Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
A knight in shining armor outsmarts the dragon and climbs to the highest tower, only the princess locked away at the top of the tower is… a lesbian.
“Oh thank god,” Thomas says, laying his helmet down. “Because I kept thinking on the climb up here that this was going to be a really awkward first meeting, and its stupid to expect you to fall in love with me just because I saved you.”
Lucinda gives him a surprised look. “You’re rather weird. Usually I get guys that demand I fall in love with them because they ‘saved’ me. Which by the way, you didn’t actually do.” She jabs a thumb towards the direction of the dragon. “She’s trained. I tell her to keep assholes away from me, but if I tell her to let you in, she won’t do anything to you.”
“Oh.” Well now he feels a bit better. “But um, the whole lesbian thing? I uh… god this is going to sound weird, but would you consider dating my sister if I brought her to you?”
Lucinda blinks, opens her mouth, and then shuts it. She finally settles on, “Is your sister cute?”
“Um, I don’t know? I mean to me she is, because she’s my sister. But um.”
“Describe her.”
“Red hair, freckles, five foot… two, I think? Likes to make dresses and pretty headdresses out of flowers, her favorite activity is scrapbooking. She’s nineteen and looking for a nice girl to settle down with.”
Lucinda admits, she sounds tempting. “Fine, I’ll meet her. But why are you acting as the go-between for your sister’s love life, exactly?”
Thomas grimaces. “Dad wants to marry her off, and she’s… kind of a lesbian too. Except dad thinks if he throws her at the right dick, she’ll suddenly want that, so… yeah.”
Lucinda cackles. “Oh my god, you climbed a tower to wingman for your sister?”
“Um, yes?”
She stands, brushes her dress off. “I like you. Show me this cute little sister of yours. We’ll take the dragon - let’s see what that old man of yours thinks when a stolen princess shows up riding a dragon wanting to marry his daughter.”
what the fuck dude this is awesome i want this too now
Okay, but what about those deep sea fish that produce light at a wavelength that *only they can see.* Predators that can somehow sense you in a completely undectable and unfathomable manner to you; they might as well be psychic.
YES, EXACTLY–vision is SUCH an asspull?? Sometimes it’s “"dark”“ and we can’t see anything. And also we’re impaired for plot reasons! Sometimes ALIEN WEAPONRY or otherwise-innocuous ship components are ”“too bright”“ and we yell and try to hide, subject to some sort of obscure, tortuous imperative. The rest of the time we can UNERRINGLY tell when anyone is trying to play pranks on us, the names and emotional/physical status of EVERY SINGLE BEING IN THE ROOM (or, when outside civilized warrens, ”“line of sight”“)–and yes, of course, can’t forget about our nigh-mythical fighting arts revolving around insane dodging skills.
And SNIPING. And also, god, fuck–don’t forget about completely arbitrary “”””atmospheric disturbances””” (fog, smoke–the new “ionic interference”) ALSO plottasatically rendering our abilities moot.
Plus, some people have more powerful Vision than others, but some people have a very short effective range of Vision. However, humans have come up with devices that “change the angles of refraction” of the “light” so that the naturally impaired have their skills enhanced–but they can always be knocked off their faces or be broken.
Also some people are terrible at normal Vision work, but have excellent night vision and are skilled at working under adverse conditions.
Oooh, and human art is almost entirely Vision based. Think about non-seeing aliens trying to access the majority of human art!
IM!!! SCREAMING!!! GLASSES. Glasses are SUCH another great Weird Alien Gimmick. God–you get all used to your Human friend and their bizarre abilities, you just start to really trust in and rely on them in tight places and problem-solving a little bit, then you get fucken marooned on a fucken planetoid somewhere and they just in this very small little voice, after you have pulled them from the wreckage and sat down to go over your options, inform you that they’ve lost their glasses.
Oh my god and an episode where we’re up against Evil Humans and our heros turn to their humans like ‘you can see them, right, you can tell when they’re near? you can counter them?’ and our hero is genuinely shaken and worried— they’ve got high-tech military mechanical enhancers, the devices strapped to their heads let them see anywhere, they can operate in near-absolute ‘darkness’, they can operate in near-lethal ‘brightness’, they can see through walls— not doors, not glass, but walls.
