#stories on tumblr

[sumcringeboi]

This is the first in a series of short stories taking place in the near future of ~2080, after a great calamity befalls earth, 1 thousand ‘Seedships’ (semi-inspired by an underrated text based mobile game called Seedship, it’s free go get it) are sent in all directions, each housing 1 million colonists frozen in stasis as well as the ingredients to build a new civilisation, the technology aboard the ships is sophisticated but fallible, rushed, prone to error- leading to some successes, but very much more failure. All compounded by a cartoonish about of human suffering told from varying points of view.

So without further a-due;

Lightyears alone -prologue: rouge deconstructors

The date was January 4th, it was seemingly an unremarkable day like any other, it was not this of course but the only people in any sense of panic were astronomers, but it all happened too fast to inform the public, by the time anyone knew what was going on the sky was already blanketed with the leering, ominous view of jet black voidships hanging over our planet.

The mothership was stomach churningly enormous, nearly as big as earth itself, and swarming around it were tens of thousands of support ships, from armoured battleships to tiny ripper drones, all had shown up to the feast.

From the second space unfolded to give way to the invasion fleet, the sky began blaring a message down to us, encoded in binary, translated it read something adjacent to;

“The Cerbrex Collective has claimed this world.

This world will be dismantled and rendered.

All organics on this world will undergo grid amalgamation.

Primitives and pre-sapients hold no right to worlds within pre-established boarders.”

The message repeated on the hour, every hour as drones swarmed the surface, pulling it apart in chunks where it would be hauled up by curriers to the awaiting maw of the mothership.

As desperate, and utterly futile defences took place, the scientists and engineers behind the scenes toiled to answer questions and build the first of the Seedships. It was discovered that the mothership would respond to certain questions beamed back to it in binary;

“Who are the Cerbrex Collective?”

“Fleet designation for automated planetary deconstruction and prospecting fleet #771258332”

“Why have you come here?”

“This planet has been marked for deconstruction- scans indicate: plentiful organics, sodium water oceans, combustible aged organics, radioactive materials, pre-refined minerals, liquid peridotite mantle.”

“What is grid amalgamation?”

“The process of chemically reducing organics in order to harvest electrical charge through cellular breakdown”

“Who are your creators?”

“-(unintelligible)-“

And perhaps the most enlightening of all- “where is your homeworld?”

This prompted a string of coordinates that, when zoomed in on, revealed the dead home of these ancient mining drones. A large planet hangs around a blue star, dimmed by a surrounding Dyson swarm, the planet itself only reveals itself as pale grey blotches briefly visible past the surrounding swarm of ancient technology and asteroid fields of perfectly rectangular chunks of refined planet. ancient automations unknowingly harvesting a random world for a civilisation, long dead. unceremoniously dumping the spoils of there crusade upon a world, long broken.

Beyond weakening morale, the knowledge of our invaders nature did little to effect the war, any hope of diplomacy was dashed by the AIs unfeeling, uncaring, unsympathising logic, we are primitives of course, unable to overcome the perils of space travel, at least according to the date of the machines starmaps, and of course, we hold no right to the planet we evolved on, it being within the ancient borders of buried bones, trapped at the mercy of laws that no mortal being had spoken for perhaps thousands of years, with no chance of appeal.

Every day our planet lost mass our armies lost people, for every thousand men dead a lucky few would perhaps manage to bring down one of the colossal harvesting units, the corpses of these titans would have to be hauled off quick to avoid being recycled by the fleet, but if successful the scientific benefits of such godlike technologies were untold, the AI cores especially, through analysis, it was discovered that these enigmatic creators stopped pinging updates to the automated swarm around 3400 years ago, weaker received radio signals continued for some 700 years after the assumed extension of the creators, suggesting one or more other galactic civilisations perhaps being in play at the time.

The dismantling of the drones and unlocking of the secrets of the AI cores lead to the completion of the seedships and the invention of the PC, the personality construct, it’s purpose was to sit at the helm, making decisions for the frozen colonists mid flight as well as to be a calm voice of reason and understanding to gently guide the colonists in reconstructing civilisation in the best possible way, or at least something resembling that…

And at last the seedships were finalised and 1 billion of us, a good fraction of what was left, we’re corralled like cattle into 1 thousand colossal, city sized ships, 1 million frozen body’s each, scientists, engineers, leaders, fighters, farmers and the every day folk all sealed away in dreamless sleep.

The space on the ships that did not accommodate our icy selves was instead filled with scanners and sensors, a cultural and scientific database containing all of humanity’s knowledge, armour and weapons, deciphered from the drones of course as well as scores of small specialised service drones knows as ‘limpets’, prospector, medic, attack, construction, ect.

