I MOVED

I moved to bookbirdcaptain.tumblr.com

[shit-that-makes-kat-happy]

I MOVED

Come find me at bookbirdcaptain.tumblr.com

[shit-that-makes-kat-happy]

I MOVED

Come find me at bookbirdcaptain.tumblr.com

[timemachineyeah]

What if by alien standards we are really cute?

And I don’t mean like attractive cute, I mean like baby otter cute. What if the stumble upon us and go “ohhhhh my god!!! Oh my god!!!! I’m dying this is- look at it! Look at them!!! Oh my god!!!”

We usually imagine having to come up with some Devils trade or unholy arrangement to get tech and trade with aliens, but the instant they see us the aliens immediately set out into conservation efforts. They’re like “their habitat is becoming harsh and unlivable for them! We have to save them!” And everyone just puts a picture of us next to this information and they all agree “Look at them! We have to save them!!” We become like the panda mascots of intergalactic conservation efforts.

Simultaneously, our main export is just streams, videos, holograms, and photos of us. Aliens lose their composure completely over videos of us sneezing or yawning or eating pop tarts or playing video games or taking care of our kids.

There are lines of aliens who would LOVE to have a human in their home or on their ship. It’s a little condescending (we’re not sure if we’re guests or well treated exotic pets) but still a good opportunity, and any human who wants can go to space at any time basically for free or even for profit, and the aliens will go out of their way to give you anything you ask for.

There are obvious downsides. We struggle to be taken seriously. While it’s usually shut down pretty quickly, every once in a while some alien group sees the demand for us and tries to start an illegal trade. But at the same time, it’s neat that somewhere out there is an alien (or usually a LOT of aliens) that would love you unconditionally, find every flaw and idiosyncrasy endearing, be worried about you and do anything they could to make you safe and happy. They work hard to make our planet and our personal lives better and don’t ask for anything in return. They just do it because they decided we are important and worth saving just for existing. It’s an odd relationship, and we’re not always sure what to make of it, but honestly it goes a lot better than we worried alien contact would.

[anightvaleintern-blog1]

I’m down to be a spoiled pampered alien pet.

[morebadbookcovers]

It would be a lot easier to get “fixed.”

[tkingfisher]

We’re all a bit confused by the cute human memes, which are usually just pictures of some random human with a phrase in alien cuneiform next to it, but which many of the aliens think are hysterical. Photos of the Lincoln Memorial are particularly popular for this for some reason, and it’s a little unsettling to see the alien spaceships with pictures of Lincoln plastered across their forcefields, saying “g+gnor’gax!” and the humor just doesn’t translate at all.

I mean, it’s not bad, exactly. Just…odd. And fortunately alien music is mostly outside our hearing range, so the sad commercials with the interstellar equivalent of Sarah McLachlan broadcasting over them, explaining how the humans are suffering at this time of rotation just look like a rather puzzling montage of normal people. It’s just the aliens get so sad when they see it and their temporal glands leak and it’s…well, a little messy.

[joasakura]

I love the idea that we are SIMULTANEOUSLY batshit-bonkers space orcs and the alien equivalent of Red Pandas or kittens.

Like,  “Oh they’re adorable!” “Yes, but for the love of zornax, don’t let one bite you! My pod-cousin lost a hand that way!” “Do you think they evolved this way to surivive the terrifying fauna on their world?” “I saw a holovid of one riding one of the so-called “moose” one time!”

[decepti-geek]

#wait #we’re big cats #giant murder cuteness

Oh my god that’s exactly it! :D

[homeland-snooping]

But imagine that last bit as two different groups. Okay, so to one species of alien we’re adorable, right? And to another we’re orcs. Imagine the conflict of those two cultures. Team Orc is talking to Team Cuddles about how useful we are on dangerous field missions and Team Cuddles LOSES THEIR SHIT.

“You sent my cuddle-fwumpkin WHERE?!? to do WHAT!?!”

“They’re uniquely qualified to explore dangerous territories that are uninhabitable to most lifeforms … ”

“I don’t caaaaaare! Hfjfjfj HD bf!!!”

Like, foreign policy issued specifically for the proper utilization of human laborers. How would human cultures engage differently in these circumstances? Like, in the US would people look down on the humans that hang out with Team Cuddles as looking for alien handouts? Would they be blamed when Team Orc humans don’t get taken seriously on expeditions?

Like, there’s so muuuuuch more to explore here.

