We should all be thankful that “anti-thunderstorms” with flashes of extreme darkness (during the day) followed by loud, high-pitch screeches, don’t exist.
^^^^^^
The weather during wormhole storms at Hitizzy
Challenge #00944-B213: One Bad Day at Station Customs
http://brutusfeels.tumblr.com/post/125690756909/haberdashing-ofshxeld-my-favourite-trope-is
Have fun!
The haughty Meyahndan in gold-coloured hunting leathers sneered down her nose at Pol. “We are Felids,” she said, showing her claws by tapping her fist against the opposite shoulder. “We are never unarmed.”
Why did her first day have to happen during an Ambassadorial Meet? “One moment,” she said, consulting the manual. Ah. Meyahndese. Yes. “Uhm. It says you have to have a permit? Otherwise you have to clip them short.”
She hissed
Read more »Challenge #00943-B212: 'Straya Mate
Someone runs across this book. And then are told about the fact in the last comment.
“This,” said T’reka a’Nyerrik, “is a book for N’Ozzie children?”
“Yes,” said the helpful Archivaas with a bundle of similar tomes. “N’Oz colonists insisted on bringing their -ah- scientifically interesting native flora and fauna with them from Australia.”
Ah yes. Australia. The only land mass on Earth that almost rated a Level Six on the Deathworlder scale. In fact, N’Oz itself
Read more »Challenge #00942-B211: Skewed Threat Assessment
Someone aware of how beneficial, on the whole, spiders are to humanity asks why there is such a disconnect between the threat posed by and reaction to spiders as opposed to the threat posed by and reaction to mosquitoes.
(Let’s ignore the Sydney Funnel Web, for the purposes of this discussion)
“Statistically speaking,” allowed Nik, “your species has more to fear from the Mosquito than it does any arachnid. Or pseudo-arachnid, for that matter.”
“Logically,” countered Shayde, “ye got a point.
Read more »Challenge #00941-B210: Idiosyncrasies
The person who asked about the human Oshit reaction witnesses a human watching the YMCA spider video for the first time (and the human is not like one of my best friends, whose reaction is still “Kill it with fire!”)
K’leb’th happened to find a space to sit near an unfamiliar human. Ze was messing around with a palm-sized device and occasionally playing things for hirself.
Ah. This human, much like Cambry, had subscribed to The Daily Meme, a co-operative
Read more »Challenge #00940-B209: Arachnophilia
An alien aware of the general human reaction to spiders runs across someone whose first response to an Oshit is “how cute!”
“Being cautious, please, Engineer Murray,” K’teth warned as she unlocked her vessel. “Security measures on vessel mine being non-standard.“
The brown-skinned human grinned. “No worries. You can call me Baz. Everyone does. Now… I know you were knocking around Pirate Turf for a year or so?”
“Yes. Learning fast, am I, there are few tech solutions to hackers.
Read more »Challenge #00939-B208: Universal Reactions
Someone finally asks a human why there is such a nigh-universal-among-the-species visceral reaction to an Oshit when seeing one up close for the first time.
Many scientific establishments hired Humans to conduct the more risky aspects of their experiments. Firstly, because the humans were tough enough to withstand the results. Secondly, because they were insane enough to want to repeat the experience.
They also used vermin as experimental animals.
“What ho, loony lizards,” said Cambry. She aimed a lazy salute at the
Read more »Challenge #00938-B207: Human Phenomena
An alien witnessing a human do the “Just walked through a spiderweb” dance for the first time
OR
A scholar writing a research paper on the one dance universal to all human tribal cultures, the “Spiderweb” dance.
In augmented scope sight, the web was clearly visible. And the spider itself stood out like a miniature sun.
“This spider,” whispered a lizard off to one side of the screen, “has been weaving and re-weaving its web all night. In a few hours, it
Read more »Challenge #00937-B206: Living Proof
Another Humans Are Crazy point: most bright colours in the animal kingdom are for either a mating display or are a poison warning. The brighter the colours, the more likely it’s poison - see snakes and frogs, even compared to peacocks they are brighter (if less visually spectacular overall).
Most other animals, on seeing the fluorescent poison warning colours, are rightly horrified.
Meanwhile, humans think they are pretty.
Of all the ambassadorial mistakes Harry could have made, this one pretty much
Read more »Challenge #00935-B204: Human Terminology
(Came up with this and thought of a certain sawn-off lunatic, but it doesn’t have to be Vorkosigan fic if you don’t want it to be)
“When you say ‘secure on three flanks, with an opportunity to the north’, what you really mean is ‘cut off on three sides, with enemies front’, isn’t it?
“I mean both!”
[AN: SO very tempted to write one of the Vorkosigan brats…]
Hwell returned covered in soot and a light
Read more »Challenge #00934-B203: Loverly Spam...
You don’t reference Monty Python to be helpful, you reference Monty Python because you can.
On the upside, they now had an interstellar ‘ride‘. On the downside, it was an abandoned freighter. Its hold was still full. Which meant that the parental company had pulled the plug and evacuated the pilot when the cargo proved to be valueless.
And, of course, Shayde had to look.
“No,” she grinned. The tone of her voice made it sound like a good thing.
Which
Read more »Challenge #00930-B199: Ban the Hammer
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can’t get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer. — IBM maintenance manual, 1925
Taking things apart is easy. Putting them back again, not so much.
So
far, Rael had had lots of practice with the former. He’d found he’d
attempted reassembly in the wrong order. Five times.
Challenge #00929-B198: Fortifying Education
A Havenworlder finds out that even after reaching the Information Age, with early-warning systems and all the other resources available to a species at such a level of development, tsunamis (“The term refers to several million tonnes of water traveling at two hundred meters per second.”) still killed an average of seven thousand people consistently, every year, over four decades
(last four from 2015)
Th’k’x had to wear full health monitors and have a Medik on standby, just to access
Read more »Challenge #00927-B196: Just My Type
The opposite to the last one - a being that is unattractive to their own race that a human finds beautiful.
Rae usually disliked going into the lower-gravity realms of the
station. She had a pathological dislike of insects that included
antisocial actions like screaming and flailing if one of them touched
her.
Only the Huf’nuf’ruf remained unoffended.
Her intent
was to go down, do her job, and then retreat into one of the luxury spas
to soak the imagined
Challenge #00926-B195: In the Instincts of the Beholder
Read more »“I want a sci-fi series to have an alien race that literally every other race but humans thinks are the hottest fucking thing but it just completely goes over humans’ heads. Like instead of the Asari or some neon skinned space babe, every other race is just fucking fawning over some bizarre spider race. When humans don’t get it they’re just like, “What the fuck’s wrong with you? She’s hot, dude.