands, but I needed to keep my promise with Eric before letting go.
“You’re better than the first pilot,” I said, and I wasn’t lying. If the previous flier had been a saint, this one was a god. “But you wouldn’t have been able to manage the landing either. There just wasn’t time.”
“Let me see,” he said, tugging on the drive. “Just let me see. I have to know I couldn’t do it either. I have to know that someone had to die.”
I let go of the drive and he stalked back into his ship. I didn’t follow. I figured I’d pushed things far enough.
--- --- --- --- ---
The second pilot left the ship six hours later. He looked bleary in a way that put me at ease. I’d been up the last six hours directing supplies from the ship. Everything from ground-to-orbit rails to AGI targeting systems was inside - to call it gamechanging would be an understatement. It was good work, but I was tired, and I didn’t want to have to pretend otherwise. Seeing the other man with bags under his eyes meant we could just be frank with each other.
“I couldn’t have managed it,” he said, half-ashamed, half-relieved.
“It just wasn’t possible,” I agreed.
We sat there a moment longer. I didn’t mind the break. This was time well spent.
“Did it hurt?” he asked finally.
“Ablative failed before heating,” I said, which was the technical way of saying no. “He overloaded the reactor before the ship actually broke up and did some kind of slingshot maneuver - hit the main body of the Kresh fleet with half a space station’s worth of shrapnel.”
“Good,” he said.
I knew the signs. The tremor in his cheek, the way his jaw clenched - it wasn’t professional, but I hugged him anyway. Let him have the dignity of choosing to weep instead of having it wrenched out of him.
It was a gift we’d all been given at some point in this war. At least now, there was the hope it could be over soon.
everybody's like "I want famous actor X in season 2! I want ridiculously expensive song Y in season 2!" shut uuuuuuuup the only stunt casting we need in season 2 is Gritty
Gritty chirped Ilya on twitter then flirts with Shane after they come out. the new hot hockey twitter beef is the ongoing battle for the hand of the prettiest hockey princess in the land
like any interaction with a muppet, everyone involved must play this absolutely deadly seriously. Shane is blushing, Ilya is racking up penalties fighting an orange dust mop with googly eyes, there are hashtags and ship wars and twitter polls about who has the bigger dump truck (Gritty wins), every game between their two teams is breaking ticket sales and TV rating records, merch sales are through the roof, and homophobes are coping and seething
who's gonna write the socmed AU for me or am I gonna have to deal with the work skins myself? idk nothing about hockey what are the penalties for fighting the opposing teams mascot which is a bundle of sentient shag carpet? does gritty travel to away games? does it even make sense for Ottawa to play Philadelphia? how do divisions even work? does it even fucking matter?
Gritty and Ilya are locked in a heated twitter qrt battle until the Montreal account tries to chime in for that sweet engagement bait since everyone high key hates them after what they did and Gritty and Ilya team up for the first time to destroy them for the Audacity
"this is silly this would never happen" 1) IDC if they'd do it on the show 2) cis men can't get pregnant and the fic writers don't let that stop them 3) Ilya Rozanov is a Depressed Millennial he's committed to two things 1) Shane Hollander and 2) The Bit
#Lori please weigh in#Could Ottawa ever play Philadelphia?
Yes of course. Ottawa plays Philly several times a year, they're in the same conference. Every NHL team plays every other NHL team at least twice - once in each barn.
The thing is Heated Rivalry is rocking a WicDonalds situation where everything is subtly off brand so the Philly Flyers (and therefore Gritty) don’t exist BUT some slightly to the left version does and I need everyone to start submitting their most deranged Gritty knockoffs IMMEDIATELY.
(Ok I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself! But like, I’m just saying I think Ngozi would be way more likely to accept money in exchange for IP use than any actual NFL team…)
Britty, it’s Gritty but in a blonde wig
Litty, it’s Gritty but he’s capable of breaking the fourth wall and he’s handing out copies of Heated Rivalry to let everyone know they’re fictional
Anyway someone who is actually funny please contribute.
You ever just. Want more content of your favorite little fictional character couples?
But there isn’t more.
Cause the shows been off air.
So all you have is all you’re going to get.
And it’s been off the air for a WHILE. So even when you get conventional appearances. They just say the same things over and over. So even there you won’t ever get any new content or snippets
I know I've mentioned this before, but if your crush is autistic (or suspected), you ABSOLUTELY MUST tell them you have a crush on them. And if your way of telling them is inviting them somewhere as a date, you ABSOLUTELY MUST tell them it's supposed to be a date.
The only reason I am married to my wife now is that in 2018 she straight up told me she had a crush on me and wanted to be my girlfriend.
Seconding. I didn't realise spouse had been flirting with me AFTER A SOLID WEEK OF TALKING ONLINE NON-STOP when they explicitly asked if I wanted to go on a date
One of my ex’s didn’t realize I had a thing for him after I whipped off my top, revealing a lacy hot pink see through bra and sat on his lap flirting for half an hour. His eyes never went below my nose. I sighed, took that as rejection, and moved off and said “oh, I had such a crush on you.”
He was genuinely shocked. He thought his crush was unrequited and was trying to be a gentleman. I thought half naked lap grinding was an impossible to miss signal.
If you have a neurodivergent baddie you wanna bang your only option is to yell “I CHOOSE YOU PICACHU”
@tikkunolamorgtfo's tags: #This goes for friendships too!#I really do need you to say ‘Hey you’re cool let’s be friends’ like we six year olds at recess#or I will assume we are mere acquaintances and that I need to maintain boundaries to make sure I don’t annoy you
Literally had to climb in my partners lap and grab his face and say "I want to have sex with you and also be your girlfriend" and he was like !
14 years together this year I think. It just didn't occur to him that I was into him. Go out and live your dreams babes, just be super clear first that it's what you want and they'll be right there with you.
I had a crush on my best friend but thought he was straight. He later came out to me and I was so thrilled that he had trusted me with that info but didn’t think anything else of it, after all just being attracted to men didn’t mean he would be attracted to me specifically.
He invited me over to watch a movie and suggested we watch it in his bedroom, (“Cool! I’ve never seen your bedroom!”). We laid in his bed, three inches apart and watched a movie. About halfway through the movie he rolled onto his side to face me and was making really intense eye contact. We chatted for about four hours like that, just about whatever I wanted to talk about but he got kind of quiet. I was worried I’d talked too much, I do that a lot. We hung out that way three nights in a row.
One day I was talking to another friend who asked me what I’d done last night, I told her and she was like “Haven’t you had a crush on him for a long time? Why aren’t you making a move? He wants to kiss you at least.” I was genuinely shocked and convinced she was misunderstanding the situation. She finally persuaded me it could be possible. So the next movie night I asked him if he had a crush on me, he laughed and was like “I’ve been staring at your lips this entire time, don’t you know that means I want to kiss you?” No, I really, really didn’t.
Anyway we’ve been married for four years now.
Explain To Me The Scientific Nature Of The Whammy @madquerade - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
kianamaiart
romaincrisis
janainaart
turnnoffyourmind
vaporwave
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