And in the bowels of the ship the power centre is housed, far away biological tissue, it’s known as the ‘Blue heart’ due to its blinding glow, and with the salvaged magic of entropy inhibitors, they can make for a near infinite power source for the ship and early colonies, with regular maintenance from the limpets of course.

On the day known as ‘The Rapture’ as our world lay dismantled beneath, 1 billion frozen souls left earth surface for the last time, stretching out into the cosmos like dandelions in the wind, preying to happen upon some fertile soil, on another world in another time.

With the ruins of our once great world behind us and all systems nominal our 1 thousand seedships spread out into random directions and enter transition, the lights wind down as the ship lowers its power usage, by the time it wakes up, the ruins of earth will be long gone and proceed, presumably dumped upon the heaping rectangular asteroid swarm, with all the other innocent worlds that happened upon the fleets warpath.

The fleet of spores, now long in slumber, wait upon there first destination to scan, slowly drifting as time and the universe passes them by

And these are some of there more interesting tales:

(Refer to any of the soon to come short stories)

[pixiepretzel]

Time Travel to Sarajevo, 1914

Emma had always been fascinated by history, but she never imagined she would have the chance to change it. As a time traveler, she had the ability to go back in time and fix mistakes, but she knew that changing history could have unintended consequences.

But when she was assigned to stop the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, she knew she had to try. The assassination was the trigger for World War I, a catastrophic event that claimed the lives of millions of people.

Emma arrived in Sarajevo in June of 1914, just days before the assassination was scheduled to take place. She spent hours poring over historical documents and studying the movements of the assassins, determined to stop them before it was too late.

On the day of the assassination, Emma positioned herself near the motorcade, ready to act. As the car carrying the Archduke and his wife approached, Emma spotted one of the assassins raising his gun. She lunged forward, tackling the assassin to the ground just as he fired.

The shot missed its mark, and Emma breathed a sigh of relief. But her relief was short-lived as chaos erupted around her. The other assassins began firing wildly, and Emma realized that she had made a grave mistake.

By stopping the assassination, Emma had thrown the timeline into chaos. World War I had been prevented, but at what cost? Emma watched in horror as the events of the next few years played out before her eyes. Without the war, Hitler never rose to power, but the world was plunged into a different kind of darkness.

As Emma returned to her own time, she couldn't help but wonder if she had done the right thing. Had she truly saved the world, or had she made things worse? The weight of her actions weighed heavily on her, but she knew that she couldn't go back and undo what had been done.

Emma had always believed that history was set in stone, but now she knew that it was malleable, shaped by the actions of those who came before. She had the power to change history, but with that power came great responsibility.

[artsy8mincemeat]

I've only read the witch-cat, Cinderella and Aurora and Ancient Greek Tumblr and Twitter. So much more Tumblr folklore!

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

[rudamaruda520]

me as a writer

[write-on-world]

[spyboy2000]

ᴇᴢʀᴀ ᴊᴀᴄᴋ ᴋᴇᴀᴛs Artwork from his 1962 book The Snowy Day.

[everythingunderthesky]

"No pasarán!"

Translation note: Did a little checking, this phrase appears to stem from the Spanish "pasar", or "to pass".

Furthermore, the conjugation used here conveys that the phrase is: 

-aimed at a group of people

-in future tense

Therefore: "No pasarán" = "You will not pass"

Sometimes Marvel gets it right.

I hate in the MCU or anything when the aliens or whatever are attacking and everyone’s just ‘oh yeah we be chilling just cowering over here’ as if seventy percent of humanity isn’t really angry all the time like catch these hands motherfucker I’ve bitten people for trying to steal my chips you think you can just steal my whole fucking planet YEET HERE COME MY TEETH film people be using responses to natural disasters but I promise if human sized things came to throw down humanity would be ready to fuck them up like yeah you got laser guns I got this dope ass stick I just found let’s go you ugly fuck

[charbroiledchicken]

if it's good enough for you, then it deserves to be made. don't let anyone else decide if your story is worth it or not.

[sumcringeboi]

Been working on a little sci-fi short story collection thing, (working title is Lightyears Alone) I’ve got the prologue pretty much done that explains the world and why things are the way they are and from there it branches out into a bunch of short story’s that all follow a similar vein.

Basically in the prologue earth is destroyed and we send out 1000 “seedships” into space to hope to happen upon fertile ground to start a new colony and stop humanity from going extinct.

The collection of short story’s themselves follow, sometimes successes of the ships, but mostly a lot of horrifying, brutal and cosmically terrifying failure and suffering.

