My World @melissaannajackson - Tumblr Blog

After succumbing to a fever of some sort in 1705, Irish woman Margorie McCall was hastily buried to prevent the spread of whatever had done her in. Margorie was buried with a valuable ring, which her husband had been unable to remove due to swelling. This made her an even better target for body snatchers, who could cash in on both the corpse and the ring.

The evening after Margorie was buried, before the soil had even settled, the grave-robbers showed up and started digging. Unable to pry the ring off the finger, they decided to cut the finger off. As soon as blood was drawn, Margorie awoke from her coma, sat straight up and screamed.

The fate of the grave-robbers remains unknown. One story says the men dropped dead on the spot, while another claims they fled and never returned to their chosen profession.

Margorie climbed out of the hole and made her way back to her home.

Her husband John, a doctor, was at home with the children when he heard a knock at the door. He told the children, “If your mother were still alive, I’d swear that was her knock.”

When he opened the door to find his wife standing there, dressed in her burial clothes, blood dripping from her finger but very much alive, he dropped dead to the floor. He was buried in the plot Margorie had vacated.

Margorie went on to re-marry and have several children. When she did finally die, she was returned to Shankill Cemetery in Lurgan, Ireland, where her gravestone still stands. It bears the inscription “Lived Once, Buried Twice.”

lindeloffspring

what did i just read

harokissmile

Irish women are strong as fuck

lord-kitschener

“I lived, bitch” irl

milesgmoralles

I don’t want another single, pop culture reference outta you for the rest of the trip. Understand?

thejgatsbykid

the real victim in Pride and Prejudice is Georgiana Darcy, bc u know her brother spent at least two weeks lying around in his Regency Jammies eating Benjamin and Jerrold’s out of ye olde carton feeling sorry for himself bc his crush not only didn’t like him back but tore him to shreds in the process and Georgie had to deal with that and then said crush shows up at their HOUSE and she has to live w both of them probably stealing lovelorn yearning glances at each other the whole damn day while knowing if she even SUGGESTS to her brother that maybe perhaps his crush doesn’t hate his entire guts anymore he’ll just be all tragic about it bc “you don’t KNOW her Georgiana she dESPISES me and i DESERVE it”

madlori

benjamin and gerrold’s

softlie

Mildly Human-Looking Aliens though??????

Okay but with all this humans are the weird ones, space australia and humans are space orcs stuff i’ve been reading on here, imagine a race out there that looks mildly human-like. Like, maybe they only have abnormal eye colours (like liquid gold or sunset pink) or different skin colours or tails or wings or something but other than that, they look almost exactly the same. just imagine

Their entire race is now completely used to being mistaken for a human and the once weak race is has now merged into one of power and respect. The humans have no clue because they haven’t actually reached that part of the universe yet but every other alien race thinks they have and are now terrified because holy lexim the humans got there, made a home on a new planet and have somehow not been wiped out in only ‘X amount of’ Human years it took us like 10 Brilkaks how did they do this so fast w h a t

The other aliens don’t even question the wings/tails/ears etc because most of them are actually used to a rather respected human thing called ‘cosplay’. (Most of the universe actually got a very good idea of it when one of the Telk Uuns transformed into a human called ‘Harry Potter’ and was enthusiastically congratulated on ‘such a realistic cosplay it’s like you’re actually him!’. The humans, when they learned that it wasn’t a cosplay at all but merely a simple transformation, had flipped and excitedly made a large commotion in the Telk Uun’s Hall of Ushvaac, scaring the Telk Uuns out of their disguises.)

Anyway, when the humans actually do find out, they’re actually amused and make a peace treaty with their look-a-like friends. occasionally they’ll swap and a few of the Human B’s will visit Earth and a few Humans will visit Earth 2 (Krexar’un)

Back on Earth the Human B’s (also knowns as the Krexarns) make easy friends because most of the humans think the situation is hilarious. Eventually the human’s begin to make classes for the transfer Krexarns so they can learn about Human traditions and historical moments to be more convincing when interacting with other aliens. The Krexarns absolutely falling in love with some of the apparently not-pet-able animals ‘nO ILTAR THATS A SHARK DO NOT PET IT GET BACK HERE’ *cue hyperventilation* and their human friends inevitably becoming the mum friend regardless and constantly worrying that they might get attacked every time they visit the beach. (the poor already mum friends become Mum Friends 2.0.)

