Challenge #02587-G030: Gung Ho
You say “martyr” and I say “I love my family.” Sometimes you have to accept that humans make peace with the concept of sacrificing a life for their loved ones (no matter what species). Get on that bike and RIDE, b@tch. – Ride or Die
This is why Humans are considered insane. Their sense of self-preservation is subservient to the greater good. They can look at an overloaded sled, figure out the importance of the supplies needed at the destination, and throw themselves off for the pursuing predators. Many will grab an axe or a blade and vow to make things difficult, but the result is often the same.
It is more often scattered remains found by the villagers at a later date. Sometimes - rare, celebrated times - it is the sacrifice staggering into the village with extra layers made out of bloody wolf hides.
There is not a mother amongst them who would not die for their child. No parent who would go down fighting just for the chance that their progeny has a chance to escape. There is not one among them who will refuse to go out fighting for their pack. There is nothing more dangerous than a Human who has told the Last Lie. They have nothing left to lose. They call it, “Ride or Die”. It is very often both.
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Challenge #02586-G029: A Friend of a Friend
We love, we protect, and we only want you to carry our own with you when you escape. Please, please, take our tiniest and most vulnerable with you when we sacrifice ourselves for an exit (X1000% if it’s our pets, who can’t even deal with the galaxy we brought them into) —HUMANKIND c/- Protection
“You lot go on, I’ll catch up. Just do me a solid, okay? Make sure Tibbles is safe with you.” Human Fil was torn between what they planned to do and the promise they needed in order to do it.
“Tibbles will be safe with us,” vowed Gork, even though Human Fil’s phlegmatic pet lizard scared five colours of crap out of them. It set off every single one of Gork’s instinctual hazard alerts. Nevermind that the creature had two modes - slow and slower - it felt to Gork like it was a three-Siwu[1] package of concentrated threats.
The Human had told the Last Lie, and the ship was falling apart around them, but Gork kept their word. They got together three of Human Fil’s best friends and gathered up lizard, terrarium, bed and toys. No matter how creepy its skin nor constant its gaze nor unnerving its flicking blue tongue was. The sacrifice did not include the most vulnerable that Human Fil had pack-bonded with.
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Challenge #02585-G028: The Hand on the Tool
A: This blade, with its razor sharp edge, can cleave through flesh and bone easily. Due to the various materials to make this, no blood or grime will stick to this blade.
B: you know out of context that is scary until you realise it’s a Butcher knife. But the way you hold it and the precision you use it is terrifying. – Anon Guest
[AN: I derped and did a prompt out of order. Apologies for the inconvenience.]
Cookie continued chopping zucchini with near mechanical precision and skill. “Aw, you’re not buying into that space orcs nonsense about Humans, are you? I’m cooking ethically-sourced vegetarian food, here.” The knife in question was now placed with precision and care near the chopping board so Cookie could sweep the finished product into the pot. “We don’t even have any nature-sourced protein[1] to cut like that anyway.”
“Nevertheless,” protested Graax. “It’s the way you say it and the way you use it… I know a knife is just a tool, but in the wrong hands?”
“Pfft. I cut myself more than I cut a living being,” scoffed Cookie. Then the shipwide alarms went off. Pirates! Cookie did what any Ships’ Chef would do. They made sure all meals in progress were at a stage where they could wait, and then made sure their knives were sharp. Cookie handed a fillet knife to Graax. “Remember what you were saying about the wrong hands?”
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Challenge #02583-G026: Ma Yub
There are two kinds of parents. There’s the kind that thinks their children should have the experiences that they had when they were a child, and there’s the kind that thinks their children should have something better than that.
The problem with being that second kind, I’ve found, is that it’s hard to give your children something better when you don’t really know what that looks like. – Anon Guest
Bringing up the next generation of cogniscent life is never easy. Certainly, the basic caretaking falls into a pattern. Clean, dress, feed, and hold. Communication in all its forms tends to take place anyway. It’s after the child surpasses the basic needs that the trouble begins, because education will occur whether the parent thinks they’re doing it or not.
The two primary patterns of parenting are Sharing, and Expansion. Sharing includes all the good experiences of the parental childhood into the experiences of the child. Expansion improves on the past of the parent, so that the child has a better life. Easy for some.
Dan knew that he couldn’t Share. Not his childhood, with the terrible neglect and the yelling and the harsh blows for the least infraction. The shouted, “Did that teach you? Did that teach you?” with his parents looming over him. It taught him, all right. It taught him things that it took years of therapy to get over. It taught him what not to do with an iron rod and the threat of hellfire. He was, he hoped and prayed, the very last of the Abused Generation, doing his utmost to see that his children could not ever suffer. So far, so good. It was the next step that had him baffled.
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Challenge #02582-G025: History is a Pane
I see the words tossed around here and there but I I don’t fully understand the impact of the “shattering” does fragment of humanity wander space, or something comical like everything went ape sh*t the moment humans enter the galactic alliance? – Anon Guest
Many don’t understand what the Shattering is, how long it took, and what it did to Human history. For a start, it’s named as if it’s one event, but it’s actually an era in Terran history. When the abundance of ‘deep time’ one-way wormholes in the Sol system were discovered, there followed an era of rapid-fire colonisation. In order to go deep, the colonists had to gather and take with them a certain amount of mass.
This included many surviving historical artefacts, landmarks, and so forth. That is, when the colonisers didn’t use other forms of mass to form the critical closure of the wormhole gateway. Most of which was obtained from the asteroid and kuiper belts. After all, the last thing a group of like-minded people needed when busy making a world in their own image was serial kibbitzing from the very world they just escaped.
The delayed result was chaos. History as Terra knew it… shattered. It was a slow dissolution, working over cycles during the centuries following the discovery of one-way wormholes. The assorted lunatic fringes, weirdoes, and cultural pockets decided that life would be so much better if they built a world of their own, or the controlling mainstream concluded that life would be so much easier if they didn’t have to deal with the aforementioned fringe. Either way, parts of civilisation as it was known went down through time and space to sink or swim on a world of their own making. The relevant parts of history went with them, thus making it easier for the remaining fragments to pretend that the fringe never existed in the first place. In this, it is certainly true that those who fail to learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
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