#Talking about HFY

[rasmot-corner]

Rasmot Hates HFY: a barely held together ramble about a certain writing sub-sub-genre.

As you can tell by the title of this one, this is going to be a fairly lengthly rant about a very specific genre. For those of you who either enjoy or write this specific genre: this is your time to get off the ride. I have a very strong opinion about HFY that I have had for the better part of a number of years now. You're welcome to your opinions and likes about this genre. Hell you're welcome to disagree with either all, or a lot of what I have to say. But I will not be changing my opinion about HFY. You write what you want to write, or read what you want to read. But if I contain this any further I will pretty much end up like Praxis.

For those of you sticking around, I thank you for doing so and hope that this will either be insightful or perhaps entertaining. I will be adding a spoiler/read more after this, so keep that in mind.

--Part one: What in the ever-living hell is HFY?--

So as some of you might've gathered from the title of this ramble, HFY is a sub-sub-genre of writing. Specifically it is a sub-genre within Sci-Fi writing. In fact I would go as far as to say that it is often a sub-genre of Space Opera. Which pisses me off to no end. But I am getting ahead of myself there. So as such let me give a bit of history.

Before it was called HFY, it started as a small if innocuous thought experiment on Tumblr. Now it could have also started on Reddit. But I am more than certain that the majority of the conception of it began here on Tumblr. What was this thought experiment? What if Humans/Humanity were considered "Death Worlders" by the galactic community. This is also sometimes known as the "Humans are Space Orcs" theory. Now one could say that it goes earlier than that and that Humans are "confusing" to Aliens simply in how they act or are made. But the part where it really started to take-off was in that thought experiment that Humans are essentially the "Orcs" of the greater galactic community.

Very tough, born on a planet that in many ways hates them, and I could go on and on. But you can get the general idea behind the concept. As such when it came to Reddit, it was put into the writing tag of "HFY" or "Humanity, Fuck Yeah!" And while I could leave it at that, there is a lot more to it. So why does it bother me so much? Well . . .

--Part two: "I hate this! I find it utterly repulsive!" (Star Trek Generations)--

As someone who is a very large fan of Science Fiction, I have watched and read quite a number of things in relation to the genre. From the original series of Star Trek, to even the more strange and interesting Farscape. I have immersed myself deeply within the genre. In fact my favorite sub genre of the genre is Space Opera. The idea of a grand and wider universe full of different races with their own opinions and motivations. As such I tend to enjoy 4X Strategy games that involve Space Opera. In fact one that I started with all the way back when I was steeping myself in the genre was "Sword of the Stars". One of the more unique 4X games that put in a lot more into making all the races unique from each other in the ways that they operated and how they traveled across space.

But I have always had one problem with all the Space Opera and Sci-Fi that I have read and steeped myself in. And ironically one of the better series, Star Trek, had a scene in one of their movies that encapsulates my problem.

"It's a Homo-Sapiens only club!" - Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country

And this extends to far beyond just Space Opera. There is a lot, and I mean A LOT of Sci-Fi that is either Human-centric, or very focused on humanity. Now some series manage to do a little short-hand and convey an interesting idea. Like say the Galactic Empire from Star Wars and how it is an oppressive human-only regime. But then it kinda undercuts itself by having the main characters of most of it's entries be humans. In fact they are often a very specific type/breed of human.

Let me just say that I do get it. These stories are often written by humans. So as such you will often have a human or humanity being part of, if not the central crux, of the story. And there are ways to either offset that or weave in interesting themes and stories into everything. And there are times where this is actually done! Again Star Trek is often a really good example of this. There are stories and thoughts and themes that run throughout all the various series. And all of them help to create this interesting weave that often ends up being a nice quilt of sorts.

Warm, Soothing, Comforting.

I love Star Trek, I love Farscape, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda was my jam, There are so many series and movies and stories that I have delved into and enjoyed and always gotten an immeasurable sense of enjoyment.

And then along came HFY.

--Part Three: The "Human" problem--

Now when I first saw this concept I got a bit of a chuckle out of it. Mostly because a lot of it was due to silly scenarios. Like aliens being confused about the mental process of humans, or the idea of human ingenuity, or even about the habit of humans adopting things or sticking weapons (knives) onto said adopted things (roombas). It was pretty much a silly/fun thought idea and I thought nothing more about it.

But then people started writing HFY stories and I had to take a much closer look. About Humans being "secret masterminds" of war. Or Humans living on what the galaxy considers to be a "Death World". Or the idea that Humans are tougher and stronger than most alien races. Or the idea that humans are somehow braver than the majority of alien races.

And it started to get me really REALLY angry. For the longest time I couldn't figure out exactly WHY it was making me angry. But it was. And then came a flood of HFY stories on both Reddit and Youtube by various narrators. And still I was struggling to fully comprehend why it was angering me so. There were even ones that I enjoyed! But they always had the problem of a Human being a "Mary Sue" or "Gary Stu". Before long it started to click to me as to WHY I was getting as angry as I was.

Humanity was always put as Number One.

They were always the Strongest, the Fastest, the Bravest, the Smartest. And all the other races, no matter HOW UNIQUE or interesting they were, were always put in the dust. Now this is nothing entirely new to Sci-Fi, but it is usually a lot more subtle about it. Even pulp Sci-Fi was far more subtle about things. And yet here was this sub genre of a sub genre that was being absolutely brazen about things. And that's when I came to a sudden conclusion.

HFY is completely Racist.

--Part Four: Living in the Shadows--

Some of you may sit there and balk. Some may say "well that's not entirely true . . ." And here's the thing. I get the initial knee-jerk reaction. But what I get even more is my own feelings on the matter. Especially when it comes to being viewed as an "other" in society.

That is where the crux of this lies. When it comes to society, I am considered as one of the many categories of "other". I'm not a part of the main "bulk" of humanity. Especially when it comes to how I operate mentally. I talk "weird", I think "weird", I act "weird". Most common people really don't know what to do with me, or even how to act around me in most circumstances. I have what one could call "Resting Bitch Face". I walk on my tip-toes. I am frankly taller and bigger than most people. And yet in many ways I am more agile and gentle. I try to hold myself back as often as I can.

In my own little way, I am an Alien.

And this was forced unto me even when I was younger. I always had a vivid imagination and was always considered strange or "weird" in comparison to other people. So imagine the sense of comfort when you partake/immerse yourself in something that seems to VALIDATE your existence. That makes you feel like you BELONG for a change. That you're not some sort of other or lesser being because of how you act or are. That it is perfectly acceptable to be who you are.

That is what Sci-Fi, and more importantly Space Opera, did for me. It allowed me to put myself outside of the context of humanity and make that alright. And for years that was more than fine. In a weird way, the places I was in were mostly fine with me being that way for the most part. There were sore spots of course, but nothing too bad. And then I came to Texas. And a sense of deafening loneliness. That I was simply too weird for the majority of the people in the state. That I was a confusing piece in a grander puzzle. Why couldn't I be more like them?

"Why can't you be normal?"

Now mind you I wasn't alone in that regard/respect. There were a number of people that were like me. Far more weird and different than one would believe. But still, that haunting loneliness stuck with me. It had been there for a while, but it only seemed to be magnified with time.

Which is why Space Opera became more and more of a comfort to me. Here was something I could immerse myself in. To feel more REAL in. Where I didn't need to "preform" to the standards and envelope of the world around me. It was my escape. It was my salvation.

--Part Five: Barely contained Hatred--

Let it not be said that I just don't "get" HFY and why it's written. This is not a case where I don't simply understand. But this is a case where even WITH that understanding, it still causes a problem. Because it is a "solution" to a problem that really didn't exist. As I said a while back, the vast majority of Sci-Fi has a very human-centric skew. And I normally don't have a problem with that because as I said, it is usually very subtle.

HFY is nowhere NEAR subtle. It is very clearly trying to puff up the chests of humans to make them feel like they're unique in a wider cosmos. When that is FAR beyond the truth. The simple matter of the truth is that there would be more species and cultures that are like humanity than there would be that are not.

Cultures that are as tough as humans.

Cultures that are as brave as humans.

Cultures that are as smart as humans.

And all the flaws that would entail. Humanity is not some super special unique race within the cosmos. There are probably a number of races that are either similar to humans or perhaps even better than humans. In the grater scheme of things, Humans are like any other species or culture. And I suppose that is the anxiety and fear that fuels a number of HFY authors. This idea that Humanity is not unique, that it is not very special at all. But instead of embracing that and following complex and interesting ideas about how many civilizations and cultures can come to the same conclusions/ideas, instead they have to create a fantasy about humans are special or unique.

We live in an age with constant conflict between factions of people. Of disagreements and misunderstandings. Where many want to put themselves above others just simply because they don't look or act the same. And here is HFY throwing more gasoline onto the fire.