Whadayall think of that general idea? Is it half decent or should I quit, turn to drugs, go to rehab, relapse, loose custody of my kids and then hang myself from a ceiling fan? Decisions decisions

I was planning on posting the prologue when I’ve got one of the actual ships stories to go along with it but if y’all r curious enough about the world I suppose I can post it :3

[afniel]

This is the magic lucky word count. Reblog for creativity juice. It might even work, who knows.

[brightlotusmoon]

This reads just like a Discworld story. Oh my gods, I'm in love.

The Van Has Officially Declared It Spooky Season

---

I've got my parent's van for the week and it seems determined to establish my status as The Local Cryptid by terrorizing an innocent 7-11 clerk.

...I might need to back up a bit.

My mother is an eminently sensible woman who knows herself well, and when The Plauge hit, she knew she'd need some sort of mentally and physically engaging craft project to keep herself from going insane and massacring the local zoning and water management boards (even if they have it coming). So she and Dad acquired a utility van and converted it into a camper van because while they love camping, they're past the age where their joints and immune systems will tolerate sleeping on the cold ground in a nylon tent.

They did a terrific job of it and my mom taught herself woodworking and carpentry and now the van has it's own cabinets, fold-away dining table, and removable queen-sized bed with memory foam mattress. My Dad was already a computer engineer, but he learned the dark magics of automotive software and electronics to install after-market backup cameras, a media player that would take a terabyte hard drive and a solar-powered battery and outlet so they could wake up and just turn on the kettle and griddle for breakfast without having to exit the van into a cold morning on an empty stomach.

Truly, the height of Camping Luxury.

My parents are both in their mid-seventies and my primary life goal is to be at least half as cool and hale as they are when I get old.

Anyway, they take it out at least a dozen times a year and it works fabulously, but, being as I am on good terms with my parents and also finishing the process of moving house, I've been borrowing it to move large and cumbersome objects that will not fit in the back of my equally lovely but minuscule Honda hatchback.

It's a Great Van. Very easy and comfortable to drive. Stunningly good MPG for it's size. The best cruise control I've ever had in a car.

It's just also. Quirky. Mischievous, even.

---

If this van has a fault its that it bears the unfortunate affliction that all lightly used white utility vans have in that the combination of an utter lack of branding features and the large dent/scrape I accidentally put on it while trying to escape a Denny's last Thanksgiving means that this vehicle is one addition of a Badly Spray-Painted "FREE CANDY" on the side away from being the sort of vehicle you see in an edgy horror movie.

It's got the same issue that Doberman Dogs have where they look like the sort of creature that likes to snack on toddler's faces whilst actually having personalities made of marshmallow fluff. This vehicle is unnecessarily menacing and I think nothing short of an airbrushed Epic Van Wizard will correct this. People see this van pull up and lean over and squint suspiciously at me when the driver's side door opens, and then look moderately confused when, instead of Charles Manson, a small, potato-shaped creature with neon purple hair and a statistically unlikely assortment of dogs emerges.

My own two dogs, Herschel the Hanukkah Goblin/Corgi and Charleston Chew The Taco Dumpster Dog, Do Not Like The Van. Even with the bed in it, they have a tendency to slide and roll around in the back, and both WILL chew through dog saftey belts or other attempts to secure them in there.

On the other hand, my house mate's dog, an exceptionally tall standard poodle whom we lovingly call "The Creature", loves the Van because SHE wears her doggy seat-belt with only mild complaining and gets to sit up in the passenger seat like A People.

Also like A People, The Creature likes to stand and walk around on her hind legs. It doesn't hurt her and it's entirely voluntary, but every so often I will feel a hand on my arm and instead of my husband or friend, it's a canine that's taller than I am on her hind legs who wants to stare at my face with soulful, concerned eyes. The Creature's favorite thing is that she is exactly the right height for me to hold her arm in Genteel Fashion and walk around the pet food or hardware store with her like I'm a count escorting a debutante around a royal ball.

---

As it stands, I am set to inherit this vehicle whenever my Honda gives up the ghost, and I fully intend to paint an Epic Van Wizard on it when that time comes.

The other peculiarity of The Van is that while Dad did manage to successfully install all his after-market electronics, not all the electronics get along. Sometimes, they fight for Dominance. The Terabyte Music Player and the Backup Camera have a particularly contentious relationship, and turning on the music has about a 25% chance of turning on the backup camera as well, and turning on the Backup Camera is equally likely to turn on the music.

Firthermore, The Van has a favorite song.

