Stories

This is a blog where I put stories I think up and other things. I have 3 wip stories at the moment, check them out on my pinned post. For irl stories, please see my main blog @howlingwolf23. Feel free to contact me or leave a comment and I'll try to reply.  Icon by @pebber-pot

[storiesabouthumanandthings]

My Original Fic Works Masterpost

Accidental Demon                        * COMPLETE

A Woman Who Can Carry Me      * COMPLETE

Beach Entanglement                    *COMPLETE

Captain’s Log                                * WIP

Milkshake                                       * COMPLETE

Punk Rock Princess                       * WIP

Super Himbo and Wonder Dog      * COMPLETE

The Martian and The Jilted Lover  * COMPLETE

The Punk and The Suit                  * WIP

[animentality]

[mothermara]

remember to bury the dead with a phone, everyone. these days the ferry terminal at the river styx wants you to download a fucking app

[finelythreadedsky]

#sooo would it be better for the phone to be fully charged or does it also have to be dead @h0wlcastle

hm by analogy to the ritual cancellation or 'killing' of items like swords, mirrors, or other metal objects in bronze/iron age burials by bending/folding/breaking them or (among the etruscans at least) inscribing them with "for the tomb," i do think the phone should also be dead. ideally also the screen should be very shattered so as to render it unfit for use by the living.

[shardlily]

Big thank you to all the creators out there ❤️

[fuckyeahfightlock]

This is why we should all be generous with positive comments.

[prokopetz]

One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play's dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It's one of my favourites for two reasons:

It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and

Imagine being the 1603 equivalent of the guy with the cell phone camera in the movie theatre, furtively scribbling down notes in a little book and hoping Shakespeare himself doesn't catch you.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Thou wouldst not downloadeth a car

[anxiousresearchraptor]

Reblogging for both, the lit history take and the perfect comment.

Also: people would only get that night's version, because theatre was highly collaborative and actors would develop plays as they went. so what you saw on monday could be very very different to what you saw on thursday.

(It sill think all Shakespeare plays should be sold as "Shakespeare et al." but that's just me)

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

Apparently some people still need to hear this so: using an 'ai checker' is still using ai. If you are feeding someone's fic to one of these checkers, you will still not be sure their fic is ai because they are not 100% accurate, but you can be 100% sure that you are using ai. For fic. Furthermore you are doing the work of an ai scraper for them. You are, personally, feeding the machine. There is no actual excuse for using an ai checker on fanfic as a hobby. YOU are the problem.

If you think a fic is ai, mute it and move on. That's it. That's all you do.

[writing-prompt-s]

“Thank you for calling the Intergalatic Emergency hotline. Unfortunately, our tracer shows your location is in Florida, Earth, where we have no jurisdiction. Please solve any problem with large rocks and fire. Good luck!”

[alphacrone]

i don't really want to weight in on the "using big words in your writing is ableist" discourse happening on tiktok because i'm like 90% certain it's an anti-intellectual psyop to stir up drama in online circles to promote the use of ai to summarize literally everything and thus feeding the LLMs and lowering the populace's mistrust of such tools but i also have to say: dictionaries and thesauruses are the most accessible they've ever been. if you use an e-reader of any kind you can look up a word without leaving the page. there's a plethora of online dictionaries and if you just type a word + "meaning" into google it'll usually give you a definition. we used to have pocket dictionaries we used when reading in class. i have two on my shelf right now that i used in high school. stop letting the fascists purposefully misuse anti-ableism rhetoric to trick you into never thinking again.

[mistressxmommy]

Watching my princess stroke my cock so delicately and seductively in his hands, has permanently altered my brain chemistry in an electrifying way.

[hiveswap]

Everyone go look up the song nasa banned from space

[hiveswap]

Don't forget to play it loud as fuck

[kowai-kabuki-tanuki]

please….listen to the whole thing. And imagine that you are IN SPACE in 1973 and you JUST woke up. Every time you adjust…it escalates somehow.

This song had to be designed in a lab for the sole purpose of fucking with astronauts. whoever added it to the NASA playlist was a genius.

[hiveswap]

It took them two tries to ban it?

[kvotheunkvothe]

[misscrazyfangirl321]

You’ve heard of “Fake Dating.” Now get ready for

Fake Family

1. “This guy is being a creep and won’t leave me alone. Will you pretend to be my overprotective older brother for five minutes?”

2. “The nurse said only family was allowed back here, so I told her we were siblings. Just go along with it.”

3. “That person asked if I was your S/O. I’m sick of people not believing when I say we’re friends, so I said we were siblings.”