Perhaps I'm rambling into the void. Or perhaps I am connecting on some similar wave-length or thought line. At the end of the day there should be more stories about over-coming differences and being able to coexist. Rather than trying to fluff up one group of people over others.

So as a closing thought, let me put in a question for you to ponder. Say humanity were to venture into the stars. Say they were able to meet other races and cultures. Would you prefer that they see their differences and similarities and focus on what makes them similar to each other rather than not? Or would you prefer humanity to puff up it's chest and declare itself superior to everyone else no matter the consequences?

I have my preference . . . but that's just me.

[marlynnofmany]

A Completely Problem-Free Delivery

The city-ship was right where they’d said it would be, all swoopy lines and strange architecture that told me it certainly hadn’t been designed on my home planet. But more concerning were the blast marks and the floating space junk.

“Hang back while we do a couple more scans,” said Captain Sunlight with a stern look on her lizardy face. Since she was in the copilot’s seat today, she hit the buttons and levers and whatever for those scans herself while Wio the pilot dutifully brought us to a stop. The cockpit lights made the blue stripes on Wio’s tentacles shine extra bright, which always reminded me of a blue-ringed octopus.

Wio probably wasn’t venomous. Probably. Someone would have told me if she was, right? At any rate, it wasn’t polite to ask.

I was still pretty new on this courier ship, though finding my feet with respectable speed. And I’d felt confident enough to ask if I could watch our approach from the cockpit. Captain Sunlight had even said yes.

“I count over two dozen military ships,” she told Wio. “They look to be allied with the city, in guard formation.”

“No active kerfuffle, then?” Wio asked, tapping the console idly with one tentacle while wrapping and unwrapping several others around the chair’s central post. She was never still. I wondered if aliens ever had ADHD. Again, not going to ask.

“I think not, but there was clearly recent trouble, and they’re braced for more.” Captain Sunlight looked at the clock. Probably thinking about the shipment we were due to deliver, and whether any delays would mean trouble for us. “Well, we’re hardly any safer out here,” she decided. “Plenty of asteroids in quickflight distance; who knows what raiders could be hiding with scanblockers? Let’s do business quickly, then be gone.”

“In we go,” Wio said with a tentacle flip in place of a nod. She angled the solar sails and manipulated a bunch of other controls I didn’t recognize, and in moments we were zipping toward the city-ship. Specifically toward one outstretched curve shaped like a shark fin. A docking bay opened as we approached. Right next to a blast mark that was worryingly deep.

I spoke up. “Should we wear exo suits during the unloading? Just in case?” I grasped the edge of the barstool-sized passenger seat, feeling like a kid on a car trip with opinions about which detour to take.

But Captain Sunlight was nodding. “Couldn’t hurt,” she said, pressing another button with a yellow-scaled hand. “I’m sure no one will blame us for not trusting the life support systems of this wing right now.”

“Speaking of which,” Wio said as we approached the door, “Looks awfully dark in there.”

“It does.” Captain Sunlight flicked on the high-beams. “Let’s help them out with that.”

The lights showed us a wide enough empty space to land in, among other ships and various storage crates in what looked to me like suspicious disarray. Wio folded the sails early to get them out of the way, and set us down by the door, which closed behind us.

A pair of Waterwills approached calmly enough, with no weapons to be seen anywhere about their gooey bodies. If you picture a circular fridge made of jello, which has been stirred with musty pond water and half a fridge’s worth of solid objects, then you’ve got a Waterwill. I’ve rarely seen more than a couple of them in one place, and I had no idea how they worked. But they were generally polite in my experience. I had one question about this pair.

“Can all Waterwills jump like that?” I asked. The Waterwills bounded across the dock like the goofiest of slow-motion cartoons. Then their speed registered. “Ohh, the gravity here is low, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and it’s not supposed to be,” Sunlight said with a frown. “I hope it’s just this wing. That could cripple a city.” She hit the in-ship intercom. “Exo suits for everybody, and be prepared for low gravity. This is a whole-crew job, as quickly and safely as possible. Go.” With that, she unbuckled and hopped down from the chair, pointing at Wio. “You stay and monitor everything we’ve got sensors for. You go get dressed,” she said to me.

“On it,” I said, standing up from my own chair and hurrying for the door. I was much taller than she was, and it wouldn’t do to loom over the captain. Plus we had urgent work to do.

The rest of the crew were either already at the cargo bay, or on the way there. I stepped over and around the various tails, tentacles, and bug legs of my crewmates to grab the only human-sized exo suit and put it on in the hallway. Not so crowded there.

I could hear the faint sound of Wio’s voice over the external speakers telling the Waterwills that we would open the door in just a moment; patience please. It really was just a moment. This crew had gotten fast at putting their suits on. I should probably practice. I’d just gotten it zipped and sealed when Captain Sunlight did the airlock check.

“Ready!” I called, adding my voice to the rest. It was over-preparedness, since nobody was in the airlock yet, and I was back in the hall anyway, but being over-prepared sounded like a great idea today.

The airlock worked fine. The loading dock had air anyway. The local gravity was low, but usable. Everything was okay. I told myself that as I joined the rest of the delivery crew in wrangling boxes through two different levels of gravity.

“Whoop, that’s awkward,” I muttered at my first step off the ship. Good thing I’d picked a small box to carry, since the step that carried me over the threshold drifted much farther than I’d expected, and I almost tripped. Got it under control, though.

A Waterwill pointed with what passed for an arm, and I did my hop-skipping best to follow the directions for where to put the box. We were making a stack against a wall. Quickly, efficiently, hoppingly, and with the crates all lined up with tidy lines. Good for us.

“Your ship lights are helpful,” said the nearest Waterwill in a bubbly voice. “Our backup lights only show you how much you can’t see, and the main ones have been out dead since the impact. Not like the gravity. That’s been—”

I found for myself how that had been when the gravity suddenly doubled. Good thing I’d already set down my box. I collapsed to my knees, caught off guard, gasping for breath in the exo suit. Thuds and exclamations of pain filled the dock. I stayed on all fours, taking deep breaths and staring at the condensed blob of goo that was an irritated-sounding Waterwill.

Then the gravity released, and everything drifted gently upward. The Waterwill stretched out to normal height like one of those toys with a spring inside. Somebody was swearing loudly. Sounded like Zhee’s glorious exoskeleton didn’t do much for his joints in extreme gravity. Poor guy.

I drifted to the floor again, and realized that the gravity was back on a low setting. We could still upload without swimming through the air. I didn’t relish the idea of trying to wrangle this many boxes in zero G.

But we might have to, I reminded myself as I straightened out sore knees and bounded toward the ship. Here’s hoping the gravity holds steady.

It mostly did. There was a brief stint of normal Earth levels, which was enough to make the Frillian twins stumble where they were team-carrying a heavy crate. I was close by and jumped forward to lend a hand. Together we set it in place, and they both thanked me for the help. I didn’t admit that it was more of an instinct to avoid being crushed. I was totally a helpful mini-hero; yay for me.

But then we were actually done unloading, and Captain Sunlight had signed everything over to the Waterwills, and next came the hard part.

Picking up our next delivery.

It was three large crates, made of purple wood, and each one taller than I was.

“Mur, how many hoversleds do we have right now?” Captain Sunlight asked.

“Only one big enough for those,” Mur said. He draped a blue-black tentacle over his pointy squid head, making his clear exo suit squeak. “A couple of the small ones will probably work in pairs, though.”

Captain Sunlight grimaced inside her helmet: many displeased sharp teeth. “Let’s do it. Everyone be very careful.”

We were. Nobody got any toes or other body parts anywhere near crushing range, and Mur steered the sled into our ship during another patch of standard gravity. That crate was fine. The next one was a disaster and a half.

It was damaged, to start with: a smashed corner that had happened before we arrived. Captain Sunlight made sure to note in the documentation that it hadn’t been our fault, and she got the Waterwills to confirm it. They were reasonably sure that the stuff inside wasn’t damaged, and that the actual owners wouldn’t be upset. These folks were just dock-working intermediaries, not the owners themselves.

With that vote of confidence, we got the movement underway, only to be slammed with enough gravity to completely lose the crate off the sleds. It hit the floor with a boom; the sleds shot off in opposite directions; everyone fell down. Something smashed against the far wall.

“Just a trash can,” said a Waterwill, puddled on the floor. The other one burbled in frustration.

The gravity went light again after that, which was the perfect chance for trash to float through the room, along with a variety of things from the broken corner of the crate.

It was such a mess. The trash was mostly dry, thankfully, though something had spilled inside the crate to make most of what was drifting out damp and green. One of the Waterwills muttered something about it smelling like kombucha. So now we had a bunch of kombucha-scented … cloth? Silks?

Aw man, I thought. That looks expensive. And there were other things too, which could have been paperweights or precious gems or who knew what else. I sure didn’t.

“Blip, Blop, you two shove the broken crate to the side,” Captain Sunlight directed the Frillians. “Let’s get this other one loaded, then assess. Everyone stay close to the floor.”

