Mara Lynn Johnstone

[Mara Lynn Johnstone]

“Oh, you write books?”

Yup! And I love it.

Here’s the published list so far, with relevant tags for all the extra content and ramblings that inevitably end up here.

ALT

“If you set Dirty Jobs in outer space, mixed in some Mythbusters, and gave Buster the crash-test dummy the ability to sass back like a cross between Bender and Murderbot… you’d get something like this book.”

“Spectacular Silver Earthling” is available wherever books are sold!

Relevant tags:
Hubcap the robot
Hubcap the Egomaniacal Sassmaster
(there’s some crossover there)
Spectacular Silver Earthling

ALT

“When space poachers release Earth animals on an alien world, threatening a fragile new alliance, they anger the wrong people. A veterinarian, an accountant, and a furious sign-language-fluent gorilla are coming for them.”

“A Swift Kick to the Thorax” is also available everywhere!

This is the one I’ve been posting backstory snippets for weekly, from when the main character was traveling the galaxy working on a courier ship.

There are also comic strips, which take place between the stories and the book. I should really draw more of those. They’re fun.

Relevant tags:
A Swift Kick to the Thorax
The Token Human (series name; originally just the comics)
Robin Bennett (the main character)

ALT

Do you long to write fascinating fiction, but struggle to find a concept that feels worthy?

Do you have piles of unfinished stories, and eagerly await the next shiny new idea?

Do you have writer friends to inflict assistance/benevolent torment on?

Good news! I have precisely one bazillion ideas for stories that someone ought to write, and I’ve selected 100 of them to collect in this book. You may recognize some from my old posts here, but not all.

“Story Seeds for Fantastical Trees” promises to grow you a forest of compelling ideas, ranging from wizards both wise and foolish, to aliens seeking dinosaurs, to a robot that lets a vampire into the house (possibly on purpose).

Relevant tag:
writing prompts
(buckle in; this one is A Lot)

ALT

“In science fiction, humans are usually boring compared to other races: small, weak, no claws or tentacles, and no special abilities to speak of. What if instead, we were talked about by the other aliens? 28 authors have contributed to make sure you never think of humans as boring again!”

“We’re the Weird Aliens” is the “humans are weird / humans are space orcs” collection that had everyone excited in 2020.

Relevant tags:
humans are weird
humans are space orcs
(and a bunch of others, but mostly that first one)
(and you’ll find the Token Human stuff tagged here too)

ALT

“An old street sweeper takes on the shadowy invaders responsible for a plague of amnesia, while saddled with a dodgy memory, a mysterious past, and a reflection that talks back and makes fun of him.”

My first published book! I still love it. Magic, memory problems, and walloping ruffians with a broom. What’s not to love?

Relevant tags:
Sweeping Changes

And that’s everything so far, as of August 2023!

Not counting the anthologies that other people put together, which I have stories in. (I’ll point you to my website for those.)

I am definitely working on more books. So many more. I write as a way of going on adventures, and I will happily take you with me.

[Mara Lynn Johnstone]

It’s nice to read your old writing and still crack yourself up. I forgot that in my “centaurs confused by human butts” story, I gave the human a name inspired by Sir Mix-a-lot.

[Mara Lynn Johnstone]

[marlynnofmany]

Today in "Where Do You Get Your Ideas?" I have tried to write "hearing aids," but wrote "herring aids" instead.

Now that's several stories in one.

Maybe they're Babelfish things that you stick in your ear so they can whisper to you all the sounds you have trouble hearing on your own?

Cochlear implants for fish?

Something else?

[marlynnofmany]

chennnington: Cochlear implants more like coelacanths implants

Taking notes for someday writing a mermaid story full of puns

[Mara Lynn Johnstone]

[secretmellowblog]

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

ALT

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[Mara Lynn Johnstone]

[pancakeke]

I think it would be pretty sick to have pneumatic tubes (like at bank drive thrus) in my house but I can't come up with a single use case for them in a residence. though thinking about it conjured the idea of putting an empty cup from my desk in one to send it to the kitchen sink, where it would be thrown with force and shatter on impact. and that's pretty funny.

[marlynnofmany]

Two uses:

• throwing toys for the pets/toddlers to chase
• absurd slapstick

[Mara Lynn Johnstone]

[moss-wizard]

What a year this week has been.

[we-dont-matteratall]

It’s Monday.

[jacuwi]

It sure as hell is.

[actualaster]

The earlier in the day Monday you reblog the funnier this gets

[marlynnofmany]

The fact that this was posted in 2019 makes me go “Oh, you sweet summer child. Enjoy your weeks that only last a year.”

[Mara Lynn Johnstone]

Seeing Faces

It’s rare when we get a shipment to deliver that’s not packaged somehow — either in Earth-standard boxes, another world’s version of shipping crates, or a livestock pen of some kind. Even that bunch of alien trees had been thoroughly wrapped at the bottom. But this collection of machinery parts didn’t have so much as a layer of cling-wrap on it. I guess the owners figured these things were sturdy enough not to need it.

They were probably right. The metal chunks were heavy. I tried to guess what they were made for as Blip and Blop muscled the biggest ones onto a hover sled, clearing the way for Paint and me to gather up the smaller pieces. Captain Sunlight bid the customer farewell and shut the cargo bay door.

“I think these look like vertebrae,” I said to Paint. “Greasy vertebra. Ew. I’m going to need a new shirt.” The offworld engine oil of whatever didn’t seem acidic at least, so that was nice. I sighed about the black smears.

“Strange vertebrae,” Paint said, juggling her own armload of odd shapes that didn’t seem to be rubbing off on her orange scales. Not that I was jealous or anything. “There would need to be a dual spinal cord.” She tapped a claw on one of the holes.

[Mara Lynn Johnstone]

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy writing a narrator who doesn’t bother with a lot of dignity? I get to write things like “She stood proudly to her full height (armpit level), and declared…”

[Mara Lynn Johnstone]

[marlynnofmany]

Hey, question: I skipped a few weeks of posting stories, and now if I copy and paste anything, the line breaks disappear.

Can anybody tell me what unholy workaround I need to do this time, instead of pasting the whole story one paragraph at a time?

[marlynnofmany]

Update: I can copy and paste things written in TextEdit, but not in Pages.

No, I can't copy it into TextEdit, then copy and paste it into Tumblr. Nor can I export it into TextEdit, then copy it. The computer KNOWS that the text was originally written in Pages, and it is NOT HAVING IT.

[marlynnofmany]

Further development!

If I use the find/change function to trade the indents/tabs in the original document for the html code for a paragraph break (< p > with no spaces), then it works!

This is very stupid and I’m taking notes for later.

So glad you all could come with me on this journey.

[Mara Lynn Johnstone]

[marlynnofmany]

Hey, question: I skipped a few weeks of posting stories, and now if I copy and paste anything, the line breaks disappear.

Can anybody tell me what unholy workaround I need to do this time, instead of pasting the whole story one paragraph at a time?

[marlynnofmany]

Update: I can copy and paste things written in TextEdit, but not in Pages.

No, I can’t copy it into TextEdit, then copy and paste it into Tumblr. Nor can I export it into TextEdit, then copy it. The computer KNOWS that the text was originally written in Pages, and it is NOT HAVING IT.

[Mara Lynn Johnstone]

Hey, question: I skipped a few weeks of posting stories, and now if I copy and paste anything, the line breaks disappear.

Can anybody tell me what unholy workaround I need to do this time, instead of pasting the whole story one paragraph at a time?