4. “I’m your bodyguard, but the event you’re going to does not allow bodyguards, so I’m now your sibling.”

5. “I was on a date, and the person made me uncomfortable, so I told them my parent was a cop. Only problem: My parents are dead, and you’re the only cop I know. Help?”

6. “We have a very elaborate story of how we’re related that we tell everyone when they meet us. No one has any idea that it isn’t true.” 

7. “I told someone we were siblings, but we look nothing alike, so you said I was adopted. Now they want to have dinner with my family… Are your parents good at lying?”

8. “We always joke that we’re siblings, but someone didn’t realize we were joking, so now we’re seeing how far we can carry this out.”

9. “Our organization is extremely covert, but your friends have caught me at your place a few times picking you up. I just found out that you’ve been telling them I’m your hysterical aunt who calls you every time she has a new heartbreak. Really? You couldn’t come up with a less embarrassing cover?” 

10. “Look, I love you, too, but if you keep telling people you’re my grandchild, I’m going to scream. I’m not that old, you know?”

[disorganisedautodidact]

I love these and I want some fake siblings right now

[average-smoothie-enjoyer]

My favorite “humans are space orcs” idea is that trope where aliens kidnap some humans for their zoo, except it ends up like Jurassic Park. And the poor Alien Humanologists who were invited to the park are like:

“You mean you locked up a pack of curious, highly competitive persistence predators with NO enrichment in the enclosure? You FOOLS! If you had bothered to throw a basketball or half a box of Legos in there, KE-X9 would still be alive!

“Well of course they climbed the retaining wall! Did you think to study their evolutionary lineage AT ALL?”

[what-even-is-thiss]

The humans would find a way to use the basketball and legos to escape. I mean one time a guy somehow escaped from a prison in Mexico without breaking any laws so his escape would be legal so honestly given enough time the Jurassic park situation is inevitable.

[elidyce]

Jurassic Park would be awesome, but now that I think about it I also kind of love love the idea of humans as the alien zoo equivalent of those octopuses that climb out of their tanks and wander around taste-testing other exhibits or throwing sub-par shrimp at handlers. 

Like they’re totally unable to figure out what’s happening because the cameras keep going out, but every night things get moved, or stolen, exhibits are disappearing, WHAT IS GOING ON, they’ve moved facilities twice and it’s still happening, are they haunted, are the ancestors angry, WHAT IS HAPPENING!?

And then a weary humanologist is all ‘… your humans are getting out’. 

“That is impossible.” 

“They’re getting out.” 

“That enclosure is COMPLETELY SECURE.” 

“And yet somehow they’re getting out.” 

“THE HUMANS ARE NOT GETTING OUT.” 

“Oh yeah? I bet you twenty glarks they’re getting out. Stay after closing time with me and I’ll show you.” 

*next day*

“… the humans were getting out.” 

“… why did they keep going back in, then?!”

(In a deeply embarrassed mumble) “They said they weren’t going to escape until they finished their behavioural experiments. Uh. On us.”

[weaselle]

two things come to mind:

1 - at our own zoos the MOST notorious jail breakers are the orangutans, who exploit all manner of methods, including literal lock picking. One orangutan, Ken Allen escaped several times WHILE THE ZOO WAS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC without getting caught by watching Zoo employees, even when they tried to disguise themselves as tourists to catch him at it. While he was being “secretly” surveilled, he managed to escape AND show the other orangutans how to escape. They finally found out he was doing some thought-to-be-impossible rock climbing to escape. To fix it, they brought in a team of human rock-climbers to locate all possible methods of climbing out. So. Humans would absolutely be the worst to try to keep contained. Like, “escape rooms” are currently seen as a fun date idea. I’m sayin.

2 - animals that escape most often return to their own enclosure (after all that’s where their beds and dinners are, and if the zoo is any good it is the place best suited to their species-specific needs for miles and miles) after they have had sufficient excitement. Ken Allen the orangutan would escape and wander around the zoo looking at the animals like he’d bought a ticket. So if the keepers were nice, and formed a bond, and the set up was comfy, once the human knew they could get out if they really wanted, they’d probably go back, depending on how uncomfortable/dangerous the alien environment was.

I mean if they were raised in captivity. Wild-caught humans, all bets are off; depending on age of capture a return home could be a full blown obsession, the sabotage of engineering from mechanisms up to entire facilities is a strong possibility, and they may go on a murder spree with improvised or stolen weapons if desperate.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Humans consider an Escape Room to be a Fun Courtship Ritual

[roseapprentice]

The wild humans thing does depend a LOT on how good the zoo is, IMO. If you, as the alien zookeeper:

“Rescued” humans who weren’t thriving in the wild. (Aka dire medical debt.)