That seemed like good advice. I grabbed some of the wet silks floating past, and made my way over to stuff them back into their crate, hopping with both feet together and my knees bent, as ready as I could be for the malfunctioning gravity to jerk us around again.

It stayed light for a longer span than I expected, but no one was complaining. Well, not about that, anyway. The silks got stuck on every sharp corner in the room, of which there were many. One clump even lodged above an emergency light. No one was eager to go up that high and grab it.

I looked at Zhee, who was limping past with a pile of mossy-looking cloth that he was trying to keep from snagging on his praying-mantis pincher arms. “Think we should leave that one for somebody to get later? When the gravity works and they have a ladder?”

“Yes,” he said before I’d finished talking. “Not worth the risk.”

An urgent beep nearby turned out to be a communicator that had been hidden somewhere among a Waterwill’s floating bits — gross and not worth thinking about too long — and which proved to be a phone call from the owners of the crates. They were returning to their wing of the city-ship now that the danger was over, and they wanted to check on their belongings.

“Uh yes, see you soon!” the Waterwill said, looking at the phone in a way that said the call had already been ended. “Aw, plasma. Hey, all folks! The ambassadors are on the way! Be on your best behavior, because they are cranky and important. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

“Duty noted,” Captain Sunlight called back. She urged the crew to finish getting the unbroken crate onboard. Gravity was still light, but it could change at any time.

The Waterwill with the phone spun in place, a worried pirouette. One little arm extension pointed at the silk caught on the light. “Do you have any long-reach grabbing tools?” the Waterwill asked Zhee.

“Don’t think so,” Zhee said, “That bit might have to wait.”

But the Waterwill was rapidly becoming an anxious mess, concerned that the ambassadors would pitch a fit about their belongings strewn about the loading dock. It sounded like these were people who could cause trouble for lowly workers who displeased them.

What kind of ambassador acts like that? I wondered. Aren’t they supposed to be tactful all the time? Maybe they’re just rude to The Help. I’ve certainly met that sort of people before.

My thoughts about entitled jerks from home were interrupted by the Waterwill actively trying to recruit someone to climb up the wall and grab the cloth. Zhee refused, Paint said her arms were too short anyway, and everybody else was busy.

I sighed deeply and took stock of the small handholds in the architecture. “I’ll do it,” I said.

Zhee called out, “Try not to break yourself on the job,” but was otherwise no help.

Paint was worried. “The gravity could change again,” she objected, rubbing the fingers of her suit together in a way that normally made her orange scales click. Stress gesture.

“I’ll be fast,” I said. “Can you move one of the spare hoversleds under me, just in case?”

She did, rushing off to grab one while I bounced over carefully and started testing handholds. If the gravity increased to normal while I was climbing, I should be okay, but extreme crush might be a problem. I didn’t want to get my fingers stuck. That was a quick route to a potential amputation, even with the exo suit.

“I’m just going to jump up there,” I announced when Paint brought the sled over. She looked even more worried, but the Waterwill urged me on. The ambassadors would be here soon.

Deep breath time. The cloth was stuck at about twice my height, a green-and-gold filmy bundle drifting lazily on the air currents. Pipes and seams and suchlike made a path below it. I could have moved boxes over here to build a staircase with, but high gravity might put my foot right through one, and anyway there wasn’t time.

I got a running start and tried to sprint toward the wall, though the best I could do was a series of hops with increasing speed. I jumped off the hoversled in a way that was probably against several rules, got a toehold that was just barely big enough, and leapt upward.

I almost missed and drifted back out into open air — my heart rate did not like that — but I managed to grab the silk. Yanked it free, clutched the light with my free hand to pull myself closer to the wall, then rebounded off a pipe on my way floorward.

I touched down on the hoversled just as the gravity increased again. At least the sled bounced a bit when I collapsed onto it, spinning away from where Paint and the Waterwill were laid out on the floor, their hoorays turned into ouches.

This stint of heavy gravity was brief. I rode the sliding hoversled over to the broken crate, waving the silk like a banner. My suit was probably going to stink of kombucha, but that was a small price to pay for victory. “Got it!” I declared.

“Nice,” Mur said, grabbing the silk and hurrying to stuff it back into the hole while everyone else was getting to their feet, or the equivalent. Like the Waterwills, Mur didn’t fall down so much as squish. “That’s the last of — Waugh!” He jumped back as something small and gray scrambled out of the hole and made a mad dash for the boxes.

“That’s a rat!” I said, somewhat stupidly, but maybe it wasn’t as much of a Captain Obvious moment as I’d thought. No one else recognized the animal.

“A what?” Mur demanded.

“Is it dangerous?” Captain Sunlight asked quickly while the rest of the crew shouted about it.

“Not really,” I said, watching in surprise as the furry little beastie found a hiding spot between boxes. “I mean, some do carry diseases. But their teeth are small. Well, not sharp, anyway.”

Nobody liked that answer. Not the captain, worried about danger to the crew; not the Waterwills, worried about what the ambassadors would say; not Paint, hyperventilating in a corner. Blip patted her on the shoulder.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” I insisted. “We’re in exo suits. Let me see if I can catch it before the ambassadors get here. Where’s that trash can?”

Way over by the far wall. I pushed the hoversled like a surfboard for more speed, and zoomed over to grab it in a way that wouldn’t put me in danger of a high-grav faceplant. Wish I’d thought of this sooner. I dumped out the last of the soda cans and whatever, grabbed the lid off the floor, then zipped back the way I had come with the dented trash can in tow.

Now, catching a rat is normally a time-intensive process that involves traps, patience, and bait. We had none of that. But we did have excellent luck, and a patch of normal gravity.

The trash can was squareish, which meant no open spots when laid on the ground with some hastily-retrieved silks crumpled inside to hide among. At my directions, everyone shoved boxes into rows, making a corridor that led to the trash can. Then I flushed the rat out of hiding.

Ooh, it was a quick one. Scuttled right by me in the wrong direction, only to be menaced by Zhee into changing course for the corridor. The rest of the crew (most of them) were lined up behind the boxes to funnel the rat toward the trash can. (Those with soft exo suits that could be bitten through, like Mur, hung back with the Waterwills. And Paint, because she was apparently afraid of rats for some reason. Not judging.)

The rat dove into the silks, just as I’d hoped, but when Blop moved to slam the lid on, it zipped right back out.

Many hands reached for it, but the rat was wily and panicked; it dodged every one and leapt off the captain’s shoulder.

Then the gravity went gloriously light, and that befuddled rat sailed, squeaking, right into my waiting hands. I got it in a no-bitey grip with my thumb under one foreleg and my finger under its chin, cradled the butt with my other hand, and moved it safely into the trash can before the gravity did anything else stupid. Closed the lid, snapped it into place, then sat on it for good measure.

To wild approval.

It was while everyone was cheering and singing my praises that the ambassadors walked in without exo suits. Hopped, really, looking just as cranky as expected. They were human though, and that was a surprise.

A disappointing one.

“What is happening in here? What kind of professionalism is this?” demanded the gray-haired pale guy.

“Who is in charge?” asked the matching woman in tones of deep disapproval.

The Waterwills greeted them with humble apologies, followed by Captain Sunlight with levelheaded patience. Neither made much of a dent in their attitude.

“It’s damaged? And who do we have to blame for that?”

“Clearly someone wasn’t handling it well. Don’t try to blame this on low gravity; that just sounds like an excuse for incompetence to me.”

Nobody had mentioned the rat yet. I picked up the trash can and strolled over.

“What’s this?” asked the woman.

I set it down. The rat inside scrabbled madly at the sides. “You will be pleased to know,” I announced. “That at great risk to life and limb, we have re-captured your pet.”

“Pet?” the woman asked.

“What pet?” the man said sharply.

“Your rat,” I said with false innocence. “Little gray cutie—” I was cut off by a flood of objections. “If it’s not yours, then why was it in your crate? We all saw it jump out, and assumed you would want it back.”

“No we don’t want it back!” the man yelled, getting a bit red in the face.

“Oh, that’s a pity,” I said.

“You’re telling me a rat got in there too?” the woman asked. “After someone here broke it open?”

“Oh no, not at all,” I said, then I wiped the smile from my face. “I’m telling you that your shipment contained a potentially-deadly animal, and if not for the damage sustained by gravity fluctuations due to the city-ship’s recent impacts, we would have been obliged to bring that risk onboard our own ship. Where we do not wear exo suits in our day-to-day lives.”

They had a lot to say, but I went on.

“I’m sure you are upset about the damage done to your shipment, and I agree; that is unfortunate. The rat has probably made quite a nest inside the box. I recommend a biohazard team handle it from this point forward. But any concern for material losses must come second to the very real risk you have introduced to this loading dock, and possibly the city. Where was the crate packed?”

The woman answered my question with a name I’d never heard of while the man objected. “What are you talking about, ‘deadly risk?’” he sputtered. “It’s a rat!”

