What if oxygen is poisonous and it just takes 75-100 years to kill us?
My science teacher said he thinks that’s true actually
Yeah this is actually pretty much exactly what is going on. It’s why anti-oxidants are such a big deal. Bonus fact: oxygen oxidizes stuff in your cells or, in other words, it’s not toxic, just setting you on fire very very slowly.
What if there are aliens out there but they subsist on entirely different substances and they’re just scared as shit of us and our crazy ass hell planet? Once in a while some alien anthropologist type suggests checking out the people on this inhabited planet out towards the galaxy’s edge. The other aliens just look at the naive academic with horror. No!! We do not go to that world. That is where the DEATH BREATHERS live. They recreationally consume poisons and are more or less composed of biological fire. Their atmosphere is made of rocket fuel. We must leave the DEATH BREATHERS in peace. Do not go there. Do not.
I tend to always reblog posts about humans being terrifying weirdos to aliens.
okay but…that is actually what went down on earth about 2.5 billion years ago.
Earth was doing just fine with a mostly nitrogen/carbon dioxide atmosphere and everyone was happy to go on living in anaerobic bliss and then cyanobacteria suddenly hit the scene, altered the atmosphere composition so that there was a ton of oxygen gas and killed practically everything (97% or more of all species on earth).
We are literally descendants of the DEATH BREATHERS and cyanobacteria is our deadly mother.
The cyanobacteria holocaust is so big, it doesn’t even have a cool name; it’s just called “The Great Oxygenation Event”; the *second* most apocalyptic extinction event in our planet’s history is the one that’s called THE GREAT DYING (the Permian-Triassic event, about 252 million years ago).
This shit makes like the rock-throwing that wiped out the dinosaurs look like kindergarten.
The Great Dying is my absolute favorite nickname for an epochal event.
Icarus: so there’s a boy, I know – you probably know the story, told a million times but this one’s different, this one is real. so there’s a boy, with the most beautiful eyes – really bright, really really blue, like the sky on the hottest day of the summer, a day so hot you can’t even wear your shirt because it feels like molten wax on your back – so you get the idea yeah? so there’s a boy, brilliant and shining, with brown skin – no wait, bronze skin, yeah bronze, like the soft color of autumn leaves that glisten in the last stray sunlight and his hair, oh god, he wears it short and it’s the softest hair I ever touched – there’s no color to describe it, blond would be too flat, brown too hard – I’d dare to say it’s golden, yeah, golden like the sun when it sets on the horizon just before dawn finally breaks the night. and so, this boy – you’re still with me? this boy, god, he’s like everything, like, I look at him and suddenly I can’t speak, I can’t breath and he’s like an interplanetary magnetic field and I feel myself drawn towards him, like I have no control over my own body as soon as he’s around. I look at him and suddenly my throat dries out and I – I feel lost inside my skin, totally and utterly useless because my bones shift inside of me and my lungs keep collapsing but every time I try to talk to him or try to get close to him my legs are failing, my voice betrays me. my body paralyzed as if I’m falling and my wings are already on bright fire, flapping shreds around me and he smiles and smiles and smiles –
(Icarus: I wish I could just go and ask him if he loves me, but I’m already falling and I fear the impact that will crash my bones)
The third lesbian fairy tale for @blimeyhermione, loosely based on The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. See the other two here and here.
She stood in the water up to her knees and refused to go further. Anahita searched the waves for a familiar break in the crests. She felt her heart thrum against her chest, trying not to panic. She would be here soon. It was almost sunset and she shivered with anticipation. A dark strand of hair whipped around her and she quickly tucked it back into her braid. She closed her eyes and sent out a whisper of Power once more, calling her beloved to her. Coralin. She felt it ripple indistinctly across the waves away from her. Coralin. Anahita opened her eyes.
A beautiful, grinning face looked at her across the water. It was dusted with freckles (Anahita simply knew this, even though she couldn’t see them from such a distance) and framed by thick curly black hair. Coralin had come. Anahita watched as Coralin dove in the waves again and again; each time she resurfaced, she was closer. Coralin’s fins, a bright red matching the coral she was named for, were powerful as she glided through the water. She stopped, treading water, ten feet away from Anahita and smiled.
“Come on in. The water’s divine,” she called, her dark eyes laughing and her fins twitching to the surface. She splashed water at Anahita. Anahita shivered and took a step back as the water hit her. “For me?” Coralin wheedled, swimming another stroke forward.
Anahita sighed, “For you? Anything.” And she stepped further into the water. Her stomach climbed higher and higher into her throat as she felt the panic that the water always brought her. It was up to her chest and she felt her lungs constrict. She took another shaking breath.
Second in a trio of lesbian fairy tales for Abby. Inspired by this post for @blimeyhermione. Sorry it took so long, doll. See the other two here and here.
Ava Monroe was not a particularly outgoing girl. She was a notorious homebody, with a deep love of books and cuddling. She had always wanted to be a famous writer. It was the one extroverted wish in her tremendously introverted heart. To be adored for her words and the creation of worlds.
She was a good writer, with a flair for the romantic, but exposure was hard to come by when you feared rejection more than solitude; when you created more colorful lands in your imagination than existed in the real world. So Ava started wishing. She wished every night for a publisher to take a chance on her—on one book. That’s all she would need, she was sure of it. And so, she waited, she wrote, she submitted, and she wished. And, unlike our mundane reality where that might not be enough, something magical happened—with just a little nudge.
Ava was home after work, sitting with her tea in her hands and her feet tucked underneath her on the couch. She heard a knock at her door. She looked at it for a moment, and then went back to watching the movie. She wasn’t home for whoever was there. She hadn’t ordered food, and no one was supposed to come over, anyway. The knock came again. Ava rolled her eyes and increased the volume. And then, the air crackled with energy and a flash of lightning came from under her door. Ava yelped in shock.
“Mortal, if I must knock a third time, you will not like what happens to the door. Open it,” came a clear, lightly accented voice. Ava shivered. She steeled herself and stood. She padded quietly to the door and opened it the tiniest crack, to see who it was.
my happy place is in an ornate bathroom with it’s own balcony; im in front of an opulent mirror, doing my skincare routine while the wind gently plays with silk curtains and the sound of people living life faintly audible in the distance. im not in love.
ImagineCreateDevour 