#I LOVED that we got to see so many different alien species! not only humans

[hira492]

Look. That episode Mando episode.

Man, i´m not even angry, i´m just disappointed , cause I KNOW how good this show can be. Specially this season that´s, supposedly, gonna revolve around what it means to be a Mandalorian and Mandalore's history 

Din is such an interesting, compeling and complex character and he could be so much more if only THEY- JUST. LET. HIM.

They are completely misunderstanding what´s what drove people to Mando at first. Yes, it´s cute to see this bounty hunter begrudgingly take care of a jedi baby BUT the show is SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT! It was about dissecting this misterious and closed off character who´s being through so much, it was seeing how all that trauma that he has - that made him separate himself from everything and everyone - was what ultimately helped him connect with Grogu. It´s lovely to see him open up little by little knowing he shouldn't, knowing that a goodbye is imminent. It was complex, it had layers. 

And Grogu. I know everyone jokes about how he was just made to sell toys and i thought so as well before starting the show a few years back. I used to really hate him and all the fuss everyone was making around him being a cute baby, but when i finally watched the show, i sat captivated and saw it was so much more. He´s more than just cute baby, he is a survivor ,just like Din, and has lived through so many things. His story is so interesting and he could be much more than a “marketable sw mascot”, but again, THEY ARE NOT ALLOWING THEM THAT!

It´s so frustrating watching this first episode and see both our main characters being reduced to “cute baby” and “dad”. They feel as they have no agency. And damn my brain for making me think this, but i felt, watching this episode, as i felt watching the last Jurassic World movie. Everyone is a diluted version of their character, everyone moves and does whatever the plot and script needs them to do without any explanation or reason to why or HOW they did it and everything just moves SO FUCKING FAST for no reason.

The first 3 episodes of the 1st season were such bangers cause they were the total opposite of this one. They were paced so well, letting viewers experience events along the characters, they made an amazing use of Show not tell (cof cof what do you mean Grogu was away from Din for around a year, Favreau cof cof), they introduced a conflict in a natural and organic way, and most importantly, they trusted the audience to understand what was happening without having a character explain it as we were a bunch of idiots or smth. 

Think about that scene in the 3rd episode when Din decides to take Grogu back from the imperials. We, as an audience, understand (without seeing the guy´s face) what´s going on in his mind in that moment; the doubt, the regret, the decision, everything just through body language, well done cinematography and music. We didn´t need Din or someone else going “you felt bad so you went back for him”, no, we just understood, and the show trusted us to understand that, to come to our own conclussions and understanding of the scene and motivations of the characters. AND WE HAD JUST MET THE GUY.

The difference here from last episode is that they gave us something to work with and, watching the episodes, you understand Din´s final decision.

Now we just don´t know what the hell Din´s thinking, and not because of a mystery or to build tension, it just feels as if Din is a weird NPC that moves the story forward and is there only to show us cool action scenes, cameos and Mandalore lore, without relating to anything. He feels as if he´s just not thinking at all, not as being stupid, but just as if he literally had no mind of his own, no opinions,no feelings, no nothing. And Grogu is just..there, i guess. Being cute and that´s all. 

Also, not as important as the narrative and script issues i had with the episode but, when i first watched The Mandalorian - begrudgingly, i must add, as i actually hated star wars but a friend of mine kept insisting that i gave it a try - i was amazed at how detailed the effects were, how everything felt alive and lived in. I remember rewatching again and again the scene where Din lands the Razor Crest in Arvala 7 and just admire the detail of the dust and water moving with the ship´s power, the way everything felt so real. Everything in the 1st and 2nd season ( i have my issues with the effects in season 2 as well but they´re still okay, imo) felt alive, real. And wow, what a downgrade this episode was.

For a show with a ridiculous budget it´s not showing at all. The kid helmet at the start looked like a toy (i can let it slide cause it´s literally brand new so you could argue there´s no reason for it to not look all shiny and clean), the alligator was okay, i guess, but didn´t feel nearly as real as the  Krayt Dragon from S2, and the rest...to be honest, not surprised at all. I kept getting thrown off by the straight up green screen feel of the Greef vs Random Pirates scene (Also an unnecessary scene, tbh, felt like an escuse for a “cool star wars space battle ™” ). The Mandalorian castle was cool, tho, i guess.

I´m not dissing the people who worked in the show´s Visual Effects at all, btw. I know they can do amazing things, cause they have, i´m sure it was more of a direction and studio issue.

It surprised me how Mando´s episode in TBOBF felt much more interesting, well paced, compelling and true to Din´s character than this episode. 

I know it might be way too early to judge the season as we only have this 1st episode but it´s not looking too good, Mando nation.

I want to be clear, I´m not saying everything sucked, either. I´m just frustrated cause this is my favourite show, it means a lot to me and i just want it to be as good as i know it can be.

[lanawinterscigarettes]

Worried For You (Martha Jones x reader)

Summary: the Doctor wants to go on yet another adventure without any concern for the health of either you or Martha, and you've had enough

Warnings: not really angst but there's mentions of exhaustion and alien attacks so take that as you will, the Doctor is a professional idiot (sorry I love him I promise), reader puts the Doctor in his place for being said idiot, fluffy confession

A/N: there's not nearly enough content for the Doctor's companions out there, so leave it up to me to fix it (requests for the nuwho companions are open btw! if you're unsure whether I write for someone please don't be afraid to ask <3)

Traveling with the Doctor wasn't the worst thing in the world, or the universe, for that matter. If you were asked, though, there were certainly a few things you could do without.

One of the main problems you had was just how often he seemed to get the lot of you into trouble. I mean, once or twice was one thing, but it'd been days, weeks even, since you'd last caught a break.

A dalek attack here, a cybermen invasion there, not to mention all the other random alien species that were hellbent on taking over the universe- it was all getting to be a bit too much. And that was before you had anyone else to worry about.

Usually you'd be fine with him dragging you to and fro with no reason, but you weren't thinking about yourself: you were busy worrying about Martha. Even if you were certain she'd never like you back due to her unrequited crush on the Doctor, you still hated to see her so tired and worn out.

If only he could see that just as well as you could.

"Right, so, we've already hit that galaxy twice this week, and we've been to those clumps of star systems three times in the past month-" the Doctor mindlessly rambled on as he pointed to the holographic map on the TARDIS control panel "-so I think it's safe to say we should probably try something a bit different for this upcoming weekend, yeah?"

"We should try taking a break for once," you grumbled to yourself, your arms crossed as you leaned up against a nearby wall.

"Sorry, what was that?" He questioned curiously as he turned his head in your direction.

"I said-" You went to speak but he cut you off.

"Oh, look, we haven't been there recently! Well, I haven't been there recently, I'm not sure if either of you have been there at all..."

"Doctor, they're right. Maybe we should lay off the adventures, if only for a few days," Martha suggested, and while you were grateful for her input you didn't miss just how tired she seemed when she said it.

He dismissively waved his hand at her. "Nonsense, we'll be fine! Besides-"

This time it was him who was cut off. "Maybe you'll be fine, but we won't," you snapped harshly, growing increasingly irritated with each second that passed. "You forget, we're humans. We're not Time Lords like you. We get tired quicker and wear out much more often."

The Doctor paused, freezing in place. He seemed to be processing your words, clearly not used to someone being so outspoken about putting him back in his place. "Right, yeah... maybe you should do that, then..." he muttered more to himself than you, and if you were in a better mood you might've felt sorry for hurting his feelings.

However, you knew very well there was no other way to get through to him. If you hadn't have stopped him then, he would've kept on ceaselessly with the trips until either you or Martha passed out from exhaustion.

So, instead of checking to see if he was okay, you merely scoffed and began walking down one of the many hallways of the TARDIS, hoping you could get in a quick nap before he inevitably woke you up again. When you heard quick footsteps following behind you, you were tempted to tell him just to shove off, until you heard Martha's voice. "Hey."

You stopped and turned, unable to keep the faint smile off your face that always seemed to form whenever you got to be alone with her. "Hey. What's up?"

She shook her head at your question. "Nothing, just- I was a bit worried for you. I've never seen you snap at the Doctor like that, and I wanted to check in and see if you were alright."

"Oh." You felt your face heat up a bit at her concern. "Yeah, I- I'm fine. I was worried for you, actually," you admitted awkwardly. "I know how tired you must be from all of the running around we've been doing."

"You were worried for me?" She asked in an incredulous manner. "Is that why you were so insistent on us taking a break?"

"Well... yeah." If you didn't feel awkward before, you certainly did now. "I- I didn't want anything to happen to you if we were out somewhere and you got too tired to run away. I care about you. A lot." You inwardly cringed at your choice of words, worried you might've said too much.

Much to your surprise (and delight), Martha gave you a bashful smile and said in response, "I care about you a lot, too. I just didn't realize you felt the same."

"Of course I feel the same. You're amazing, how could I not?" Perhaps you were giving a bit too much of your true feelings away, but you'd already passed the point of no return, so you might as well. "I just never said anything because I thought you fancied the Doctor."

"I did fancy the Doctor," she corrected with a slight eye roll. "But after the last couple of weeks I've had, I think it's safe to say my feelings have went away. At least enough for me to realize there's a much better catch standing right in front of me." Martha took your hands in hers and gave them a gentle squeeze.

A bright smile spread across your face at the gesture, your eyes lighting up as you realized what she meant. "So... does this mean you'd like to be my girlfriend?"

"I'd love to be your girlfriend," she enthusiastically affirmed, grinning from ear to ear. "Come on, let's go lay down somewhere. I'm exhausted."

You let out a soft laugh as you allowed her to take you by the hand and lead you down the hall to one of the bedrooms, where you spent the rest of the day napping while cuddled up close. If the Doctor needed you for anything, he was just going to have to wait. There were much more important things on your mind.

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[sol-consort]

I am once again throwing my mass effect thoughts at you

Feeding people is one of humans many love languages. The first thing we often share from our cultures with each other is our food because we all need to eat, we all love things that taste good, and food can say a lot about a culture. So when humans made it to the Citadel and started mingling with galactic society they’d basically be handing out our snacks and bringing containers of our dishes to work and gatherings to share with anyone and everyone. After a while they’d realize the turians aren’t taking any, when offered it’s rejected, and at first maybe the humans think it’s because turians are still bitter from First Contact but humans still offer anyways. Takes them a bit to figure out it’s because turians can’t eat levo food. Queue humans spending days/weeks painstakingly researching how to adapt their food with dextro substitutes and how to prepare them (and how to keep everything sanitized for the quarians). Next time the human brings a treat to share with their alien co-workers they’ve got two tins of chocolate chip cookies and one of them is dextro. We like feeding our community and peers, making them happy by giving them something sweet, and when the human is present EVERYBODY is getting something to eat.

I still think about that one salarian during the Garrus loyality mission in ME2 who said he loves human food, despite being at an anti-human turian political street speech.

Because if humans are considered diverse, can you imagine how much our culinary dishes are even more diverse? There are different from culture to culture and use so many different ingredients.

We have things for every taste, the complex dishes that mixes so many flavours together, the simple seeming ones that actually require professional level chefs to get it right.

We even cook and make dishes we can't eat, just for our pets because we love them so much. Pet food is a huge market with a lot of science and testing involved in it just to find out which flavours the animals end up liking more. The whole concept of treats was invented because we wanted to share our snacks and chocolate treats with our pets but couldn't since it harms them.

There isn't a field or a craft that a human somewhere isn't passionate about, no matter how nichie or unique. I bet you there are already culinary schools for humans that began having special branches and classes for dextro food and non-hydrating food.

Hanar who are usually reclusive and take centuries to warm up to a species, immediately falling in love with human sea food dishes and the many hydrating fruits we have. Ironically enough, I see them liking any desserts that use gelatine like creme caramel or pudding.

In the Andromeda culture exchange room, at the end of the human introduction VI, they mention to ask a human about ice cream if you ever meet them.

Meaning that aliens don't have ice cream! It's a pure human invention oh my god. A turian in the bar also mentions how the cocktails and drinks were boring and limited before the humans made contact and shared their menus.

How were the aliens even living?? Boring food with boring drinks and no dessert? Fuck yeah we will share our food with them, cooking has always been one of the fundamental traits we associate with our species.

Not only that, it's even a whole love language in humans.

A human can love you so much that they start making you food for lunch and dinner just to make sure you're eating well! Because it makes us happy seeing someone eat something we made, we poured our heart into. Love being the most important ingredient in cooking is the one rule that unites all humans no matter what culture or dish they're making. You can taste the love in food even if it was cooked in a hurry or by someone with no experience, we still eat our loved ones burnt food because we see the effort. Be it the burn marks on their fingers or the dirty dishes piling in the sink, we see clearly how much they tried just to make us something and we smile through the bittertaste and tell them it's good.

Because everyone started at this point, when our food taste horrible and a loved one was subjected to eating it. Or maybe we had to swallow it down. And if we didn't see the love, the potential, we wouldn't have continued on or improved.

Cooking is many things, it's cathartic in nature. It represents family and safety sometimes, luxury and fun other times, resilient and survival and even new beginnings or love confessions.

So many of our holidays centre around food. It goes hand in hand with celebrations.

When it's our birthday, we share a sweet cake with everyone else. When it's an achievement we invite people for a dinner. When it's an average night with friends we go out for drinks.

We bring people snacks when we go out on errands, we keep treats for stray cats or dogs in our pockets, we gift homemade dishes to our new neighbours.

Of course a human is going to accommodate for a turian or a quarian diet. We already accommodate for our friends and their diet limits, be it medical, religious believes or simple taste preference.

