Void cat but space, with moon for eyes~

I found this youtube comment and honestly,,,, true

Should auld acquaintance be forgot And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot And days of auld lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear For auld lang syne We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet For auld lang syne

Richard Savoie.

New shiny rec! for @gameofdrarry​ ❤️

you’ve got the antidote for me by Kandakicksass

You guys. I can’t even with this fic. It was so good. 

1) the angst. Okay listen to me. I’m not one for angst. My chest aches with the pain of the characters and I need happiness, but this one. Was. So. Great!!!! It’s written so well, Draco’s POV is so deep that you live with him through the story. I was totally absorbed in how deliciously heartbreaking it was!! And, it’s Happy (very!!!) Ending in the most perfect way.

2) perfect length. It’s 20k which is such a nice read you can have even during your lunch break (why, yes, that’s exactly how I ended up reading this, woops). The story it’s so captivating that you hold your breath from start to finish barely blinking.

3) the friendship. It’s all about love this story, not only romantic love. There’s so much friendship, in all kind of ways, I was so happy reading it. Draco and Ron become true friends, and then even Hermione, and ultimately Harry and it all happens so normally, gradually. It felt unavoidable, just perfect. 

Draco’s voice is really splendid in this and I’m feeling all soft and in love now. I hope you’ll enjoy this as much as I did. 🥺

THE WAY IT CUTS OFF AT THE END IS SENDING ME

as I’ve said on here before, I have prosopagnosia (faceblindness.) It’s very difficult for me to recognize and correctly identify faces; I typically depend on other cues to recognize people I know, such as hair, accessories, posture, body movement and body shape. (Interestingly enough, I also can’t draw faces without painstakingly copying a reference, even though I can draw the rest of the body fairly well.) Prosopagnosia is usually a result of brain injury, but some autistic people (like me) also have it.

There’s a specific part of the human brain that’s adapted to facial recognition if I remember correctly, which is why brain injury is the most common cause of prosopagnosia. We’re specially adapted to be able to distinguish members of our own species! Which makes me think—aliens, or other non-human sapient beings, would probably all have prosopagnosia. There’s no reason why they would be adapted to distinguish human faces. They would learn to tell humans apart, sure, but they might struggle to generally distinguish people that are similar in size and skin and hair color.

This sent me down another trail of thought, though—humans interpret other humans through a set of very subtle cues. Humans are incredibly diverse in appearance as a species, but in general, we take in several pieces of basic information about humans we meet almost immediately.

For example, we can pretty much instantly tell approximately how old the human we’re talking to is. There are outliers, but adolescent, young adult, older adult, and middle aged humans can generally be distinguished, even if the humans are the same size and have the same colors.

Not only that, we pretty much instantly recognize the race of a human we meet, even though race is almost a biologically useless characteristic. Skin color is a major visual cue, but when you think about it the range of variation in human skin color is often pretty subtle—just think about how many supposed “categories” of human fall in between “light sandy color” and “medium brown color.” Furthermore, we can generally pretty easily distinguish a tanned white person from a POC. That’s kind of insane.

People also generally form assumptions about a human’s biological sex incredibly quickly, even though the characteristics that indicate this overlap a lot, and human biology doesn’t go one way or the other 100% of the time. “Male or female” is thought of one of the most clear, basic dividing characteristics between humans, even though the ways we categorize humans as genders in our day to day perceptions are based on dozens of different cues, many of which aren’t even biological.

So my thought is that aliens probably wouldn’t be naturally attuned to understanding the categories we use for other humans at all. The defining characteristics we see as indicating basic facts about a human might not even appear significant at all to an alien. Because they’re not human. They haven’t been socialized among humans. And their brains aren’t specialized for processing human features.

For instance, imagine trying to explain how to determine a human’s age to an alien or other non-human being. Size is not a good indicator—humans are highly variable in adult size, and some young adolescent humans are much larger than some mature adult humans. This would probably be even more confusing to beings that grow throughout their entire lives. Older humans often develop silver or white hair, but some of them change color much, much earlier or later than others, and many humans dye or bleach their hair. To make matters worse, perhaps these beings can’t even percieve the differences in color that distinguish gray hair from blond.

