Had to include the screen-cap because otherwise I’d have a shit-ton of Trump supporters saying “this isn’t true” in my mentions. This IS true. This IS fucked up. And y’all should be TERRIFIED this is happening in our country.
Thank you @adobsonartworks for sharing. I wouldn’t have believed it either, but here we fucking are.
If anyone else is still dubious about this:
here is the link for the Slate article, where the USCIS director is quoted, “What we’re looking at, when you boil it all down, is potentially a few thousand cases” – and this even though there have only been about 300 denaturalization cases since 1990
here is further background from The New Yorker: “Historically, denaturalization has been an exceedingly rare occurrence, for good reason: by the time a person is naturalized, she has lived in this country for a number of years and has passed the hurdles of obtaining entry, legal permanent residency, and, finally, citizenship. The conceit of naturalization is that it makes an immigrant not only equal to natural-born citizens but indistinguishable from them. So denaturalization, much like the process of stripping a natural-born American of citizenship, has been an extraordinary procedure reserved for very serious cases, mostly those of war criminals.”
and here’s a link aChicago Tribunearticle which notes that “2,536 naturalization cases have prompted an in-depth review so far”
Re-reblogging links for the doubtful. They are talking about snatching up Naturalized Citizens and deporting them. This has become a thing to discuss. In THIS country.
the only thing i knew about sex at the age of nine was that
1) it was for mommies and daddies who were married;
2) it made me, my five year old sister, and my baby brother.
i learned everything i knew about sex from the internet while secretly browsing grownup sites on my 4th generation ipod touch i earned for doing so well at a piano recital. because of the nature of, you know, men and their internet porn, i learned that my sexual role as a woman was to be slapped and pissed on and tied up. i didn’t know what healthy sex was. i didn’t know it should be mutually consensual, or that it was okay to want sex with girls. i didn’t know that sex should be good for both people. i learned that sex would hurt, and that sex was about men and men only, and that i would be forced into sex whether i liked it or not, and that it was normal to have sex with big, burly, grown men as a teenager. i learned it was normal to cry during sex. i was scared of sex for so many years because of that, and the way i was exposed to sex at a young age led to the inappropriate and traumatic sexual encounters i had (occasionally with older people) later on in my teen years.
the day i got my first period, i was ten-and-a-half. i was swimming in the river with my best friend, and when i got out to go to the bathroom, i noticed brown blood on the inside of my mint-green tankini bottom. i knew what a period was, but i hid it from my mother in shame. she found out, eventually, of course. she told me, you have a woman’s body now, and if you have sex, you could have a baby. all i heard was, you have a woman’s body.
i started shaving my vulva when i was eleven, because i saw memes on memegenerator about how disgusting “hairy pussy” was. i wanted to be sexy. i was eleven years old, and all i wanted was to be sexy. it hurt, and it itched, and it made me uncomfortable, and i’d sometimes nick my labia with the razor, but i did it anyway, because i didn’t want to have a nasty, “hairy pussy.”
eleven was the age i first started getting pinched on the EL. i was an early bloomer: i had B-cup breasts already, and my menstrual cycle was regular enough that i could keep a calendar. i started wearing a full face of makeup to school and buying shorts that rode all the way up my skinny twelve-year-old thighs. i remember the day i stopped jumping off the swings the summer after fifth grade. skinned knees weren’t sexy. smooth, flawless legs were sexy, and i was a sexy girl. i was probably the sexiest little girl in the whole world. my parents hated it. they told me i was too young, but i knew the truth. my body was older, maybe 17 or 18, so my brain must be, too.
when i was twelve, i had a secret kik account that my parents didn’t know about. i used it to message strangers. i made all sorts of friends. i wasn’t stupid. i used a fake name. never showed my face. one of my friends asked me for a bra picture. i was a cool girl, right, i was sexy, so i sent him a picture of me in front of my bedroom mirror in my little white training bra with the blue butterflies.
sexy, he said.
that was all i wanted.
i’m not typing out all this bullshit because i think it’s something special. i’m typing it out because it’s not. i’m typing it out because i see the same thing happening to my little sister. i’m typing it out because i see the same thing happening to that little millie bobbie brown, sexiest actress at thirteen. i’m typing it out because i’m sixteen years old now, a girl in the eyes of the law and a woman in the eyes of men.
mothers, talk to your daughters. tell them to jump off the swingset and skin their knees. tell them to get dirt on their dresses. tell them that they’re a woman on their 18th birthday, not at ten-and-a-half on the first day of their menstrual cycle. the world is confused. the world is sick. if your daughters don’t hear about how to treat their bodies from you, they’ll hear it from the sick, sick world, and they’ll do the things i did.