Then we have a heroic scene where the crew’s human is the scrappy, desperate underdog for once instead of the cool and collected superbeing. It is super cool. The human and the captain probably mack wildly on one another in medbay after this. Roll credits.
Person 1: I dunno, dude. This ‘light’ stuff sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me. I mean, how do we know it’s even real?
Person 2: Seriously, how can something be a wave and a particle? That doesn’t even make sense.
Mysterious Human: Even if you cannot perceive the light, you can feel its warmth–
Person 1: Oh my god, please shut it with the mystical hoo-hah. You’re insufferable.
Mysterious, somewhat exasperated Human: the ‘light’ enters the sensitive paired apertures in our faces, passing through biological lenses and chambers to stimulate specific nerves we call ‘rods’ and ‘cones’. one set of nerves tells us the volume of light we’re perceiving, while the other estimates the wavelength frequency. the total input creates in our mind a continuous sonarscape of immense complexity, where we can perceive ‘textures’ that are impossible to understand with mere sound or touch. this is why my people’s communication devices are small, flat, silent boards: we ‘read’ the patterns of light they emit as language and ‘watch’ the patterns of light they emit as sonarscapes.
Captain: okay…. sounds fake, but okay…
And they just keep on making up new bullshit rules for how light works, like
Navigator: Warp drive engaged. We are approaching 90% of the Lorentz limit.
Human: What now?
Navigator: Oh, uh, it’s really complex, but lemme try. So, matter can only move so fast through space, right? Like absolutely, nothing can ever ever possibly go faster than like about 3 hundred million meters per second–
Human: Ah yes. The speed of light.
Navigator: …oh for fuck’s sake.
Captain: My god! Time! Has… frozen!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
Captain: What?
Human: Remember how light is a wave and a particle?
Captain: Yes, we mention this every episode.
Human: Yeah, light’s frozen along with everything else. I can’t see shit.
Captain: My god! Our sonar doesn’t work either! The soundwaves— they can’t propagate through this frozen air! We’ll have to use just our whiskers!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
The fanfiction for this show has to be amazing.
“Shh. Don’t try to hide your needs, Captain,” Hue Mann soothed. “My sight has told me all about your traumatic memories of the war.”
“What?” Captain gasped. “But…how…?”
“The light knows all,” explained Hue. “Time slows down at the speed of light. It sees all of the past..and all of the future.”
“And what is it telling you now?” questioned the Captain.
Hue leaned in close. “It tells me, ‘Mate with them now, you lovestruck fool!”
“Damn you, Hue Mann. Damn you and your penetrating ‘eyes.’”
“Oh,” breathed Hue, voice husky and sexual. “That’s not all my eyes can…penetrate.”
goddamn, you people amaze me.
I love the idea that the protag species has telepathy as ‘boring normal standard’ senses and they can’t understand why human thoughts seems so strange, fragmented, occasionally blank… until they realise that a great of human thought is ‘visual’ and so can’t be heard…
“Lori, what do your Human eyes see?”
“Coupla billboards, and it looks like it might rain.”
This keeps getting better
This is so cute. Your human crewmember is getting a crush on another human. Time to observe the humans’ weird yet endearing courtship rituals.
“Tell me all about them! What do you like about them?”
“Well, they have these amazing eyes…”
“Yeah? Better at the the wavemapping thing than yours?”
“…I don’t know how good their eyes are at seeing. They’re just this beautiful shade of brown.”
“Wait. You wavemap each other’s wavemapping organs? And have opinions about what nice frequencies they refract the waves at?”
“Yes? What’s so strange about this?”
“I thought your ‘vision’ was passive. Do you listen to each other’s ears too? And like the smell of each other’s noses?”
“Like you’ve never touched someone’s whiskers with your whiskers.”
my fav trope is like, nonhuman characters not understanding human needs/customs but still being super supportive of their human companion
“look what I found while exploring this planet’s surface!” “kilrak please I’m trying to sleep” “ah yes your human circadian rhythm. *stage whispering* I am supposed to be quiet during this time in your rhythm, yes?”