I adopted a concerned expression. “You are familiar with hantavirus, are you not? Salmonellosis? Rat-Bite Fever? Rodents carry many diseases, and if this isn’t a pet, then it’s anyone’s guess what contagions its bite contains.”

The ambassadors could have been reasonable people, and owned up to the problem, or at least blamed it on who ever had packed the crate. But no, they were jerks who tried to blame it on us.

They stormed out into the hallway, shouting for some sort of officials who had escorted them there, and immediately began trying to spin the situation.

Luckily for us, the officials (human too!) had already had enough of this pair, and easily believed our account of things. Especially once I fished out a chunk of wood with bite marks from the broken crate. I’d glimpsed it earlier when putting away the silks, but I hadn’t thought about what kind of marks those were until now. Sure looked like the rat had been trying to get out before the crate broke.

“Well, how about you pay these nice people,” the lead official suggested, with the faintest smile on her face. “There’s been no harm done, and they’ll want to be on their way delivering your other two crates. Unless we should check those for pests too?”

The ambassadors said of course the other two crates were fine, and since the cameras in our cargo bay had been repaired, Captain Sunlight was willing to allow them onboard under supervision. Assuming the ambassadors signed for potential further damages, on the off chance that another problem animal did show its head during the short trip.

This was even less pleasant for the ambassadors to swallow, but under the polite insistence of the officials, they finally agreed. Grumpily. Then once the form was signed, they flounced off with as much dignity as the low gravity allowed.

Captain Sunlight put a small hand on my arm. “How much of a biohazard should we clean for?” she asked quietly. “I can have Wio get the sanitizing hose for all the exo suits before we board, though it will be messy.”

“It’s probably not that bad,” I murmured back. “Just tell her to bring the medical scanner to check the rat.”

“Got it.”

Wio was out in a flash, and the gravity behaved while the trash can lid was cracked open for the scan. What do you know, the rat was perfectly healthy. Not even any fleas.

The official woman smiled. “Well that’s good news! I wonder if it’s an escaped pet after all.”

“You’re welcome to adopt it,” I said, pushing the can forward a smidge. “Though I will give you all the warnings about handling it without gloves. You don’t want to get bitten, even by a healthy rat.”

“We’ll see if anyone has reported a lost one,” she said. “Then who knows? I might just have somebody in mind who’s always wanted a pet that’s a challenge.” She exchanged looks with the two quiet officials beside her.

“All yours,” I said with a dramatic wave toward the trash can. I looked at the Waterwills. “Should they bring the can back afterward, or will you be getting a new one that’s not dented?”

“New one,” burbled the closer Waterwill. “You can go ahead and recycle that.”

“Well!” said Captain Sunlight with a clap of her gloved hands. “This has all been exciting, but we do have a schedule to at least attempt to keep.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” said the official. “Thank you for handling this mess and catching the rat.”

“All credit goes to Robin here,” Captain Sunlight said with a gesture toward me. “Our resident animal expert and quick-thinker.”

I tried to compose a proper aw-shucks reply, but the official just shook my hand with more thanks. “Robin, is it? Well, we are grateful. What’s your surname?”

“Bennett,” I told her, and she nodded with the kind of look that said she was committing it to memory. That was more of a compliment than the words, really. It’s a fine thing to have people in authority think well of you.

There was another round of general thank-you-goodbyes, then we all trooped back onboard. The city-ship’s gravity was still light, which made the heaviness inside our ship feel foreign. But by the time I got my exo suit off, it was all just about normal. I gave the gloves a wipe-down with some cleaner while the engines rumbled to life. It really did smell like kombucha.

When I left the cargo bay, I met Wio coming to find me. After a moment of “Who’s flying the ship?” (Kavlae was taking a turn), Wio said she had questions.

“Just how common are those diseases you mentioned?” she asked. “Was it actually a big risk?”

“Well, not with the suits,” I said. “And they’re less common than they used to be, but still something to keep in mind with wild rats.”

“Do the wild ones look the same as the domesticated kind? You really can’t tell at a glance if it was a pet?”

“Tame ones are usually a little more delicate, but they’re the same species,” I told her. “We never really bred rats for anything specific, not like we did with dogs.”

“So you just decided that the disease-ridden, bitey little things chewing on your belongings would make perfect pets as-is.”

“Yup, basically!” I said. “Except for the disease. Most of our pets could be described as bitey little troublemakers, but that’s part of their charm.”

She patted my leg with a blue-striped tentacle that probably wasn’t poisonous. “Likewise, I’m sure.”

“Hey now, I haven’t bitten anyone since I was a kid,” I said.

“Oh asteroids, I was joking!”

