Elly Bangs
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ellybangs.bsky.social
Elly Bangs
@ellybangs.bsky.social
3.1K followers 660 following 1.9K posts
Author of the apocalyptic cyberpunk novel UNITY, available in bookstores and libraries near you. Short fiction and more at elbangs.com. Queer and trans. Loneliness elemental. (She/her)
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ellybangs.bsky.social
J. Frank Parnell's radiation monologue from Repo Man (1984): "Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense! Everybody could stand a hundred chest x-rays a year. They oughta have 'em, too."
November 9, 2025 at 6:23 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
My writing career summed up in one image:
A Furby smoking a cigarette and staring blankly into the distance, with the image of a burning city overlaid like a PTSD flashback, and the text caption "It is what it is"
October 2, 2025 at 5:57 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
If you see this, quote with the energy you bring to BlueSky.
A 1970s-style public awareness poster from Scarfolk Council Civil Defence titled "Protect & Survive & Be Merry", in which a small child draws a mushroom cloud in the frost on a window pane. It says "In the event of a nuclear strike this Christmas, 1. Do not have snowball fights with fallout ash. Do not make a fallout snowman. 2. If you run out of food, eat the Christmas tree but first remove tinsel, baubles and other ornaments. Rub mulled wine into irradiated gums. 3. Package deceased family members in discarded wrapping paper. Do not use ribbons. Use spare gift tags as corpse identification toe tags."
September 16, 2025 at 4:40 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
What poster did you have hanging in your room as a kid?
Movie poster for the early 2000s restoration of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927)
September 13, 2025 at 11:41 PM
ellybangs.bsky.social
How my perception of people has evolved over the course of my life.
A graph of how the author's perception of humanity has evolved over the course of her life, with people broken into four categories: truly good (very thin throughout), imperfect but basically good (a steadily shrinking segment), naturally inclined to goodness but evil in practice (a steadily growing segment), and iredeemably evil (an exponentially growing segment)
September 10, 2025 at 6:35 PM
ellybangs.bsky.social
You're having a dinner party with characters from Star Trek. What four shapeshifting women are you inviting?
The shapeshifting "Salt Vampire" from ST:TOS S1E1 Iman, the shapeshifting Chameloid from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Anya, a shapeshifting allasomorph from ST:TNG S2E10 Ardra from ST:TNG S4E13, who doesn't physically shapeshift but does project cool disguises using holography
September 4, 2025 at 6:02 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
If you see this post a wizard
Photograph of a raccoon waving its paws around a large floating soap bubble, with a Tumblr-style caption that reads "HE IS DOING...... SPELLS......"
August 21, 2025 at 6:31 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
The "fighter vs. giant" meme where the fighter is labeled "JB's shame over disinforming children about the holocaust" and the hundred-foot-tall giant is "my shame over that time I was a jerk to a stranger when I was 14 years old in like 1997"
August 20, 2025 at 7:01 PM
ellybangs.bsky.social
I made this in January when the board was still empty and here's where things stand now.
A bingo card of catastrophes that could reasonably happen during the current US presidential administration. Squares currently checked off: concentration camps, Trump-Musk Feud, free space, martial law imposed. Squares highlighted to show they're pending but not yet checked off: marriage equality repealed, new nuclear arms race, major economic collapse.
August 12, 2025 at 5:27 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
So it turns out the sound of even a tiny submarine imploding under two miles of water is so loud that you can hear it clearly all the way up on the surface. It makes sense, but I honestly wouldn't have imagined it that way.
Excerpt from the USCG report on the Titan submersible implosion: "[...]at a depth of 3346.28 meters [...] the TITAN suffered a catastrophic implosion, resulting in the immediate loss of all lives on board. Two seconds later [...] heard a 'bang' emanating from the ocean's surface, which the investigation later correlated to the TITAN's implosion."
August 9, 2025 at 12:04 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
My second double feature results in the theater's permanent closure after the few attendees who stick out the entire evening slip into comas and die of sheer depression (although these are both important films that deserve to be extensively seen and discussed!)
The Day After (1984), an American film accurately depicting global thermonuclear war Threads (1984), a British film accurately depicting global thermonuclear war
July 21, 2025 at 5:01 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
You’ve inherited a movie theater, what’s your first double feature?

This potential combo has been on my mind a lot recently for some reason.