Made sure to take an entire social troop instead of lone individuals. (Your closest friends/family members are there.)

Offered VERY good care and enrichment.

Then I think you’d have at least a PARTIAL chance of your wild humans proving to themselves that they can escape and immediately going, “Okay but the zoo is obviously better.”

[inbabylontheywept]

The Motherfucking Lizard King

No one at work trusts my boss. 

He's smart. He works hard. He's not trustworthy. He hasn't actually fucked anyone at work over, but he's ruined his last two marriages with affairs, and got dumped by his third fiance when he wouldn't sign a prenup. The fact that we all know this is just a hazard of working in a small town. 

Anyway: The thought process of the people in the lab is that if he screwed over his first wife, and his second wife, and was probably planning on screwing over his third wife, it would be insane for him not to screw us over. After all, what kind of idiot treats their employees better than their spouse? 

I dunno. His kind, I guess? He's had a few chances to fuck us over, and he hasn't taken them. Opposite really. When our parent company was doing furloughs, he stayed in the office almost a hundred hours, talking and talking and talking his way up the corporate ladder. And in the end, no one at our site got furloughed. 

He's pulled strings like that before. And it baffles me, right? Because it really does make zero sense. He'll move the heavens and the earth for us, but his wife and kids are afterthoughts. It feels like any moment, he's going to look into the mirror and realize how stupid that is. It feels like I'm betting on him making the same stupid mistake again, and again, and again - like it would be less cynical to believe he was, eventually, going to stab me in the back. But he hasn't yet, and as far as I can tell he's been making that mistake for close to fifteen years, and it's already cost him everything it can. If he was going to learn, he would have by now. 

So my position on him is that if he wanted to date someone I cared about, I'd warn them off. I don't trust him there. But I tentatively trust him to be my boss. Maybe one day he'll stick the knife in and twist, and everyone will say Ah, Babs, we warned you, but for now, I accept that he's doing a very predictable, very irrational thing, and I've made my peace with it. 

---

My job has glue traps. 

No one likes the glue traps, but we don't have a lot of options. Poison's banned by state law, spring traps are banned by company safety, and several non-lethal options tried in the past failed to work. The mouse problem can get pretty bad if it's ignored, and there's some real health hazards in that. Our site has never had a positive hantavirus test, thank God, but the big base about a half hour away has. That guy's gonna be on oxygen the rest of his life. 

If a mouse gets caught, we just euthanize it. But more than mice get stuck. Lizards can wander into those traps too, and the people working there have different feelings about the lizards. They don't pose nearly the same kind of risk mice do. They're chill little guys, and they keep the moths away, and they're just 

You know. They're friendly. There's something to be said about walking into a room, and hitting the light switch, and seeing two little guys on the wall start to do pushups as soon as they see you. 

People used to just euthanize the lizards too, but I had pet leopard geckos as a kid and I couldn't take that so I wound up googling how to free animals from glue traps. Now, when a lizard gets stuck in a trap - which happens once or twice a week - I get some vegetable oil from the breakroom, and a little plastic fork, and I'll spend fifteen to twenty minutes just kind of gently prying the little guys out. 

I have a team of technicians that help me operate one of the larger machines. They're real blue collar guys, ex-airforce, and they make me look like a little kid. Being an engineer means they'll look to me as a leader sometimes, which is a wild experience. And I started helping the lizards for my own conscience, but one of the crazier consequences of it has been that it seriously boosted my leadership cred. Because those guys see me, and they go: Hey. If he's willing to fight for a lizard, he's gotta be willing to fight for me. 

I cannot overstate how nice that is. Most engineers that want to make a change to a maintenance practice, or try an upgrade, they have to work their asses off to get the techs to buy in. But I can just ask. They already trust me to do good. They know I'm new, and they know I'm not the smartest engineer in the building, but they also know I'm the one who gets lizards out of the glue traps. 

And just because of that, they're willing to follow me. 

---

My boss has a meeting every month or two. It's typically basic house cleaning stuff - reminders about routines we've gotten lazy on, and updates on future projects. Maybe some warnings about problems coming from higher up in the company.

People are, in my opinion, a bit too cynical about the meetings. It stems from people not trusting our boss, which again, I understand, because it would make so much more sense if he wasn't trustworthy. It's a testament to the man's incredibly unhealthy priorities that he is. But as we made it to the end of the meeting, one of bullet points was: 

Do NOT mess with animals in the building. 