Or imagine trying to explain the idea of “skin color.” Yes, humans are technically just different shades of the same general color, and most of them are in the middle. But the shades are deeply important, and it’s essential to understanding human history to understand the supposed differences in shades of human skin. Aliens read human literature and its metaphorical uses of “dark” and “light,” and delve deep into study of human vision, trying to understand why the lightness and darkness of colors is so deeply fundamental to the human understanding of everything.

Sex and gender is quite another thing. Depending on the senses that aliens mainly use to navigate the world, it could be difficult to clearly perceive a bimodal distribution of sex characteristics in humans at all. (Too many things are sex characteristics, the aliens protest. Hair?? We’re supposed to interpret the location of hair?) But these aliens might not have sexual dimorphism, use two sexes for reproduction, or even have sexual reproduction at all.

So, the aliens learn that many humans insist there are two categories of human, based on secret body parts that humans generally keep covered up. But the secret body parts are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to categorizing humans, and the idea of not categorizing humans according to exactly two categories makes some humans inexplicably angry. If the secret body parts are supposed to be kept secret, how do we categorize the humans? the aliens wonder. The humans list off a long litany of characteristics, like having hair on the lower half of the head specifically, and something about the frequencies of their vocalizations, and the specific shape of the human’s torso. But of course, none of these things are clear indicators all of the time.

“If a human is wearing pink, they’re usually a girl,” one of the humans says. The aliens, who have 18 types of photoreceptors, give up on trying to work out which colors are “pink.”

I guess what I’m getting at is...imagine a society of non-human life forms interacting with humans for the first time and being asked to describe a particular human they were in contact with, for example.

They can offer the types of genetic material the human came into contact with last (cats, dogs, dust mites, all of the plant species that go into creating a jar of salsa) the fabric blend of their clothing, the metals in their tooth fillings, and an alarmingly precise estimate of their bone density, but cannot say how old the human was or what gender they were.

“How tall were they?” the people questioning ask in increasing exasperation, and the being hesitates, calculating what they judge as the volume of the human they encountered.

Humans are weird: The five second rule

Eəlik was exiting the canteen with Human Anthea when she dropped her 'snack carrot', hastened to pick it up, exclaimed "five second rule!" and heartily bit into it again.

"...Excuse me?" Eəlik remembered his course in human manners when he wanted to ask about this strange behaviour.

"Oh, the five second rule" Anthea mumbled with a mouth full of earthly vegetable before remebering her own manners, chewing, swallowing and continuing to speak: "It's a human thing."

Eəlik had expected as much.

"Basically, when I drop some food, if I pick it up within five seconds or less, I can eat it without having to wash it again!"

Eəlik blinked. "That is- highly illogical. Terran bacteria as well as other contamimants do not all take the same time to contaminate different edible substances. In addition to this, the hallway E-71 as most other spaces on this vessel is routinely de-contaminated, any such rule would therefore be unnecessary in this space, even if it was logical in the first place."

Anthea laughs. "That's a fancy way of saying we could eat on the floor here! Yeah, no, sure it's not really logical, I really just do it cause it reminds me of home, illogical and all- we'd have picknicks and bonfires in the wild, and of course us kids would drop things, but we'd still eat it all according to the five second rule!"

"Illogical humans" Eəlik mutters under his breath.

Anthea tilts her head. "Oh, I don't know" she says quite thoughtfully. "Sure we're not very logical, but that's why illogical rules make sense for us, right? I mean, you'd probably know exactly which bacteria could be where and to what kind of food it would stick and in what dosage it'd be dangerous to you... we humans don't tend to know that, we just know something fell to the floor. And we're pretty durable, we can survive to eat most dirt. Plus, in human history, we were often short on food, so we couldn't waste things needlessly... but when something falls to the ground, it's gross or socially unacceptable to eat it- except with the five second rule, it isn't anymore!"

Eəlik stares at her. That even somehow makes sense. Still... "Illogical humans, coming up with such intricate rituals for the easiest things."

"Oh, shut up!" Anthea laughs, so he knows she did not mean it in a menacing way. "I've seen the way you layer your robes and stuff- don't talk to me about needlessly intricate rituals!"

And she does have a point about that.

