Status Updates From FTL, Y'all!: Tales From the...

Gonna finish this tomorrow probably

An alien draws upon human love to get a lost prince back to his homeworld. A bunch of would-be looters run afoul of a crazy AI. More heartwarming stories and more grim ones.

The first story with actual aliens, including some kind of eldritch entity that accidentally got sucked into our world via the FTL drive -- and needs to go back home with some help from three friends working together. And a story of a young man with a dream, a washing machine, and parts he bought online via a cracked smartphone. It ends as one would expect in a harsh universe.

After two downer stories, an uplifting one about family reunification made possible by the generosity of two elders who've been to Mars plenty of time and can pass on this trip to let a child see Mom.

Solving an old mystery, and an engineer stranded on a bad jump has a plan.

The stories I enjoy are great but the ones that I find distressing are very distressing haha

Wayhome, Evan Dahm: A dark, troubling, and claustrophobic tale of homesteaders on an alien frontier. Contains interpersonal violence and the slaughter of a beast for food.

My Stars and Garters, by Ainsley Seago: Feels like a response to those ridiculously entitled Victorian LARPers with the blog, remember them?

The Senior Project, by Maia Kobabe: Two high school students work on their projects and grow closer. Cute, but--how do I put this--probably kills a lot of people in service of the happy ending.