So I looked at my techs, and they looked at me, and when he got to the point, he was so scathing I actually just wanted to crawl under a rock and die. He said basically that he'd heard some reports about someone in the building handling animals that found their way in and got stuck, and that he just wanted to emphasize how insanely inappropriate that was, not to mention dangerous, and that if he needed to speak to anyone about it again, there would be severe consequences. 

I was willing to just take the shame and move on. I was. But one of my techs is old. Old enough he could've retired two years ago. And his actual literal goal is to one day get angry, yell at someone, and storm out. That's how he wants to retire. So instead of biting his tongue like everyone else, he stood up and said: I hate the glue traps. You hate the glue traps. We all hate glue traps. But we've all sat here for years, ignoring the little things that get stuck in them, watching them die, and then Bab's comes in, and he is the first person in decades to give enough of a shit to start pulling the lizards out. And I don't want him to stop. 

Get humane traps or shut up but we are not going back to the old way of just letting things starve. 

And my boss actually froze up. He got all wide eyed and stared at Marc, and then the other techs jumped in, and there was a very small but intense rebellion in the meeting and my boss kept trying to interrupt while getting absolutely bowled over by this gang of angry middle aged air force vets, and eventually he just went 

I will speak with Babylon about this afterwards! After! And then he will speak with everyone else, but I have more points to cover. 

So they went silent, and my boss rushed through the last five minutes, and we all adjounred. The techs really didn't like that I was going in alone - they thought our boss was going to try and shout me into compliance. Marc in particular was like, Look, if he tries bullying you, stand your ground, and if he threatens anything, just come get us, and we'll give him hell. 

So armed with that, I went to my boss's office. I sat in the chair across from him, and he kept his composure for maybe five seconds before just flopping back into his chair. 

I had no idea you were saving lizards, he said, but I'm glad you are. I always hated seeing them die in the glue.  

I wasn't expecting that. I was about to ask him what the comment from the meeting was about then, but he answered that before I even got the chance.

A snake got into the building last week, and - someone picked it up and chased a coworker around. Turns out that coworker was severely afraid of snakes, and now it's a shitshow. We're a small site, and now I can't ask those two to work together anymore, to say nothing about how the snake fared after all that. Being upset about that is a reasonable thing, right? 

And he gave me a look like he actually wanted an answer, so I said Yeah, totally, chasing a coworker around with a snake is a dick move. Especially if that coworker is already afraid of snakes. 

And he said Exactly! and then we sat there a few moments longer. He looked so incredibly tired that I did, actually, feel kind of bad for him. And then he somehow managed to sink even further into his chair, and said

Look, I know I'm not a good guy. But I'm not evil. I'm not some sort of crazy asshole that's going to demand that everyone watch lizards starve to death. When you go back downstairs, could you try to pass that on? That I'm not evil? 

I said Sure because it wasn't a hard request, and he looked relieved. I actually made it halfway out before I realized I had a question. 

Who grabbed the snake? I asked. 

Not supposed to talk about it, he said. But whoever comes to mind first is probably right. 

ThatGuy? I asked. And he looked me in the face, nodded his head yes, and said No. 

---

The techs seemed a little disappointed that they didn't get to storm the boss's office, but were otherwise in good spirits. They were actually a little bit embarrassed to hear about the snake story - apparently, it wasn't much of a secret. It'd just slipped their minds because it happened three weeks ago. 

We did maintenance after that, the same basic repairs we did every week. The meeting had been stressful and it was a relief to work with my hands. When the parts were reinstalled, everything cleaned and smooth and ready to go, Marc found me again. 

You know what the lesson of today is? he asked. And there were quite a few answers to that that I could have taken - from don't assume the worst of people to be careful with how you spend your trust - we all need it more than we think. 

But instead I said what? because I wanted to hear what his answer was going to be. 

That I got your back, he said. Then he clapped one very, very large hand on my shoulder, gave it a good squeeze, and walked back to dosimetry lab.

---

The next day, Marc gave me a package and told me to open it in my office. I was suspicious, but I followed the request.

Cardboard gave way to a small baggie, obviously full of fabric, which opened to reveal a t-shirt that read

"I Am the Motherfucking Lizard King."

I looked at it, I loved it, and then I got an idea. I went to my boss's office and knocked on the door. When he opened it, I asked him if he would be willing to allow something very unprofessional to happen for morale building purposes.

How unprofessional? he asked. I held the shirt up in answer. He gave the shirt a short look over and snorted.

You can wear it on weeks without customers, he said. Which just so happened to include that week.

I'll pass on that it came with your blessing, I replied, and he looked oddly relieved.