Humans are Weird: Cyber Warfare

The shift back to real space was never something one became used to. It was a feeling as if the bones in your very body were being ripped from your screaming flesh while you remained fully aware of every nerve and pain cluster in your body as it screamed out in mind numbing agony. 

High Marshal Volgrim had performed the process so many times he had stopped counting as he deemed it hardly worth his time and effort; but what he did remember was the pain of each transition. That, was something he could not easily forget nor repress. 

“Navigation, give me location and baring.”

“Coms, I want our command beacon broadcasting for every ship to hone in on as they exit the jump.”

“Weapons, I want the guns unlocked from storage and primed within the next forty seconds”

“Engineering, give me a report on ship wide systems and then raise shields to maximum if permissible.” 

“Radar, give me contacts a full sweep of the surrounding space.”

Though the High Marshall was still rubbing his closed eyes to ease the pain his orders were crisp and direct. He knew his crew would need a moment as well to recover but a moment was all he could spare them. 

“Star charts coming in now; we’re at the edge of the Hyperion System.” 

“Readings confirmation codes from the Shveron, Mulbo, Tapis Dawn, and Kalbrum fleets now emerging alongside us now.”

“Gunnery teams report arc cannons are primed and ready to fire. Javelin batteries are still connecting coolant pipes now. ETA 60 seconds till ready to fire.”

“Engineering reports all systems are showing positive. Shields raised at full power, no fluctuations.”  

Volgrim nodded with every reply as if checking off a list in his head. The rhythm of the checking was interrupted by the noticeable lack of reply from the officer radar station. 

“Radar, report.” 

The commotion on the bridge of his flagship would have deafened lesser captains but to Volgrim he had become so used to it he could even hear a pin drop over the murmur and be able to point which station it had fallen from. So when the radar officer failed to reply once again volgrim opened his eyes and looked directly at the officer. 

“Officer Murbak,” he began with his voice rising, “re-”. 

Officer Murbak held up a hand to the High Marshall and continued observing his display. 

Having trained each of his bridge crew himself, Volgrim knew full well that one of his men would not act in such a disrespectful manner unless it was something urgent. 

Without saying a word Volgrim rose from his command throne and slithered over to the Murbak’s station, his thousand tiny feet across his segmented body pattering against the metal body sounding like rain atop a roof. He leaned over Murbak and took note of the display console. 

“What do you see lad?” 

Murbak’s dozen arms were twisting and adjusting a handful of knobs on the console as the image in the display shifted over and over. 

“Shortly after we came out of our jump we detected several enemy markers.” Murbak replied as he continued to adjust the knobs. 

Volgrim looked over the display. “The radar shows nothing there lad.” 

At this Murbak broke his gaze at the display and turned his worried eyes at his high marshal. “I know what I saw sir. They’re out there.” 

Turning his gaze to the main view port Volgrim took stock of what lay before them. 

The fleet had arrived at the very edge of the Hyperion system, home to a newly founded human colony that had imprisoned traders of Volgrim’s people, known as Vukori, after a dispute at the space port turned violent. Naturally the Vukori government had seen this act as a direct act of aggression and dispatched the High Marshall with several fleets to punish the wayward humans. 

The Hyperion system was surrounded by a thick nebula of gases that were now playing havoc with the sensor equipment. Volgrim trained his eyes on the swirling masses of green and orange clouds as they danced in space.

As the clouds drifted apart for a moment Volgrim’s eyes shot open as he saw for the briefest of moments the reflection of a metallic object in the gas. 

“All hands to battle stations!” Volgrim cried out as he returned to his command throne. 

He had no need for his radar officer to give him a confirmation, his concerns had been vindicated. The humans had hidden their fleet inside the nebula to hide it from sensor readings and no doubt had planned to ambush the Vukori fleets as they entered. 

“Assemble the fleets into a wedge formation. I don’t want us being picked apart one by one.” 

Though he had only seen one ship in the clouds he was sure more were hiding. With his fleets dispersed from their jump exit they could easily be picked apart one by one, but by concentrating them they would be able to fully bring their might to bear. 

As if sensing their plan had been discovered the first of the human ships began emerging from the nebula. Their hulls were of a steel grey that reflected the green and oranges of the clouds around them like a patchwork of modern art and their frames resembled sea faring vessels of their primitive years without the sails of fabric and masts. 