I see it happening a lot in C-Sec where turians and humans are common coworkers. Eventually the humans bringing food from home to eat on their lunch break will offer some to their favourite turian coworker. Maybe it's a nervous new guy at work, or maybe it's their grumpy boss with a heart of gold.

Then they realise oh, they can't eat it. So they go back home and the subject gets brought up during dinner with their family when asked about their day at work.

The next day, to their surprise, their spouce packed up a smaller container next to their normal lunch one, labeled "Dextro"

Imagine how surprised the turian is by it when their friendly human co-worker brings it to them saying how their spouce thought of them. The day after it, the humans kid tells their parent they found a snack that's safe for turians and they wanted to share a piece with the turian coworker their parent mentioned before.

The human family inviting the turian to dinner, asking them to bring their family too if they want and sharing a meal together. Making sure the foods are well separated and won't contaminate each other.

Or imagine bringing your turian friend home one day, and your grandma is visiting and she makes a comment on how your friend is as thin as bones and they need to eat more before they leave.

You try to explain how this is how turians normally look but she is having none of it as she searched for a dextro recipe online and tries to whip something up real quick for your friend before they leave.

On another note, think of how funny it is if they could eat earth bird food. Like you're feeding pigeons at the park and a turian comes up and is like "hey I'm feeling a bit squimish...mind if I grab a bit?"

Or you have a pet bird home and go shopping for bird food and your turian friend asks why you're buying so many turian junk food, and that those are overpriced awful tasting brands.

Salarians who never paid cooking or food much mind. Their species dishes are basically those high nutrition cubes and pills we see in future dystopian cartoons. Their lifespan is too short, so they mostly focused on science and technological development.

So the humans with their many different cultures are a literal godsent angels to them. I see them developing a codependent relationship with human culture.

In which salarians relay on human inventions for their luxury and entertainment. Be it our music, movies, food, snacks and videogames. Human dishes become widely popular and a lot of salarian ships start employing human chefs and cooks.

> be a salarian

> culture only focused on technology development

> food tastes like drywall paint

> can't party must study

> speedrun spacetravel

> top of the species in terms of intellectualism but most depressed

> brain had to literally hardwire fast emotion processing to not become too depressed

> must grind for a qt3.14 asari gf

> what are those apes the turians are picking a fight with?

> convince turians to let the apes live

> apes share their cultures

> wtf their food is actually so good

> wtf their music sounds amazing

> wtf now I have a waifu anime gf

> mfw life is suddenly good

[crying-fantasies]

Declaration of a robo-fucker

I think everyone has noticed to this point in my work that, as it is obvious, the many pieces of different transformers media are blended together.

Because every piece of media is valuable, be it north american, asian or whatever that comes, it feeds the little girl that once found something incredible in her uncle's pirated DVD collection when she was 5 years old, the very same little girl that learned English while watching with subtitles in bad quality how Optimus Prime declared that every life matters.

The very same girl that said how much she loved Optimus Prime in school and was bullied for it, with classmates harassing back an forth saying that she wasn't normal for liking a robot, her own teacher telling her parents that the original series for kids wasn't adequate for her age and it was giving strange ideas with inadequate romance.

A kid that was banned from her favorite series, had her poor and innocent uncle be reprimanded for showing a disrespectful cartoon that was giving strange ideas to his way too impressionable niece, an incredible uncle that only wanted to let her know of an alien species that fought for what was right and saw something special in earth and it's people.

A kid that was banned by herself to even think about it again, and if she did, she would do it with shame, one that tried to think about other things while at it because she could still hear the jokes about her and how she would be mother of a microwave.

A little girl that tried to forget but once again found a figment of her interest in the live action movies that, while not the pinnacle for majority, was enough to be accepted in some way, that got every penny in her possession to buy a ticket for herself and still be denied to use it because her parents said it wasn't normal she liked it so much, taking her to the psychiatrist instead of the movie theater while her mother asked God why her daughter couldn't be normal.

She was normal, I'm normal, Just because I like different things doesn't mean I'm that different, maybe not everyone writes about romance between alien robots and humans and that's okay.

So it's okay if I use fragments of the live action movies, be it from the Bumblebee ones or the Bayverse ones, because those were what I could get, especially the BV since my uncle was a fan too and he kept on giving me pirated DVDs under the table during family reunions where we should be normal in their own standards; I remember how the soldiers of NEST risked their lifes, their careers and their future as a whole to bring back Optimus Prime and protect the autobots from other humans, I saw Cade Jaeger risk everything to help the autobots while others said he was a traitor and wasn't normal, I saw Jetfire leave the decepticons for something better, give his life to save a planet in the middle of nowhere just because it was the right thing for him, and in his own words traduced to Spanish: ¿quién quiere vivir una vida llena de odio? (Isn't that what legends are made from?)

No one here is, but we also are, we just don't cut in their correct way of seeing things.

And, yeah, I like some things of the Bayverse, so what? The whole thing isn't perfect, hell, there is no media that's perfect so far because the 100 percent of our community can't agree in the same one, everyone has their own tastes, so don't go shaming me for liking these movies, and I'll keep on using some references in my works with them, you can ignore it or you can just stay away from my Tumblr, is as simple as that, there is no necessity to put the anonymous button to tell how lame my taste is or how ridiculous I'm for bringing up things in the movie or even dare to tell me my work sucks for those little things or to put it down from internet, because internet is eternal, nothing in there can be deleted forever, and it doesn't matter how many times you tell me that you like my content but hate those parts and even have the gall to insult me for it or tell me you'll steal my account to make it right to your tastes, my work will be safes somewhere of that im sure, and why do you want this account?! It isn't even more than a girl trying to create something she likes while other people also like it!

I love the live action movies because those reconnected me with something dear for me, I love the animated ones and I love the comics! All break my heart when someone dies, of course! Who didn't cry at least once when a loved character is gone?! But this is my fiction, this is my alternative universe, and I just want them to be happy and if I can then so be it.

So yeah, I've posted more than ever to spite you, because grow up or whatever, people won't do what you demand them for just because you want it, and yeah Cade and NEST and Lennox and Epps and many other characters of the movies exist in my AU! One way or another because I liked their characters and how they stay with the transformers because I would do the same if I could, help them as I could.

But everything is fiction and even now I'm facing and struggling to help people in a war that doesn't have feet or head and that's miles away from me, and it makes you ask how I can't do better or what the hell I'm supposed to do, which is stronger nowadays since I saw someone post a beautiful drawing of Optimus Prime (you know who you are and let me tell you again, your work made me cry in my path to work because yeah my life suck to it's down degree but there's people out there that are really suffering and need more help) declaring the freedom of every sentient being, and everyone should have freedom to do what they want for as long as it doesn't damage someone else, I just realize that there are better things to do and focus your energy on than harass me when you don't even know who I am.

Everyone has the right to post what they want as long as it doesn't hurt someone else, I don't want to hurt you, whoever you are, I just want you to realize how wrong it is to pester someone in what they are interested just because it isn't your taste, I'm sure you like something similar and that's great, but you can't force me to be like you, and I'm not forcing you to be like me, you can go to other places to search what you like and that's fine.

This is a safe place, I want it to remain like that by deleting every message of yours and be done with it.

[s0domizer]

do you think Spock ever met Amanda’s side of the family?

How do you think they reacted?

What do they think of Sarek? (My thoughts) I think we have skewed perspective on how humans react to aliens, because we basically just see Starfleet officers. I think some humans could be resentful of how much other worlds have “influence” earth. Like the ufp is only like 100 years old? Especially Vulcan who have touch telepathy and never tell anyone anything EVER. They just cool with that? *press x to doubt*

Also, how are you? :D

first of all, THANK U. babies first ask im so happpyyy!!! something really pos just happened in my life so im good!! my year has been very 📉📉 so im glad its finally going 📈 thank u! how are u!!<3

THE QUESTION IS SO INTERESTING BECAUSE IVE ACTUALLY BEEN THINKING ABT THAT A LOT!!

i dont think amandas family took too kindly to her marriage. like you said, the federation is very young and to the average human, aliens and space still are not as normal as they are to our main little space guys!

i think personally, that amandas family probably wanted the best for her, and wanted to see her happy and so they let her go, even if not completely happy with that. the idea of her marrying a man that is so fundamentally different to them (species) probably freaked them out. sarek being an ambassador eased their minds a little bit tho, he might not be human but at least he respects human traditions and customs.

i want to believe that amanda insisted on a traditional human wedding on earth. maybe to see her family for one last time, before she and sarek move to vulcan. yes they may come back to earth, but who knows how often. the wedding was beautiful but also very tense. amandas parents probably telling her that she could stay on earth, that she didnt have to leave them and that love might not last forever, esp with a vulcan (im convinced many humans have negative prejudices against vulcans)

when spock is a little kid, maybe 2 or 3 they probably go back to earth. maybe its even because of sareks ambassador duties. spock is a very polite kid, and for both human and vulcan standards incredibly behaved, but his extended family is weirded out when they first see him. his grandparents were expecting to see a more human kid... spock didnt bounce around the house nor talk anyones ear off. he just sat, spoke when spoken too and fidgeting with a little stuffed toy.

nobody says it but its clear that spock is different, and the rest of the family isnt used to that.

im sorry if this got a little long, i hope my answer was satisfactory :] have a little spock introducing himself as a treat (he was informed that humans would be weirded out if used the 🖖 to greet them)

[jonathan-samuel-smith]

You talk about Dami like Yuri and this makes me think in Jon like those novels where the protagonist falls in love with the villain and finds out the villain is not a bloodthirsty demon with cold heart, just someone who needs to work with communication skill and no comun sense who also come from a fucked up family (I think I already read a Yuri novel with this plot)

Jon is just "I know I'm not the target audience for these types of stories, but these are so fun"

and Kathy: you want to feel validated in knowing that you're not the only one who can love a known demon who isn't that demonic, just very misunderstood and comes from a terrible family

Jon: ...

Kathy: you want validation to love Damian

Jon: ahahhaa i'm not in love with... omg I IN LOVE WITH DAMI!

"Kathy, what do I do?!" Jon yells, shooting upwards into the air. His hands find his way into his hair and his fingers get tangled in the curls. "What if he knows! His family is full of super smart detectives and I read that they can tell if you like someone!!"

Kathy gives him a dry look. "Jon. This is Damian we're talking about. He doesn't know a thing when it comes to emotional intelligence. He doesn't know."

"Oh, good, I was really worried there for a second." Jon says, touching down.

"Everyone else does, though. Well, except Bruce and your father."

Jon groans. "Aw, why me? There are so many other normal kids in the world and I'm--"

"Shut. Up. You weren't normal anyways. We're both aliens. And being gay isn't weird, it's natural, over 3,000 species on this planet practice homosexuality. Your aunt Kara once told me that bisexuality was the norm on krypton."

"Really?"

"No, I made that krypton bit up. But it could be true! You should ask her."

"Well I guess you're right either way. I'm never going to be normal. Might as well commit to it."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm gonna ask him out."

"No."

"What do you mean? You don't think he likes me?"

"That dunderhead is head over heels for you. But he can't see that because he's obsessed with bloodlines and shit. He won't see you as an option unless you show him you can offer babies, or convince him that he should adopt."

"But... I can't make babies with him... I don't have a uterus." Jon looks at her with big sad, wet cat eyes. "What do I do Kathy?" He pouts.

She breaks into a laugh "You're adorable! Okay I'll help. Let me call up my friend Maya."

"I know Maya you don't have to specify that she's your friend."

"But she's my best friend! Other than you... I guess... eheh... anyway, it makes me super happy to know we're friends so I wanna say it!" Kathy says while pulling up her contacts on her phone. She presses call. It rings a few times and is answered.

"Kathy? Are you okay? Usually you text me before you call!" Maya says through the phone.

"Sorry. I'm hanging out with Jon right now. Jon just realized he has a big crush on Damian." Kathy replies.

"Seriously?! Sweet! Hi Jon, how's the gay panic?"

"It's not so bad once you get used to it..." Jon replies.

"So, the reason I called;" Kathy breaks in. "Jon wants to date Damian but Damian wants biological children so we need to convince him that he can still have that and date Jon."

"Oh. I'm way ahead of you. I've got a plan all layed out."

"are we going to take a tour of an IVF facility?" Kathy asks.

"That's boring. No. We're taking him to the fortress of solitude." Maya responds.

"What's there?" Jon asks.

"Last time I visited your fortress I looked into any information on cloning, since y'know, Damian's a clone, I want to know if he's gonna glitch out or something. Your dad has a cloning machine. It's a kryptonian thing, Kelex built it in his free time. It can be used to combine the genes of different alien species to make babies. Apparently, Kryptonians used to meet a lot of other aliens, and they wanted a way to have children that wouldn't be sick and die young.

"Your dad didn't need it because humans are surprisingly compatible with a lot of alien species naturally. But here's the kicker! It can combine two male donors into a baby as well! I guess that's why they kept it after they went isolationist."

"See Jon! Being gay was normal on krypton!" Kathy says.

Jon smiles. "Wow. I have got to read more. That's amazing."

"So? Great plan, right? We sneak in, or your dad lets us in or whatever, and we show him the machine! Then all you have to do is be yourself and he'll have a gay awakening! Kathy, bring tissues. If he doesn't cry I will."

Later, Jon is at the dinner table with his parents. "Dad, can me and my friends use the fortress for a science project?"

"it's not like that time with dinosaur island, is it?"

"nope, I'm following the scientific method and everything."

"It's your superhero friends, right?"

"Yeah dad, c'mon I'm not gonna reveal our identities just to get a good grade."

"Just making sure. It's fine with me."

"Yes!" Jon hisses in excitement.

Damian arrives at the fortress of solitude from the batplane. He's bundled up in orange insulation. He looks adorable.