“the book I purchased on ragnok V says humans require physical touch when upset. therefore, I shall engage in a ‘hug’ with you.” *supremely awkward five-armed hug ensues*
*human sneezes* “OH MY GOD SIL'EEN GET THE MEDIC OUR HUMAN IS DYING”
“this pamphlet I received recently says that humans require companions and packmates in the form of small earth creatures. you should have told me this before we departed earth, but it is no worry. we will have to stop at the next trade planet to get you one of these ‘cats’ or ‘dogs’.”
imagine the aliens really purchasing a kitten for one of their rough and world-weary scifi badass human companions and watching in helpless wonderment what ensues
“she’s been cuddling that small animal for the past fifteen minutes just going ‘kitty, kitty’. did we - did we break our human?”
a more seasoned alien puts one of their tentacles around the younger one as the rest of the team gathers to watch their human make kissy noises.
“no, kilrak,” the alien says. “we did good.”
“Human-Steve! I have heard that today is the anniversary of your hatching! According to my human culture pamphlet, it is customary to set a sugary pastry on fire while chanting your species’ growth incantation and presenting sacrifices wrapped in shiny paper. I am afraid to ask, in case this ritual is sacred and this request therefor insensitive… but may I be allowed to participate? It sounds much more fascinating than molting.”
“Human Steve, I have read about your ritual dance called ‘The Hokey Pokey,’ performed mostly at mate-bonding celebrations after the guests reach an elevated level of intoxication. But Human Steve, how do I know WHICH left foot to put in, put out, and shake all about? I do not… Human Steve, why are you laughing?”
“Human-Steve, you are… you are eating, but it is not one of your ritual fueling times. Are you dying? Is everything alright? Have you not been receiving enough sustenance? Do I need to get you better things to eat? Human-Steve, why are you trying to hide that food?”
“Human-Steve, my research has informed me of a grave oversight in your care that I, as your companion, have made! Thus, I have gathered collections of fictional human literature to read aloud at the time of your bed. Which is more to your liking: “The Care and Keeping of Cacti” or “1001 Crossword Puzzles?” Human-Steve? Human-Steve, I am serious.“
One of the things I love the most about this post is how “Human-Steve” makes me think that there is also an alien called Steve in the squad, and I just imagine the first meeting and introduction where there is the human guy introducing himself as Steve and then there is this huge blue guy with like 5 legs and bug eyes and apparently Steve is like a completely regular name on his planet too in some intergalactical coincidence
Going off how the Humans are Space Orcs and “Humans bond with anything despite obvious danger” that annoys the rest of the alien crew, think about them being introduced to earth oceans
After all it’s common to have to always remove their human from unknown likely dangerous life forms despite constant protests and that they were only “playing”
they start to notice that their human never really speaks of their earths sea creatures, which makes sense as the humans organs aren’t equipped to survive in that environment despite being able to “swim” (it is a common theory discussed that humans could survive if given no option to otherwise as that’s what they always seem to do)
curious and nervous, a rookie of the crew, decides to ask (the veterans have learned not to ask about earth as it always ends in confusion and horror)
Only to be told that “they aren’t really sure”, in human speak this can mean many things. One is that they never looked, another is that they were honestly telling the truth.
Confused, they ask again as surely the species that does everything to fulfill their curiosity would surly know what fills 75% of their surface?
Only to be told of creatures that are the length of their ship with a jaw just as wide. Of creatures that glow to attract and trap their pray. And that there was never a pod that was created could withstand the pressure of deepest depths. Or if it could, the visual feed would always disappear within rows of jagged teeth. And that are only the stories that have been proven. There are stories of the old ages, of creatures that could drown you with the sound of their voice, of things only seen in the shadows with a glimpse of sharp teeth.
Humans don’t go in the ocean, they learn. Humans that are made of iron and steel, known to bond with anything, and a curiosity that defies all known logic don’t dare to explore the depths of their own planet.
The crew learn that the only thing to terrify their human are the creatures that lurk in the oceans of their own earth.
Everything must seem tame to them compared to the monster planet that they call home.
And suddenly, things make sense.
I just had to explain what I was cackling at to my roommate. It automatically passes the Laugh Rule.
She found her reluctant fiance, Erstad, brooding out on the rainy moors.
“Is that a baby rabbit?” she asked, observing his huddled form.
“IT’S SIX BABY RABBITS AND YOU CAN’T TOUCH THEM,” replied Ernstad, contriving to look twice his usual size and at least three times his usual fierceness.
