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computer girl pinup

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Hierodula salomonis, aka, the “Jade Mantis”

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Jaroslav Paur (1918-1987) — Burnt Down City [oil on canvas, 1980]

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"cathedral spires" in cave of the winds postcard ca. 1930s

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you sickos want more bugs with eyelashes. so obscene. so thirsty

well who am i to deny yall the pleasure

take your gay eyelash bugs

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four is a great number of arms for a girl to have

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I like the idea of grey aliens having crazy frantic sex without any erogenous zones or sex organs. Like just jumping up and down on each others heads and pulling each other around by the feet

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on my hands and knees. scrubbing sticky spilled beverage off of the floor. it was heavily flavored with (artificial) vanilla, had a strong scent. so sticky, so much sugar. a customer had dropped a beverage can. management had said “don’t worry, we can write it off, it’s not that expensive. go wipe it up.” outside, it was snowing, heavily. there with me on the floor, puddles of melted snow, grimey, brought indoors by customers’ boots. apron stained. while there, on the floor, repetitive scrubbing, i considered that an English sugar-plantation-owner in Barbados in the 1790s was likely to have been 5-times richer than their wealthiest land-owning (white) childhood friends still living back in Britain proper. i wondered how vanilla has come to be so inexpensive. (is it actually “inexpensive”? or do landscapes and people still die to grow and harvest it?) where did this vanilla come from? where was the coffee grown? all of this sugar just tossed aside. like nothing. 125, 200, 350 years ago, vast amounts of people were enslaved and died for this sugar. entire communities, whole cultures invaded, destroyed, to bring Empires sugar, the Georgian-era equivalent of this spilled “BANG Birthday Cake Bash (TRADEMARKED) Keto-Coffee Protrein-Enhanced Energy Drink” which i’m scrubbing off of the floor, on my knees, almost in an act of worship. “we can write it off.” in 1540, how many people were murdered in Central America by Spanish colonizers to acquire this amount of vanilla for shipment back to a court in Iberia? in 1610, how much reward would an Italian merchant vessel have earned for delivering this coffee from North Africa to Venice? in 1805, how much cash would a London tea-shop-owner have paid for this sugar? all so easily acquired, now? in 2020, how many people still work and die so that these ingredients can be shipped to the Europe and the US, offered at such “inexpensive” price? now all of these substances are just … a sticky puddle on the floor? a stain on the apron? after scrubbing the floor, i entered the walk-in cooler, the white noise of the fans a reprieve, to read the list of ingredients on the labels of the coffee/energy drinks. “guava.” “acai berry.” “Nesquik Double Chocolate ready-to-drink milk.” how did it get here? a loud ringing. motion detectors. customers are entering the store. too much stimulation. supposed to be “working.” don’t know how long i have stood in the cooler. deep breath. attempt to revert to normal workplace behavior and thoughts. had to go back to “helping customers.” cannot openly discuss botany and colonization and land-theft of Regency-era British Empire. i leave the cooler. same day, a co-worker: “hey, check out the new hand lotion, really helps with the bleach burns, smells awesome!” me: “oh?” she says: “coconut and vanilla!” again my thoughts are dragged away: “what harms have come to the islands of the South Pacific? how did this substance extracted from tropical plants find its way here, to this snowy landscape? why is the coconut-oil lotion so cheap? who paid the real cost to bring it here? this process was not passive. which institutions stole local plant knowledge and patented this variety of the plant? who was forced under duress to harvest the coconut?” violence.

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A rednote user ( http://xhslink.com/a/hGMGjJtnHQB ) keeps these big tree crickets as pets, they make silk with their mouths to join leaves together, they will try to do it anywhere and they are so cute I'm mad we don't have them here

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Hi everyone, I have an itch.io question. Is this

Is this normal ? I haven't cashed out any of that already. Where is my other twenty american dollars. Am I just confused about how the pending payments/pending balance works, or

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hi ^w^ so sorry if this is weird but im currently brainstorming a piece that i noticed has some similarities to your work They Colonized Mars, and i wanted to ask about like. the theoretical possibility of citations and references and such? i understand this can be a more complicated topic but i don't want to push for like messaging or anything lol ^^ i'm down to go into more detail i just wanted to reach out/establish contact

Oh hey! You can absolutely explore similar ideas, etc, They Colonized Mars itself is very heavily playing off of a lot of classic sci-fi tropes, so I have no problem with people being inspired by it and playing off of my take on it. I think that's cool! I love fiction as a communal activity

I'm curious about what exactly you have in mind, I'd love to hear more about it

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this thing contains the divine spark. it evolved from ancient ungulates like whales did

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Do you like found family? Queer romance? Enemies to lovers and an epic space opera setting with fantasy elements?

well I didn't write that. You are fucked out of luck.

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Good news anon you can download it on itch.io now!

Hello! I wondered if you had any plans to release They Colonized Mars in a complete set like an ebook (or on AO3 or something where readers can download it as an epub). I find I read things better in that format (but if that's not something you're interested in, I understand!)

I was also wondering if you are okay with your work being put into The Storygraph using their "not a book" feature (or I suppose as a book if you'd prefer!) I know a lot of fanfic writers prefer not to have their work in there, even with the precautions against not-books being searchable, not having reviews visible, etc. but I find my brain is more likely to actually read things I want to read if I can track it along with everything else! (Of course, if you are not okay with that, I understand.)

Thank you!

Hi there! I *am* planning on having a downloadable file, and kind of tentatively exploring my options re: hosting on other websites. At this point I'm looking around at how different things Work that might be easier than manually emailing it to people lol

I'm not familiar with storygraph, but I'm looking it up right now & what I'm getting is Not Goodreads which I'm all for lol, & I'm 100% fine with They Colonized Mars being listed there 👍👍 it's a short story, so "not a book" seems apt, though I don't know what other categories they have available. You can have it searchable, reviewable, go wild, assuming it's all credited back to me etc etc

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You can now download it on itch.io!

They Colonized Mars

> sci-fi/horror original fiction, 4.8k words

> an exploration of space colonialism, capitalistic exploitation, disability and gender. Or: my strongly worded love letter to the genre

Directory:

> content warnings

> part 1 & 2

> part 3

> part 4

> part 5

> part 6