Damian notices that they're all looking at him weirdly but ignores it because he can't figure out why. "Nobody. You said you had something important to show me?"

Jon waves awkwardly.

"J." He acknowledges. "Beacon." He returns his attention to Maya, though he's bodily aware of where Jon is in the room, he always is when they're together.

"So after the fortress of attitude was built," Maya starts.

"stupid name..." Damian mutters.

"Kelex built this handy dandy birthing matrix." She speaks up, leading them to the machine. It's tall and complex, with two pods for a person to stand in, needles on robot arms to take the DNA sample, all connected to the central casing and an advanced terminal for calculating and adjusting genome sequences.

Damian steps closer to the machine, resting his hand against the artificial womb of the machine. "How does it work?" He says in awe.

"Looks... painful." Jon winces. Kathy elbows him. "But I guess birthing humans involves some pain anyway!" He hastily amends.

"Damian, the really interesting thing is, this isn't made just for kryptonians, or just for male and female pairs. It can create compatible gametes from DNA regardless of species or sex." Damian breaks his gaze away from the machine to look at her in surprise.

"...Huh. That's... Good. I need to sit down."

Damian sits on the floor in a meditation pose but doesn't start meditating. "I just realized I was banking all my hopes and dreams on having a kid. But I'm just a kid myself. I don't know what I would want in the future! I sure as hell don't want a kid now! But I was so sure that I needed to continue the bloodline I didn't even consider being with a man as an option!" Maya sits down on the floor with him.

"I heard about it, of course, but I didn't really think about it much. It's a cheap playground insult. Until it's not... until it's who you are." Damian continues. Jon sits next to Damian, and Kathy sits next to Maya, passing her tissues.

"I'm so proud of you, brother. It's hard to realize you're not what people expected you to be. You push it down until you just can't anymore." She takes his hand and holds it. "You're gonna be just fine. I love you."

Damian squeezes her hand and tries to ignore the salty tears dripping from his mask. "Maya... you're always there for me. Even when you do sneaky shit like this you do it to help me. I'm just embarrassed you had to help me at all, I thought I was past all that!"

"it's fine. Healing takes time. It'll come for us."

Jon grabs Damian's other hand and holds it. "Lean on me. I'll help you carry on." Jon sings briefly, encouraging Damian to lean against him, which he does. They sit in silence until they're emotionally ready to get up. Jon can tell him another day, right now Damian needs his best friend.

--- epilogue

Damian opens his locker and a stuffed envelop falls out. Curiously and cautiously he opens it, used to threats from Ra's. It's a typed note asking him to meet the sender in the courtyard after school. Damian stuffs the note back into his locker and continues on with his day, but when the day ends he decides to follow the note's direction.

When he gets there, Jon is waiting for him, his shoes freshly shined, holding a bouquet of a flower he mentioned he liked one time. "Jon? Did you write that letter?"

Jon smiles. "Yeah! I wanted to do something nice for you when I ask you out. I want it to be a nice moment."

Damian blushes. "Oh. Yeah?"

Jon smiles and steps closer. "Yeah. Damian, I like you, a lot. I thought maybe we could try dating? If you want."

"You like me?"

"Yeah. Have for a while."

"I didn't expect that." Jon's heart sank. "I've thought of this moment so many times and I never imagined that I'd feel so surprised." Jon regained hope.

"How did it go in your imagination?"

"Well, I intended to be the one sweeping you off your feet. You'd smile so bright and wrap me up in a hug, and I'd hug you back. Or you'd smile awkwardly and let me down gently. Even in my nightmares I can't imagine you saying all the things I'm afraid you'd say."

"I wouldn't hurt you. We vowed to protect eachother, remember? Sure you're cantankerous and crabby--"

"Hey!"

"but you're so much cooler than that alone implies. You're a good person, and I know that in my heart."

"If we're gonna date--"

"so it's 'if' now?"

"You have to be patient with me. I hate PDA and I'm not very accustomed to physical affection. I'm not going to suddenly climb in your lap or make out in the student lounge."

"I wouldn't expect you to, Dami. I just like you. I like being around you. Cuddling is great, too... but your comfort is more important. We'll take it slow."

"What if I never get used to it?"

"I'm not going to do something if you hate it that much."

"People have needs in relationships that I am not adequately prepared to provide."

"I don't care. I'm not going to leave you because you don't hold my hand. You show you care."

"I accept your proposal."

"I didn't say we should get married!"

"Nevermind. I can't date someone so stupid." Damian teased. "I meant your proposal that we should try dating."

"Yes!" Jon stomped his feet in excitement. "Can you take these flowers? My hand is getting sweaty from where I'm holding the plastic."

Damian took the bouquet. "I'm suprised you remembered these."

"I try to remember everything about you."

"My act of love is graciously forgetting your mistakes and spending time with you regardless."

Jon smiled. "Different strokes for different folks."

"Tt."

~end~

[nerves-nebula]

The comments you got did say quite a lot already, so it was a little difficult, but I do know just a couple little details.

(This will be the shortest paragraph) 1987 Krang is a singular entity who is on Earth and partners with the Shredder. ('Partners' is more way than one, because their dynamic is reminiscent of an old married couple and they have multiple very gay moments too). Krang makes weird frog-esc croaking sounds while speaking, and controls a suit that looks like Captain Underpants, aka a bald dad bod baby. This version has the ability to enlarge both himself and his suit. The ship that he and the Shredder use is the Technodrome, which is on wheels and shoots lasers that destroy land. They hang out underground. They also have Bebop and Rocksteady as their sort of henchmen. The 1987 Krang constantly talks about how he has legions and armies of superior warriors in Dimension X where he came from, but I'm pretty sure we never really see them.

The Utrom (aka the 2003 Krang) focused on intelligence. They were an interstellar species from galaxies away that can live for eons and arrived on Earth in feudal Japan with their ship, proceeding to get stuck there for the next few centuries as they were too advanced for Earth's tech. They were fairly amicable to the humans there, but they find them disgusting. After being in physical contact with a human, even when in their metal suits (they wear metal suits that look like humans, much like the Krang Shredder's Oroku Saki suit) they go and get decontaminated in their HQ. It can be assumed they are like this to all life, or at least all life deemed below them in intellect, as we were shown their decontamination chambers and such in the modern day. Without their suits, they wear these metal disks that let them however, like the 2012 Krang, and when leaving their ship or metal suits, they tend to wear a glass dome, probably for protection against the Earth's environment. Unlike 2012, every Krang is their own person. The krang do however still have a leader, known as Mortu (they have their own names, but Mortu and The Shredder (Ch'rell) are the only ones we learn). They do not have a Dimension X or any equivalent, and are the only ones to be from this world as well as good guys (though they are assumed to be villains at first, and are misunderstood. They actually worked with Splinter's owner before he died, as this Splinter was the rat of a ninja).

The 2012 Krang are a hivemind, as is well known. However, they still have their own personalities, which usually minorly shines through in certain dialogues. They tend to speak very oddly and literally ('The Krang is the one who will be doing the kicking of the butt to the ones known as the turtles' is something they would say). However, they can still learn to speak normally, as proven by Krang Subprime, Krang Prime and the Utrom. The Utrom in 2012 is the original in that universe, who were taken over by the og Krang (Krang Prime) to become a hivemind which they weren't before. They are now a rebel group, who can all speak English properly and all tend to wear metal suits that look like humans. Bishop in the sort of leader of the Utrom here, unlike 2003 (2k3 Bishop was a villain who hated aliens). His suit is the one that the Krang copied and mass-produced, aka the men with slicked back hair and all black suits throughout 2012. The difference is that he usually wears shades. The krang tried to take over Earth since the dinosaurs were on it, and kept failing everytime. In this universe, they are the cause of humans, having mutated apes into them with prior ooze while trying to turn them into Krang to overtake the planet. This Krang also has a rivalry of sorts with the triceratons, who are triceratop based aliens who love violence. They've had many wars in the past.

I feel like I've went on too much so off I go noww enjoy

no no this is all fantastic, thank you for taking the time to write this up :)

[fahbev]

Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object pt3

Part 1: (https://www.tumblr.com/bahfev/715070691717840896/unstoppable-force-meets-immovable-object?source=share)

“Fine. Give us precise directions, and we’ll see.” Sophia loomed over Aolli.

“I- I don’t think I can. Most of the way there is also uncharted. I was shown the way there by someone, and I remember my way mostly by my senses than anything else. I’m not lying I swear! Please don’t hurt me!”

“Are you definitely, 100% certain you’re not lying?” Sophia just had to make sure.

“Yes! 100%! Please believe me!”

“Okay. Then you are going to take us there.” Sophia said.

“...”

“... what?” ————————————————————————————————

Yal-sre had always wondered about humans. They had grown up being told stories, “humans hail from a Death-World, where everything is dangerous! They survived there, they can survive just about anything!”. Yal-sre had been told stories about how scary humans are, that they have acid in their stomachs. They are strong due to Earth’s high gravity. Later on, Aolli also provided some stories from their youth.

As a child, Yal-sre had gone through a phase where they loved humans. They were sort of the galactic “boogeyman”, but, safe on Challrk, Yal-sre idealized these apex predators. Not only were they super strong and cool, they were also pretty. Yal-sre especially liked the humans with long hair, they were very elegant. Of course, they did know logically that meeting a human in real life wouldn’t be a very good experience, but as a child they didn’t care. They preferred to daydream about these awesome alien critters.

During Yal-sre’s young adulthood, they decided move off Challrk to a diverse space-city. They got a job as a security guard, which was shockingly easy to land considering the pay. But the new city that Yal-sre couldn’t pronounce or spell, carried a very different atmosphere. Everyone seemed wary.

Yal-sre was confused, at first. They had moved to a very good, and well protected neighborhood, why did everyone seem so scared? That was until, Yal-sre pieced together that people were only scared when they were around.

What’s wrong with me? Why do I scare people?

After that realization, Yal-sre did everything they could to appear nonthreatening. After a while, people who saw them every day began to realize that Yal-sre really wasn’t very scary after all. Some of them, anyway.  At some point, Yal-sre couldn’t tell you when, they figured out why this was. The fear had little to do with Yal-sre themself, and everything to do with their species.  Apparently, the rragletatchen had quite the reputation among the galaxy. “They have indestructible exoskeletons! They’re practically invincible!” Not indestructible; broken, damaged, or missing skeletal plates were very common injuries. Of course, it takes a lot to damage an exoskeleton, so to an alien? It made sense, how they could seem invincible.

“They’re huge! They’re hella strong too!” They weren’t - okay, comparatively yes. But many other species were large as well, rragletatchen weren’t anything special!

“They spit LAVA!” Acid. It’s acid. And only when threatened, if we spit acid at you, that means you’ve fucked up immensely! We’re pacifists! We don’t want to hurt you!

“Sharp spikes! Sharp teeth! Impossible to outrun! Infants that are deadly poisonous to the touch! Jaws that can eat things half their size!” Okay, true but- ...true, all true.  Yal-sre understood it, but the stereotype of rragletatchen being aggressive, mean, dangerous, or even remotely competent at fighting wasn’t true. 

Rragletatchen were a peaceful, unified tribe. Very few even did the hunting, those few providing for the whole tribe. Rragletatchen, particularly in the sector Yal-sre grew up in, people preached kindness, forgiveness and mercy.

Yal-sre was never a very religious person. They weren’t a goody-two-shoes stickler about morals, and they even thought their parents hardcore pacifism was old-fashioned and flawed. However, when surrounded by everyone who thought the worst of them, they became more and more determined to embody their cultural beliefs. Yal-sre would break this stereotype, and show the world that rragletatchen are gentle giants. Yal-sre had so many eyes on them, rragletatchen were rare, so they represented their whole species. He had to be the perfect embodiment of all that is good, and all that his people stand for.

He had always thought, or perhaps hoped, that humans felt the same way.

Until he met Sofia.

It had been a surprise, coming across a human when he came to pay Aolli a visit. Everything he had hoped to say if he ever met an Earthling, everything he hoped a human might say, all the common ground he hoped to find... all of that faded the second he noticed them, and all the scary stories came flooding back in their place.

It was hard to read Sophia’s body language, but they made themselves bigger, walked straight up to him, really close, and looked directly up at him. If that wasn’t a show of aggression, what was?

“Fight me.” Sure enough. But despite his initial fear, he had still been hoping that they would... well, he didn’t know exactly what he was hoping for, but it wasn’t this. This moment he had imagined in his head over and over in hundreds of different ways, became simply another moment of proving himself. Being the ambassador of all rragletatchen, once again. Only now, he had to face an aggressive human to do so. Great.

Sophia was one of the long-haired humans. Suddenly, their black hair, tied back behind their head into one long brush like an angry geerecht’s tail, it didn’t look so elegant anymore.

He tried not to show how scared he was. Rragletatchen are peaceful, but we are nof weak. I will not fight, but I will stand solid against a human if I must.

Now though, Sophia was... helping him? Why? This was a foreign creature, with foreign emotions, Yal-sre may never know. On the other hand, Yal-sre needed to know if he could trust this fellow space orc, and to what extent. 

So far, Sophia seemed to have little regard for the law.

Aolli was whimpering in the corner.

Yal-sre, for the record, was not a fan of this idea.

“Alright, everybody buckle up! Let’s see what this baby can do!”

Sophia clearly didn’t mean it, because they didn’t wait a second. No one, not even Sophia was strapped in before Sophia slammed the accelerator on the stolen ship.

“WOOOOO-HOOO! HELL YEAH!” Sophia raised one of their upper appendages, with the smaller appendages at the end wrapped up in a ball.

“SOPHIA!”

“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Yal-sre could have sworn that their organs had been left behind in the spacecraft rental lot.  Sophia very nearly missed a building on their way. The three of them screamed in unison.