[raptorific]

bruce wayne maintains a presence on all conspiracy theory boards with the screen name BruceWayneIsTheBatman and all his posts have titles like “BRUCE WAINE IS BAT-MAN INDISPUTABLE PROOF” and it’s just a picture of Bruce Wayne from the back next to a picture of Batman from behind and they both have the contours of their butt drawn on in a shitty MSPaint red line (note: Bruce is in a suit and Batman has a cape, neither of their butts are clearly discernible) and the quote “THE BUTTS MATCH!!! THE FACTS DON’T LIE!!!!!” and he makes at least three of these posts a day, and “Bruce Wayne is the Batman” becomes a meme a la “Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer” and he gets asked about it on a talk show and he laughs uproariously at the idea and Stephen Colbert just HAPPENS to have a batman mask under the desk and they do a bit together where Bruce Wayne puts on the mask and walks around saying things like “excuse me, bank robbers, can I perhaps offer you some money to stop you robbing this bank?” and “I say, cease and desist your criminal behavior or I’ll have my butler ask you to leave” and the audience is LOSING THEIR MINDS laughing at the idea of this pampered rich guy taking on the Joker on a bi-weekly basis and then anyone who suggests “Bruce Wayne is Batman” in earnest gets met with mocking “oh man do the butts match” comments

[writing-prompt-s]

You’re a minor enemy in a video game. The protagonist reaches your level and is taking out colleagues around you, but misses you before moving on.

[kaylapocalypse-deactivated20201]

Actually

The question I get the most is how I write characters that feel like real people. 

Generally when I’m designing a human being, I deconstruct them into 7 major categories:

1. Primary Drive 2. Fear: Major and Secondary 3. Physical Desires 4. Style of self expression 5. How they express affection 6. What controls them (what they are weak for) 7. What part of them will change.

1. Primary Drive: This is generally related to the plot. What are their plot related goals? How are they pulling the plot forward? how do they make decisions? What do they think they’re doing and how do they justify doing it. 2. Fear: First, what is their deep fear? Abandonment? being consumed by power? etc. Second: tiny fears. Spiders. someone licking their neck. Small things that bother them. At least 4. 3. Physical desires. How they feel about touch. What is their perceived sexual/romantic orientation. Do their physical desires match up with their psychological desires.

4. Style of self expression: How they talk. Are they shy? Do they like to joke around and if so, how? Are they anxious or confident internally and how do they express that externally. What do words mean to them? More or less than actions? Does their socioeconomic background affect the way they present themselves socially?  5. How they express affection: Do they express affection through actions or words. Is expressing affection easy for them or not. How quickly do they open up to someone they like. Does their affection match up with their physical desires. how does the way they show their friends that they love them differ from how they show a potential love interest that they love them. is affection something they struggle with?

6. What controls them (what they are weak for): what are they almost entirely helpless against. What is something that influences them regardless of their own moral code. What– if driven to the end of the wire— would they reject sacrificing. What/who would they cut off their own finger for.  What would they kill for, if pushed. What makes them want to curl up and never go outside again from pain. What makes them sink to their knees from weakness or relief. What would make them weep tears of joy regardless where they were and who they were in front of. 

7. WHAT PART OF THEM WILL CHANGE: people develop over time. At least two of the above six categories will be altered by the storyline–either to an extreme or whittled down to nothing. When a person experiences trauma, their primary fear may change, or how they express affection may change, etc. By the time your book is over, they should have developed. And its important to decide which parts of them will be the ones that slowly get altered so you can work on monitoring it as you write. making it congruent with the plot instead of just a reaction to the plot. 

That’s it.

But most of all, you have to treat this like you’re developing a human being. Not a “character” a living breathing person. When you talk, you use their voice. If you want them to say something and it doesn’t seem like (based on the seven characteristics above) that they would say it, what would they say instead?

If they must do something that’s forced by the plot, that they wouldn’t do based on their seven options, they can still do the thing, but how would they feel internally about doing it?

How do their seven characteristics meet/ meld with someone else’s seven and how will they change each other?

Once you can come up with all the answers to all of these questions, you begin to know your character like you’d know one of your friends. When you can place them in any AU and know how they would react.

They start to breathe.