I really want a science fiction story where aliens come to invade earth and effortlessly wipe out humanity, only to be fought off by the wildlife.
They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.
Imagine coming to a hostile alien world and being attacked by a horde of creatures that can weigh up to 3 tons, run at 30 km/h (19 mph), and bite with a force of 8,100 newtons (1,800 lbf).
By the time you realise that they can traverse water, it’s too late. The surviving members of your unit manage to make it back by shedding their excess gear and running for their lives; the slower ones were crushed to death within minutes.
You later describe the creature to one of the humans you captured, wanting to know the name of the monstrosity that will haunt your nightmares for cycles to come.
The human smiles as it speaks a single word, slowly and distinctly, in its barbaric tongue.
“Hippopotamus.”
This is giving me the biggest, creepiest grin I might have ever grinned
Imagine being the next crew to go down to earth and thinking “it’s fine, we got this. We have the weapons and equipment necessary to deal with bears and *shudders* hippopotamuses. We’ll be fine.”
And at first you are, you’ve learned how to dodge. You’ve learned where their territories are. You know how to defend yourself.
But then one night you are sleeping in your shelter. You’re in a tree covered temperate part of earth. It seems benign. There are been no sightings of the dreaded “hippos” around. Not even any bears. But there is a slight rustle of the undergrowth. You try and ignore it telling yourself it is just the wind.
Then you hear the rustle again. closer this time.
You peer out into the darkness but see nothing amongst the trees.
The rustle again and now you realise you can smell something. It’s musky and slightly foul. It’s the smell of an omen, a warning. But what of? Where is this smell coming from.
You sit up, but it’s too late. The foul smelling creature is on you. You are hit with 17kg of coarse fur and vicious bites. Long dark claws tear in to you and you are pinned down white the striped creature tries to bite your throat.
It takes some doing but you manage to wrestle free. Blood drips from your wounds and already they itch with the sign of infection. The creature has a bloodied snout, rust rad, mingling with the black and white hairs. It lets out a terrifying growl from the back of its throat and looks to attack again. It’s between you and your knife, so your only choice is to back away.
Eventually the creature gives up and snuffles off in to the undergrowth, down a hole near your shelter you hadn’t noticed before.
When you make it back to your base you once again consult the captive human.
“Badger.” they say, with a solemn nod.
One word: Moose
“Our vehicles are far superior to the local human models, in range, speed, armament, and any other metric you care to name! Nothing could possibly-”
BAMrumblerumblethumpcrash!!!
“That’s called a moose.”
Wolverines.
Also.. dolphins.
The invasion is going slowly. The humans have caught on and are actively destroying information on the planet’s flora and fauna before Intelligence can capture and process it. All that they have are survivors’ accounts. Bears. Hippos. Badgers. Moose. It is becoming obvious this mudball planet is a full-on Death World to the unprepared, and you are so very unprepared.
You lost Jaxurn to a plant. Not even a mobile or carnivorous plant, just one that caused a vicious allergic reaction on contact that killed him in less than a rai’kor. Commander Vura’ko died to an insect bite, a tiny local pest that sucked a tiny bit of her blood and apparently replaced it with a bit of its last meal, which was full of disease. Backwash. She died to bug backwash. And yet you honestly envy them after that… thing you encountered…
When you got back to base the quarantine officer refused to let you inside. They had to roll a containment tank outside to put you in, because you all knew there would be no chance of eliminating the smell if it got into the ship’s air ducts. Smell. You wonder if your nasal slit will ever recover from this stench.
And the smell would. Not. Leave. After incinerating your gear the Q.O. had you use every cleansing agent they could think of, including a few janitorial ones, and still everyone fled the stench if they were downwind of your tank. Desperate to protect everyone’s nasal slits from the smell the quarantine officer interrogated the humans. From them, a glimmer of hope: there was a cure. Somehow the juice of a certain fruit on this mudball was the only thing that could break up the chemicals in the little horror’s spray. Immediately the Q.O. sent a team to recover buckets of the stuff and made you bathe in it. That was hours ago and it didn’t seem to be working, though. All it was doing was turning your blue skin an interesting shade of purple.