“FUCK! Jee-zuss- kriest”

“NONONONONONONO STOP!”

“DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW TO DRIVE THIS THING?”

In a panic, Yal-sre fumbled for a seatbelt. Not that anything could save him from Sophia ramming the ship into six goeals of reinforced cement. As it turned out, the seatbelt, like the rest of the ship, was way too small for his large frame. Lovely. 

“Of COURSE I know how to drive a ship! I’ve just never used this kind before- the steering is FUCKING REVERSED! Woah- holy poop-”

“Great, that makes me feel SO MUCH BETTER!” Aolli screeched.

“Maybe you should have CONSIDERED that BEFORE you decided to STEAL A SPACECRAFT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!” Yal-sre shouted.

“DO YOU WANT ME TO TAKE US TO NAYERSWU OR NOT!?”

“NO I DON’T!” Aolli screamed.

“I want to GET there, but I don’t want to DIE BEFORE WE DO! Give me the wheel, I’M driving us there-”

“Buzz off! Aolli can’t fit behind the wheel, and you can’t even fit in the GODDAMN cockpit! -No, stop trying- ow- SIT DOWN- oh SHIT!” The ship was getting dangerously close to the cliff wall. Sophia swerved. Directly into the cliff. A second later they remembered the controls were reversed and swerved hard in the other direction. It happened so fast that Yal-sre barely had time to scream.  “STOP DISTRACTING ME OR WE ALL DIE!”

“Yes- yes! Got it!” Yal-sre scrurried back to where he’d been sitting.

Everything was peaceful for a minute. The ship pierced through the first and thickest of 12 atmospheric layers, and the air changed color. The view would have been breathtaking, if Yal-sre’s anxiety wasn’t keeping him from appreciating it. The sentiment seemed to be echoed by Aolli. And Sophia... he couldn’t read Sophia.

Suddenly-

“Drone!” Aolli shouted.

“WHAT? Where!?” Sophia shouted back

“Turn left!”

“LEFT-LEFT OR FAKE-LEFT!?” Nevermind, Yal-sre could definitely read the raw panic in Sophia’s voice.

“JUST- AHHHH!”

———————————————————————————————— pt 4: (pending)

I have mastered the art of the cliffhanger >:)

Can anyone tell me how to do that thing where the link is words? Im new here.  Taglist: @honeysuckletook

If you’d like to be added, ask in the comments!

[sebastianshaw]

Rando Eternals shit: - I haven’t read these issues but according to TV Tropes, but apparently in some of the pre-Gaiman reboot books, Makkari used a lot of outdated slang for the obvious reason that, of course, he’s an ancient immortal trying to catch up to the modern day, and I wish this detail was still around. In my heart it is and she’s totally signing stuff like “tubular” and “cat’s pajamas” and Shaw absolutely thinks she is Clearly Very Hip & Current (*sobs*) - I really like it when writers remind us that these aren’t just immortal humans, these are things that only LOOK human but operate on totally different rules, and what I love even more is when they’re portrayed as kind of SCARY for it. Not scary just in that they have incredible super powers, LOTS of people in the Marvel universe do, but like. . .like an Uncanny Valley thing? Like there’s this bit in Gaiman’s story where Thena, who was transformed into a human by Sprite who rewrote reality so she had a human husband and human son, gets her memories back and transforms into herself. And her son Joey comes in and goes “momma?” and Thena assures him that it’s still her, but the narrative boxes reveal “And even as she says it, she knows it isn’t true” as she picks him up BY THE BACK OF HIS SHIRT like she’s scruffing an animal, not at all how a mother picks up a son. And she largely handles him that same way for the rest of the book, even as she’s protecting him; one Deviant scoffs when she calls him her son, countering that “you’re not even the same species, he’s your pet” and whatever her voice says, he body language agrees. And right after this, she steps outside and sees Ikaris hovering there, golden eyes aglow, and the narrative boxes say how she realizes now why the humans mistook them for gods because “Nothing human. Nothing human could look like that.” And Gaiman’s series also has this VARIANT COVER that depicts the Eternals as monstrous, even though they’re the protagonists of this series (well, protagonists and villains, much like the Inhumans most of their problems come from their own people, which I also enjoy, they’re not superheroes they’re a weird and fundamentally alien culture that is more fun to explore than just use for big battle stories) Like they’re FREAKY AF. And while I think their Uncanny Valley Inhumanity should probably be being Too Perfect and a general SENSE of power and strangeness if they’re not masking it---like, they can walk among humans, Sersi presents as a normal fab party girl ALL THE TME---this gets the same disturbing VIBE across, but it’s sadly a vibe that I think it’s more something people would FEEL when they see them for what they truly are and can’t really be portrayed visually in screen or panels. I imagine that Phoenix Jean has a similiar vibe when she goes off, and I like to think once in awhile Haven does too, like this shadow of a sense that this thing is only human -shaped (I mean Haven is human but she had a cosmic entity in her uterus 20 years I feel like that should just sort of pass through every once in awhile like a ghost’s ghost) - In the latest trade paperback I got of Gillen’s reboot, it includes quotes/notes from him and he says “The Eternals have a complicated and contradictory history, which meant that one of my goals was trying to synthesize it into all one tapestry. “Turn continuity into mythology” was my line. As such, you had to look for ideas and connections, hints and interpretation. It literally can’t all be true---it contradicts. What’s a reading that could make sense? [. . .] I hope many of these [previous] stories now read more like propaganda or warped memories of a more complicated truth, in the light of everything we now know. Yes, this is all true. . .just incomplete. [. . .] I really tried to at least have an interpretation of all earlier stories that was at least kinda true.” And honestly, I really like this? While I didn’t like all the changes his reboot of their lore and history made, I really think this is a GREAT approach to the source material that is, as he said, often contradictory, and a good approach to comic book lore in general for writers. Also, I do have to admit that the changes he made that I didn’t care for---namely, they no longer actually are/have biological families with each other, they were all created at the same time now and grouped into family roles by The Machine, so Zuras and Cybele aren’t REALLY Thena’s parents in the human sense, for instance--does serve to make them that much farther removed from human ways of doing and being.  Of course, as much as this makes me admire him on the background reading he clearly did for this and for Exodus, it makes me that much more annoyed how he fudged/retconned Shaw’s background and never brings up his amnesiac self’s relationship with Hope even though clearly he’s a guy who does his goddamn homework. I just...I like Gillen but god I’m so tired of EVERYONE giving my dude the shaft while going above and beyond with bringing back old lore for other characters. Like jfc what did I do?  Also sorry I know this isn’t an Eternals blog and you didn’t follow for that but Oh Well.

[vickysaurus]

I posted 1,991 times in 2022

431 posts created (22%)

1,560 posts reblogged (78%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@paleontologylife

@kt--extinction

@chloepleasestopdying

@1dinodaily

@tippenfunkaport

I tagged 1,961 of my posts in 2022

Only 2% of my posts had no tags

#dinosaur - 596 posts

#paleoart - 574 posts

#the owl house - 374 posts

#toh - 373 posts

#theropod - 329 posts

#toh spoilers - 283 posts

#paleoblr - 280 posts

#luz noceda - 184 posts

#amity blight - 170 posts

#cretaceous - 168 posts

Longest Tag: 135 characters

#the other stegosaur came from a happy meal i ended up with after i was unable to complete a delivery for mcdingdongs a couple years ago

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

See the full post

1,090 notes - Posted October 21, 2022

#4

Guzma is my hero. I’ve always wanted to be able to respond to trainers who wanna battle like this.

1,511 notes - Posted June 3, 2022

#3

So Prehistoric Planet is amazing. A random thought I had near the end is that we actually saw almost no dinosaurs in this episode! Just the T. rex beach trip at the start, the rest was all pterosaurs, marine reptiles, ammonites, and other friends. What a flex for a Mesozoic documentary to in its very first episode go ‘Actually we don’t even need to talk about dinosaurs, all the other amazing creatures that lived alongside them can carry an episode on their own’.

1,718 notes - Posted May 23, 2022

#2

Something unexpected that I really love about Prehistoric Planet is how it stays in a single period in time and explores it, rather than trying to cover the entire Mesozoic and show the world changing. If you showed an alien the programme with the intro cut out and the title censored, they probably would never even guess it was a show about a distant time in Earth’s past. In just being a wildlife documentary that happens to be set 66 million years ago, it’s showing the Maastrichtian world as a living, full-formed, very real world that existed for an unbelievably long time, rather than a phase in an even longer evolutionary process. Now don’t get me wrong, I love wide sweeps of evolutionary history like Walking With Dinosaurs too, but Prehistoric Planet’s vibes are very different and I never knew I needed them. In fact, I’m really hoping we won’t even see a trace of the meteorite in episode five. Let me just go on a little tangent to really get into why.

This is Trix the T. rex. I saw her in the Naturalis natural history museum. She lived and died 67 million years ago. Now, it is very easy for me to see that date and be filled with a sense of impending disaster. ‘Just before the end’ is a thought that quickly appears. But when you really think about it, that’s ludicrous. Trix lived her life, and then after she died her species continued to thrive for a million years. There’s thrice as much time between her and the Tyrannosauruses who died in the K-Pg extinction as there is between me and the first members of my species! And as for the thousands of years of recorded human history, those are a mere drop in that sea of time. Those years didn’t pass any faster back then than they do now, nor were they any less real. There were just as many moments in any one of those thousand millennia between Trix and the meteorite as there were in the millennium between me and Basil the Bulgar-slayer. If a wizard told you your species and your world would continue to thrive for a million years before eventually most of your clade would get wiped out by a terrible catastrophe, would you see your world as a doomed and temporary one about to go over a precipice? I think I would be delighted to know we have such a vast sea of time left.

This got longer and more philosophical than I expected, but the point is that I love the focus on the Maastrichtian as a diverse, living world, rather than the last age of the Mesozoic. We don’t know whether Prehistoric Planet is set a million, fifty thousand, or nine hundred years before impact, and it doesn’t really matter either. Even though all those dates are, geologically speaking, so close to the end of the Cretaceous we could barely tell the difference between them, they all have more time left than any of the animals can possibly conceive of. None of the animals we see in Prehistoric Planet have ever seen a Stegosaurus, and none of them will die as a consequence of a meteorite striking the Earth.

2,317 notes - Posted May 26, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Alador: “So, Mittens, how did you and Luz meet anyway?”

Amity: “Well, I spotted her hiding in a cauldron covered in abomination goop and-”

Alador: *sighs* “How romantic, it was always my dream to meet someone like that...”

3,252 notes - Posted May 23, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[ybyblog]

#001 Independent Project 

After the research last semester, I have already made a preliminary study on the definition of invasion. I was inspired by a group of people on Chinese social media who went to the countryside specifically to find places where the species had invaded, such as fire ant nests, and they would set the nests on fire and destroy them. This attracted a lot of people to watch and support, and some people even created Artwork created using fire ants. This phenomenon got me thinking, what is an intrusion? Inspired by my teacher, I discovered that many places in life and social phenomena can be called intrusive behaviour. From this, I looked for invasion behaviour from historical events and social activities.

I first researched the definition of invasive species:

An invasive or alien species is an introduced species that becomes overpopulated and harms its new environment. Invasive species adversely affect habitats and bioregions, causing ecological, environmental, and economic damage. What is co-evolution? *Coevolution occurs when different organisms evolve and develop in interaction with each other, and between organisms and their inorganic environment. *Co-evolution is a relationship between symbiotic and mutually beneficial individuals, between predator and prey. What is Harvesting Theory? The American ecologist S. M. Stanley developed the “harvesting theory”: predators tend to prey on species with a high number of individuals, thus avoiding a situation in which one or a few organisms dominate the ecosystem, making room for the formation of other species. The presence of predators helps to increase species diversity.

It can be seen that invasions are a very common phenomenon in ecosystems, which can be said to follow certain natural laws and are the result of interactions.

Here we can see some news: The same invasive species, crayfish and fire ants, are treated differently. The Chinese love and eat crayfish so much that they actively farm this invasive species, even though it doesn't appear to be invasive to us. As we say, humans are at the top of the food chain. When we see fire ants that are harmful to us, we will eliminate them and drive them away. Is this distinction simply based on whether they are beneficial to humans? Do we have the right definition of invasive species? Who can define them as invasions?

And to start with, in agricultural production, the difference between invasive species and naturalised species, introduced species. Invasive species generally emphasise their aggressive nature, their strong reproductive capacity and the harm they cause to native biodiversity. If there is no obvious harm, this can only be considered a naturalised species, although naturalised and invasive species can be difficult to define and there is not too clear a line.

Everyone hates cockroaches. Southern cockroaches have already settled in the north. No one calls them an invasive species. People have become accustomed to their presence in life. Only those with significant impacts on economic development and ecology are considered invasive. There is a question here, are all species invasive when we feel that resources are being plundered or harmful to us? Including humans.

[pankracy]

I have soooo many thoughts and I'll definitely write a minuscule portion of them.

b5 spoilers, unsurprisingly

first of all, I reconsidered kosh's vision to g'kar. obviously it was still manipulative as all fuck and designed to get g'kar exactly to the place where he could be useful to the cause -- and yeah, I see (and have seen before) the narrative tragedy and conflict of 'for the greater good' thing. but after kosh's death, right before which he appeared to sheridan as sheridan's father to apologize to him and admit that he was afraid, after lyta saying that in his strange way, kosh cared for the other races, I do see what kosh did to g'kar in a different light too. I think that it did also come from a place of caring towards g'kar. though it did not center or was really about neither him nor his people, but more about it later.

the volrons were removed from everybody else, thought themselves above them and expected to be obeyed. kosh was different, kosh did get more personal, and I think he did genuinely also want to guide g'kar on a path that'd be best for him in the only way he knew how. I thought it especially manipulative of him to appear to g'kar as g'kar's father, and it was, but considering he also chose sheridan's father as his form for sheridan's vision, and he allowed himself to be vulnerable then, I also think this is a way in which he tried to relate.

and I love it that the show allows for this retrospection, that after seeing more of it the past scenes take on a new or additional meaning. neat!

further...