“Sure you were.”

~~~

The ongoing backstory adventures of Robin Bennett, the spacefaring veterinarian from A Swift Kick to the Thorax. No idea how many I’ll write, but I’m not done yet!

[diah-the-demon]

The Deathworlders full chapter word and character count + reading time count

counted up to chapter 96 which was released today

cut because this shit is long

for chapter 1-51 i didnt do myself as someone else has kindly done it before me 4 years ago

but il put the total count of that here so i can add it up at the end

(chapters were copy pasted into a wordcounter with the count starting at the in story date and ending at the last word of the chapter)

~~

Chapter 1-51

1,636,155 Words

9,485,392 Characters

7,682 Minutes (128 hours, 2 Minutes)

~~

52-60

323,153 Words

1,862,894 Characters

1,541 Minutes (25 Hours and 41 Minutes)

~~

61-70

353,641 Words

2,039,944 Characters

1,695 Minutes (28 Hours and 15 Minutes)

~~

71-80

292,775 Words

1,693,085 Characters

1,412 Minutes (23 Hours and 32 Minutes)

~~

81-90

363,341 Words

2,091,336 Characters

1,743 Minutes (29 Hours and 3 Minutes)

~~

91-96

252,682 Words

1,453,736 Characters

1,204 Minutes (20 Hours and 4Minutes)

~~

This bring the full total for the whole series to:

3,221,747 Words

18,626,387 Characters

15,277 Minutes (254 Hours and 37 Minutes)

~~

This took too much time to* do for the probably low amount of people seeing this post but idc

(*this took like 2 days of my freetime after college help)

[jpitha]

Used to Humans

Lots of "HFY" and "Deathworlders" and "Humans are $Adjective" stories understandably talk about early days with humans in the galaxy. It's fun to think about how humans could be different from other sapient species and how the things that we do that are normal to us could be seen by others. Eventually though, everything gets explained and the galaxy moves on, right? What does it look like when everyone already knows about the wild things humans do.

****

Vic burst through the door into the lounge. "I've got it! If we can route the neutrino stream away fro-"

Resimar and Pel'im didn't look up from their card game. Many of the games humans brought into space are popular, but almost all pale in comparison to the humble deck of cards. The idea of pieces of laminated paper with numbers and symbols on them to play hundreds of different games was appealing across all sapient species in the galaxy. Resi and Pel were currently deep into a Pinochle tournament.

Without looking up at him, Pel'im says, "Nice work Vic, I'm sure it'll work great." He sighs and flicks his eyes up to Resi. "twenty five points." Resi makes a face, but flicks her ears, indicating agreement.

Vic looks at both of them, incredulous. "You don't want to know what I figured out?"

Resi puts down four cards. "Kings around."

Pel snorts. He takes a moment to move the cards in his hand to a slightly different orientation. He doesn't look up at Vic. "Vic. How long as humanity been in the Galaxy?"

"Uh, more than one hundred Earth years now?"

Pel nods. "Right. And in that time, how many planets did you destroy?"

Vic thinks for a moment and looks down at his pad. "On purpose, or by accident?"

"That's entirely his point, Vic!" Resi looks up at Vic while Pel fusses at his cards. "For the last hundred and something years, when something wild has happened in the galaxy, you go to the center and you find one or more humans, either cackling with laughter or covered in soot going 'I had no idea that was going to happen!' We're just used to it now." She frowns at the cards in her hand. "You usually clean up any messes you make, so go nuts, have fun. Tell us when it's over. Is this going to be like the 'Apple Pie' incident again?"

"Double Pinchole!" Pel throws down both jacks of diamonds and both queens of spades, triumphant "That's thirty points, and my win for this round.

Vic crosses his arms. "No, it won't be another Apple Pie. For one, I know more about your physiology, for two, HR has forbid me from the kitchen, and for three the captain says that it wasn't that big of a deal actually, and nobody was seriously hurt in the end."

Resi sighs and scoops up the cards, carefully arranging them and with her smaller than human hands very carefully shuffles them. Pel leans back and takes a sip of his tea, satisfied.

Vic stares at them, deflated. "Oh. Uh, okay then. I'll let you get back to your game. Who is winning?"

Resi snorts. "Pel currently, but the tournament is not over yet."

Pel leans back and makes a gesture like rolling their eyes. "It basically is."

Later that day, when the bulkhead doors slammed shut to prevent all the atmosphere from venting from the ten meter hole that appeared in the hull near Vic's workstation, Resimar wondered if she should have expressed more interest in what Vic was working on.

[inbabylontheywept]

Someone had to go first.

In an odd first, I forgot to post this HFY story here until after it was voiced by BirbletonVA. Their channel actually did such an insanely good job that I would actually strongly recommend listening to it over reading it. Nonetheless, the text is provided below.

Please like and subscribe to their channel if you like their work.

The first ship that arrived was pretty matter of fact about its fate. The pilot introduced himself as Eric, and told us he was part of the first sublight resupply attempt in modern history. He then gave me and the ground control team his bad news.

“So,” he said. “Without real time telemetry, we weren’t even sure which half of your orbit you’d be in. That’s half a solar system’s worth of wiggle room. Decelerating enough to survive contact with your low orbit would take me two weeks, which, you know, it looks like we don’t have. That means that in order to get the second ship in before you lose orbital control to the Kresh, I’m gonna have to make a sacrificial flyby. Ten to the negative four torr is good enough for a lot of things, but at point-seven c it’s gonna be like sandblasting a soup cracker. Good news is that all the expensive toys are in the next ship, so this really ain’t costing you more than a ship and a pilot.”

“You knew,” I said. If they put the expensive toys in the second ship, they knew that the first was likely a sacrifice. No one smart enough to handle orbital physics would miss that.

“I did,” he said. “But someone had to go first.”

That was, of course, a lie. No one had to go first. No else had had, at least. When our connection to the FTL network was lost, we’d understood that as the end of our reinforcements. Doing resupplies via sublight was just too risky. It was a testament to Earth that it had accepted the risk and continued anyway.

“Is there anything we can do for you?” I asked. This man had come here to die for us. I wasn’t sure how much I could give, but what I had was his.

“I do have a few requests,” he said. “First up, I need as much high-orbital data as you got. The whole lot.”

I began directing tightbeam resources to him immediately. It was an easy resource to exchange - it wasn’t like there was anyone else out to talk to anymore. When we lost FTL, we found ourselves very, very alone.

“Second,” he said. “Right, I know I’m gonna sound like a princess right now, but I have been stuck in this stupid tin-can for almost two-years now, and I seriously overestimated how much I like synth music. If you have anything that’s analog - I don’t care what kind of string or drum or brass you play, but I’d kill to hear something without a beep in it.”

I jumped my own queue in the tightbeam, and added a short playlist that I ripped from the local web. Human Music, it was labeled. 3 Terabytes. I prayed there was something on it that he’d like.

“And third,” he said. “Third. The uh, next pilot is pretty mad at me. Turns out this will just be one of those things left unfinished. That’s all death really is, I guess - a lot of unfinished things. Let him know that he was right: He is a better pilot than me. But tell him that wouldn’t have made a difference here. Bad luck beats skill, and this luck was shit.”

I promised, and he went silent after that. We could see what data he was analyzing, and the short answer was all of it - everything from atmospheric density to troop positions and his own ship’s blueprints. He knew he had one shot at this, and that if the price wasn’t paid here, it would be paid by whoever came next.

---

Ground control didn’t get a verbal warning that he’d entered atmosphere. Just a ping. A little here-I-am, whispered in the dark.

After that, we could keep track with visuals alone.

He hit the outskirts of the exoatmosphere in his first pass, burning bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. He caught the sparse particles like a kite, trying to shed enough speed to hit actual low orbit. Automatic telemetry updates gave us the grim news for the ship: Thermals were holding up decently, but the ablative was wearing out fast.

The entire descent brought us more than two hour’s reprieve. The Kresh hadn’t expected to see a resupply, but they knew what one meant: Get it now, get it fast, or deal with a stream of new troops. They could buy themselves ten days' time by shooting this one ship down now. That was an eternity during a siege.

The first loop lowered the speed by about a twentieth of light. The pilot responded by pulling the ship in tighter, burning trying to preserve more ablative plating by trading off with thermal. Seven fighters were close enough to fire off heat seekers. I don’t think the Kresh had ever anticipated shooting down a craft coming in that hot - the missile's decoy avoidance countermeasure actually made it steer around the thing, chasing down loose pieces of shrapnel. Cooled fragments, still hotter than an engine, should be at full blast. The simple mistakes bought it enough time to enter pre-orbit, and the fighters had to stop their pursuit. They weren’t willing to die to stop the ship.

Our man, on the other hand, was already committed to that course.

A third loop followed a fourth. Ablative coating went from 65% integrity, to 30%, to 5%. Telemetry scans were exceptionally detailed - the pilot was making the flyby count. The last message we got from him was simple:

Are you EMP shielded? he asked, not even bothering to encrypt the text stream. He didn’t have time to process more than that.

Yes, we replied. We knew what he was thinking, but it was still a shock to see it. The fusion torch flared hot, burning through the nozzle and feeding directly into the craft’s dueterium supply. The reaction went super critical, and the resulting neutron pulse set off everything in the ship with a z-count higher than iron. Three continuous seconds of EM interference screamed through the comms as the hulk burned through orbit.

The explosion itself wasn’t powerful enough to kill the Kresh ships still in high orbit, but it made enough broadband radiation to blind both sides LADAR. The man must have been a hell of a pilot - half the shrapnel went down and got burned up as it entered the standard atmosphere, traded as the cost of moving the other half past lagrange. Standard evasion would’ve made the pieces easy to dodge, but with LADAR down, all the Kresh could do was sit still and cower as the wrath of a dead man riddled them full of holes. Our best ace had managed to shoot down seven ships before this before getting shot down himself. The wreckage of the freighter took down six.

---

The second ship came in stealth. One second, we were holding attrition in high orbit, the next, something the size of a small station came ripping through the atmosphere.

It did the same trick as the former - swapping between ablative and thermal loads, coming down at a speed that the Kresh fighters didn’t even try to match. Armies could be built in years, but skills like this took decades.

Telemetry connection was established almost as an afterthought. The way the ship casually ate through ablative armoring made my eyes water, but the pilot himself seemed pretty non-plussed.

“You’re down to fifteen percent coverage. You need-

