Challenge #02556-G001: Tearful Appreciation
“Are you alright?” The same question they got lots of times when tears would fall down their cheeks. Of course, they understood the Galactics were not used to seeing a human crying when nothing was wrong, obviously. They were sitting with their friends watching a video that showed incredible sunrises and sunsets from various worlds with a background for these wonders being the sound of an orchestra increasing the richness of the experience. And, as always, they wiped their cheeks and said softly to their friends. “It’s… just.. so beautiful.” – Anon Guest
Human Pal was an emotional cryer. As in, more than the standard emotion made hir weep. Tears sprang readily to hir face at the drop of a hat. Not just sadness or anger, but also joy, wonder, and pure aesthetic adoration. The old term for it was ‘crybaby’. Newer, more understanding terms include “hyper-responsive tear ducts” or the more abbreviated, “tearfully emotive”. Pal is… unusual, even against the Human baseline for unusual Human behaviour.
Thus, when ze enters a new place, ze prefers to introduce hirself and hir weepy eyes to as many people as possible. Ze also introduces all the concepts via the local free Infonets. Nevertheless, for the first two months of a new habitat, the one question everyone in her new community asks is, “Are you all right?”
Fortunately livesuits have chemanalysis built into their liquid vacs, so when out on a mission, the crew need only check their HUDs for status updates. The very instant the Galactic Alliance learned that Human tears had different chemical makeups depending on the emotion behind them, they added chemanalysis to tear vacs in every human-compatible livesuit. It was important information, helpful to those who might miss other cues. Outside of a livesuit, however, the question always remained.
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Challenge #01950-E126: What is Life and What is Real — Steemit
They were just shapes on a page. They should very clearly not be so impactful. They were the written word. They were pictorial representations of impossible things. They were imagination. They weren’t real. And yet…
There he was. Hiding away from the world because these particular shapes on a page had reached a spot that regular, everyday people could not make an impact on. These unreal things, these abstractions of reality, had hit his hidden heart. They had found the chink in his armour and now he was weeping from an entirely fabricated pain.
He tried to choke it down. Squash it. Tell himself over and over again that it wasn’t real. It was a series of abstractions. Symbols that had no meaning but that which was assigned to it. That he could close the pages and freeze the action his brain had supplied. And all his efforts failed.
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Okay, I think we might all need a bit of a break…
Darkfic can be… intense for many.
Yeah, yeah, I know some folks find darkfic hilarious, but I don’t know anyone who laughed at any darkfic I’ve written. YMMV, etc. etc.
It was strange for me, re-reading all of that and riding an emotional rollercoaster of my own making. Especially since I was in a personal emotional trough at the time.
Don’t worry, it’s over now.
But I did learn some very important lessons:
1- People dealing with depression should not read darkfic.
2- People dealing with self-doubt of any variety should also avoid darkfic.
3- Hugs can do a lot to help a person out of depression and self-doubt.
4- Do not send Walls of Text concerning depression and self-doubt to spouses who have literally been working all night.
5- No matter how vicious my Dark Side is being, I can still do the things that need to be done.
So the next fic I queue up here will probably be a piece of fluff, waff or a PWP. And yes, callmegallifreya, I will also queue the one I think you’re talking about. I have a few Kurt-gets-adopted-into-the-circus fics….
This is as good a place as any to ask my loyal readers: which of my fics do you wish to see next?