Sighing in frustration you wave the med-assist on duty over, who only approaches after checking the wind direction. Annoyed, you flip on the tank`s vox speaker.
“The humans did say it was “grape” juice that removed “skunk” stench, right?“
Every night.
It came for someone almost every night.
Any soldier alone was a viable target for this native monster that moved unseen by any but the security viewers, usually only spotted in hindsight. They were taken as silently as this earth-monster moved. Sometimes they’d find the remains in the morning taken up a tree and hung there, mostly eaten, as if it were a grisly reminder that the monster was still there, waiting unseen, to strike again.
What little they saw of the monster on the vidfeed showed true horror. Yellow eyes that shone with all the light it could gather. It had fangs as long as his grasping digits. Claws half that size formed curved hooks that allowed it to climb up their fortifications with impunity. And in the underbrush, its spots made it almost impossible to see clearly in the undergrowth, if it could be seen at all.
Even the native sentients, the humans, had a healthy respect and fear for it.
The earth natives called the monster a leopard.
It was a constant fear that muddied the senses, and let the monster hunt even more effectively as the soldiers were always on edge. Sleep deprived with fear, it made them even better targets for the monster.
But rumor was that there was worse on this planet. Rumors of a monster like a leopard but larger, and bigger in every imaginable sense. Stripped instead of spotted, which leaped from the underbrush with a sound.
A sound that burst eardrums, paralyzed entire units, and let the monster kill with impunity. While the Leopard wrestled soldiers down and ripped their throats out. This other monster, the Tiger, killed with its pounce alone.
“We’ve been through this,” Group Leader 455 snapped. “The dissection of an Earth life form will help the scientists make weapons to combat the rest of this planet’s hellbeasts. And these are domesticated. Harmless.”
The troops were not-quite-looking at her in the way troops do when they don’t want to be seen to contradict a ranking officer, but can’t quite muster a correct Expression of Enthusiastic Assent. “The name of this species,” she pointed out, “is synonymous with dullness and slowness in the language of the Earth barbarians.” Well, one language out of several thousand—these creatures needed Imperial guidance more than any other world on record—but there was no point in confusing the rank and file.
More not-quite-looking. 455 bubbled a sigh and consulted her scanner. “That one,” she decided. “Alone in the separate pasture. Scans suggest that it’s a male, which means it’s probably weaker. Possibly it’s kept isolated so that the females don’t eat it before mating season. And yes, I know some of you are here on punishment detail, but you’re still soldiers of the Imperium. This squad is perfectly capable of handling a lone, helpless, pathetic male cow.”
I’m enjoying this immensely. Wait until the aliens try Australia for size…
It was a strange creature Tar’van glimpsed at on the vast island known to the humans as ‘Australia’.
“I would warn you not to fuck with us, mate.” Their forced guide, a prisioner, had warned with a chilling grin upon capture. “If you think a moose is bad, wait until you tango with a red back.” To this day Tar’van fears the creature known as the red back, and what horrors it would bring.
The prisioner turned out to be of little help,the stubboness of his people causing them to refuse the danger that the captured human warned of. Tar’van recalls a moment when one of his squad members approached a creature know as a dingo, insistent they had seen these creatures before and they were tame. They barely escaped with 5 of the original 7 members of his squad.
Another moment Tar’van recalls was the brutal mauling they witnessed by the hands of a creature called an ‘Emu’
“Don’t feel too bad,” the prisioner mocked. “We lost a war to the Emu’s as well.”
Now with only 4 members of their squad left, including themself, Tar’van had learned to listen to the prisoner, to be wary of the simplest of creatures. This human was of the sub-species of ‘Zookeeper’ after all.
The ‘Zookeeper’ looks off to the distance, where the creature is.
“It’s a kangaroo, leave it be and you’ll be fine.” Tar’van nods, a human signal of acknowledgement if they are correct. The human smiles a bit.
“That creature cannot possibly harm us.” Tar’van’s squadleader protests. “It is so docile. I will aproach it and bring back it’s head to show this human is a fearmongering liar.”
The human reels back, a look of disgust crosses their face and anger passes through their eyes.
“Fucking do it mate, I dare ya.” The human hisses. The squad leader puffs up their hoinn gland, a sign of pride to their species, and aproached the so called ‘Kangaroo’.