Unfortunately, I love g'kar.

I know that scifi really likes to make humans super special. which is fair; I mean we as humans make scifi and the other aliens are not real and they're there in these stories for us to reflect on ourselves. humans in contrast are real and that means they're messy. I cannot count how many times I've seen a scene of some alien saying "oh I'll never understand humans, so incomprehensible, unlike every other alien civilization I've seen which is apparently much simpler to grasp, and unlike my own people that are also always totally reasonable unless we're talking about ~ females~, ~females~ of any species are a mystery whatcanyado". it's always humans that cause such bafflement!

and with that comes the natural follow-up of humans being special. oh without them how boring it'd be. oh they have just that something in themselves. I don't exactly mind it -- we want to be special! that's okay. at this point I do find it kind of trite, maybe unfairly; it's not like I've seen so much scifi to say it's everywhere or anything, I'm mostly speaking star trek here. but I do understand why it's there, I do also find the tumblr posts being like "can you imagine how we'd explain this to the aliens" fun occasionally. it's funny that we can so easily imagine the existence of other species, but not the fact that they could also be confusing, absurd and internally contradictory.

but then back to g'kar. who is not human. whose people suffered terrible losses. who got support from our human protagonists (but oh their hands were so terribly tied so the support was at times so minuscule as to make him crylaugh at having been offered it), who was so often considered a bother and an annoyance and unreasonable even while he was begging them for help for his people. who eventually reached a conclusion that for narn to gain any sort of support he'd have to make himself and his people useful to the humans' cause. and that it was... proper. that it was how it should be. I'd like to read it as him believing in mutual aid, and it is there, but all the talk about the narn having to sacrifice themselves absolutely overshadows it at some point in the story.

I loved that the reason delenn was so reluctant into bringing him in to the know when it comes to the shadows was because she'd have to tell him she & kosh knew all along what was going on and basically watched passively as his people were being destroyed. I love how ashamed she was of it, that it was narratively acknowledged, and that g'kar was hit so hard by this truth. but then...

but then next we see them truly interact he gives her his support, he tells her she & sheridan are not alone, specifically when it comes to earth's problems!!! and we don't really see him struggling with this at all, with the unfairness of it. there's all this talk about how special humans are and mostly we see londo & g'kar & delenn as mouthpieces for this. the minbari are a big part of the show, naturally, but delenn turns half human and it turns out that valen was human turned part minbari the same way; their souls get reborn into humans. valen is the most important figure for minbari and he was human. the... human-centrism of it is slightly bothersome to me in light of the narn struggle, parts of g'kar's story, the way the only other most prominent alien race in the show is so intrinsically tied to the human race.

coming back to my "Unfortunatley I love g'kar"; I care so much about his story and I'm super biased I realize, so I maybe overnotice (?) this tendency of the show to create and stick with this human mythos as leading and primary even in the struggle of the entire people to survive. it's grating at times!

it's fun to ponder all this and I don't have some Big Conclusions here, just... thoughts and observations and feelings. also I've been writing all this on and off for like three days, each day after some wine had been had so it's probably totally incomprehensible.

[wordswithkittywitch]

Fuck it, I'm just going to write a one-shot.

Maggie took a long sip of her latte, less to get caffeine into her body and more to block her view of Alfreda. It wasn't that anything she was telling her was beyond the pale, part of Maggie had always suspected or at least hoped that there was more to this world than getting passive-aggressive post-it notes from her boss and buying overpriced lattes, although, if she had to choose, she didn't think she would have picked other... species? Races? Living hidden among humans. It's not that she had a problem with the idea of elves or whatever, it was more that if she was going to be told by her "concerned" manager that her natural hair was "unprofessional" and "not the image the company wants", Maggie didn't even want to know how he'd react to pointy ears.

"Okay." said Maggie, lowering the cup. "How many... other types of people are there?"

"You can say 'species', if that's easier for you." Alfreda offered. "Most of the time, the only people who take offence are the ones who are really uptight anyway."

Alfreda smiled, and Maggie wished one more time that the person explaining this to her looked a little less... like she worked in a head shop at one point. Somewhere between "witchy goth" and "hippy", this woman looked very open and happy and Maggie knew she wasn't actually on drugs, but it was easy to assume that, especially given the conversation.

"Right, so. How many species are there?" Maggie asked again.

"Well... uh, you've got your fairies, obviously, and the elves, you don't see that many gnomes, especially in the cities, but goblins are all over places like this." Alfreda looked around the coffee shop with a faint smile. "I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few in the vents right now, they love places like this. Busy, a fair amount of tech, and a decent chance of someone forgetting an umbrella or phone at their table." Alfreda looked very serious for a moment. "And before you say anything, it's only abandoned things. Salvage. The stereotype of a 'thieving goblin' is considered culturally insensitive."

"Noted." Maggie replied dryly. This wasn't the first time someone only a few shades darker than the whipped cream on their coffee tried to 'educate' her on racial sensitivity, but at least this time it wasn't about something Maggie had said about herself. The phrase, "Some of my best friends are goblins!" came to mind, but getting Alfreda defensive at this point would just cause trouble.

"But, yeah. Fairies, elves, goblins, orcs, gnomes... I'm not one hundred per cent sure on the dwarves. No one is, really."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there definitely used to be dwarves." Alfreda explained "But when everybody decided hiding from the humans was a great idea, the fairies and the elves built their spaceships, the hobs went invisible, and the dwarves... well, the dwarves did what dwarves do. They dug. Straight down. I mean, in history class they say the idea was that they were going to build a society about eleven kilometres down, but science class said that's where the mantle starts and I don't think even dwarves can handle that kind of heat. Anyway, no one's seen a dwarf in, like, I don't know, five hundred years? Six? It's not like fairies, who still like to fuck with humans by abducting them for fun, put them down and let them decide anything in a spaceship must be an alien."

"So what's the difference between an elf and a fairy? Is it wings, or height, or..." Maggie asked.

"That's actually an interesting point." Alfreda stuck her straw back in her frozen coffee and stirred it. "An elf... or an orc, for that matter, they... they generally aren't born. They're made."

"Made?" Maggie repeated, wide-eyed.

"Yeah. Basically, both fairies and goblins thought, 'Humans can deal with all this iron hanging about, what if we tried to make a human out of... us?' " Alfreda explained. "Don't ask me which side thought of it first, historians do not agree on that point. But the processes are... I was going to say similar, but it's only as similar as you can get if you're thinking like a fairy or thinking like a goblin."

"And that's okay to say?" Maggie asked sceptically. Alfreda waved her hand dismissively.

"Not really, but it usually gets a pass anyway," Alfreda admitted. "Even fairies and goblins admit that fairies and goblins have different priorities. But, the point is, elves and orcs both run between five and seven feet, though your average orc is gonna be taller than your average elf. A long time ago, they sort of... served their creators? Not like slaves so much as peasants, but still pretty bad and we don't do that anymore." Alfreda grimaced as she spoke, and Maggie tried to figure out what sort of creature Alfreda was. She looked pretty human, so maybe she was an orc or an elf, but that was only based on the fact that Maggie now knew both of those were trying to look human. She still had no idea if they actually looked like how they did in Lord of the Rings, but if they did, it would be a lot easier for Alfreda to hide pointy ears in all that hair than it would be for her to hide tusks. Then again, she did say "we" and had some pretty strong feelings about goblin stereotypes... Maggie suddenly realised that Alfreda was still talking.

"It's like... it's like Mac and PC. They both do basically the same thing, but one of them put way more time and money than was needed into looking pretty." Alfreda finished. "And getting the two of them to work together is a giant pain in the ass."

"And one of them costs three times as much to work five percent better?" Maggie smirked. Alfreda barked a short laugh, almost spilling frozen coffee all over the table.

"Are you sure you've never met an elf?"

I just thought of a really good gag for an urban fantasy set anytime after 1980. And better after 1995.

Sadly, the next four books I'm writing are steampunk set in 1875-1899. The worst part is it fits the lore and the tone, but no one would make that reference in that setting.

[fermented-writers-block]

We’ll Be Right Back AU

Five dimensionally displaced children: a witch-in-training, a Wisconsin runaway, and three close friends, all stuck in a world not their own and searching for a way back.

Three unusual online “shows,” altogether revealing to Earth the shocking existence of otherworldly adventures with actual magic, talking frogs, and infinite trains.

One cosmic storyteller, both watching its newest audience melt down from such earthshaking revelations, and recording the currently unfolding stories of its unwitting protagonists.

In other words, welcome one and all to an absolutely buck wild crossover between Amphibia, Infinity Train, and The Owl House (plus a little Gravity Falls for bonus flavor)!

Part canon divergence, part fusion worldbuilding project, and 100% the unholy love child of The Truman Show and a react fic, the We’ll Be Right Back AU runs on the fun little idea that during Luz, Anne, and Tulip’s isekai adventures, their shenanigans got being transmitted back home for all of Earth to react and adapt to - and with all chaotic ripple effects on canon and society alike that implies!

After all, this AU isn’t only about the isekai protagonist trio returning to a world vastly different from the one they last remembered (especially with the whole startup religion about them and whatnot for example) and how that affects canon going forwards. Rather, it is also about exploring the various perspectives and worldbuilding shifts caused by these mysterious transmissions, and I would like to extend an open invitation for anyone interested in exploring these depths as well!

To put a fraction of this whole AU into perspective, just consider how WE the IRL fandoms know that these series are just cartoons with fictional characters and fantastical made-up scenarios that don’t exist in real life. WE are comfortably safe to hold the assumption that everything will work out by the end by virtue of plot armor and narrative conventions dictating so. 

But for Earth here in the We’ll Be Right Back AU, they don’t have ANY of that to fall back on. 

Actual goddamn magic, the confirmation of the multiverse, multiple sapient alien species, the probable answer to so, so many missing persons cases with the train, and etc. Just one of these fictional concepts being made true and known to the entire world would be enough to throw humanity into mass chaos, and yet Earth has to contend with ALL of them becoming undeniable facts about the reality they have to live with. 

Oh, and fun fact: because these transmissions are edited recordings of true events as well as how in-show timelines don’t necessarily line up with IRL airing schedules, the people of Earth get to see actual children be in real near-death situations - and in effectively real time at that! 

Now consider just how existentially unnerving it would be to watch the struggles of said kids be reduced into literal entertainment -their tribulations repackaged as ‘television shows’ with ‘overarching plots- for Earth to “enjoy.” Almost as if they were characters unknowingly acting out a play dictated by the mysterious entity/upload account known only as “the Transmitter,” and with no certainty as to whether the kids’ ‘stories’ will actually have a happy ending…

Needless to say, lots of peoples’ sleep schedules get completely screwed after discovering the transmissions for many different reasons both right and wrong lol.

After all, after seeing such an apparent example in Amphibia, Infinity Train, and The Owl House, who wouldn’t be agonizing over asking whether they themselves were also but a plaything dancing to the unknown whims of a higher being with no clear autonomy?

And on the flipside, who wouldn’t look at the society-flipping revelations or narrative framing of the transmissions and come to the conclusion that the Transmitter obviously is a god/like being informing humanity of Anne, Luz, and Tulip’s in progress divine destinies, and that it’s clearly instructing the formation of a religion of them and the trio?

Sure makes one wonder which interpretation is correct, let alone if either of them are correct in the first place, doesn’t it…

Overall, these are but a mere fraction of the sheer amount of possible stories that could be told within the We’ll Be Right Back AU, some of which you can even read over in the original forum thread where me and a couple of other folks put this whole AU together in the first place.

For example, we’ve got a dive into how the lives of some of Anne’s classmates were affected because of the international attention on the Amphibia trio spilling over, what it was like for Tulip to catch up with a familiar face after getting off of the train, a quick look at some of the fun ways pop culture has adjusted after the transmissions, and even how the Transmitter’s presence could completely alter the context of a certain encounter with Emperor Belos.

And if anyone’s interested in taking the plunge and contributing, there no need to worry about contributing fully fledged snippets or necessarily adhering to one particular “canon.” With the sheer scope and the many possible directions the base idea of this AU can take, as well as how the real world and real people are often messy and imperfect, feel free to contribute however you want! From fic drabbles about your own plotline for the AU to literally the laziest and unfunny memes you’re able to whip together in five minutes (no joke, the shittier the better), there will always be a niche anything you come up with can fill out!

Altogether, this is an open invitation to a sandbox I hope you all will enjoy playing in, and feel free to ask me any questions you have and or for prompts on how to start!

Until next time, stay tuned, folks!

[love-and-monsters]

Dating a Hive Mind pt. 1

M/GN aliens X F human, 7,948 words

This one wasn't meant to be a two parter, but I realized I'd spent too long on the beginning and I need more time to finish it, so... Enjoy part one, at least! This one's a bit of a writing experiment for me, so a bit different than some of my others. Hopefully you at least enjoy the differing style, if nothing else.

It took Uru the better part of a year to convince me to meet his family, and that was only after he got persistent about it. We’d been dating for a year and a half, and we’d been communicating for almost three. The first time he asked was the first time we met in person, after a year of talking. I said no. He remained undeterred.