[writingtipsandtricks]

-Sherry

[meangirlnurse]

my family is so. fucking weird and resistant to talking about anything. when i was a small child i asked my mother why she had a lot of gifts and things where people called her by another name and she like. didn’t give me a straight answer? it was her Hebrew name. like that’s literally it. that’s all u had to say 

[meangirlnurse]

great-great-grandma cohen refused to tell her younger children that they were related to her two eldest children

[meangirlnurse]

my family didn’t tell me about part of my actual name until i sent away for my social security info to get my driver’s permit in my junior year of high school. i have an entire middle name that no one ever felt the need to mention to me

[meangirlnurse]

i had to google my own brother to find out why we don’t talk about him anymore

[meangirlnurse]

one morning in seventh grade my mother was driving me to school and asked me if she was too overprotective. i told her “yeah, sometimes.” then she casually, calmly went, “maybe it’s because you were almost kidnapped as a baby”

she didn’t even elaborate until i asked her to explain

(my father later confirmed that i was, in fact, briefly stolen as an infant)

my mom just dropped this information on me for the first time and was then like “bye honey have a good day at school”

[meangirlnurse]

no one knows great-grandma ruth’s real last name 

[ziraseal]

this is some Lemony Snicket shit right here

[plebeiantologist]

ok but have any of you thought about pacific rim from the perspective of the precursors 

it’s like. you just bought a new house, but it’s infested with termites, so you call the exterminator thinking “alright, yeah, just get those termites gone and then we can get moved in” 

the exterminator drops off the face of the planet. you never hear from them again. so you send in another, and you just keep sending them, and it’s always the same. you’re wondering if there’s something up by this point. 

and then one of them comes back, battle-torn and bedraggled like “THE TERMITES HAVE BUILT HUMAN-SIZED CONSTRUCTS OUT OF SAWDUST AND SCRAP WIRING AND ONE ESTABLISHED A PSYCHIC LINK WITH ME.” 

by this point you’re saying “what the entire fuck.” 

so you call in the best of the best, the Elite exterminators, and guess what? the termites slaughter them all in a coordinated assault, and then come to your house disguised as one of the exterminators and set off a pipe bomb in your garage. 

man, that’d be a trip and a half

[thexfiles]

i love women. in the feminist way and in the gay way. happy international women’s day

[writing-prompt-s]

All the gods of myth and legend are real, but having your prayers answered depends on discovering which god can hear you. You figured out which god is listening to your prayers, but they’re not what you expected.

[wulfgang]

Suzy was dissapointed. Most people her age had discovered their deity so far, and she was starting to think she was godless. She turned the next page of McBayers’ Little Book of Deities, and tried reading their names aloud to see if she’d get a reaction. It had taken her weeks just to get through Chinese spirits and deities, and had finally reached the first page of Egyptian Gods and you.

“Ammit? Amun? Anhur?” Nothing. Her heart slowly sank again. Three more tries, and she’d stop for now.

“Anubis?”

The ground shook. The lights in Suzy’s room flickered and went out. A single flame hovered in the middle of the room, and as it grew to a blaze it changed form. Within the blink of an eye, there was a tall figure standing in Suzy’s room. The body of a man, and the head of a jackal. His eyes shone bright as he peered at her.

WHAT IS IT, SUZY OF THE HOUSE MILLER?

“You’re the deity that answers my prayers?”

INDEED. I, ANUBIS, WHO RULES OVER THE LAND OF THE DEAD, IS HERE TO ANSWER YOUR REQUESTS.

Suzy thought for a moment. “O great and mighty Anubis who rules over the afterlife, can I please have a puppy?”

Anubis seemed taken aback.

IN THE CENTURIES THAT I HAVE BEEN PRAYED TO, THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I HAVE BEEN REQUESTED SOMETHING LIKE THIS. CHILD, HOW OLD ARE YOU?

“I’m eight and a half. My mommy says that if I can take care of a puppy, I can keep it.”

ARE YOU CERTAIN YOU DO NOT WISH FOR ME TO BRING PLAGUES UPON YOUR ENEMIES OR WEIGH A SOUL FOR YOU?

Suzy shook her head. “I want a puppy.”

CHILD, IN TRUTH THIS WISH I CANNOT GRANT. MY JOB HAS BEEN TO BRING PEACE AND LEAD SOULS INTO THE AFTERLIFE, NOTHING MORE. IF I WERE TO CREATE A HOUND FOR YOU, IT WOULD BE FORMED OF BONE AND SOUL ALONE.

Suzy thought for a second. She would have liked to have a nice fluffy puppy, but then she remembered how Aunt Marge’s Sphinx cat was still nice, even without fur.

“No fur is fine, as long as they don’t bite and make a mess.”

Anubis nodded, and raised a hand. Underneath his palm an intricate symbol appeared on the floor. It glowed bright, and the floorboards burst apart. Up sprang a massive skeletal dog, bigger than suzy herself. Its eye sockets held blue flame, and its jaw hang partly open in a perpetual grin. It slowly walked over to Suzy and nuzzled her.

