Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

arcticfoxbear:

xtremecaffeine:

roachpatrol:

iztarshi:

Inspired by various tumblr posts.

Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetry alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.

Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.

You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.

That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?

You really want a human.

you know fantasy dragon soulbonding fic i want more of that where the humans are the dragons, like, we’re huge, we’re old, we’re scrappy as hell, and if you are small and cute enough we would be delighted to carry you around on our back 

“One time, I was trapped in an asteroid belt when the main fission compensator blew. Normally it’s no sweat, right? But for no good reason, the backup has failed as well. So the light on the dashboard is saying ‘Abandon Ship’ but we’re in the middle of an asteroid belt, y'know? We’d never make it out alive. So anyway me and the rest of the guys are just like, well, I guess this is our lot in life, we’re done for. At least we have enough power to send transmissions to our broods and go into hibernation and maybe some other group of dumb fucks can find us out here.
But then, right, the human goes crazy! She jumps up on the table and starts shouting about how we’ll never surrender, right? It made no gods damned sense! But somehow, she won us all round and we’re all pumped up.
Then she started marching around the ship, gathering up all the spare cabling, tape, those little paperclip things they always demand to have on board?
So anyway, she goes into a trance, starts building something, and we’re just like, well, even the human has gone nuts, must be because they can’t go into hibernation naturally.
So anyway, after a few minutes she jumps up and starts screaming, screaming at the top of her lungs, takes this bizarre sculpture thing to the engine room and wires it in place of the fission compensator’s tertiary manifold.
And somehow, somehow, it works.
So we limp to the nearest base, and they test this heap of junk, and it should have never worked, there’s no possible way this tangle of cables and bent wire could possibly interface with the engine’s systems, let alone work with them.

But there’s another human at the station and they just look at it and nods, like this is the most natural thing ever.

Apparently, the pile of junk was inhabited by one of their ancient gods, name of Ma Kyver?

And THAT my broodlings is why we take a human with us.”

Report from Cultural Researcher Qulix’tch to Home Swarm University:

Re: Human Survival Rates As it Relates To Diet:

Dearest colleges, I am ever grateful for your kind communications and support. I have compiled all collected data and attached it to the overview for your perusal. Let me say first and foremost that the rumors that I was sent to investigate, ie that humans were the first observed truly omnivorous species, have turned out to be a gross understatement.

It is not simply that humans can eat both vegetative flesh and animal flesh, not even  that they can eat anything in between but seriously, they eat everything regardless of it’s inherent nutrient value and risk factor. Indeed this increases their odds of survival but from an intercultural interaction standpoint it is a little weird, and creepy, let’s be honest, that it seems like their first thought when encountering something new that isn’t a rock is  “Can I eat this?”

Mostly they prefer plant matter as (thank whatever deity you will) they seem to be squeamish about eating sentient beings and the odds favor that plants won’t be. It has also come to my attention that our particular eight-legged and multi-eyed form, added to our chitinous outer membrane is particularly unappetizing to them across their multi-culture. This is reassuring but hardly a firm deterrent as they have an instinct set that drives them to make digestible anything that isn’t inherently.  

The nutrients are trapped in an unusable form? No worries, the human just finds something combustible, builds a fire, and heats it till the undigestable fibers or whatever release the nutrients.

Is the edible bit protected by spikes, spines, and thorns they might just grab a rock and beat it until the edible bit is avaliable.

They carry around vats of acid just in case they need to add it to the mix to denature large proteins.

I kid you not they have hundreds, hundreds, of  different species of microbes on their skin, in their mouth, in their digestive tract that help them break down what their own systems won’t.

If the nutrients are contaminated with unfriendly microorganisms they count on this friendly micro-fauna, as they call it, to fight them off.  Failing that they have developed an entire subculture devoted to brewing poison of just the correct potency that it kills the intruding microorganisms while leaving them alive.

And if there is no plant matter they can eat? They just find a (hopefully) non-sentient species that can break it down for them and wring the proteins and nutrients out of them in ways that don’t bear mentioning. (see appendix Eggs, Milk, and Meat)

It has been reported, if you can believe it (and with humans why not), that on their own planet. In an ocean that is full of fish that they can eat with no processing at all, there is one species that is particularly poisonous to humans. Instead of avoiding it and eating the swarming fish species that are so benign that they can be eaten without even the basic heating, humans pay to have a specialist in food preparation known as a chef go through a complicated ritual to remove the deadly toxin. They will do this even when the non-toxic fish flesh is readily and far more cheaply avaliable.