Thanks, he said. And then I went downstairs.

---

The techs were very, very happy to see the shirt. And while my boss's reputation remains in tatters, and probably will be until he moves (or dies), the next time there was a meeting, there was quite a bit less complaining about how mere presence. Which is, I guess, a start.

We'll see if he squanders it.

[blueapplesiren]

I wonder how aliens will react to our communal grooming instinct? Like when you see something stuck to your homie’s clothes/skin/hair and it’s driving you nuts and you just gotta be like “hold still, lemme get that for you real quick.”

One time when I was a kid, I had a science teacher with a snake as a class pet, and said snake was almost done shedding. There was one little bit of dried skin stuck to its face and I was like, “would it hurt him if I pulled that off?” And the teacher said, “yes it actually could, it’s probably still attached to living skin if it hasn’t come off yet” and I was like “oh, sorry,” and he said, “that’s okay, you were just wanting to do the primate thing.” And damn, that’s such an accurate descriptor.

Anyways I hope aliens don’t mind me/my descendants having the urge to pluck stuff off of them. If they ask, we’ll have to tell them it’s a trait we evolved to survive ticks.

[valentine-leclair]

humans are space orks: periods

if I have to suffer then so do all of you. my followers seem like generally cool people I'm sure none of you will mind

Alien: "Knock, knock, Pae. You were supposed to be back on the clock ten minutes ago-..."

Human: Curled up in bed with a heating pad, groaning and clutching their middle.

Alien: Quickly rushes over to their sleeping pod. "Ohhh my goodness what's wrong? Who hurt y-"

Alien: Sniffs the air. Stifles a gag.

Alien: "I- don't understand- I smell blood- Are you dying? Human, humannn, you smell like-"

Human: "I know! I know. It's..." Turns over onto their stomach. "Listen, this is normal, okay? Ignore me."

Alien: "Nor... 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘭? You liar. Where are you bleeding from?"

Human: Long sigh.

Human: "Listen. I'm having a menstrual cycle. Okay? And I'm on the bleeding part of it."

Alien: Muttering, "The bleeding part-?"

Human: "My body is cleaning itself from the inside out."

Alien: "... Why would your blood be so dirty your body felt the need to expel it out?"

Human: "It's not-"

Alien: "𝙒𝙝𝙤 made your blood dirty? M' gonna fight 'em. Gonna go whoop, shwoop, 𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘨, punch punchity-"

Alien: Grins as they manage to get a laugh out if the human.

Human: "Nobody. It's... been a thing for some humans, mostly women, since, like, forever. We all get it. Fuckin sucks."

Alien: "Oh."

Alien: " 'Scuse me for a second, I have to go fight god."

[vs-space-orcs]

Thinking about how aliens would respond to the English phrase "better to ask forgiveness than permission." Like imagine that one survives in whatever language we evolve and the aliens are like "Do Not. EVER. Follow a human who says it's better to ask forgiveness than permission unless you are willing to go to space prison for them."

[crashingcryptid]

Human reader on an alien 141 crew ship. You're an engineer, mostly for the ship, but you've learned a fair amount of weapons repair as well. The team enjoys having you around, mostly to study you, to learn more about human behavior.

"I'm a pretty bad reference." You joke one day during meal time, picking at your tray. "I'm autistic. That's already going to throw off your studies."

"Yes, but you're still human." Kyle insists, studying you with his eyes. You weren't sure where his eyes were, but you could feel them on you. "Humans are predators. My species are prey, and so is Simon." Simon lets out a sharp grunt, his form resembling what a snake looked like on your planet.

Only much larger.

"We are not prey. Ambush predator." Simon insists as he coils around your shoulders. He liked soaking up your body heat like a snake, too.

"Humans are endurance hunters. We're pretty far removed from using our instincts because of modern evolution, industrial revolution, all that. But they are still there." You explain as you finish your food, pushing your tray away.

"How can you be an endurance predator? You don't run." Johnny teases his fungal flower spiral opening and closing slightly. You'd learned quickly that his fungal growths worked almost independently of him, expressing his emotions for him.

"Want to see?"

Simon was fucking exhausted. The ship had two places for you that mimicked a human atmosphere. Your room and one that looked like a small forest with a lake. You hadn't run once, but every time Simon thought he had shaken you off, you would find him again. And again and again. For hours, he had tried to evade you.

He wound his way up a tree, high enough that he was sure you couldn't climb up and find him. He needed to sleep just for a few minutes, and then he would move. He woke to a soft rustling in the leaves beside him, body stiffening as he slowly opened his eyes.

"Hey, Si. Nice nap?"