“What does it eat?”

IT WILL NOT NEED SUSTENANCE, AND WANTS NOTHING MORE THAN TO SERVE ITS NEW MASTER. I HOPE THIS WILL SUFFICE.”

“I love it. Thank you, Anubis.”

Anubis looked slightly taken aback, but nodded peacefully.

FAREWELL FOR NOW, SUZY OF THE MILLERS. IF YOU EVER NEED ANYTHING ELSE YOU HAVE BUT TO ASK ME.

Suzy nodded, and ran over to her parents’ room to show them her new dog. She was pretty sure they couldn’t object to this pet.

[wulfgang]

A part 2,since this got some people interested.

Keep reading

[wulfgang]

Part 3, due to popular request. 

Keep reading

[charminglyantiquated]

do dragons or cryptids have a place in elsewhere university?? what are the winters like?? the summers, when hardly anyone is around?? how bout the poor art majors?

Cryptids remain cryptids; the whole point of them is something you can’t actually pick a fight with if you wanted to (although the Gentry are inventive enough with their shapes that you can often find some common ground between the stories).

And of course, there is the Wyrm. It sleeps under the perpetually condemned old English building, and it appears to be dormant for the moment, but nevertheless, you shouldn’t make a bid for the fairy gold beneath it. No one’s come back yet.

[lesbiansitara-moved-deactivated]

I am yelling I landed on a Christian article about Florence & The Machine 

[birdschoolforbirds]

this is honestly probably the best review florence welch has ever received

[mulukhiyah-deactivated20200604]

i wish someone would talk about me like this

[cityelf]

Concept: fantasy world where dragons are A Thing™ but instead of them being these rare, semi-legendary creatures who exist solely to terrorise and wreak havoc and mayhem and burn inconveniences to a crisp they’re like… dogs… vaguely domesticated cats…

They come in loads of sizes and it’s a common thing to hear them scritching across your roof or rummaging in your garbage. You pass by like four every time you go to the market.

There’s even some snoozing at market stalls and strays playing with children and stealing scraps of food that fall in the street, with mottled scales and mixed textures of feathers and mismatched jewel colours.

Your favourite baker has three tiny western diamondtips who are in charge of keeping the ovens fired up and don’t always eat all of the bread. Sometimes.

Linda Bagshot on the corner has a ground rooster who can’t fly but always reaches up and stretches her neck out as far as she can to try and scrounge pets as you pass her garden wall.

A local inn is named after its summer aura who is the length of the room, all careful length and soft scales, with breath perfumed like spring breeze and scales that emanate just enough warmth to comfort, just enough that you won’t fall asleep, just enough that it’s tempting nonetheless.

The school you went to has a forest guardian older than the town itself who spends all his time slowly ambling down the corridors, and his favourites are the kids learning their first letters who like to read to him, sound out letters and marks that don’t have any correlation just yet, and you know that nobody has conclusively proven that dragons understand human tongues but you also know that if anyone understands, it’s him.

There’s a festival of dragons, a public holiday where banners are strewn and candles glow even into the wee hours and rainbow confetti and paint clogs the streets and maybe some overexcited babies set things alight but that’s ok, the town prepared better this year, far fewer people will lose their gardens and eyebrows this time, they promise.

And yes ok, there are big dragons. Ferocious dragons. Dragons that only come out once every ten years to feed and pillage. Dragons who rule the seas and shake mountains, who take flight and block out the stars. There are reasons you don’t go into the woods at night, reasons some wells are avoided, reasons entire villages up and vanished without a trace.

But there are also dragons who curl up with your children to rock them to sleep, and ward off nightmares. There are dragons who open doors and fetch supplies and guide those without sight. There are dragons who mimic words and whistles and delight in your joy when they get them just right.

There are dragons who adopt orphaned piglets, kittens, lambs, calves, puppies, ducklings. There are dragons who sunbathe and dragons who need kept on ice and dragons who climb atop weather vanes in storms to conduct electricity. Dragons who sparkle like jewels in the light and dragons who glow in the dark and dragons with flora creeping in and around their scales and dragons who sound like windchimes when they fold their wings.

Concept: there are dragons.

There are so many dragons.

[jumperjohn]

You know that one post about humans being really durable compared to aliens and that one about humans being really cute to aliens?

What if they were both true at the same time. Like the aliens decide to take their human on a landing mission because they get so exited and it’s so cute but then a storm hits and they crash. And the aliens are all freaking out because they can’t be rescued without going outside to fix something but the readings say they’ll die if they do because of the storm. The leader’s all prepared to make a heroic sacrifice when the cute human just walks out the airlock to fix the thing and when they get back they’re just like “what? It’s not that bad out.”