Over on Krexar’un, humans are treated with a great deal of respect however because they’re Very Curious, they often have to be surrounded by guards to make sure they don’t kill them selves by wandering into any native animals. Nevertheless, the humans will often escape their guards and many of the Krexarn children begin going to the Human transfers to get lessons on it. (ehhh, basically the same thing as on Earth but including lessons on how not to die on Krexar’un)

Eventually all the other aliens learn that the Krexarns aren’t human and are pissed but that soon melts away when they learn how close the Krexarns and the humans now are and oh mirtd do not cross them the humans will find out and you will make them mad

lesbianshepard

there’s an educational trivia game at the citadel on the exhibits on different planets called “Dog or Not?” that shows pictures of various four legged mammals and asks if they’re a breed of dog.

it was mainly for kids to learn about the diversity of earth’s flora and fauna but it became popular with adult aliens too and had to be shut down after almost causing no less than three diplomatic incidents.

they brought it to the nexus and it’s caused two more so far

lesbianshepard

“That’s definitely a dog.” “Incorrect. This is actually an animal called a ‘raccoon’” “What? No! It’s got the ears and the tail!”

“Okay, okay, I got this. That’s not a dog. It’s way too big it’s uhhh I think humans call them bears.” “Incorrect. This is a dog breed called a ‘newfoundland’”

thementalconfetti

And when it becomes such a cultural obsession that they run tournaments and the final rounds are displayed live on the worldswide hologram system …

Somewhat cocky contestant (who heckles the others for wrong answers) looks at the hologram on display: “I’ve read up on a lot of Earth animals, even visited the Earth zoo, so you can’t fool me. It’s a picture on a farm so that’s the first clue. It’s white, fluffy, got a sloping forehead and no distinct… muzzle.. if I do remember the term correctly. It’s most definitely a sheep.”

Trivia host (attempting to hide their joy at finally being able to tell the contestant they’re wrong): “I’m sorry, that is a dog called a Bedlington Terrier. It is actually bred to look like a sheep, but notice the lack of keratinized tissue coverings on the extremities that make contact with the ground. You missed quite an obvious difference there.” (after the contestant stutters a bit and protests about dogs made specifically to look like not-dogs) “Let’s take it to the judges then” (after consulting small podium-top hologram of judging panel, now grinning and dripping with sarcasm) “Awwww…unfortunately it is a dog and rules of the game do not allow us to award partial credit… toooooo baaaaaad” (super cheerfully) “aaand… next image please!”

jimperbam

Shepard loves “Dog or Not?”. The human crew never misses a tournament airing. They get it on a vid screen in the mess hall and all crowd around. Some people bring blankets and pillows. Some make snacks to share. Eventually it becomes like a Superbowl party.

Dog or Not becomes a sort of inside joke on the Normandy, one that the non-human crew members still kind of get - they’re always invited to the viewing parties and sometimes sit in - but don’t really understand. Tali especially doesn’t understand when a snickering Shepard elbows her and, pointing to a varren being taken for a walk, asks, “Hey, Tali - dog or not?”

“That’s…that’s a varren, Shepard,” Tali responds, bemused. “You know what a varren is.”

Shepard is still giggling, and Kaidan, who heard the exchange, joins in.

Liara, Ashley, and Shepard go to recover the lost data drive at Admiral Hackett’s request. They eventually find themselves surrounded by the strange monkey-looking organisms.

With a straight face, Ashley comments, “Wow, sure are a lot of dogs on this planet.”

Shepard doubles over. Liara isn’t sure whether or not to laugh. She’s watched “Dog or Not?” before, so she knows these creatures aren’t dogs…right?

Garrus accidentally joins in on the fun after they discover a new species on a fog-covered planet. They’re bright red, they have carapaces, and they breathe fire. The team is examining one’s corpse when Garrus asks hesitantly, “So…is that a dog?”

Shepard’s head whips up and they stare at him for a full five seconds before breaking down. Garrus has to half-carry a wheezing, crying Shepard back to the shuttle. Jack’s eyelashes are wet from her own mirth.

They’re driving full speed over the scorching desert of Tuchanka. They’ve just called Kalros, the mother of all thresher maws, to deal with the Reaper destroyer in their way. All faces are pressed to the windows to see the fight.

Kalros bursts from the sands with an unearthly screech and tackles the Reaper. The two grapple in the sands, both representing the might of organic and synthetic, respectively.

“Garrus,” Shepard says in a low, awed voice.

Garrus has been around Shepard for too long not to know when they’re about to make a joke. “Shepard, I swear on all the spirits of Palaven - “

“That’s the biggest dog I’ve ever seen.”

Garrus quietly regrets all his choices that led him to this moment, then sighs. “Which one?” he returns.

love

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)

dajo42

humans getting a reputation amongst the galaxy for doing totally absurd and reckless things, like making absolutely ridiculous flight paths through asteroid belts, or hitting warp speed for a five mile trip, or devoting 90% of the power of a ship’s onboard computer to their personal laptop so they can torrent abba’s discography, or mixing rocket fuel with mentos to see what happens

and at first other species are like….. okay we’d better not have humans on the crew if they’re this dangerous….. but then when they notice the humans are actually getting a lot more done and advancing super fast because they take such absurd risks “just to see if it works” it becomes commonplace to have a group of at least four humans on every ship in the fleet

no other species previously had a word in their language that equated to “fuck it” but within a century “fuck it” is regarded as an immensely wise proverb

dajo42

Scenario One

“Now we must be careful as there is still the question of how territorial the wildlife in this area is-“ The jalaxian fleet commander says, standing in front of their crew, ready to lead a slow and calculated expedition through an unexplored forest on an uncharted world.