“Give me a count Mr. Murbak.” Volgrim called out as he watched each new enemy vessel pull forward. 

“I count five battleship class, 7 cruiser class, and fourteen destroyers.”

“Keep an eye on that nebula Mr. Murbk, there could be more hiding in there.” “Aye, aye!” 

Volgrim cradled his head between his arms and pondered the situation. The human fleet was roughly half their total fleet size but also was at the disadvantage of lacking heavy ships compared to the Vukori fleet. Yet Volgrim was well aware that humans had an annoying habit for implementing unconventional tactics when outnumbered that often saw them win the day or at the very least inflict serious casualties against their foe. This was the first step of the war with the humans and Volgrim was not sure if he could replace any losses he sustained so early on in the campaign. 

“Mr. Huckval,” Volgrim called to the communications officer, “ order all ships to keep their distance from the human vessels and turn their scanners to maximum range. I want them reading everything within a 300km distance from us.” He leaned over and gave a hard gaze at Huckval. “If so much as a asteroid the size of a finger floats this way I want to know of it.” 

Huckval relayed the high marshalls orders fleet wide as the Vukori fleets finished arranging themselves into formation. 

“High Marshall, we are receiving a communication.” 

“From which fleet?” 

Huckval shook his head. “It’s not from one of ours but from the human fleet.”

“Interesting. Put them through, fleet wide.” 

After a brief moment a picture appeared on the view port and for the first time Volgrim saw his enemy; or so he thought. 

The image on the screen was constantly shifting and only ever holding image steady for a few moments before shifting again into a blizzard of static. When the image was holding steady Volgrim could barely make out the image of a human figure in a deep blue uniform with short cropped hair. 

“Mr. Huckval, what is the meaning of this?” 

The comms officer looked embarrassed and hurried back to his station just as the human figure began to speak. 

“THIS IS ADMIRAL PYRE OF THE 3RD FLEET.” The voice was drowning and at such volume that it hurt the ears of everyone on the command deck. 

“Cease your shouting human!” cried Volgrim as he covered his ears in pain. 

Admiral Pyre looked confused when the image steady and looked off screen as if talking to someone. 

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” The admiral continued. “ I AM TALKING NORMALLY.” 

Volgrim brought his hands down hard on the arms of his command throne. “You are shouting at the top of your tiny lungs!” 

Pyre looked off screen once again before turning back. “THERE MUST BE A PROBLEM WITH THE TRANSMISSION BEING SO CLOSE TO THE NEBULA.” Pyre said, taking a apologetic look. “I AM TERRIBLY SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE CAUSED.” 

Volgrim turned to Huckval and motioned to end the transmission with a wave of his hand. The picture on the view port was instantly cut and replaced again by the view of open space and the human fleet. 

The crew were slowly recovering from the audio assault on their ears. Volgrim was turning to Huckval when the engineering officers voice rose up in alarm. 

“High Marshall! We are reading arc cannons charging up!” 

Volgrim spun around. “I gave no such order!” he barked. “Whose ship is daring to defy me?!” 

The engineering officer looked scared at his commanders anger but continued his report. “Shveron and Mulbo fleets are showing increasing energy readings.” 

Volgrim was confused at this. Both fleets were commanded by commanders he had served with on numerous campaigns and neither had ever shown such defiance before. 

“Confirm readings and contact-”

The engineering officer cut him off. “We are now reading energy spikes from the Tapis Dawn and Kalbrum fleets as well!” 

“Something is wrong.” 

Volgrim put his thoughts to words as the new report came in. “Mr. Huckval, get me the commanders of all fleets on the line this instant. We need to find out what the gulgut is going on!” 

Huckval turned to his console and began dialing in when suddenly a spark of energy discharged from his station. Huckval was able to jump back in the nick of time but the energy discharge fried the console entirely. 

“Repair crew to the bridge!” Huckval called out. 

Things were spinning out of control one after another and all Volgrim could do was watch. 

All of a sudden a red warning lights began flashing across the bridge and the radar officer pushed people aside to get to Volgrim.

“Sir! Three ships of fleet Shveron just exploded!”