Then, even when they have enough nutrients they will masticate whatever inorganic substance is at hand in some odd, seemingly unconscious ritual. The humans I encountered seemed to have a preference for writing utensils for this purpose

I hope the information I have gathered will prove useful.

(via windbladess)

unpretty:

Miscellaneous Clark Kent headcanons as relate to my little fic universe, that may or may not ever come up because who knows:

• Little Clark was really susceptible to childhood superstitions for some reason. He didn’t go under ladders, he did the salt over the shoulder thing, he did not fuck with that Bloody Mary shit like NOPE I’M OUT THIS SLUMBER PARTY IS CANCELED, LANA GET OUT OF MY HOUSE AND TAKE YOUR MURDER GHOSTS WITH YOU. He believes that he is over this as an adult but whenever his foot is about to fall on a crack in the sidewalk it actually stops like a half inch above the ground and hovers there. He does not notice he is doing this. No one notices, ever, because it is the weirdest subtle unconscious thing in the world. At least Martha’s back is safe?
• I covered the picky eater thing in Christmas in Kansas but to be more specific his tastebuds are just really sensitive to certain chemical compounds? Not just in terms of things he won’t eat but also in terms of things that he expects to be there and he doesn’t really like foods that lack those things. Your two options to make him eat anything are to cover it in sugar, or cover it in garlic.
• He goes through a lot of breathmints. Can you imagine if Superman saved someone and they were like “man i appreciate being alive but he had some really bad garlic breath”? He would be so horrified.
• He has a ratty, fucked-up old shirt that he wears whenever he is making pasta with red sauce. Even Superman cannot stand against the ability of red sauce to end up on whatever you happen to be wearing. HE WAS SO CAREFUL THIS TIME, HOW DID A STAIN END UP ON HIS BACK THAT JUST MAKES NO SENSE. Clark Kent’s weaknesses: kryptonite, tomato stains.
• His ability to perfectly imitate anyone’s voice was one of the first things to manifest themselves, but this wasn’t the kind of thing anyone noticed was weird. It definitely didn’t seem like a power. He was just a small child who could do a really good Kermit the Frog. He sang Rainbow Connection at a middle school talent show and all the moms cried.
• He definitely has a playlist to cheer himself up and get pumped and it has Eye of the Tiger and You’re the Best on it. Probably also half the Top Gun soundtrack.
• Clark Kent’s twitter is pretty standard snarky newsman except with more farming memes. No one can tell how ironic the farming memes are. They might not be ironic at all. Clark Kent might be really sincere, or he might just be so ironic that he has circled back around into sincerity. No one knows. He’s also really good at that thing where you retweet two things from a person that side-by-side reveal they are a dingus. I don’t know if there’s a word for that.
• His Snapchat is all dogspotting, with occasional rare dance breaks. He’s a pretty good dancer since he found those YouTube tutorials. He does this thing with his hips that Lois finds deeply upsetting for reasons she cannot articulate.
• Jimmy asked Clark how he got so fit once and Clark was like “uh, farming. farm. eyup.” But he kept pressing for deets and Clark ended up just telling him that he’d pulled a Milo of Croton??? He lifted a newborn calf over his head and then just did that every single day until he was lifting a cow over his head. Jimmy knows nothing about farming or cows or physical fitness and this seemed plausible enough to him.
• He has a blog where he posts rejected articles and it is the wonkiest thing in the entire world because that is why they got rejected. Perry takes one look at these articles and is like “it will take more words than I want to pay you for just to explain the setup for this article and also there are five people total who care, in the world, including you”
• He has to be really careful when he buys clothes because he needs to make sure that they aren’t too tight and he has full range of motion. He does not want to relive The Skinny Jeans Incident. Shirts that say ‘I flexed and the sleeves fell off’ are only funny until it happens to you, then they are just horrible reminders. Popped seams everywhere. There is no way to explain that without looking like a huge tool.
• Even when Superman has a really shitty day he keeps it together until he gets home, but then he shuts the balcony door and peels off his costume and Clark does the Tina Belcher groan for like ten minutes while he takes a shower because he got covered in sewer mutant or space crab or god knows and UUUUUUUUUUGH. Fortunately the nice older lady in the apartment next door always seems to know when he has had a shitty day and she brings him pie.