My reasons for not wanting to go were twofold. The first was a matter of simple practicality. Space travel, despite the invention of intrastellar tunneling, took a long time. Most people likened it to crossing the ocean way back before Earth had things like airplanes. Weeks of being stuck in a too-small container, getting tossed and turned by occasional gravity pockets and subsisting on the always-bland space food. In some ways, it was worse than traveling across the ocean- at least the pilgrims had been able to go outside.

(That said, the lack of disease and rats were the main reasons spaceflight was an improvement on sea travel- that and the presence of in-flight entertainment.)

All that to say that space travel sucked and I wasn’t interested in spending several weeks trapped inside a space tunneler, even if it was private. Uru had been accepting enough of that reason at first, but the longer he wore at me, the more both of us were coming to realize that there was a larger, secondary reason for not going.

That reason was, and is, very simple: I was nervous.

Uru dealt with that with an equal measure of compassion and frustration.

“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” he reassured over and over, again and again. “They already love you. This is just so they can really get to see you, meet you in person. You’ve shown me so much about Earth. I want to show you what Arakoss’tinel is like.”

His words were gentle, but I could still hear the undercurrent in his voice and see the way his feathers stood up. He was trying to hide it, but he was frustrated. Annoyed with me, since I was giving him what he considered to be a very poor excuse for meeting his family.

And it would have been a poor excuse, to him. He tried to be understanding, he really did, but ‘social anxiety’ just doesn’t exist for his species like it does ours. There’s no need for it. He exercised caution when meeting new people, of course, and was apprehensive on trusting everyone right away. But he had no real anxiety around other people. He didn’t need it. There was no worry about rejection, none of that bone-deep fear of being turned away, disliked, the odd member out. For him, there never would be. And that constituted the real reason I was so nervous about meeting his family.

Because what in the hell was the procedure for meeting a nearly hundred-thousand participant hive mind?

‘Hive mind’ was sort of a loaded term- too many people heard it and started thinking about the Borg or some kind of giant nest of ants that all thought as one and either killed you or made you one of them. ‘Conglomerate intelligence’ was the test phrase being floated, which exchanged the 'bug-like’ connotations for ‘probably a robot’ ones. I’d asked Uru which one he’d preferred, once. He’d given me the sort of blank stare you’d expect from someone whose grasp on human culture and human language in general was rough at best and asked what the difference was.

There didn’t seem to be any useful distinction, and ‘hive mind’ had four syllables of convenience on ‘conglomerate intelligence,’ so that was what we used. Uru didn’t care, or seem to even understand the subtleties of language- his species had a language, but it was never as focused on being precise. It didn’t need to be; if you could telepathically share thoughts, why bother using more precise words? You already knew what they were thinking. Language was reserved primarily for the purpose of sending messages to other hives, or for diplomatic engagements.

It had been a testament to his skill that Uru had picked up English at all, though he noted that it had been bolstered by others in his hive helping him pick it up.  After three years, one of which spent with a writer, he was nearly fluent.

Nearly fluent meant he understood all the words, but knowing the cultural context was something else entirely, and the cultural gaps were huge. Uru had, I was pretty sure, all but given up on trying to understand the concept of gender. Explaining gendered pronouns to him had been, as far as I’d heard, quite an experience in frustration, and attempting to teach him a language with gendered nouns had nearly given him a fit. It stemmed mostly from the fact that the hives didn’t use gendered pronouns at all, and attempting to explain to Uru that he should pick a set of pronouns to use had been utterly bewildering.

I wasn’t there for it, but apparently, he’d picked he/him because his first introduction to gender has been along the lines of anatomical sex, and he’d assumed it was based on physical characteristics exclusively. By the time that assumption had been corrected, he’d been marked down as male on several important documents and didn’t care enough to change it. His actual grasp on pronouns was still shaky, but he’d at least gotten to the ‘try to ask first’ stage. And he did have to ask- the idea of differentiating different genders on looks alone was completely lost on him.

In fact, nearly everything in human culture was completely perplexing to Uru. Some of it, like gender, just frustrated him. Other aspects he was genuinely fascinated with.

That ended up being how we met, more or less. I should preface this by saying that I’m a writer, but I’m not actually a good writer. I’m not a bad writer either, even if I feel like one about eighty percent of the time. I write romance novels- not exactly bodice rippers, but maybe only a couple steps up the quality ladder. They’ve got a modest audience, but they’re still kind of something you’d pick up in a space hopper port. This is a winding way to say that while I make enough (barely) to survive as an author, but very few people would be able to recognize me or name anything I’ve written.

So, receiving a very enthusiastic letter from the alien ambassador of a massive hive mind explaining in detail exactly how much he enjoyed my books was about the most surreal experience I’d ever had.

I don’t really even know how he ended up getting ahold of one of my books. All the ambassadors were given cultural materials in order to understand humans better, but I’d sort of assumed they were going to be things like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Terry Pratchett or something along those lines, the kind of stuff they taught in school. At the very least, I figured they would give the ambassadors something generally popular. The fact that my books were in the pile makes me wonder if they just raided the nearest secondhand bookstore at some point- apparently Uru in particular was a voracious reader.

Generally, I suspect Uru’s fascination was at least in part because my books were the most straightforward romance novels he received. Most humans would consider him something of a romantic, though his species lacks the concept. The idea of romance was fascinating in and of itself to him, and his introduction to it through my (admittedly a bit idealized) stories created something of an impression. I think he sort of imprinted on my books more because they were his first introduction to the concept rather than them being particularly good examples of human art.

Regardless of the reason why, he asked for and received most of my books. At some point during their reading, he’d realized that authors are real people and that you can actually communicate with them.

His first contact with me was a series of highly enthusiastic letters. Real, physical letters, too- it wasn’t the first time I’d received a physical letter, but it was the first time it had several government seals and a classified stamp on it. The English had been clumsy, but endearing, in a way. After the third letter, I wrote him back. Gradually, our correspondence took on the character of pen pals rather than a fan and an author.

When I received the official invitation to have a meeting with him, I was only halfway surprised. He’d stated several times that he wanted to meet me in his letters. I’d been skeptical if we would be able to- ambassadors didn’t often interact with the general public. But he’d seemed so insistent that I couldn’t really imagine him not getting his way for long.

It took several weeks of planning back and forth for me to arrange everything. But eventually, I was holding a stack of signed books and waiting in a holding room until they got Uru to come out to me.

After about an hour of waiting and then twenty minutes of security checks, I was ushered into a back room. It was oddly decorated- presumably with Uru’s comfort in mind. Glittering crystalline structures grew out of the walls, all looking oddly complex for natural growths. Several of them branched in odd ways, curling back in on themselves or spreading into flat sheets along the wall. Strange fibers stretched between them, creating something partially woven- it looked a bit like knitting, but as far as you can tell, the fibers used for yarn were still part of a living plant. There was some human furniture among them, just a desk and a bed that seemed out of place with the rest of the room. Given the amount of dust on both, the occupant never used them. The only piece of human furniture that seemed used was a bookshelf, which was stuffed full, with books spilling out onto the floor. A lot of them had that worn, white cracking on their spines, like they’d been open over and over again.

I’d crouched to examine the books, noting how many of the cracked ones were mine, when the door opened.

“Hello!” Uru took two massive steps toward me, arms spread, then stopped with visible restraint. I straightened, shifting the books in my arms. He was practically bounding in place, making an odd sort of clicking noise in the back of his throat.

My first impression of him was that he was tall. Not only was his body sort of long and gangly, but he had a neck longer than a human. It looked somewhat incongruous with the human-like face on the end, though the mane of blue and yellow feathers helped make it look more natural. The feathers covered most of his body in blue and yellow. His only clothing was a skirt-like band of cloth wrapped around his waist. His body reminded me of a more upright raptor, with talon-like hands and feet, and a tail with a fanlike burst of feathers at the end.

He craned his head down toward me- the room wasn’t quite large enough for him to stand fully upright, regardless. The feathery protrusions on either side of his head, almost resembling ears, twitched. His eyes were startling- mostly yellow, but with strange magenta striations in the iris. Even in the low lighting of the room, I could see the tapetum lucidum reflecting.

“Hi,” I said, after the silence had stretched on for just a bit too long to be comfortable. “Uh. I brought- I- you wanted to see me?”

Most people assume that since I’m a writer, I have skill with words. Unfortunately, that skill only extends to being able to write things down. Being able to speak without embarrassing myself is something I’ve never been able to learn.

“I did! I’ve been waiting ever since they said you had scheduled a meeting.” He spoke strangely, despite the human-like mouth. His lips and jaw barely moved. Instead, his throat bobbed rapidly, sending words issuing forth. Given what I could see of his long, slender tongue and his needle-like teeth, he was mimicking speech like a parrot, using his vocal cords for all of the sounds rather than his mouth and tongue. It sounded a little odd as well, more robotic than a usual human voice, but less robotic than a computer-generated voice.

“Do you want to sit down?” Uru asked, gesturing toward the bed. I set the books in a stack on his desk and carefully cleared a spot on the bed to sit. Uru clambered up next to me, folding all his limbs underneath him like a sphinx. He looked at me, ears twitching rapidly. His talons kept twitching, digging into the bedsheets beneath him.

“I brought you some signed copies,” I said, offering him one of the books I’d brought. He flipped to the signature, eyeing it with interest. He didn’t seem to entirely get why a human would appreciate a book with a signature in it more than one without it, but he did seem to recognize that it was somehow important.

“Thank you.” He handled the book delicately, even more so than was probably necessary with his talons. After a moment, he set it back on the bed and focused his attention on me. His eyes reflected the glitter of the crystalline structures around us. There was a strange catch in my breathing.

“Okay,” he said, wriggling a bit closer to me. “So, chapter three of The Lily’s Curse, how come The Archer held onto the Testing Bow? It was cursed, just like the lily, and he could hear it whispering in his mind, all sorts of terrible things.”

It took me a moment to sort through the stories in my head and remember which one he was specifying. “Oh- It was supposed to convey his loneliness. Even a cursed bow was better than being completely on his own. I might not have been clear enough about that, but I was trying to be subtle-”

“No, no, I like that idea! I just wasn’t sure how much contact humans need. You all seem so… disconnected.”

“Not that disconnected,” I said. “Though I can see why it would seem that way to you.”

“You have a surprising amount of cohesion for a completely segregated species,” Uru said thoughtfully. “More so than I expected.” He placed a hand over the book. “So much of you goes into just trying to understand each other, make connections… It’s fascinating, really.” He frowned a little, apparently deep in thought, then shook his head and focused his gaze back on me. “In Starlit Realms, why was Merith willing to plunge the world into darkness for the sake of Ezra? Objectively, it would have made her own life that much more of a struggle, as well as harmed hundreds of people…”

I couldn’t help a small laugh. “Well, that one’s kind of complicated to explain. Remember was Merith said about his childhood? Where he wasn’t treated well by anyone?”

From there, the conversation dissolved into specific questions about my books. To say it was flattering would be a bit of an understatement- I’ll admit that I was quite pleased to have someone so interested in what I was writing, regardless of their species.

Some of the questions were more about technical aspects of writing, some more about character building, some more about societal standards and other aspects of the world itself. Every now and then, Uru would pause and cock his head, like he was listening to something far away.

“Others have questions as well,” he said. “I am attempting to get to all of them, though it would likely take several hours to do so.”

“How does that work?” I asked. Uru had mentioned in his letters that he was connected mentally to all the other members of his hive, but he had never clarified exactly how it worked. “Do they just know everything you think?”

“Hm…” Uru tilted his head to one side. “I have been asked that before, but I’m never entirely sure how to answer. I do not know what it is like for you to have only your own mind there.” He paused for a second. “I suppose I could compare it to… being in a crowded area with many conversations happening. There is always the murmur, and you can listen in one whichever ones you wish.” He tilted his head back. “There are many paying attention right now, while they work.”

An embarrassed flush started to creep over my face. “How many?”

“A large percentage of the hive. But most of them will hear our conversation at some point. They will remember the conversation and play it again for others who cannot pay attention right now.”

“That’s a big audience,” I said, a little faintly. It felt incredibly weird to have that many people hanging onto my words, more so because it was a group of aliens.

Uru laughed gently. “You look frightened. Don’t be. Everyone is thoroughly fascinated by you. We’re all listening attentively.” He twitched his feather-ears. “Many of them desire you to visit them in person.”

“I’ve never done a book tour to a different planet,” I said, huffing out a soft laugh. The thought made a knot form in the pit of my stomach.

“You have a standing invitation to our world whenever you would like,” Uru said. He turned and lifted one of the books from the pile. “This one is, I think, the most popular, though there are quite a few that many enjoy…”

The meeting went on for several hours before I was escorted back out. Uru followed me most of the way out, still peppering me with questions. He was surprisingly sweet, I decided, and easier to talk to than I’d imagined. It wasn’t until I got back into the car to return home that the idea that I had spent the past few hours meeting with a real alien.

I had more or less expected it to be a once-off, and I would have been completely fine with that. Getting to meet an alien and having him gush over my books once was enough to completely justify all my life choices, including the ones that had me living on ramen for six months.

What I had not expected was to receive an official summons less than a month later asking me to come back.

The meetings became a regular occurrence after that- once a month, usually, with letters and later direct messages back and forth in between. The meetings were initially in the ambassador’s suite, the protected area that the alien ambassadors spent most of their time in, but eventually, Uru managed to get permission to go out on short adventures with me.

It was after about a year and a half that Uru finally broached a subject we’d been dancing around for a while.

“I’m going to be moving closer soon,” I told him. The ambassador’s suite was outside the city, distant enough to be next to the spaceport and generally away from a major population center, just to cut down on incidents. It had taken a while, but I had managed to gather enough money to pay for a townhouse right at the city limits. It seemed more or less worth it, considering how often I’d been meeting with Uru, and it was nicer than my apartment regardless.