“WHAT?!”

Hammering in keys into his command throne Volgrim brought up the display of his fleet and indeed saw that three ships were gone.

Volgrim roared and grabbed Murbak by the neck and hoisted him into the air. 

“Why wasn’t I told the enemy started firing on us!?”

Murbak was shaking and clawing at his neck. 

“The humans didn’t fire! They didn’t fire!!”

Four more ship icons flared red and vanished from the screen before Volgrim’s eyes. “Status report, now!” 

Murbak scrambled back to his console and keyed in several commands. 

“The ships were destroyed from internal explosions, not enemy weapons fire.” 

“Explain!” The confusion was only adding to his continued frustration as Murbak continued reading the scrolling information. 

“From the readings it looks like their arc cannons detonated from a build up of ene-”

“FLEET WIDE BROADCAST!” Volgrim shouts in alarm realizing the danger they were now in. “DISCONNECT POWER SUPPLIES TO ARC CANNONS!”

“Communications are still fired sir, we can’t send a message out.” Huckval called as the repair team arrived and began quickly disassembling the burnt out communications console. 

Volgrim watched as more and more ships in his fleet began blinking out as their arc cannons reached critical mass and detonated. 

Another sound of alarms began ringing out and to his mounting horror Volgrim knew instantly what they were. He turned to his gunnery officer to see him sprinting out of the bridge. 

“Where are you going?!” Volgrim shouted over the blaring alarms. 

“I have to disconnect the cannons or we’re all dead!” the officer shouted over his shoulder as he scuttled as fast as he could out of the bridge to the nearest access hatch and descended to the gunnery decks. 

The flagship was beginning to shudder as the mounting energy in the cannons became increasingly unstable. The energy was meant to be fired outwards in an arc when at critical mass and trigger immense damage to enemy ships. But without firing coordinates the weapons muzzles had remained shut as more and more energy was being poured into each cannon.

Consoles now across the bridge were sparking and exploding as the crew darted back and forth all  the while Volgrim sat upon his throne. 

He knew his gunnery officer would never make it to the gunnery deck in time and so resigned himself to his final moments. 

With vengeful eyes he gazed out at the human armada before him and cursed them with his final breath just as the arc cannons exploded and ripped his ship in two.

———————————————————————————————————-

“Confirm, enemy flagship is down.” 

The human radar officer confirmed the readings once more and nodded. “Half the enemy fleet has been destroyed. The remaining portions appear on the verge of detonation or attempting to flee out of system.”

“Permission to fire?” the gunnery officer inquired, eager to get the final blow in. 

Admiral Pyre shook his head, a faint grin crossing his face. “Save the ammunition for another day.” 

Pyre looked away from the view port and stepped over to a special portion of his bridge. The area was filled with consoles and screens reading off seemingly endless streams of data that the staff present monitored and altered as needed. 

He stepped behind one officer who promptly turned and saluted smartly.  He returned the salute crisply. “At ease.” 

The officer lowered her arm and motioned for her staff to disperse. “I would say your program was a success.” 

To Pyre’s surprise he saw her shake her head. “Hardly. We were only able to implement it through the transmission because of the audio distraction and even then it took nearly twenty five seconds to spread fleet wide. We were lucky that they did not employ any tactical ai programs otherwise they would have detected the cyber spike and contained it.” 

She handed him a large folder. “This is a list of all the features we can improve upon and requisitions for better equipment for future engagements.” 

He took it and skimmed through a few of the front pages before closing it and tucking it under his shoulder. “I shall give it a more detailed inspection later tonight but rest assured you will be provided with everything you need.”

She looked puzzled at this. “But you haven’t even read what I’ve asked for.” 

Pyre nodded and smiled. “True, but I have already seen what you can deliver.” He motioned her to the view screen as dozens of enemy ships exploded in the distance. Bright blue arcs of energy shooting out and ripping metal hulls apart like paper as the remaining ships made futile attempts to jump away. 

“Do you have any idea how many lives of my sailors you saved today?” 

Pyre gazed out at the destruction and kept his smile. “Because of you and your teams work you have delivered a critical blow to our enemies without endangering a single one of them.”