I am not kidding that Dad filled an entire terabyte hard drive with music and the software to sort it via the radio controls, but of all the Early Boomer Dad Rock (Kingston Trio over The Eagles) and Irish Folk and Symphonies and the entire discography of Weird Al Yankovic, The Van's favorite song- The one it picks to play as victory music every time it beats the Backup Camera at their weird electronic game of rock-paper-scissors -is The Liberty Bell March by John Phillip Sousa.

You all know this song already.

...but in case you've forgotten the tune:

Yeah.

The Van's favorite song is the goddamn Monty Python's Flying Circus Theme Music.

It does not play this song at a normal volume.

Every time I turn on the Backup Camera and it manages to turn the music player on as well, The Van insists on absolutely blasting this nonsense on at the maximum volume it's physically capable of producing, which I know is loud enough to be heard from the Denver International Airport's Pickup zone when they Van decided to start playing it from the economy lot about half a mile away.

Perhaps it's The Van's way of honoring the aesthetic sensibilities and sonic enthusiasm of Mr. Sousa.

...I can't help but wonder if the purpose of an Epic Van Wizard is to control this sort of faerie-like malarkey, and channel these chaotic energies into things like Spell of Don't Break Down In Nevada or Enchantment Of Always Have Good Parking.

---

So last Friday the 13th, I get a call from my friend and housemate, at said airport.

It's roughly 11PM at night, and I have already retired for the evening. I am in the exact minimum of clothing required to be a decent housemate and not scandalize the neighbors should I happen to walk by a window. My feet are up. There is a cat in my lap and fictional British people murdering each other in highly inventive fashion on the tv. -But my friend has returned from her friend's wedding,and either American or United Airlines has managed to lose her luggage, including, among other valuable possessions, the keys to her car. ...So she cannot just drive home as originally planned.

There are, as luck would have it, her spare set of keys not eight feet from me.

Being a good and decent person, I agree to bring the spare keys to her so she may get home before daybreak and not spend a semester's worth of tuition on an uber across the greater Denver traffic jam.

Being also that she Loves Activities, and it's her mom we're going to pick up, I elect to take along The Creature.

I am primarily focused on remembering how to get to the airport and not leaving my friend's spare keys on the counter, so I throw on a pair of flip-flops, step outside, remember that it's AUTUMN and my minimal evening attire is not sufficient thermal protection, step back in, grab the first coat in the closet I lay hands on, pull it on, check that I have her keys again and leave.

The trip to the airport is largely unremarkable, save that it becomes necessary for me to put on sunglasses to drive, despite it being nearly the witching hour and almost entirely darker than the inside of a cow.

It's necessary because this blissful darkness of night is violently punctured by a startling number of cars that seem to have installed miniaturized but no less powerful lighthouse bulbs in where their headlights ought to go so the oncoming traffic and sports cars that insist on tailgating me in the slow lane alike illuminate the road and my mirrors with the kind of radiance I'd normally associate with the arrival of a Seraphim.

I arrive at the distant highly discounted airport car lot where my housemate is waiting, deeply apologetic. It's nothing. I say. Once I see that your car starts up, I'm gonna go to that 7-11 across the way that I parked in front of, get a slurpee or something and I'll see you at home.

While she is retrieving her vehicle (an equally eccentric but much more stately Subaru that is old enough to be elected to congress) I rifle through the loose change in the glove box and discover that I have exactly $6.66 in small bills and coins. The Subaru, continuing it's long voyage into vehicular immortality, immediately starts up.

Upon her return, we all remember that my friend had all her camping gear in the backseat of the car and there is no room for The Creature to ride home with her parent, so I again assure her it's nothing, and will just take The Creature into the 7-11 with me. She is trained as a service animal and needs the practice after the plague.

I wave my friend off and turn to enter the 7-11.

I promptly trip over the jutting back bumper of The Van and fall, cartoonishly, face-first onto the sidewalk.

Fortunately, I have a lot of practice falling on my face, and have learned not to throw my hands out but instead cover my face, so my unexpected self-inflicted attempted curb-stomping lightly scrapes my hairline and nothing else -my sunglasses even stay in place- and I get up and resume my quest for a slurpee.

It's well known that the airport is a lawless place, and the 7-11 across from the discounted airport parking at the stroke of midnight is no exception.

I know it's the stroke of Midnight because there's one of those Audubon society bird-call clocks that makes bird noises, and my arrival is heralded by the twittering call of a Summer Tanager. I am almost charmed enough by the unusual choice of chronological device to excuse the exorbitant Airport-adjacent mark-up of Slurpee prices. I stand at the machine for some time, trying to decide on a size for the price and guess what the fuck "Blue Lighting Blast" is supposed to taste like.