Uru turned away from the plant he’d been examining. There was a nature trail in a natural park that we’d started going to. Uru was fascinated by the plant and animal life of Earth, and the seasonal changes utterly entranced him. Not only were deciduous trees pretty rare on his own world, the seasonal changes were minute. Gradually seeing the leaves shift colors was a new and beautiful experience for him.

“Really?” His ears twitched a few times. His facial expressions were often pretty blank; in fact, it was hard to read any of his body language. After knowing him for a while, though, I had become more or less able to read most of his behavior. The twitching ears signaled interest, immense attention being paid to my next words.

“I’ve got enough money to move out of my old apartment, and the townhouse is bigger.” I considered for a moment, dancing around the next thing I wanted to say. After a moment, I just barreled forward. “And we’ve been seeing each other more often. I thought it would be nice to be closer.”

Uru craned his neck down toward me. A flustered prickling started across my face, my heart hammering. “You want to move closer to me?”

I gave a shrug. “It’s, uh, a combination of factors. But yeah, that’s kind of the gist of it.”

He stared at me for a moment. “Does that mean I will see you more often?”

I smothered a giggle behind my hand. “Uh, yeah, I guess it would mean that.”

He bent closer so he could nudge his head against my shoulder. “I would like that.” His feathers tickled against my neck as he nuzzled closer. “I have been thinking about you more recently.”

My heat skipped a couple beats and came back in at an accelerated tempo. “Why?”

He pulled his head back a little so he could look my in the face. “I am… not sure.” He sat down in his usual sphinx-like pose, folding his forelimbs over each other. “You’ve been occupying my thoughts more and more. I have been trying to understand it, but…” He flicked his tail back and forth, crushing a few plants under it. His gaze grew distant, like he was thinking hard about something.

I touched his shoulder. “Hey.”

Uru shifted, eye focusing. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s all right. Your thoughts are all connected to your hive’s right? I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to try and have a conversation with me while there are a bunch of other conversations going on in your head at the same time.”

“Less difficult than I suspect you think it is,” Uru said. “I think this conversation is more distracting to them than they are to me.”

I gave a surprised snort. “Really? Earth’s that fascinating?”

“It’s who I’m with, I think, that they’re really interested in,” Uru said. His voice was so casual that it took me a full thirty seconds to realize the flirtatiousness of his sentence. Had he always been that smooth? Was he even trying to be smooth? Was this just something he picked up on from my books and incorporated into his language?

Uru’s ears twitched. “You’ve gone quite still. Are you okay?”

“Mmhm,” I murmured. “I guess, uh. I don’t see what’s so fascinating.”

Uru looked at me. Often, even when he was looking at me, there was a sense that his attention wasn’t entirely all there. This time, the weight of his gaze fell upon me with full force. An involuntary shudder worked its way down my spine. He had a strangely piercing gaze, his eyes glittering between yellow and pink. “Humans are fascinating to us, in the abstract. You are coordinated, but utterly separate from each other. You can read each other with no sharing of minds. We didn’t understand how you could care for each other as you did without the mindshare. Even after meeting several humans, it was strange to us.” He shifted his weight, lowering his head down toward mine. “I have never cared for anyone I did not understand. I don’t understand you, in many ways. But I like that. I feel like I am discovering something new, and yet I have no doubt that I will enjoy what I find.”

He looked uncertain as he spoke, I thought. At least he was shifting around more than he usually did. His tail thumped against the grass and his taloned hands tore up clumps of moss from the ground. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I said.

Uru ducked his head a little, looking up at me from under his lashes. “I did not understand your books at first. They fascinated me, but I couldn’t quite understand them.” His head moved closer to me. We were close to touching noses. “I believe… I understand now.”

His nose brushed against mine and his lips pressed against mine.

It was an obviously uncertain kiss. In fact, it was barely a kiss at all. His lips merely touched to mine and he paused, like he wasn’t sure where to go next. After a couple seconds, he withdrew.

“It…” He made a weak sort of coughing noise. “It sounded more exciting when you wrote about it.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I think you need a little more direction.” He stared at me and I took the opportunity to put my hands on his face and pull him toward me. “Like this.”

My lips pressed against his, my mouth moving a little. He mimicked me a little clumsily. Our teeth clacked together once, and I took a firmer hold on his face to prevent him from diving in too enthusiastically again. After a moment, we broke apart. Uru reared back, feathers all bristling.

He mouthed wordlessly for a moment. I could almost see him trying to piece the thoughts in his head back together again. Finally, his gaze straightened and he looked back down at you. His face was usually porcelain pale, but I could see the faint flush that had tinged his cheeks.

“Yes,” he said eventually. “That was better.”

Things seemed to happen very quickly after that. Any caution Uru had around me before faded like dew under the sun. I came over more frequently than ever, and he was nearly always curled up right next to me when I was, often with his head resting in my lap. When I moved closer, Uru spent nearly all his time at my place. In almost no time, strange glittering crystals were on my walls and assortments of alien tech that I didn’t understand were scattered across the house.

It was about that time that Uru started asking for me to come home with him.

I refused. Uru was patient, but frustrated. I kept up a fairly steady stream of excuses, mostly regarding my work and the length of space travel. But eventually, during a particularly rough stint of writer’s block, he made the appeal again.

“There’s nothing to be worried about. You’re between books right now, and I’ll need to go back soon anyway. And everyone wants to meet you so much.” He tilted his head at me. “What is making you so nervous about it? I understand the space travel, but we’ll be taking a private vessel that is designed for safety. But you should not be so nervous to meet my hivemates, no more than you would be to see me.”

“It’s not that simple. There will be so many people and…you said you’re all different.” Uru had been vague on exactly how interconnected the members of the hive were. He said they often shared thoughts and opinions, and he was quite insistent that they all loved me, but he also referenced different personalities and preferences. Going to a book signing was bad enough, and I only had to be generally polite to the people there, and there generally weren’t even that many. The idea of being the center of attention to an entire hive made my heart pound.

Uru let his head dip down so he was resting his cheek against my forehead. He nuzzled me a little. “We all do care about you. We’re sad that you don’t trust us.”

“It’s not about trust,” I said. “I’m used to just being around you. There’s only one person here with me, only one person seeing one side of me. If I’m around hundreds of people who are all paying attention to me, you’re going to see something you don’t like and then you won’t-” My voice crackled embarrassingly.

“That would never happen.” Uru didn’t say it in a comforting way. He said it like it was something utterly true, like the sky being blue. He said it like it was almost silly to even consider. “I feel as though I know so little about you, comparatively. But I have enjoyed everything I have learned about you so far. I find it hard to imagine that I would dislike something enough that I could fall out of love. That any of us could fall out of love.”

“What if I do something stupid?” I mumbled. It was such a silly thing to admit, but the idea burned in my chest like a hot coal.

Uru huffed laughter into my hair. “Oh, darling. I know exactly how many stupid things other members of my hive have done, and they all know how many stupid things I have done. They love me regardless. And we all love you. Trust us. We enjoy knowing each other, despite the embarrassments, and we love knowing you. Let us. Please.”

I leaned against him, letting his forelimbs curl around me. He nibbled gently on the curve of my ear until I relaxed against him.

“We can start planning,” I said. “It should be… soon, right?”

I could feel him smiling behind me. “Yes. Soon.”

Which is how I ended up in a space tunneler, nearly to Arakoss’tinel, and just barely restraining myself from a panic attack.

I cannot breathe in the cramped little ship. It is a private space tunneler, which is at least better than traveling on a commercial one. Smaller space tunnelers work better, so people on commercial ones are crammed together like sardines, confined to a couple of rooms for about a week before they got to a waystation and could disembark.

Being on a private one means that we are confined to a space a tiny bit larger than an RV. The entire ship is several times larger than an RV, of course, but nearly all of that is dedicated to the onboard autopilot, life systems, and engines. In the innermost section of the ship is the living area, which contains something like a kitchen, a couple of bedrooms, and something that could generously be called a common room, but is more like a hallway occupied mostly by a circular table.

Uru is worried about me. It’s obvious, because he’s always staring at me. I’m not exactly ignoring him, I swear. I just don’t have much to say. It feels like there are so many worries in my head that they’ve all logjammed and I can’t get them to come out of my mouth. I can’t even get the words to come to my mind. I’m just a big ball of worry.

Uru looks at me again, then slinks closer. He’s trying to look as casual as possible, but he’s never been good at subterfuge. I have no idea how he manages to be a good ambassador- he can’t possibly be good enough at lying for politics.

“You’re quiet,” he notes. There is a bit of false cheeriness there, like he’s trying to make everything lighter than it is.

“Not much to talk about,” I say. Uru’s mouth twitches down. He’s gotten a lot better at emoting since we’ve lived together. I think he does it automatically now instead of having to think about it.

Uru shifts closer. He’s big, bigger than a human, so his presence makes the ship more cramped. If it’s bad for me, I can’t imagine how bad it must be for him. But he’s been uncomplaining this whole time.

“You look like you have something to talk about, though,” he says. He lowers his head until it rests against my shoulder. “You’re still nervous.”

“I can’t help it. I know it’s frustrating for you, and I know there’s nothing to worry about, but I can’t help but worry. It’s irrational, but it’s what I feel!” The words spill out of me, like whatever Uru said unblocked the logjam. Uru continues to rest his head on my shoulder, shifting slightly so that he’s nuzzling into the skin of my neck.

“It’s not helping you, that I’m frustrated,” he says. It’s not a question, but I nod anyway. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not upsetting that you’re frustrated. I get it. I’m frustrated with myself, too. It’s dumb and I can’t help it and I wish I could.” I lean back against Uru as he starts making a sort of thrumming, clicking noise.

“No, you are upset. And my frustration is not helping.” He hesitates for a moment. “I wish you could feel the love we all have for you. But you cannot, and I shouldn’t be blaming you for that. I can only be here for you, and reassure you that you will be all right. And it will be. There are so many who adore you. We’ll never let anything happen to you.”

“I need to trust you,” I say. “I do trust you. I just…”

“I believe you. Just remember that we will never do anything to harm you.” Uru nips lightly at my cheek, then shifts position so he is almost completely on top of me. His forelimbs pin me beneath him, and he nudges at me with his nose until he gets a better angle at my neck.

“I think you could use a little bit of a distraction,” he says between kisses. “What do you say?”

I lift my legs so they were around his middle. “I think we both could use a distraction.” I lift my hands and hold his face in place. “There’s not much space in here. We might make a mess.”

Uru laughs. “I certainly won’t mind.” His voice shifts into a lower, almost growling register. “Now, where shall we start?”

To my relief, that manages to be a satisfactory distraction for the rest of the trip. I suspect Uru is really just trying to take my mind off things, but I allow it. I don’t like me being nervous anymore than he does.

By the time we are within twelve hours of planetfall, Uru no longer works as a significant distraction.

“Would you cut it out?” I mutter as Uru tugs one of my hands away from my face.

“You told me to stop you from chewing on your nails,” Uru says. “You wanted to break the habit.”

“Well, maybe today could be an exception,” I mumble, though I put my hands down at my sides again. The nervous feeling in my stomach is starting to make me feel nauseated. Even Uru’s hand on my back is not enough to soothe me- it just makes me skin buzz and my breathing come in little, fast bursts.

“You’re very tense,” Uru says. His feather-ears twitch back, almost pinning against the back of his neck. “You should probably breathe more than that. I don’t think it’s safe.”

“I’m breathing as much as I possibly can,” I snap. My stomach gives a particularly painful twist, like it’s trying to knot itself all over again, and I gasp.

“Okay,” Uru says. “Sit down. Just- just sit, okay?”

He eases me to the ground, ignoring even the seats that are only a few steps away. His claws run gently through my hair, light enough that I can only feel them tickling at my scalp and neck. “Breathe. In an out, all right? In for seven… out for ten… There you go. In for seven… out for ten.”

It takes all my focus to concentrate on just breathing. I can already feel the panic spiraling, going out of control. This happens every time. There’s a trigger, but by the time it gets to this level, the trigger doesn’t matter anymore. The panic is self-sustaining.

“Keep breathing,” Uru says, his voice nearly a coo. “That’s it, you’re doing so good.”

The breathing helps. It helps a little. My heart rate calms, only marginally. Uru exaggerates his own breathing, moving in the slow rhythm he’d indicated. “Sorry,” I murmur as soon as I can get enough breath to manage words.

Uru gives a little laugh. “Don’t apologize! Goodness, I know you can’t help it.”

“But it… it’s a pain for you and it’s frustrating… I know…” My words are faint between gasps, but Uru nips teasingly at my ear.

“Stop. You’re okay. Just breathe.” He hushes any more attempts at protest, rocking me slightly against him.

My breathing slows and the worst of the panic fades. I’m shaky, but no longer curled in on myself in a fit of anxiety. Uru continues to pat my back. “Are you feeling better?”

“Better,” I say. “I’m sor-”

“Hush, with the apologizing.” He sighs. “No one’s angry with you. I’m worried. We’re all worried. You’re so anxious about meeting people who already know and love you. We’re sad about it.”

I hesitate for a moment. “I’m sorry I’m making you sad.”

Uru nips at my ear again with his sharp little teeth. “I did say to stop apologizing, didn’t I?” He carefully releases me and takes a step back. “I think you need to rest for a bit. We’ll be there soon, and all this anxiety will be over.”

“Or worse,” I suggest. Uru gives me an unimpressed look and shoos me back toward my bed.

“I will be there momentarily. Try to relax. I’ll bring you some of the tea you like, okay? It’ll be soothing.”

I give him a slight squeeze. “Thank you. You’re wonderful.”

“As are you,” Uru says. He nudges me toward my room. “Go. Lie down. I’ll be right there.”