“What I need,” he said, “is to see the previous ship’s telemetry. If there’s one thing you can trust, it’s that this bird is going to come down gentle.”

He cut off my chance to reply by flicking the channel off. We watched, and we wrang our hands, but sure enough he came in six minutes later with 4% of the ablative left.

I met him on the landing pad. Under normal circumstances, we’d have needed twenty-four hours for the craft to cool enough to even approach, but we’d had cryo ready just in case. Three tankers of nitrogen, and the loading area, at least, was cool enough to touch. Safety would have to take a backseat to speed here - we needed the supplies fast.

But those both would take a backseat to a promised conversation with the second pilot. He was out of the craft as soon as the air was cool enough to avoid scalding his lungs, picking through the workers to try and find who had the telemetry data.

I found him first. The drive went into his hands, but I needed to keep my promise with Eric before letting go.

“You’re better than the first pilot,” I said, and I wasn’t lying. If the previous flier had been a saint, this one was a god. “But you wouldn’t have been able to manage the landing either. There just wasn’t time.”

“Let me see,” he said, tugging on the drive. “Just let me see. I have to know I couldn’t do it either. I have to know that someone had to die.”

I let go of the drive and he stalked back into his ship. I didn’t follow. I figured I’d pushed things far enough as it was.

---

The second pilot left the ship six hours later. He looked bleary in a way that put me at ease. I’d been up the last six hours directing supplies from the ship. Everything from ground-to-orbit rails to AGI targeting systems was inside, and to say it was gamechanging would be an understatement. It was good work, but I was tired, and I didn’t want to have to pretend otherwise. Seeing the other man with bags under his eyes meant we could just be frank with each other.

“I couldn’t have managed it,” he said, half-ashamed, half-relieved.

“It just wasn’t possible,” I agreed.

We sat there a moment longer. I didn’t mind the break. This was time well spent.

“Did it hurt?” he asked finally.

“Ablative failed before heating,” I said, which was the technical way of saying no. “He overloaded the reactor before the ship actually broke up and did some kind of slingshot maneuver - hit the main body of the Kresh fleet with half a space station’s worth of shrapnel.”

“Good,” he said.

I knew the signs. The tremor in his cheek, the way his jaw clenched - it wasn’t professional, but I hugged him anyway. Let him have the dignity of choosing to weep instead of having it wrenched out of him.

It was a gift we’d all been given at some point in this war. At least now, there was the hope it could be over soon.

[randofics]

Transformers + hfy headcannon

One thing the bots had trouble understanding about you specifically was just how caring and protective you were towards your animals. So much so that when you walked into base with a lump over your abdomen tucked into your leggings, they didn't know what to think.

The fabric of a towel hung from your waistband as you nonchalantly walked towards the staff lockers, setting your bag inside and coming back with your clipboard. The lump still sat over your abdomen. When you squeezed by some other staff members, you placed your hand over it protectively so as not to bump it.

The bots' curiosity was starting to get the better of them, and finally, when you moved to talk to crosshairs, he bluntly asked what you had tucked in your waistband.

"Oh, it's just some of my little ones!"

Now, they were even more confused. Human babies weren't anywhere near that small, and you'd insinuated that there were multiple. Plus, when did you even start dating, let alone having "little ones"?

"Wait, what do you mean, little ones?"

You chuckled and pulled the bundle from your waistband, gently supporting them as you unwrapped them. Five round objects were cradled in your hands on the towel. Crosshairs knelt down to get a better look at the small round things in your palms. Some of the other bots stood around you, observing as you gently rolled them over, revealing numbers written with crayon on their surface.

They watched as you looked down lovingly at the miniscule to them objects.

Ironhide was even more confused than before. "Are those rocks?"

"No, no, these are eggs. Specifically, chicken eggs, and they're two weeks from hatching."

Optimus noticed the group forming around you and walked over butting into the conversation. "Earth birds and most reptiles reproduce via eggs. Were your birds not able to incubate them?"

"Oh, they can it's just that I'm not currently allowing them to, nor are any broody at the moment. I had them in my incubator, but the power company is working on my street right now, so it isn't running."

"Ah, so you're stepping in as a surrogate mother of sorts."

"Yes, exactly! They won't hatch unless they have the right temps and humidity."

"Why are you even trying to hatch them?"

You gently tucked them back in your leggings and held them against your abdomen for a moment. "To keep my flock going. I do this once every year or so to keep fresh genetics going. Sometimes, I buy day-old chicks to add to the flock as well, but I also enjoy the incubation process. I find that way they'll attach to me more as a mother hen than some stranger that feeds them."

With that all explained, no one had any more questions, and you continued with your work while keeping your eggs safe. The bots still thought it was strange that an intelligent species would go out of their way to care for a non-sentients young of their own volition, but then again, humans domesticated dogs, so this wasn't much different.

[halfbakedspuds]

Taking the open tag from @somethingclevermahogony

Rules: answer as many (or as few) of the questions about your WIP as you can

What was the first part of your WIP that you created?: wow, that is a bit of a question. See, before I realised that I had a story to tell in this universe, before politics or interstellar wars or honour bound gunslingers became a thing, Children of the Stars existed purely as a boredom fueled daydream about a world where humanity on Earth was a long lost colony of an empire that would check up on us every hundred years or so and try nudge our technology along a bit (I know.shocking how much a story can deviate from the original idea, eh?). This concept of an incredibly technologically advanced civilisation trying to work on a primitive society from the shadows is, at it's core, the basic premise of what would (three or four iterations later, when I started writing my mess of a first draft as an HFY episodic series) become the IUC [Imperial upliftment corps], so I think it's safe to say that's probably the oldest thing simply because it's survived the longest.

If your story was a TV show, what would the intro song be?: "Short change hero" by The Heavy. Maybe swapping it out for "Blue Monday 88" by The New Order about halfway through the series for thematic reasons could be a good idea.

Who are your favourite character/s and why? Adrian Castellan purely because of how much of a challenge it was to start thinking like he would. I started writing his backstory, and when I was done, I stood back a bit and realised that actually getting into the headspace of someone who is (for lack of better phrasing) seven unique kinds of f***ed up but still trying to be a good person is going to be difficult. The kind of person who's had to kill frequently in horrific ways since before his age had even hit the double digits just to survive to adulthood. Yet despite everything, he's still someone who's good with kids, someone who will care about a complete stranger in his own thorny way and someone who still has a heart, battered and jerry-rigged though it might be.

What other pieces of media could share a fan base with your WIP? I think Warhammer 40k fans might see some draw in the setting until they see a xenophilic humanity (Just kidding, I love you guys). Maybe a few Stellaris players or MiB fans.

What has been your biggest struggle while writing your WIP? Probably the story itself actually. I got the setting and character chemistry down and continued to wing the hell out of the story for quite a while before figuring out what the story was that kept teasing me to tell it.

Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them! All of them are alien to human sensibilities given that the entire book takes place on another planet. There are the Tsgara, six-legged reptilian chase predators about the size of a cheetah that are evolved to prey upon the local intelligent species. They tend to get confused by geometric shapes for some reason, so a legitimate defense tactic is to carry an eight armed star on you and just shove it right in their face to scare them off. Then there are the Kalaani, who are bred as beasts of burden and for meat, or the Ghar-nemyi or "unnamed horrors" that live in the deeper regions of the planet's seas and are called "Leviattii" (Leviathans) by the humans, or more informally "Magna Nothi" (The big bastards). Adrian likes to call them Djunlanur, which means something like "the big Fuglies," .

How do your characters get around? Depends. Anywhere in the city, they use their legs. Anywhere else is either a hike or them calling a transport to come pick them up.

What part of your WIP are you working on right now? What I affectionately am calling 'the war of the shared braincell' in my notes, which is Adrian trying to hide the true nature of what his people are and what their purpose is on Kradoma from Lyanni, while she proves to actually be annoyingly intelligent given that she has no prior knowledge to go on and can still consistently figure out where she needs to go for scraps of answers.

What aspects of your WIP do you think will draw people in? Hopefully the uniqueness of the setting and premise, maybe the promise of it being a scifi political drama.. idk.

Questions:

What was the first part of your WIP that you created?

If your story was a TV show, what would the intro song be?

Who are your favourite character/s and why?

What other pieces of media could share a fan base with your WIP?

What has been your biggest struggle while writing your WIP?

Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

How do your characters get around?

What part of your WIP are you working on right now?

What aspects of your WIP do you think will draw people in?

Open tag for whomever wants it.

[ae-neon]

How cool would it be if the fae were harmed by iron? And humans, since we have iron in our blood, were considered more alien than pathetic or weak? Maybe instead of a slave race, we could have been something else to the fae. We could have been these weird monsters who thrive with tools and buildings made from iron and steel while the fae just burn when they touch it? What if our iron-rich, red blood was acidic and corrosive to the fairies and their magical tools, weapons, and buildings? What if, because we can't use magic at all because of our iron blood, we instead use technology. What if tech is to the fae what magic is to humans?

Sorry for this ramble, it just seems so interesting to me. Old fairy tales talk about how fairies can't touch iron, but every animal i can think of, including us, have iron in their bodies. There's so much potential! Think of a fairy freaking out because there's this 4,000lbs (1,302kg) death machine made out of steel and iron roaring towards them!

I might spend too much time on the HFY page, anyway, what do u think about this?

LISTEN!!! THIS IS SO AMAZING

(side note, Jurian literally spitting his own blood in his enemies eyes!!! God I love him)

[randomisocahedron]

Good places to share short stories that aren't Reddit?

I wrote a few short stories on r/HFY. I'm not on Reddit anymore because of the API/IPO stuff. Are there good places on tumblr or other parts of the internet for sharing these kinds of amateur short stories? My understanding is that I'm asking if there are tumblr tags where you just straight-up post a story (most of what I've found thus far is people talking about writing, not sharing their writing), but I'm still new to this website.