He turned to her and fixed her with a serious stare. “Not. A. Single. One.” He said the words slowly to let that sink in. “They will not only go on to serve the navy in future battles and wars, but also be able to one day go home to their loving families because of your hard work; and I think that is worth more than a few million dollars of computers and cable.” 

She coughed and tapped her leg nervously. 

“It will, uh, be roughly a billion dollars in computers, and, ugh, cables; sir.” 

Pyre looked at her, then back at the destruction she had wrought. 

“I’ll see if we can cancel a battleship production to divert the needed funds once we return to port.” 

Before she could reply Pyre turned and left the bridge to report the victory they had achieved back to the homeworld leaving the human fleet to watch the destruction of their enemies unfold from the stroke of a few keys. 

Humans are weird: Mandela Effect

Imagine Aliens discovering the Mandela Effect. Like the effect is debated to be either a case of mass false memory or a case of alternate realities bumping into ours. We don’t really know much besides the fact that its a real documented thing that millions of people experience. But imagine if aliens had no such experiences. Imagine them trying to understand why humans remember things that didn’t happen. Imagine them trying to grasp the concept. Then imagine it spreading to the aliens. Cause remember the effect only became widely known because Mandela was remembered to have died in jail and the internet allowed people to share their confusion. But imagine aliens being introduced to the effect and suddenly there are millions of aliens reporting mass false memory events and or alternate reality bumps. Like imagine the chaos that would follow as the aliens start questioning their realities.

Give a bored human a screwdriver and you’ll find a pile of scrap where your ship used to be, with a proud looking human sitting nearby. 

This is (A) hilarious, and (B) perfect for adapting to a science fiction setting. 

Sneaking onboard an alien ship?  Send in Stabby the Roomba first.

Humans are unstoppable...Until they aren’t.

I’m not the most eloquent writer, but I’ve had this idea kicking around for a while and figured I’d put it out into the universe.

A lot of the basis for the “humans are space orcs” stuff is the idea that we’re pretty durable compared to many species, yeah? When it comes to physical trauma, we can bounce back from most things that don’t kill us outright, especially given the benefit of hypothetical space-age technology, and adrenaline is one heck of a drug when it comes to functioning under stress. 

But that doesn’t make us unkillable, and even though we can survive debilitating injuries and not die from shock, it doesn’t mean it’s fun. Dying of shock sucks, but at least it’s probably quick.

So - Imagine a ship, adrift in space, slowly being drawn into a star or something. In order to save the ship, someone has to repair the hyper-quantum-relay-majig on the hull or in the engine or whatever. Bit of a problem though- there’s a ton of deadly, deadly radiation (Wrath of Khan style) or poisonous fumes or, I dunno, electrical current, between the crew and the repair. Like, enough to kill most species instantly, so the crew is just like, ‘welp, guess we’ll die then’. But then.

BUT THEN

They ask the human. Because everyone’s heard the stories - you’re basically unkillable, right? Could you survive long enough in there to fix it? And their human goes real quiet for a second, but still says ‘Yeah, I could fix it’. And the rest of the crew is like, ‘Whaaaaaa, it won’t kill you?’ and the human repeats “I can fix it” (which isn’t an answer, but no one catches that, not yet at least), so they send ‘em in. And the human fixes it, they come back, the ship flies to safety, and the crew is thrilled to survive. If the human is a little quiet, well, they’re entitled after pulling off a miracle. Everyone else is just excited to get to the nearest station’s bar to tell their very own human story, cuz, ‘those crazy humans, amiright?’.

The good mood keeps up until the human is late for their next shift. At first it’s just faint unease, but- but they earned a bit of a lie-in, right? No reason to begrudge them some extra rest, even if it is a little weird for them to oversleep. They’ll be fine. Humans are always fine. 

(Right?)

(…Wrong.)

- What is… help. Help!-

- ake up! You have t-

- been days. You need sleep, you-

- nother transfusion. We could-

- out of sedatives!-

A week later, the crew finally reaches the station. They stumble into the bar, haggard and haunted. And over the next months and years a new rumor about humans starts to make its way through space. A rumor unlike any before.

‘Be careful with your humans’ it whispers. ‘Their strength is not always a blessing. Be sure they don’t do something they can’t come back from, because when a human dies… they die slowly.’