“SPACE PUPPIES!” The human medic exclaims, barging past, picking up a small tentacled beast. It appears to be friendly, welcoming the contact.

“… Well, I suppose that answers that.”

Scenario Two

Zampushian: “Captain! The space pirates are hot on our tail and with their firepower we could never hope to outrun them! I can send a beacon to the fleet-”

Human: “Nah. It’s cool. Just put all the power to the shields.”

Zampushian: “But Captain-”

Human: “Trust me, dude!”

[The Zampushian transfers all available power to the shield modules. The ship, unable to move now, slows to a halt. The space pirate ship barrels forwards and crashes into the ship, exploding on impact, with no damage to the fleet ship.]

Human: “See? Everything’s chill. Do we have any chips left?”

Scenario Three

An Ungrampish crew member working aboard a multi-species fleet ship goes into the ship’s cargo bay to move some equipment. Tye (that’s the pronoun they use on Ungramp) is greeted by the sight of a human eating an entire Ungrampish chilli pepper, the hottest in the known universe, just to see what happens.

janothar

I remember two other posts closely related to this…one was about Star Trek, and another said that the human superpower is “Fuck it, hold my beer, I got this”

All three are excellent posts.

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.”

down-sizing-deactivated20180211

“I’m telling you, they terraform for fun!” “Don’t be ridiculous” “No, seriously. Some of their most celebrated cultural loci are built on swamps. They have an entire city that is literally in a body of water. Not, like, an artificial pontoon city, they literally sunk the foundations into water. For Grilp’s sake, they build elaborate structures out of frozen water AND THEN SLEEP IN THEM.” “Dear Thilak. Think we could get them to terraform our moons?” “Psh, they’d probably pay for the privilege.”

galaxystew

Eventually, it occurs to someone that humans are the perfect terraforming shock troops, as it were. They think it’s fun to be sent to horrible planets! They’re really good at surviving and then taming them! All you have to do is sit back and wait until the planet is habitable, and then move there yourself! It’s genius.

It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.

“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.

“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”

Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.

“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”

“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”

Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”

“They’re so cute!” the human says, brightening. “Have you met mine? Her name is Spot!”

exvind

Humans are told of some planet or region of space that is considered “completely and utterly inhospitable - it would be folly to try and settle there.”

Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible.

“This moon is still forming as such it is primarily soft - by that I mean most of the magma is close to the surface and-” ‘OH BADASS you mean its like Mustafar right!?!?!?! I’m totally going to build a castle there.’ “What. I mean. There is NO fertile ground there whatsoever. No ecosystem. It is molten rock and minerals only.” ‘Which will make my castle there look METAL AS FUCK am I RIGHT!?!??! Come on. COME ON. I TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISTBUMP COME ON.’ “….you….you are going to die, you know this right?” ‘I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to come to Lava Castle for some reason?’

awkwardtimezone

This is the quality scifi I sign up for.

a-spectacular-pigeon

Humans are weird: babies

So I’m a big fan of the idea that humans are “space orcs”, and today it got me thinking about something else.

Human birth is pretty unique among mammals. Not only are our birth canals narrower than standard due to being bipeds, but we have a larger head to body ratio then any other mammal. As a result of this, the only way to fit a baby’s head through a person’s birth canal is for them to be born very early, and massively underdeveloped.

Other mammals are capable of walking and running within the first day of being born, where as a human baby doesn’t even have strong enough neck muscles to hold up their own head.

They can’t see, they can’t crawl, they don’t have the coordination to grab things, and they have a soft spot on the skull that leaves part of the brain incredibly vulnerable. And while an adult can adapt to a range of temperatures, babies have to be constantly monitored to make sure they aren’t chilled or over heating.

Can you imagine you’re an alien, who knows humans as these highly adaptable endurance machines that can eat almost anything and survive tremendous physical pain and injury, and you learn that their young are so fragile. That they emerge from the womb barely able to function biologically.

And suddenly you remember all those humans on your crew who get attached little creatures. The toughest, burliest people who will coo and coddle over fluffy little cats and call lizards babies. And you realise that their whole species developed to care for these tiny, vulnerable, defenceless babies, and that kind of attachment tends to spill over a little.

And now you understand that old adage, that the most dangerous humans are the ones whose young are in danger. Because if they’re going to stand a chance at surviving until adulthood then human parents have to be willing to defend their children with their lives, and that is exactly what they do.