And the aliens find out humans are made of iron on top of being adorable.

[beka-tiddalik]

Captain Kulld was originally sceptical about the value of having a human on board. 

Sure, the human, “Viola” (which Captain Kulld’s dictionary of human languages assured him was a stringed instrument, which was an odd thing to name one’s offspring but Kulld supposed xe had come across weirder) was a great morale booster for the crew, but Kulld was not sure really if that was worth the consumption of oxygen and food from the ship’s stores. Xe could have used a sixth of the cost in resources to double the entertainment library and get roughly the same value as far as crew morale went.

It wasn’t that Viola with her bouncy curly hair and her dark brown colouring wasn’t the most adorable thing Kulld had ever seen - xe was secure enough in xir class designation to admit such things. Viola also made the most pleasant of noises when simply communicating. It was like having a meditation track and juvenile comforter on board instead of another crew member.

But that didn’t make her as smart as a Azigplast or as fast as a Huupo or as knowledgeable as a Jijip. Captain Kulld was left wondering what xir recruitment officer had been thinking.

At least until the time the ship, stopped for supplies on an uninhabited planet, had been caught in a storm that had moved in unexpectedly fast.

The crew had huddled in the ship, shivering, as the winds rocked the fragile spacecraft. To Captain Kulld’s alarm, xe noted that one of the rear solar fins was starting to come loose.

“Isn’t anyone going to go out and fix that before it blows away?” Viola asked.

As one, the crew turned to look at her like she was suffering from a neurochemical imbalance. Foliage was blowing off the native flora. To go outside in such conditions would be to risk life and limb!

Viola sighed in exasperation, (causing a frisson of murmurs as various crew members exclaimed over how it sounded just like a juvenile Skubub,) saying, “fine, I’ll do it then.”

Before anyone could stop her, she was already outside, the contents of her utilitity belt proving to be sufficient for the quick repairs.

Captain Kulld stared with all five of xir eyes.

“Destrue,” xe addressed the ship’s xenometeorologist, “exactly how fast are the winds out there?”

“51 km/h,” Destrue responded faintly, his face-fronds curling in distress. “She’s out there in near-gale force winds, and the only protection she’s applied is her goggles!”

The crew watched, spellbound, as the human manouevred the heavy solar wing against the strong winds and secured it quickly with a combination of duct tape and rivets.

All gasped in horror as a particularly strong gust threw silica particles into the human’s skin.

Would their crew-member disintegrate in front of their very eyes? Captain Kulld braced xirself. It would not do to look away from what could be Viola’s last moments, what would have been the last moments of any average being.

Apparently, they were all coming to realise, humans were rather tougher than the average being.

When Viola finished the repair job, and came back into the ship, all were in awe of her bravery, of her toughness, of her ability to not die in the face of the elements.

Viola all looked at them a bit oddly. “What, seriously?” she said. “I used to pull in the washing off the line in stronger wind than that.”

Captain Kulld thought that xe maybe understood now, why xir recruitment officer had been so adamant that hiring a human was worth every molecule of excess carbon dioxide for the environmental scrubbers to process.

[talkingbirdguy]

I feel as though Floridians would rank second to Australians in desire to have on ships because while the Aussies can take care of the most violent flora and fauna to exist, Floridians do not give two shits about the weather. Personally, I have flown kites while a hurricane was just off of the coast and the rain hadn’t hit.

[valarhalla]

Fun fact: Tenochtitlan fell in 1521. From 1603 onwards, large numbers of honest-to-god fricking Japanese Samurai came to Mexico from Japan to work as guardsmen and mercenaries. 

Ergo, it would be 100% historically accurate to write a story starring a quartet consisting of the child or grandchild of Aztec Noblemen, an escaped African slave, a Spanish Jew fleeing the Inquisition (which was relaxed in Mexico in 1606, for a time) and a Katana-wielding Samurai in Colonial Mexico.

[valarhalla]

Also a whole bunch of Chinese Characters BECAUSE MEXICO CITY HAD A CHINATOWN WITHIN TEN YEARS OF THE FALL OF THE AZTEC EMPIRE.

[sadboybrigade]

WHERE THE HELL IS MY STARZ ADAPTATION

[just-shower-thoughts]

at 6ft4 and being the smallest male in my family ( including cousins ) I have unique point of view to what it feels like being both tall and short at the same time

[bookbirdcaptain1]

I’m having a really good self-confidence day. :)