The Creature is being Very Polite but is somewhat agitated, I assume because she *just* saw her mother for the first time in three days and then she LEFT with no explanation, so The Creature is on her hind legs, staring woefully into my eyes, asking to be escorted around the 7-11. Even though that's not what she's not supposed to be doing, there's nobody else in here, so I let her hang off my arm and discuss various Slurpee Flavor options with her.

We eventually decide on an experiment in which I try a Small Blue Lightning Blast, and discover it tastes a bit like licking a nintendo cartridge but in a pleasantly satisfying way.

I go up to pay and realize something is amiss.

The Cashier is a young man staring at me with wide eyes, one had over the register and the other wrapped up in his rosary.

I look down at myself.

In my haste to reunite my friend with her spare keys and service animal, I had left the house in the following accoutrements:

Flip Flops. Not matching. It's below freezing outside. That last part is not particularly odd footwear for the weather in for Colorado, but it's an important detail for the rest of the ensemble.

Assorted scrapes, bruises, cuts and welts on my arms and legs that come with doing outdoor work and living in a house with three dogs and a fully-clawed cat that all want to be in my lap all the time. It's cold out, so vasoconstriction has pulled the blood away from my skin, a trait that served my ancestors well during the last Ice Age, but leaves me with pale skin to contrast the various wounds and I look like a corpse that fell out of the back of a pickup truck.

The black Bootyshorts with "CRYPTID" painted in bright red gothic font across my ass, that @theshitpostcalligrapher gave me for my wedding present.

A peculiar but extremely comfortable garment that straddles the line between "Lacy Camisole" and "Industrial-Strength Sports Bra" like the Ever Given straddling the Suez Canal. It is also Bright Red. with black accents.

The Jacket I had grabbed out of the closet, which is in fact, a black Velour Dinner Jacket.

The Tokyo-Ghoul inspired reusable anti-covid mask a friend made me with the set of Coyote Teeth.

My sunglasses, which are shaped like a Halloween Bat. The lenses are the wings and the body is the nose bridge. It is ALSO bright red.

A Very Large and remarkably Humanoid Poodle that I have been audibly affectionately calling "Dear Creature" who is hanging off my arm like she's my Prom Date.

The Very Large and remarkably Humanoid Poodle is ALSO dressed up in a black Dog Sweater that has white bones printed on it to look like its an X-ray jacket showing off her skeleton.

I look like I am taking my Very Fancy Werewolf Girlfriend to a particularly casual Dinner Party for Vampires, but the thing that's really selling it and probably alarming the kid the most is the fun accessory I acquired in the parking lot not five minutes earlier:

The "Small Scrape At my Hairline" is actually a painless but PROFUSELY bleeding head wound that I had somehow entirely failed to notice covering my face, neck, decolletage and magnificent cleavage with blood like a Tarantino Film Extra.

This does explain why The Creature has been delicately trying to use her bodyweight to push me down onto the floor for the last ten minutes. So I don't injure myself while we wait for the paramedics she hoped this kid called to arrive, you see.

The Creature has such a High and Naive Opinion of humanity.

I decide this social situation is already fucked, and the only way out is through, and with haste, before I start dripping on the floor.

"Hi there!" I say cheerfully, to indicate this is a visually alarming but not terribly serious situation. "Just a Small Slurpee!"

The Cashier has entered the relevant code into the register before I finish the sentence. His gaze flicks off me just long enough to look at the total, and he grips his Rosary harder.

$6.66

"Oh cool! I have exact change!" I say, taking the money out of my as-yet-unsanguined pocket without looking and slap it down on the counter. "You have a good night and be safe out there!" I wave, leaving.

I get in The Van, mortified, buckle The Creature up, and as I make to leave, I have to put it in reverse, which automatically turns on the backup Camera.

It also turns on the music player.

I make eye contact with the cashier as the dulcet tones of John Phillip Sousa boom from the van hard enough to make the windshield and the windows of the 7-11 rattle for the nine-and-a-half seconds I have to wait to be able to turn the volume back down. Not knowing what else to to, I give him a thumbs up, and leave.

Anyway, now I know what my Future Van Wizard has got to be dressed like, and what their familiar is.

---

If you enjoyed this story, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or Pre-ordering my Family Lore Funny Stories book on Patreon

[theaftersundown]

the holy grail types of fanfic

[mimimar]

the woman who holds the moon

prints available here. my cover for this month's issue of baffling magazine.

[stargirl230]

you’re my hero!

bnha doomed yuri was not on my 2024 bingo card

(no reposts; reblogs appreciated)

[hopelessromanticsavage]

They will burn this shit down before they allow us to shine. White ppl are weak and fragile. Yep I said it