“This will be unpleasant.” A squadmate mutters as they watch their leader raise their fist and bring it down on the creature. The ‘Kangaroo’ looks a little stunned by the impact, before it raises itself upon its strong tail and uses its powerful heind legs to launch their squadleader backwards through the air.
Their squadleader lands upon the ground, unmoving with black blooded oozeing from them. It appears Tar’van is the squads leader now.
“I don’t know what they expected.” the human says, smugness filling their tone. “Kangaroos are fucking shreaded. 8-pack and all.”
Tar’van steps forward to the human, whom inches back in a sign of fear as Tar’van pulls their blade from its holster, and in their first act as leader, frees the human of the bonds around their hands.
“Please,” Tar’van bags. “Get us back safely.”
@kryallaorchid, you guys really lost a war to emus? Why was it necessary?
oh, mate, you never mess with the emus.
(Jesus christ. Dont get us started on kangaroos)
They had faced Emu’s. They had lost one in the battle but had experienced them. But this was no emu.
Looking to their guide, they all stare in horror as his face changes from calculating to fear. Pure, heart consuming horror as he stares at the large bird. “Cassowary…” They mimic him in fear. Squawking the horrific name as another joins the first in the mad run towards them.
The only ones to survive was the native guide and Tar’van. The guide was carrying the soldier over his shoulder as they made their way back to the settlement. Tar’van was a wreck. Periodically alternating between rocking in complete silence and whispering broken words in horror. When they consulted the native all he said was “Its spring…. Magpie season…”
“Listen up, troops. This armour upgrade has been tested both in the laboratories of the best Imperial military scientists and in the field. We are impervious to the stings of any insect on this hellhole of a planet, striped or not! We can brave the perils of its wildlife, and conquer it at long last! Revenge for our fallen companions! Glory to the Emperor!”
“Excuse me,” the native Terran guide speaks up in a tired tone, and the squad’s cheers die on their lips. “This is Japan. You haven’t seen what–”
“Silence, worm! No sting can penetrate this plating!”
The guide tries to warn them once again, merely earning a blow that throws them to their knees. The troops set out, morale high, certain in their ability to brave the wildlife now and thirsting for vengeance against the non-sentient native species. One soldier thumps his fist against a tree. A hollow sound follows.
In an instant, the soldier is the centre of a storm of the striped insects. At first, no one pays it any mind. Their little stings cannot penetrate the new plating, after all.
But then the soldier falls to his knees, and the squad stares in horror as the insects enclose him in layer upon layer of their own bodies, all moving. The squad’s medic yells a warning at everyone to stay back, watching the readouts of the unfortunate soldier’s armour on their diagnostic screen with undisguised horror. The insects aren’t even stinging. They simply keep moving, one atop the other, and the soldier’s body temperature is slowly rising until he drops to the ground, quite literally cooked alive. The insect swarm takes off, unharmed save for the ones that were crushed when the trooper fell.
Finally asked about what happened, the human sighs. “Japanese honeybees. They do this to wasps, too.”
“How?” You ask. “How has your species dominated this planet?”
The human bares its teeth. A smile, they call it. Something humans do when they are happy. Yet you can’t help but think of all the creatures with the their large fangs and sharp teeth. (What kind of species uses a threat signal as a sign of happiness?)
“Persistence and ingenuity.” The human answers, still smiling.
It doesn’t matter that this one is your prisoner. Humans, you decide, are as terrifying as their planet.
“And scattered about it … were the Martians–dead!–slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, had put upon this earth.”
– HG Wells, The War of the Worlds,1898
I’m picturing aliens going up against a hoard of Canadian geese, or a swan.
I think at that point they’d just give up.
Or fire ants
No one even MENTIONED snakes yet…
This thing gets better EVERY FUCKING TIME I SEE IT.
“Let us try the creatures that the humans keep for domestic companionship”
“Is that a miniature tiger?”
“Why does this human own a small pack of wolves?”
The aliens ask their human captive why small wolves live with them.
“Oh, you mean dogs? Yeah, they’re the only animals that can keep up with us.”
The aliens look at each other in fear. “What do you mean?”