• She can hear his melodramatic bullshit from over at her place, that’s how she knows. They share a bathroom wall and it practically echoes. If she times it right he will answer the door before he has put a shirt on because he doesn’t want to leave her waiting in the hall. She does not know what his day job is and it definitely does not occur to her that he is Superman because her primary interaction with him is that he acts like a whiny bitch and she brings him pie so she can ogle him. She is a simple woman who enjoys life’s simple pleasures.
• The Kryptonian language is really complicated in terms of tonality, context, word order, musicality, etc, and the written language reflects that. Things like the order things are in, how things overlap, colors, etc, are all important. So basically I really like the idea of his symbol being one that represents his family name and says that he is of the House of El. It’s really just basically his last name.
• If Starfleet gets to have replicators then Krypton gets to have replicators and Jor-El definitely stuck one in the ship so his son would have, you know, food and clothing. But only Kryptonians can use their tech because they’re who the neural interface is designed for so whoops they got real lucky that Kryptonian babies love milk from Earth goats. Clark only started using the replicator later but it only knows how to make Kryptonian things and only some of those are useful to him.
• Okay so here is where I tie those last two bullet points into something fucking dumb that you will take out of my cold dead hands: Clark got the costume out of the replicator. It didn’t necessarily understand what he wanted though? Like, the concept of a costume didn’t really translate, but it got the idea that he wanted an active uniform, so that is what it made. It’s brightly colored and has his last name on the front. Clark is wearing a Kryptonian football jersey is what I’m getting at. Later Kara will be VERY confused by this. Imagine ending up on an alien planet and meeting your cousin and he’s been fighting crime dressed like a quarterback.
• Most telepathy does not work because different neural patterns. Diana can only manage it if she uses her lariat and even then it’s like trying to lasso a freight train that does not stop. It’s extremely disorienting. J'onn has just accepted that Superman can hear him but he’s not going to get anything back. It’s like the psychic equivalent of a dial tone for him. He’s trying to call his bro but their family has dialup. He tries not to fuck with it because he doesn’t want to poke around in Superman’s head blind and break something.
• Clark can’t type with super speed because he’ll break the keyboard and the computer can’t keep up. Instead he uses shorthand along with a custom set of AutoHotKey macros and it is honestly infuriating how fast he can get things written with this setup. But also if he doesn’t have AutoHotKey on whatever he’s typing with then sometimes Lois will get an email like: ll] dyk f pw mde a dec wrt t $l stry? ]ck
• A woman was told by her therapist to try talking to at least one person once a week but she decided to cheat by just talking to her empty apartment under the guise of telling Superman about her day because lol he can hear everything allegedly so this definitely counts and is what the doctor was going for with this. When she has to go to the hospital for a medical emergency she comes home and there is a note on her counter wherein Superman explains that he was worried because he hadn’t heard from her in a while, so he swung by to check on her. When he found out what happened he watered her plants and fed her goldfish and also that cat that he thought might be hers (she does not have a cat). She is completely mortified because she was just being full of shit she did not actually believe he could hear her oh god what all did she even say and whose cat is this???
• Look if you are in Metropolis and you loudly say HEY SUPERMAN there is a very good chance he will hear it even if he doesn’t mean to. He is not trying to eavesdrop, that’s just what happens when you yell someone’s name in earshot.
• He doesn’t wear the costume under his clothes because you may have noticed a running theme here where the universe is conspiring to ruin his clothes and leave him running around shirtless all the time. I mean thank god for the rest of us but he would rather not risk someone spilling their drink all over him somehow and suddenly his shirt is transparent and you can see the big S. It’s bad enough when it happens under ordinary circumstances. How often can one man get drinks spilled all over him? You would be shocked. Shocked. His eyes are up here, Lois.