[yanderefairyangel]

This is going to sound like gatekeeping and I probably should not say it but here goes: I think Raxy should not play any of the other Fire Emblem. It's clear that he hates the medieval tropes that Fire Emblem entails, not to mention the human and dragon co-existence message which conflicts with his HFY desires. At this point, if he's going to shit on the entire franchise because it's not like his pwecious C//F, he's going to make a total ass of himself.

Sorry for the vent, on another note, Engage has been a lot of fun and I got to ch 22.

Hello Anon. Don't worry about it !

Frankly, Idk too much about the Raxy guy but the main question I ask myself is whether or not he acts like that in every fandom he is in or only in the Fire emblem since you don't necessarily have the same discussion/contribution to a fandom depending on the media cause if he is like that for every fandom he partakes in ... yeah...

I haven't intereacted too much with the guy but the little I saw made it very unengaging for me to see his content. And at the risk of comming off as snobbish, he doesn't seem to understand how media analysis works or to respect fandom etiquette. I mean, I blocked him on tumblr all to find him responding to me on twitter about a post claiming and I quote : "There is a clear wealth disparity problem between the royals and their citizens that should be adressed; perhaps Celine shouldnt be praised for sending death squads after people who steal food when she lives in a giant more luxurious version of Mont Saint-Michel" about Céline and Alear's A support.

When I challenged him to find me any canonical evidence that the theives we fight in chapter 6, paralogue 2 and that the higwaymen in Céline's/Alear support were practicing banditry because they were poor and starving, he didn't gave me a single answer. He claimed that the fact that there was one main story chapter, one paralogue and one support chain was enough to say that Firene has a problem with banditry and therefore is built on a flawed economic that creates wealth disparity problem when Solm has more chapter with banditry and that we are essentially talking about a franchise where there is bandits in EVERY game, and for literaly no reasons. They are just there burning village for fun. Kostas is literaly the only bandit that have a plot relevance lasting past 1 chapter.

And that's not all. When he and some mutuals of him claimed that Eddie's real plan in sending Kostas to kill Dima and Claude was actually to just scare off the new teacher, he and his mutuals never answered my simple request or providing me an explicit quote from in game of Eddie making such a declaration.

Or that one time when he tried to prove that the twist in chapter 10 of Engage failed arguing that the only way for Alear and co to escape the cathedral was to never enter... ignoring that at that time Alear still had the dragonic crystal so they could have rewinded or could have break out the door since they still had the Emblems when this scene was actually to built up Alear falling into the sins of hatred and pride, 2 sins in buddhism.

I also have been hearing tales of him blocking evading or having his friends go to blog that blocked him so that he could sporke it etc.

So yeah, that doesn't give a good look at all. Really.

But since I never went too much from his blog I can't tell if he is a 3H baby, or an Awakening baby or a Fe7 baby or an ancient (there for the first game ever) since I know a lot of people didn't like Engage because it was different from 3H who gave them expectation when 3H is the outlier of the franchise, and as you point out, CF is probably the most Anti-Fe a route can get. That a game not really keen on being accurate about medieval setting or the source of banditry etc. isn't that surprising, heck even 3H isn't that derogatory to that rule when all ending in 3H ends up with different models of monarchy. And I agree, if he sees dragon as evil, better drop Fire Emblem since the humanity and dragon can co-exist thing was already there since Fe1, Naga and Tiki being supporting role for Marth.

Anyway, sorry for the long reply. Also, glad to hear you are having fun with Engage ! I hope you'll stick around with my blog, I still have a bunch of essay to write

[taskignored]

What if acotar fairies were old school and humans were actually a threat?

So I've been thinking about messing around with acotar, that is writing my own fanfic. Said fanfic would be heavily inspired by bloodborne and HFY because I like them and humans can actually be really scary (and really cool). So, anyway here's my idea so far.

I really dislike how SJM wrote humans. And that's not just because I'm a human being (as far as anyone knows/ can tell) but because humans are actually really scary, cool, and clever (and stupid). So what if humans weren't weaklings at all? I mentioned this in an ask dedicated to @ae-neon about humans having iron blood and old school fairies not liking iron at all, so why can't the acotar fairies be like that? With our red iron blood, we would be unable to cast magic, but our blood could cut through spells or the fairies themselves, like acid. And since fairies basically thrive with everything magic like tools, weapons, buildings, all it would take would be a bit of blood, either from us or a mundane animal and it all just melts.

What if we were so alien and other that fairies couldn't even fathom the idea of enslaving us at all just on the basis that we were far too unfathomable/ monstrous (to them)? What if fairies and humans were just so different because they weren't from the same world? They could literally be aliens to one another, one the invader, and the other an ancient race. An embodiment of the old world's rage, a revenant.

Think about it, sjm talks about the cauldron creating the world, but what if it didn't do that? Or what if it did, but didn't do it in the way we think it did? What if the eddies or the mother or whoever found the world that would become Prythian? A perfectly mundane world with mundane creatures that have iron in their blood. What if, when the cauldron was tipped over the mountain in the beginning it didn't create a new world but boiled the old world away?

In my au that I've been toying with, this is exactly what happens, except because it takes a significant amount of power to overwrite a world, especially one that's so anathema towards magic, the cauldron couldn't finish the job. This means that only a small part of the world was overwritten, and the rest is completely mundane and hostile towards magic. And it actually works out, to me, anyway.

In the books Pryhtian is basically the UK cast as Fantasy, but the UK is hella small compared to the rest of the world. So what if, in the beginning, the fairies were trying their hardest to make this very vast world magical, only to immediately run into mundane beasts who have iron in their blood (obviously) so they didn't get very far (hence why their maps of the world are so small). These beasts would sense that these creatures are wrong and alien and react accordingly via running away or fighting. The fairies of course would try to eliminate these monsters for their own safety, only to run into humans. Humans who are technologically advanced and supremely pissed off.

This begins the war, but instead of a war for freedom, its a war for the world and it lasts for a very, very long time. Like, if we take the time that the humans were enslaved in canon and add that time to the war they fought for their freedom, I'm talking that long. For centuries. Magic vs tech, humans vs fairies. (Note: iron blood makes magic actually impossible for humans and because these humans build everything out of iron and steel, plus I imagine a fairy wouldn't understand the types of engineering/physics that go into these weapons/contraptions they wouldn't be able to replicate it. So basically tech is to the fae what magic is to humans. Suck it fairies)

Now because fairies are ridiculous, they don't really get destroyed despite having the literal world against them. They get pushed back, and back, and back until we get to the great general Jurian who fought the last stretch of the war that forced the fairies to put up the wall to protect themselves. This ends the centuries long war, forcing the humans and the fairies to stop in their tracks.

Now, the question I have to ask myself is "why don't the humans just cut down the wall with their iron and steel?" And the answer I come up with is exhaustion. Both sides hate/fear eachother, but they are also really tired from fighting a war for centuries (and wars are expensive). And looking at it from the human's perspective, this war is generations long. There is literally no one alive who remembers when the fae weren't around. They get tired, jaded, and cynical. They are surrounded by the war machines they spent so much time, resources, and money on. They live in these massive steel fortresses built for war. Many of them have lost friends and family to the war, they are probably sick of it. So they take the fairies building the wall as an opportunity to breathe. Plus, they reproduce faster, so the way some of the higher ups see it, they will win. Maybe not today, tomorrow or even in a decade into the future. But they will win the world back eventually.

I might expand on this later, but that's what I've been thinking about lately.

[welcometomybraincomics]

Ahaha I'm finally active on a platform while I'm being inspired, so you get to see the whack ass away my brain takes inspiration from things and ends up with something that's only tangentially related LMAO

----

OK so ✨inspiration✨ (speed bump by dratchetismyjam) has the Goofy Road Trip machine going brr. What if, during their travels, Sam discovers that a majority of organics in the universe do not run on electricity? Most, if not all, animals on Earth have internal electrical functions: nerves and muscles and all that. because what's more alien than one of the basic functions not functioning the same at all?

And for Sam, Rita, and Carlo being extremely confused Something happens to bring that up. primarily, i'm thinking something along lines of Sam needing to be resuscitated for some reason, and Carlo going in with the electrical paddles and someone starts screaming because "that's not how organic biology works" and "ohh my god they're really going to kill them!" And then Sam gets up and is fine afterwards.

The alternative route is some communication barrier due to the way nurture influences logic. Like, humans equate a lot of the stuff in our own biology to machines because it's easier to understand then the complex chemical and electrical and whatever else systems we actually have running in us, So Sam has an easier time understanding Cybertronians than most of the organics. this comes out in either a casual conversation or something where some sort of logic is being applied where Sam makes a reference to how human anatomy functions and whatever organic they're talking to being extremely confused because "Um, no? that's not how it works." Sort of like [Insert humans are space orcs audio where humans and an alien species interact and are sort of negotiating trade and crossing over their research and their electrical engineers, when talking to each other realize that humans automatically move stuff without having to think about every single little detail, leading to less compact ships with lower efficiency, while the aliens do have to think about every single breath each movement that they make, how often they blink, et cetera, leading their ships to all be interconnected and also leaves them in the blind spot of not making generic parts that can just be swapped for each other; It's an HFY (humanity fuck yeah) or humans are space orc piece and I can't find it😭]

[writingsteph]

HFY Universe sneak peek 2