The Brother from Another Planet (1984), starring Joe Morton as a lone extraterrestrial who gets stuck on Earth The Man who Fell to Earth (1976) starring David Bowie as a lone extraterrestrial who gets stuck on Earth
July 21, 2025 at 5:01 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
me and my book project
A diptych illustration: on the left, luminous, otherworldly pipework and machinery rises under a starry sky with two moons; on the right, a woman sits at a table in her living room, solemnly setting fire to a sheet of paper. Behind her, her orange cat makes a flying leap through a window, crossing the boundary between the two worlds that make up the image. This is the cover art for San Diego Lightfoot Sue, painted by Leo and Diane Dillon.
July 19, 2025 at 4:33 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
This is where I post from
A lone phone booth at the entrance to a long, dark alley in a crumbled part of town: a haven of warm white light islanded in the dim and sickly glow of the street lamps.
July 19, 2025 at 4:24 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
Close-up of two strawberry-rhubarb pies, fresh out of the oven, with the fruit visible through a thick lattice crust dusted in sugar and cinnamon, cooling on a stovetop
July 6, 2025 at 6:04 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
A version of the "illusion of free choice" meme in which a cow contemplates two pathways that lead to the same end, but each pathway is labeled with one of the garbled, unintelligible emotions from the wheel chart created by regurgitative AI.
June 6, 2025 at 6:44 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
What goes on in that creative brain of yours?
A motion-blurred photograph of someone firing a bow and arrow while rolling rapidly downhill through the woods on a plastic carousel horse mounted on wheels
May 25, 2025 at 4:44 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
The latest object the crows have left for me in the birdbath:
A Panda Express fortune cookie fortune that says "YOU ARE IN THE COMPANY OF EXCEPTIONAL FRIENDS -- ENJOY"
May 24, 2025 at 4:11 PM
ellybangs.bsky.social
It's 2023. A dramatic disaster surrounds Worldcon.
It's 2024. A dramatic disaster surrounds Worldcon.
It's 2025. A dramatic disaster surrounds Worldcon.
Meme image of Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen sitting on a rock on mars
May 1, 2025 at 2:14 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
describe yourself with a building
A painting by Sacha Goldberger, depicting a dusty roadside diner somewhere in the American Southwest. In the distance, flying saucers careen through the sky and blast the joshua-tree-stubbled landscape with destructive energy beams. In the foreground, a few people stand in the open doors of their 1960s-style cars, staring at something outside the frame.
April 15, 2025 at 6:15 PM
ellybangs.bsky.social
Show me a picture on your phone that has your energy that isn’t a selfie.
A highly detailed woodcut illustration of a person with the head and antlers of an elk sitting despairingly on one of several stumps of cut-down trees in the middle of a dark forest.
April 13, 2025 at 6:31 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
Seems like prayer wheels don't work quite the way she believed, though? I don't know about motorizing it, but wrathful protective energy sure sounds like music to my ears right about now, tbh
Wikipedia article on prayer wheels: "The practicioner most often spins the wheel clockwise, as the direction in which the mantras are written is that of the movement of the sun across the sky. On rare occasions, advanced Tantric practitioners such as those of the Senge Dongma, the Lion-Faced Dakini, spin prayer wheels counterclockwise to manifst a more wrathful protective energy."
April 11, 2025 at 4:46 PM
ellybangs.bsky.social
He could fix me.
David Lynch on set holding a megaphone and telling the cast, "Okay, let's try that again, but this time good."
April 6, 2025 at 4:56 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
The road is long, but it leads to the only places worth being. Wishing you fortitude and defiant joy on this #TransDayOfVisibility.
The OP, a white trans woman in her late 30s, on the shoulder of a winding highway, at the top of a long hill in the woods. Her hair is braided to the side. She wears bicycling gear and a purple bandanna. She is smiling, exhaustedly.
March 31, 2025 at 6:04 AM
ellybangs.bsky.social
Holding it together at work while being aware of the news
Edward John Poynter's 1865 oil painting "Faithful unto death", depicting a Roman soldier patiently standing guard over a stone archway in the city of Pompeii while citizens behind him lie dead on the ground or run while trying in vain to shield their heads from falling globs of lava. The soldier is staring directly toward the light source, presumably the volcanic eruption itself, which reflects in his armor and casts a motion-blurred shadow on the ground behind him.
March 27, 2025 at 4:57 PM