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

Anonymous asked: ayyy after your brilliant Purim story could you do one for Passover, since that's coming up, if you haven't already?

swanjolras-archive:

okay CAVEAT: i have, at times in my life, been a serious* student of ancient egypt and so while i am comfortable historically telling Mostly Untrue stories about ahasuerus (xerxes) and Mostly True stories about the maccabean revolt it is, technically, my duty as a historian to tell u all that Nothing In The Passover Story Actually Happened, There Are Literally No Historical Sources For Ancient Israelites Migrating To Or From Ancient Egypt At Any Point, This Didn’t Happen

*i have never been a serious anything

unfortunately for history, u know how historical accuracy in storytelling is just like hanukkah foods?

(no, how is historical accuracy in storytelling like hanukkah foods)

I Donut Care About It. okay so like

way back in the waybackwhen there’s this dude joseph, and due to a large number of improbable circumstances involving fashion choices, a huge pit, and some well-timed freud-style therapy, joseph becomes bros with the pharaoh of egypt. on account of this joseph’s entire family moves to egypt; on account of this all of their friends move to egypt; on account of this all the jews start living in egypt, because as u may know, we all know each other.

eventually joseph dies, and also joseph’s bro the pharaoh dies, and also a couple more pharaohs die after that, and finally the pharaoh is like WAITAMINUTE WE GOT A SHIT TON OF JEWS LIVING IN EGYPT. WHY AND HOW DID THIS HAPPEN

and decides the best solution to this problem is to make all the jews slaves, because of reasons

but unforch jews keep having babies, because… jews… so the pharaoh is all like U KNOW WHAT WE’RE GONNA DO? WE’RE GONNA TAKE EVERY JEWISH BOY BORN… AND WE’RE GONNA KILL HIM. THIS WILL HAVE NO REPERCUSSIONS WHATSOEVER.

you may ask to yourself, “hey, don’t the jews have, like, a god? where is god in all this?” u would be right in asking this, because the jews are also asking this question. where is god?? why is he not fucking shit up?? wasn’t there, like, a covenant or some shit?

and the answer is, after a couple hundred years god is like Huh Whatsit Whazza Huh Oh Shit Yeah Jews. Fuck. Yes. Jews. I Have Those Now. because this is what happens when u make deals with infinitely old and infinitely powerful spirits whose hobbies include “gardening” and “whining about gardening”.

so god looks around and there’s this lady, yocheved, who’s birthin’ a baby; and there’s a couple of midwives called shifra and puah who are like WOW THAT’S A BABY BOY??? HM OKAY GUESS WE GOTTA… WANDER OUT OF THE HOUSE… BEFORE WE COME BACK AND KILL HIM. SURE HOPE NOTHING HAPPENS TO HIM BEFORE WE COME BACK. WOULD SURE BE A SHAME IF HE WERE TO MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEAR BEFORE WE COULD DO THAT THING.

the baby’s big sister, miriam, is like I GOT THIS. and she steals a basket and the baby and runs off and dumps them both in the river, where they whack into the knees of an egyptian princess, who is like “oh shit now i gotta be responsible for this water bottle.”

“i have an IDEA,” says miriam, popping helpfully out of the bushes. “why don’t you keep the baby and say he’s an egyptian and he won’t die. but also give the baby a BABYSITTER. wow i found one. she is jewish and also my mother. WHAT A COINCIDENCE HAVE A GREAT DAY”

so the baby, moses, is Definitely An Egyptian!! Not Jewish At All!! but raised by jews with jewish values. (THIS ALSO HAPPENED TO FOUNDING FATHER ALEXANDER HAMILTON. LOOK IT UP.) and identifies largely as a jew 

and one day he’s wandering along the pyramids and sees an egyptian whipping a jewish slave. he goes, NAH BRO, and kills the egyptian.

…have u heard of conflict management???? says the pharaoh, and kicks him out of the country. where he wanders and wanders and eventually meets a dude, becomes a shepherd for him, and marries one of his daughters, cos that’s how the life cycle works in Whateverthefuck BCE

one day he’s a-wanderin out in the desert when he comes across a bush. (you allllll know this bit.) and the bush is on fire but it’s not burning up and it starts yelling about taking his sandals off, etc, etc, and moses is like holy shit, it’s god.

Yeah, says god. Yes. I Definitely Remembered That I Had Jews And Now I Am Here To Free You From Slavery With A Genius Plan.

wow!!! says moses. what’s your genius plan!!!

Tell Pharaoh To Make You Not Slaves, says god. 

uh, says moses.

Look, says god. You Got Any Better Ideas, Hotshot? I Don’t Think You Do. And I’mma Send Your Brother With You Cos You Got A Speech Disorder. You Know How I Knew You Got A Speech Disorder? Cos I’m God. So Fucking There.

so moses heads back to egypt and is all like, sigh, okay, let my people go. look. i have this cool staff and it turns into a snake. it will eat your magician’s snakes. wow. this is not homoerotic at all. can we stop being slaves?

lol, says pharaoh.

WELL THAT FUCKING WORKED, says moses to god.