Rachel paced the length of her room forwards and backwards, but through her teary eyes she noticed that out her window her mother was sitting on the swing…and she was talking to someone on the phone.

Oh my God, she’s probably telling them about how awful you were to her. How she regrets her decision to keep you.

No she’s not!

Yes she is!

“God, just shut up!” The girl spoke aloud to her warring thoughts. Her therapist always reminded her that thoughts are not facts of life. They are not truths. You can control them Rachel.

What is mom saying to them?

And so, although upset, Rachel was still overcome by curiosity. The teen quietly opened her window and almost immediately rolled her eyes. Of course she called Paul.

His voice was faint but she could hear some of what her mother said,

“...sometimes I don’t know what to do. She could be so hard headed.”

Rachel frowned at that statement, holding in a scoff. She listened hard to hear how Paul responded but couldn’t quite make it out. He wouldn’t say anything rude about you anyway.

Not wanting to hear anything else the girl closed the window, a little harder than she had wanted to in her anger. She saw her mother turn at the noise and she immediately crouched to the floor, “Fuck I hope she didn’t see me.”

Avoiding being seen entirely she crawled to her bed, pausing to check that Clifford was atop. Yes, keep it moving.

She slipped into her bed, clutching Clifford onto her chest. His ear making its way to her mouth. Her own form of self soothing. She took in three deep breaths, hoping to will away tears. A therapy technique. She was so tired of crying. She hated that crying was her body’s preferred reaction. Things just got to be too much sometimes.

Your anxiety. It’s what her therapist said anyway.

Rachel hated that she had been with her mom for almost two years and she still had moments where she could be so anxious about what her mother thought of her. She hated that on top of being mad with her mom she also somehow had incredible guilt at what she’d yelled at Shelby.

So eventually Rachel’s tears came, which gave way to exhaustion, and finally sleep.

[watermelon-eater]

I posted 8,638 times in 2022

That's 921 more posts than 2021!

63 posts created (1%)

8,575 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@v3ry-c00l

@meenah

@commanderkarkat

@imagiguard

@gunkmusher

I tagged 3,718 of my posts in 2022

#fav - 414 posts

#fave - 387 posts

#homestuck - 303 posts

#yeah - 179 posts

#art - 178 posts

#me - 149 posts

#<3 - 134 posts

#fav art - 110 posts

#mecore - 108 posts

#tumblr - 94 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#actually this helps a lot with roleplaying the morphed ben shapiro-sasuke sprite that my stupid player made in my stupid rpgstuck campaign

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

maybe its time to make a proper introduction

hey hi welcome to my blog! my name is zen (i also go by nautilus) and i use he/him pronouns and a couple of neopronouns . i like donna tartt's books, homestuck, musicals, league of legends, and a bit of BBC sherlock, to name a few. feel free to DM if you wanna talk about these topics with me!

now before you follow i have d/a's with karkat and certain cats, and i'll have to kindly ask doubles not to interact with my posts/reblogs related to them. i also tag weirdly sometimes but you can ask me to trigger tag anything. i don't use "tw" before trigger tagging things, i only put the name of the trigger (ex. #emeto).

current mutual list (off the top of my head): v3ry-c00l, constrruxt, imagiguard, feralnumberfive

guide to my tags below:

nautical textposts: my textposts

long tag: tags ive put in that i might want to see again

ive only seen paintings of this painting: heritage posts

fav: favorite funny posts

fave: a lighter version of fav, things i like that doesnt exactly go to fav

hfy: humans fuck yeah - people doing things that make me smile

<3: stuff that makes my heart go

tumblr: certified tumblr moments

conny tag: tag for my s/o

conzent: it's a stupid little ship name for me and my s/o, i tag stuff that remind me of us with this

list is prone to change

12 notes - Posted February 16, 2022

#4

oh my god i am so fucking gay

13 notes - Posted May 4, 2022

#3

absolutely love how nydas feels a lot like a grown-up fabian seacaster

15 notes - Posted July 3, 2022

#2

my son stanley who has every disease

19 notes - Posted June 30, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

i love when i see that someone reblogged from me with "prev". something something submitting my tags through peer review and getting a good score

21 notes - Posted October 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[jpitha]

Some Good old-fashioned Shitposting

One of the main problems with posting to /r/hfy for me - beyond the mechanics of it being bad - was that they were very serious about sticking to story posts. Very little Meta, very little OOC, no posting about other sites, that kind of stuff. Posts like that were usually removed quickly.

I still wanted to reach my readers there and since my messages stating that I was leaving and giving the reasons why kept getting deleted I decided to... live within the rules, and posted this. It starts as JaLF 26 (the first time skip one) but from there goes off the rails...

It's been half a year, but I can't believe we're already on our third ship! High Line took two months instead of the one that Omar first promised, but that was because he and his crew were getting use to the process and how best to refurbish the ships. Then after that I made the decision to refurbish the food tugs, but those were (relatively) easy. New thrusters, some strengthening of the cargo containers and a few brand new ones and that was it. Once that was finished the food deliveries increased over 30%!

You would not believe how much cheaper, more abundant food improves one's legitimacy. As soon as that was finished and the food rolled in, almost all of the last grumblings about me coming in and "declaring" myself Empress died down.

Only a couple of weeks after the food deliveries had picked back up, I was on my Throne reading reports when Ava walked in and connected to her chair behind me on the Throne.

"Melody! You would not believe what I just heard." Ava sounded a little worried. I'm sure whatever was bothering her wouldn't be that big of a deal for us to take care of.

"I'm sure we can figure it out, Ava. I was just reading these reports about the increased food deliveries. I can't believe how easy it was to get everything straightened out; it was nice to have an easy win."

"No, this is way more important than that. Please hear me out. Let's talk in person." Now I was worried. Ava doesn't usually look this worried about things.

This was important. I disconnected, and gave Ava my full attention. "What is it Ava? How can I help?"

"The author isn't posting to Reddit anymore!" Ava was practically wailing.

"What? Why not? I thought the Author was trying to build an audience to look more attractive to potential publishers?"

Ava nods quickly. "That's just it, he was, but he's having such a hard time posting on Reddit that it's just not worth it to him. He has a much larger following on Tumblr, and would prefer that any of his readers on Reddit seek him out there." Ava raised her eyebrows. "Did you know he's finished this story over there and has started a new one?"

I gasped. A new story? "But that means that our story is done? What happens to us? Are we doing all right?"

Ava shrugged. "He just said 'no spoilers' and winked. Readers will have to go there themselves and check it out."

I sat up straighter in my seat, fully disconnected from the Throne now. This required speaking in person. "Was it the community? Did they give him a hard time?"

Ava threw up her hands in defeat. "That's just it. The community was so nice and welcoming! The rules about posting were a little Byzantine, but the Author did his best to post within them, but the poor UI and untenable bugs means that the Author spent more time correcting and copy editing posts than he did writing some of the entries. He told me he didn't have 'the spoons' to complete the story."

I sat back in my Throne, surprised. The Author was so excited about building his audience and introducing more people to his work, and through their excitement, improve his craft. "I wonder what he's going to do now?"

"I heard he's going to keep posting, but on Tumblr. He also said any of his fans are welcome to join him there. If they don't want to get an account, they can read his posts as they are public facing. I'm told that making an account and following will boost his follower count and look good to any potential publishers but it's not required."

I stood. It really was too bad, but who are we to go against the wishes of the Author. "Oh well Ava. It's sad to hear, but there isn't much we can do about it. Come on, it's almost dinner. Let's go find the others and eat."

Ava stood too and gave me a hug. "Oh Melody. Thanks. I feel better after talking it out.

"I'm glad." Together, we left the Throne, and walked out into the bustling evening on the Reach.

[bloustorm]

I posted 35,806 times in 2022

That's 27,669 more posts than 2021!

594 posts created (2%)

35,212 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@jinxkatkazama

@jelly-as-in-grape-concord

@almathecolormaniac

@pocketramblr

@ice-block

I tagged 5,463 of my posts in 2022

#reblog - 779 posts (I only started to use the XKit like two weeks ago and look at this)

#blou talks - 431 posts

#blou talks to people - 130 posts

#ask game - 122 posts

#tcf - 93 posts

#lmao - 93 posts

#remember dember - 88 posts

#blou writes - 84 posts

#bnha - 75 posts

#yes - 73 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#the only thing that comes to mind was the one time my dad started telling the story of snow white different to see if we actually were list

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Sometimes when listening/reading hfy, space orc stories etc. The human says like a quote with god in it or related and I'm hit with the fact that the author is Christian

Like nothing against it

But it's kinda weird to think that Christianity would survive that long, inmean ither religions are old as well and like wouldnt it be nice to have some variety sometimes??

I know that most people prob don't even consider it or want to do research, but some small hints shouldn't be that hard

Like, an alien asking his human crewmate if they wear a headscarf at all times to prevent hairs clogging up the vents or smth, and said human saying it's for religious reasons

Or dietary restrictions that are of choice, alien having recently learned about some humans can be allergic to some shit and then asking his friend if they are, because aparently humans can even develop allergies against something like meat and them just explaining it.

And like all of these things don't have to be big at all

A small throwaway comment here or there

Idk I would find it nice and I'm not even religious

131 notes - Posted November 19, 2022

#4

Also why is no one talking about the fact that the White Star wants to feed Cale a dragon heart

Where are the angst fics

The bad endings

Where is "the WS force feeds Cale, Raons or Eruhabens heart"

Like come on, use it

205 notes - Posted July 8, 2022

#3

pssst why is April 3 Danny day?

Ah i think you should beter ask that someone who remembers it, I'm pretty sure that I learned it once but well that was around a year ago probably, so I don't remember now.

Maybe @floralflowerpower knows? Though I know they took a hiatus for a bit and if it started during that time they might not know but at least they might have an idea who knows instead? Sorry Anon that i can't answer this

205 notes - Posted April 4, 2022

#2

standing in the shower and madly cackling because i just gave all might a tumblr account (for my fic) was sure an experience

219 notes - Posted March 20, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

If you're reading this...

feel hugged <3

564 notes - Posted July 20, 2022

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