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Challenge #02194-E365: Won Family by Combat

It's the nice, sweet, quiet ones that never argue that you should be afraid of. -- Anon Guest

They thought the Human was docile. Quiet and apologetic, they assumed that they had been 'trained'. The Human certainly acted that way. Always eager to please. Always nice to the point of being excruciating. They thought that Human Zie would never be violent.

They were wrong.

The thing about Humans is - even the soppiest milquetoast has their line in the sand. The point at which no more shit will be tolerated. At that point... all bets are off. For Human Zie, that point was seeing an abusive guardian in one of the Edge Territory markets. Needless to say it was more than a shock for her Thufei crew to see hir charge at another Human and lay them flat with one punch.

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Challenge #02193-E364: Baby Steps Please

Welcome to wizardry, where people with awful ideas and no social skills invoke supernatural forces to gain power and respect. Almost makes you want to tap out and start a little shop selling healing potions, huh? -- Anon Guest

They say that anyone could be a wizard. They never say whether or not anyone should be a wizard. This was zipping through Lady Anthe's mind as she raced after Melvin and the phantasm he had conjured. She was the fastest of the

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Challenge #02192-E363: Operating Soundtrack

The ship's human brought a ukulele on board, now they've infected the gravity drive. -- Anon Guest

Many Galactics assume that Humans are naturally musical. The fact is that it rather depends on the Human, and the truth of the matter is that a Human involved in jobs that require waiting for something to happen will take up a hobby for something to do. Some take up fibre crafts. Some take up art forms. Others... take up instruments.

Many wish that the

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Challenge #02191-E362: Specific Remembrance

The Galactic Council learn about ANZAC day -- Anon Guest

Humans are Deathworlders. They have such an enormous warrior culture that baring their teeth is seen as being friendly, and can get hostile when others fail to follow suit. Thus it is surprising to learn about assorted memorial days. War, they reason, is a common occurrence on Deathworlds. They should be as unmarked as the average rainstorm.

Then they learned about the Great Wars and the immense chains of stupidity that almost

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Challenge #02190-E361: Unreachable

What if someone was trying to get information out of someone else by threatening them, but the second person was just too positive. For example:

"I'll cut off your leg."

"Yes! I can get a peg leg!" -- Anon Guest

Violence can solve some things - like how to stop a racist in one easy step. What it can't do is defeat someone with the correct amount of optimism.

They called him Fearless Harry, and the enemy who captured him were beginning

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Challenge #02189-E360: Backfire Initiative

"Fear me, for I am descended from tigers!"

"That would be much more impressive if you weren't only as tall as my boots and as heavy as this bag." -- Anon Guest

People assume. It's in their nature. They also fail rather spectacularly at connecting certain dots. Dots like - there's a small, medium, and large version of every type of creature. It's just that many of them avoid the more common thoroughfares, or interaction with the greater realms.

However, there are

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Challenge #02188-E359: Normal is Relative

"Why is that rooster using an airhorn?"

"It's outsourcing its morning crowing." -- TheDragonsFlame

There are downsides to living in quiet country towns and the one you never notice is how casual one can become when faced with things far from normal. It's only when the outsider arrives that things like the neighbours taking their pigs for walks or the rooster down the road greeting the dawn with an air horn get pointed out as unusual.

The same thing goes for the

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Challenge #02187-E358: Mechanics of Recovery

The sheer existence of the various characters Jim Henson and his protégés created, both Muppets and Creatures. From highly stylised characters in a children's television show that still stand up today and whose show is still at the forefront of teaching children decency and tolerance, as it has been since its first season, but were never meant to pass as flesh-and-blood beings (no matter what so many children know in their hearts to be true, that despite not being flesh and blood,

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Challenge #02186-E357: Prowess

One more Queen prompt, not BoRhap-related this time. The story of the recording of "The Show Must Go On", the last song Freddie recorded for the band, barely a year before his death. He was so ill when the band recorded the song in 1990 that Brian May, who wrote the melody and much of the lyrics, after he and Freddie had sat down and determined some of the crucial lyrics Freddie wanted in there, had concerns as to whether he was

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Challenge #02185-E356: On and On With the Show

So I saw Bohemian Rhapsody recently, and while I was SO ANGRY at their handling of queer issues and history in it that I was on the verge of walking out at one point, other parts moved me to tears and still others had me ready to punch the air and yell, "Hell Yeah!" (I didn't, I was in a film theatre - I have SOME manners, after all).

Because of this, I am having Queen and Freddie Mercury-related feels, and have

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Challenge #02184-E355: The Chaos Creator

Third Bohemian Rhapsody prompt.

This video. The Muppets are always an outstanding technical achievement when they do anything more complex than stand there and open and close their mouths, and it is a tribute to Jim Henson that his techniques have been used for such a wide range of media, from Sesame Street all the way to big-budget films like Star Wars and Labyrinth, to a TV series like Farscape that wanted a higher level of verisimilitude for their non-humanoid characters than

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Challenge #02183-E354: Zeerusted Symphonium

Second Bohemian Rhapsody Prompt.

This video. The person who built this machine has (at time of prompting) 97 other classic songs 'sung' and 'played' by the amalgamation of repurposed obsolete computer parts, but for their celebration of their 100th video, they chose Bohemian Rhapsody (it is two videos 'early' because the final necessary component for Bohemian Rhapsody to be successfully done by the machine was obtained recently, and it dates from the Windows 98 days. The fact that this machine, which has

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Challenge #02182-E353: Feeding Time at the Library

Been a while since I submitted a prompt, but I thought of some Archivaas running across references to DNA data storage - look here for my ramblings on the subject (it became too long for a normal prompt, as I am forever incapable of being concise). -- RecklessPrudence

[AN: They have actually encoded a gif in bacterial DNA so we're maybe not that very far off. There is a generational corruption problem to conquer though.]

Archivaas are not a race, though a

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Challenge #02181-E352: Mightier How?

Aliens find out about "ink poisoning" and get concerned about crew members who write on their hands. -- Anon Guest

There should be no reason for a living being to draw on their own bodies. Data readers are flexible and wearable, they can go anywhere a cogniscent being does. The art of writing in and of itself is a niche for hobbyists, since everyone in the modern era types. Well. Almost everyone. There are niche hobbyists and the occasional fanatic who just.

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Challenge #02180-E351: Looks Peaceful Enough

"I think we may have pissed off the locals."

Loud explosions

"We definitely pissed off the locals." -- TheDragonsFlame

The Drizit thought the world they invaded was ripe for the picking because the inhabitants had no obvious weapons. They thought that an agrarian culture was passive and harmless. They should have really done their homework, because these apparently passive agrarians were also humans.

They took precautions, because parasitising an entire planet largely depends on remaining undetected until your presence is merely a

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