LOOK! says god. Look. Look I Have A Lot Going On Right Now!! Okay!! Jesus God!!! Always With The Judging!! Look, Have You Considered Turning Their Entire River Into Blood? That Always Works For Me.

THIS COULD HAVE BEEN YOUR FIRST RESORT INSTEAD OF THE FUCKING SNAKE THING??? says moses.

so they turn the river into blood. pharaoh is like, okay, dude, i can make water red too, we live in egypt, it is called iron in the soil. 

god is like, Nah, I Got More, Watch This Shit. frogs start pouring out of the nile; pharaoh’s like FINE Y’ALL CAN GO. 

god’s like cool!!! bam no more frogs!! moses is like COOL BRO THE FROGS ARE GONE SO WE’RE GONNA LEAVE TOMORROW. pharaoh’s like haha what? leave? who said you could leave? no one said you could leave. you gotta get that hearing checked moses bro

FINE, says god, and sends a shitton of lice; same deal happens, pharaoh is like YEAH and then is like UNYEAH. god sends a shitton of flies; god sends a livestock disease; god sends boils; god sends hailstorms; god sends locusts; god sends darkness for three days; pharaoh is like LOL, NOT LETTING YOUR PEOPLE GO; ralph fiennes and val klimer have a great duet; everything is terrible.

so god says to moses, Okay. Tell Your People, Take a Lamb And Slaughter It, And Paint Its Blood Above The Doorway Of Your House.

you’re gross, says moses.

No, says god. You Don’t Get It. This One’s Serious.

so the jews paint their doorways with lamb’s blood. moses goes to pharaoh, says, dude, i know we’ve had our bad times. but this is your last chance. i don’t want this to escalate, you don’t want this to escalate. sure, your people have been keeping my people as slaves and mistreating us, but there’s some shit that we do not want to do.

hahahaha, says pharaoh. knew u were too chicken to go through with it. have fun being slaves, nerds.

so moses goes home, and the sky opens up, and the jews pray in their rooms all through the night and open the doors in the morning to a wailing in the streets, because the angel of death has killed the oldest child in every single egyptian household.

Moses, says god. You Gotta Get Out Of Here. Don’t Even Let Your Bread Finish Baking. Just Run.

the jews grab their shitty unrisen bread and their living children and they run as far and as fast as they can until they hit the red sea. at which point they realize, well, they’re fucked, because pharaoh’s army is behind them, and it’s coming after them to take them back to be slaves again.

god has been following along in a pillar of fire and smoke, and god’s voice from the pillar says, Okay, Moses, This One’s On You, Raise Your Snake-Staff Thing Over The Red Sea. and moses does, and the sea splits in two– the waters pulling back, the dry land before them– and the jews run and run and run, and behind them, the enormous wave of the water crashes onto the egyptian army.

(brief interlude: AND THE WOMEN DANCING WITH THEIR TIMBRELS FOLLOWED MIRIAM AS SHE SANG HER SONG (HEY!) SING A SONG FOR THE ONE WHOM WE’VE EXALTED, MIRIAM AND THE WOMEN DANCED AND DANCED THE WHOLE NIGHT LOOOOOONG)

and they keep walking through the desert, and the bitter iron water becomes sweet when moses puts wood into it, and bread falls from the sky when they are hungry, and god says, Okay, I’ve Got A Place For You, It’s Not Five-Star Or Anything, But It’s Got So Many Livestock And Bees That It’s Literally Flowing With Milk And Honey.

that’s wonderful!!!! say the jews. oh my god you’re literally the best we love you oh my god!!!!

Cool, says god. How Does ETA: Forty Years Sound To You.

so they all gather at mount sinai, and moses walks up the mountain like okay, kids, you have literally one job and that’s to not worship anything, ‘kay? KAY, say the israelites.

moses goes to argue with god for a long while, and the israelites are like HE’S GONE, HE’S DEAD, LET’S GO, MOTHERFUCKERS, and melt down all their jewelry and make a cool cow out of it and start worshiping the cow. moses comes down and is like GOD FUCKING DAMN IT, smashes his tablets, has to go back up the mountain again.

Why Do I Even Keep These Assholes, says god.

i dunno, says moses. i guess if you wanted, you could wander off and let us be slaves for a hundred years. wait that would be terrible gosh you would never do that.

…Anyway, Let’s Get Stonecarving, says god.

down in the desert, we the jews make bad jokes at each other, get into arguments, poke at the gold cow bits, rest, wait for god to come back.