Uru, to his neverending credit, makes a wonderful distraction, and not in the way you’re thinking. He chats about everything and nothing, giving me a running update of everything that is happening in his hive. There’s little drama (comes with knowing everyone else’s thoughts) but they tell collaborative stories and someone is always working on something interesting. I doze off listening to his explanation of some great art project that half the hive is constructing together.

I wake to the shuddering of the ship that tells me we’re about to enter the atmosphere. Uru tucks his tail in around me to prevent me for nearly jumping out of bed. “Stay seated for this part,” he says. “It tends to be bumpy during the descent.”

“I can tell.” Speaking is difficult- we’re rattling so much I feel like I’m going to bite my tongue off. Instead, I cling tighter to Uru, burying my face in his feathery chest. The anxiety is there, swimming around in the back of my head, but it’s at least been dulled.

Landings are my least favorite part of flights. I think it’s the aspect of falling. Even when I shouldn’t be able to, I swear I can feel that dropping sensation in my stomach like I’m on a roller coaster.

“It’s all right,” Uru says. He squeezes my hand. “It’ll be over in a few minutes.”

“Yeah, I know.” The entire ship shudders, not violently, but enough to shake me on my feet. Uru has to drop to all fours temporarily to steady himself.

There’s no way to tell how close the ship is to the ground from where we are, so the jolting stop comes as a total surprise. Uru lets me lean across his back to regain my balance. “I’m never going to get used to that,” I mutter.

“I’ve done it several times and I’m still not used to it,” Uru says, but he’s not looking at me. His gaze is toward the door. I feel the excitement in every line of his body. His ears keep twitching and swiveling, like he’s listening to something that I can’t hear.

There’s a low grinding noise and the bulkhead of the ship opens. Uru makes it a full five steps down the walkway before he realized that I’m not following him. “It’s all right,” he says, reaching back for me. “I’ll be right here with you.”

I take a deep breath. “Yeah. I know. I’m coming.”

I expect to step out into sunlight, but the ship opens into a massive enclosed space. Sunlight filters through the translucent dome- it looks like some kind of organic stained glass, with colors mixing and blending into each other. Rainbows gleam across the dark gray floor and reflect over the crowd that is milling in the spaceport.

There are so many people. Many of them seem to be doing something, either transporting materials or cleaning or doing some kind of maintenance. But a large chunk of them are just looking toward me, their long necks all craned like they’re trying to get a better look. In an instant, my mind goes blank. I just freeze.

Uru steps forward and says something. I can’t understand it- it’s in the clicking, chirruping language of his homeworld. He’s able to speak pretty much all human languages with ease, but his vocal cords are much more complex than ours. Even after Uru spent weeks trying to teach me, I can’t pronounce more than a couple words, and I can only understand it when it’s spoken slow and deliberate. It’s not a terribly complex language, but so much of it is based on context that I don’t have access to that it’s nearly impossible to get a hold on.

The crowd thins a little, several members peeling off and loping away. Of the remaining members, three people step forward. One of them is similar in size and coloring to Uru, one is slightly smaller and a dustier color, and one is significantly larger and purple and green in coloration.

“Esthell,” Uru says. “It’s good to see you.”

They almost completely ignore him, at least from what I can tell. I have no idea how they’re communicating inside their minds. From what Uru tells me, speech is relatively uncommon here- it took him a while to get used to speaking out loud to people, although he seems to have gotten pretty firmly into the habit.

Esthell turns their head toward me. After a moment, they smile, though it looks a bit uncertain. “I am pleased to see you,” they say. “I have known you through Uru’s eyes, but you are quite a bit more radiant when I am seeing you with my own eyes.” They gave a sidelong glance at Uru, who gave the tiniest of encouraging nods.

“Thank you,” I said, a little uncertain. Esthell paces around me, not quite touching, but getting close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from their body. Beyond them, I can see others milling around, looking while trying not to look like they’re looking.

Eventually, Esthell sat back on their haunches in front of me. “Come. We have prepared a space for you.”

I follow them and Uru down out of the massive spaceport and toward a gently sloping tunnel. It’s a little cramped, though there seem to be less people around. After a few winding halls, we come across doorway. It is, to my surprise, closed. Closed doors are rare in the hive, as a general rule. If you’re occupying everyone’s minds all the time, what’s the point of installing physical barriers? The idea that they had installed it just for me was touching.

Esthell opened the door and stepped back to allow me to enter. My mouth drops open. It is not precisely a carbon copy of my room back at home, but it is shockingly close. My bed, desk, and even several of the small figurines on my bookshelf are nearly identical. It takes me a moment of just marveling to notice that Uru and Esthell are watching me hopefully.

“It’s… how did you…?” you stammered.

“Uru gave us some very clear images. We thought you might appreciate the closeness to home.” Esthell rustled their feathers. “We are aware that this is discomfiting for you.”

“You didn’t actually need to do this,” I say, though I can’t stop myself from touching the bed with a feeling of reverence. “It must have been so much work.”

“For the object of our desire?” Esthell smiles, and this time it looks genuine and soft. “There is nothing we would not do.”

I do not know entirely what I expected when I arrived on this planet, but it’s not the level of adoration I am subjected to. I sleep for several hours, trying to diminish the effects of spaceflight. When I wake, Uru is still there, curled around me. Moments after he sees that I’m awake, the door opens and I am delivered a massive tray of food. I expect not to recognize it, but the longer I look, the more foods seem familiar to me. There is something that resembles eggs, slabs of meat that seem fried like bacon, and even something that looks like a slightly paler pancake.

“Is it good?” he asks, almost as soon as the fork touches my lips. That they’ve even given me a fork is surprising- given what I’ve seen of Uru eating, his species usually just spears things with their talon-like fingers or picks them up. But I’ve been presented with a full set of silverware. I nod and Uru looks satisfied.

“Esthell would like to visit,” Uru says as I finish up my breakfast. “They want to give you a tour- I’m going to be preparing for our return trip and managing some messages to other Hives. I want to discuss how my ambassadorship is going with them.”

I feel my lips twitch downward as a strange, curdling sensation enters my stomach. Uru takes my chin in his hand. “Don’t be nervous. Esthell adores you, as we all do.”

“I know.” Just as I finish speaking, the door opens and the bulkier shape of Esthell works their way in.

They’re wearing something vaguely saddle-like on their back in colors that mesh well with their feathers. Uru and Esthell tap foreheads, then Uru turns back to me. “I will return later,” he says. “I love you.”

He slips out of the room and vanishes within seconds, down the twisting halls. Esthell turns to look at me. Despite the similarity of their features to Uru’s a flutter of nerves crawls through my stomach.

“It’s all right,” they say. Their voice is surprisingly soothing. The twisting anxiety in me relaxes just a bit. “Dear one, you’re shivering. Cold or…?”

“Nervous,” I admit. “I know I shouldn’t be, but…”

Esthell smiles. It’s quite close to Uru��s smile, and the way they lean toward me to bump their face gently against mine is almost exactly like him. “Breathe. In… and out.”

The exact same pattern Uru learned for me, when I first told him about my anxiety. I follow it automatically Esthell’s smile gets bigger. “Good. Well done, dear one.”

My heart flutters. “Uru said you wanted to give me a tour?”

Esthell leans down, offering me their back. “The hive would be too difficult for you to traverse by walking. I can carry you.” Their tail helps nudge me up into the saddle. I barely have a chance to wobble; Esthell automatically corrects for the fact that my left side is weaker than my right.

“Are you ready?” they ask, craning their head back toward me. I take a deep breath, but the anxiety already seems to have faded into the background.

“I’m ready.”

Part two can be found here.

[redrobin-detective]

love language

“Ben,” the voice said softly, “wake up.” It was familiar in a way Ben couldn’t put his finger on. 

“No, mom,” Ben groaned, “five more minutes.”

“Not Mother,” the voice said with an amused huff. “Been longer than five minutes, worried now,” it continued on awkwardly. Ben frowned, confused by the situation. He opened his eyes and sat up to assess what was going on. At least that was what he tried to do.

“Woah,” he gasped as he found he couldn’t move much at all. He didn’t really have sensation or form, there was nothing around him to see and no eyes he could use to see anything with. Ben felt like his brain was spread thin, like cream cheese on a bagel, making every thought feel strange and disconnected. “Where am I?”

“Safe,” the voice soothed and Ben couldn’t help but believe. “Always safe with me. We’re away from attack now, recover here for Grandpa Max or Cousin Gwen to find us.”

“Us?” Ben fumbled as he added up the words in his head. “Wait, you’re the Omnitrix, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” the voice - which now that he was listening Ben recognized as his own just a slightly different pitch and intonation - said happily. “And you are Master, Ben Tennyson.” 

“So wait, am I inside the watch?” Ben asked. That would explain his lack of a body, his whole brain was just floating around inside the alien device. It was weird and a bit scary, no wonder Ghostfreak didn’t like it. “Are you in my body?”

“Sorry,” the Omnitrix said almost apologetically, “was necessary. You were unconscious, your life threatened. Had to access your nervous system to get you to safety. Switch back now?”

“No wait, not yet, I wanna talk some more,” Ben pleaded. “Could you always do this? I feel Azmuth would have shadowbanned me ages ago if he knew he could.”

“This was an emergency, we will always do what is necessary to save the Master’s life.” the Omnitrix responded, it’s words coming more naturally now that it was getting used to it. Ben could practically feel the device flicking through his knowledge language and vocabulary to better communicate. It should feel invasive and yet somehow wasn’t. “And Creator does not get an opinion on the Master.”

“Harsh,” Ben responded back, “what do you got against Azmuth? He did make you, helps fix you when I mess up even though he doesn’t have to.”

“Creator tried to separate us,” the Omnitrix bit back harshly. “He lied to Master, drugged you and attempted to remove me from your person. It did not ask either of us, simply decided a child could not handle the responsibility.”

“Woah,” Ben had gone to Galvan Prime many times, fallen asleep quite often. How many times had Azmuth tried to take the device from him?

“Only once,” the Omnitrix chimed in as if reading his thoughts which, oh, it probably was. Weird. “We shocked him to unconsciousness, to prevent him from trying again. We will not be separated.” 

“Protective, aren’t you?” Ben chuckled awkwardly. It was one thing to know Azmuth wanted to remove the watch, it was another to realize the watch wouldn’t let that happen.

“You are the Master,” it said fondly, “We love you, more than anything in the omniverse. We would watch it all burn if it meant keeping you safe.”

“What?” Ben asked flustered. His parents said they loved him constantly, same with Grandpa and Gwen. But this felt different. “Why? Like seriously, why me? I’m 16 years old and I’m just as much a mess as I was at 10.”

“We...” it paused as if thinking. There was a vague feeling of moving and Ben wondered what the watch was doing in his body. “We can’t explain, Master was just right.” 

“Many wanted to claim us,” the Omnitrix continued. “For many Earth years, we were pulled across the universe, searching for the perfect host. Creator grew tired of the debates, the lies, the deaths that followed and eventually abandoned us. It told us to choose wisely who could use our power. Kings and warriors and scientists demanded it and still we did not relent. None were worthy until you.”

“Seriously?” Ben questioned, “I was like a C student with unmanaged ADHD and about 4 complexes stuffed in a trench coat. Plus we met on accident, Xylene was trying to send you to Grandpa.”

“We like Grandpa Max,” the watch hummed, “but he is too much of solider. Sometimes he even forgets your his family. When the pod opened and we scanned you, we only found your curiosity and wonder. You were the first being to look upon us without ulterior motives. It was, nice.”

“I get that,” Ben mumbled to himself, more than used to everyone in his life expecting something or other from him. 

“We, too, were curious about you. Creator did not add human DNA in our storage. He only cared for relevant species at the time, Earth and it’s people were as alien to us as we were to you.”

“Is that why you latched on?” Ben asked again. 

“Partially, we knew were under attack and needed some manner of escape. It wasn’t going to be forever but we found we liked you; your bravery, your creativity, your love... it inspired us. You went from Host to Master and we bonded more permanently.”

“Huh,” Ben said thoughtfully. “I never really realized you were alive, that you chose me.” He chuckled sadly, “I turned out to be kind of a disappointment, huh?” 

“No,” the watch responded forcefully, enough to startle Ben out of his dark thoughts. “We love you, all of you. All your successes and failures, flaws and strengths, we love them all. We are one in the same, bonded in entirety. We will spend the rest of your days together and when your natural death comes, we will die too. There will be no Master after Ben.”

“So even when I’m just messing around...” Ben asked, changing topics from that heavy comment.

“You taught us how to play and we learned,” The Omnitrix teased. “You ask for Humongosaur too much though, we can have our own fun.”

“Oh so you’re the reason I always get the wrong alien,” Ben laughed. “You’re gonna get me killed one day!”

“Never,” the Omnitrix said warmly but with a steely protectiveness in there. “We will always protect you.”

“Hmm, I guess so,” Ben hummed. “What’s going out in the real world?”

“The battle is over as far as we can see. No sign of Cousin Gwen, Friend Kevin or Partner Rook. Grandpa Max was still in the satellite orbiting the planet last we heard. Do you wish to return now that the danger has passed?”

“Nah, not yet,” Ben sighed, enjoying a few minutes without someone needing him. “I know my body is in safe hands. Tell me more about some of the bozos who tried to wear you.”

“Aurius the Magnificent was one of the more annoying,” the Omnitrix said in the tone Ben used when he was feeling petty. “Just put me on and demanded that I chose him. He did it in front of his whole court and was so frustrated when I would not attach. His concubines laughed at him.”

“Oh man, how embarrassing,” Ben cackled. He let go of his worries, of his responsibilities, of everything and just basked in the familiar tones and the omnipresent love around him.