“Oh well that’s why you guys ‘won’ is because humans aren’t super fast or strong. I think my middle school biology teacher called us pursuit predators? It means we evolved to hunt things by following them at walking pace until they had to stop to sleep and then catching up to them then. Dogs are the only animals that can keep up with us. Did you know one time a pack of wolves tailed a herd of caribou for three days straight?”
“Uh… okay, what about these small round things with big teeth?”
“Omg dude no if you give a hamster enought time that little fucker can chew through concrete :)”
The aliens wonder if the surrender of humanity was a trap.
Somebody do sharks or sea creatures next. Giant squids would wreak havoc on their ships.
The aliens have sophisticated technology which pretty much allows them to live underwater, which is something even the inventive humans have never managed. Submarines have nothing on alien submersion pods, which can withstand the crushing pressures of even the darkest depths of the oceans and seas.
The aliens aren’t expecting any difficulties with their underwater expeditions. Of course, that’s when four of the life signs on the central screen simply vanish, like they’d never been there.
Alpha turns on the direct communication lines to the remaining submersion pods, and the only thing they hear through the tinny speakers is screaming.
Alpha resists the urge to turn and stare at the shackled human standing behind them, but Beta, Gamma and Theta have no such compunctions.
The human shrugs. “I mean, we’ve never really been down there so we’re not entire sure, but we’ve heard stories of giant squids and stuff. No smoke without fire, and all that.”
“There can be neither smoke nor fire underwater, human, cease your prattling.”
The human snorts. “It’s a phrase. A metaphor? Man, I don’t know, I studied marine biology, not literature.”
The human is unable to tell them anything useful about what might have happened to the submersion pods, but retrieved footage later shows tentacled behemoths snaking out of the depths of disturbed silt and cold water, and crushing the submersion pods effortlessly, in full view of the outer-hull cameras. The monsters have giant beaks which rip through the organic alloy sheets, and into the bodies of the pod pilots within.
The outer-hull cameras register the blue of fresh spilled blood and gore, at the same time the on-board cameras register screaming and the red glow of critical power failure.
The last thing the aliens can see on the retrieved footage is thin, long, snakelike creatures appearing out of the darkness and gloom, creating their own light and descending upon the remains of their brethren. They are accompanied by creatures that look like plastic bags, but which feed upon the toxic remains of the organic alloy of which the pods were made.
The human appears completely nonchalant – there is no love lost between slave and master. “Wait till you see sharks.”
I’ve seen this post go around a few times, but this time I have some thoughts: 1) This is more or less the plot of Animorphs.
2) Earth has Poison Dart Frogs, we’re clearly a Death World.
3) I’m now imagining them deciding to set up a base on the poles, because life on this planet is clearly dependant on plants. So, that frozen wasteland should be safe of any dangerous megafauna. Cue Polar Bear out of nowhere.
GIANT SQUID.
OH GOD. This is brilliant.
@words-writ-in-starlight ik you’ve reblogged various versions of this but this one has so many more…
MY FUCKING FAVORITE THING OKAY
Of course the aliens are not dumb. So eventually they put their head of operations in some urban area somewhere in western europe, because the humans have long ago killed all the dangerous beasts who used to live there, like bears and wolfs. But then an entire team gets murdered by a grey monstrosity the humans call “elephant” and then one of the dreaded tigers shows up and rippes the head off the consuls body. The vice consul (now new consul, apparently) runs to the human prisoneres in a rage.
“You said those monsters do not live here.”
“I don’t know man”, one of the humans sais. “They aren’t supposed to be here. Maybe they broke out of the zoo.”
And to his horror, the new consul finds out that the humans have brought animals all over the world for fun, and apparently a tiger can sneak up on you anywhere on this god forsaken planet.
me, a femme, tacking a rose and a sports bar gift card onto a fishing line and casting it out into a lesbian bar: find me a butch girlfriend
me, a butch, tacking a rose and a sephora gift card onto a fishing line and casting it out into a lesbian bar: find me a femme girlfriend
Me, a femme, hanging out at the lesbian bar with my butch gf, frantically tangling your fishing hooks together so when you try to reel them in its like the spaghetti scene in lady and the tramp: find eachother you sweet, beautiful, useless lesbians
If the art side of Tumblr doesn’t turn this into a mini-comic then why even does the internet exist
please excuse my quickie doodles, Tumblr
it got absolutely better
IT GOT GAYER
Could be gayer-
You are absolutely right
Decided to do a part 2 since it’s been widely requested
Death By Catchphrase 