demented clockwork hummingbird

ROTK ANNIVERSARY WEEK | Hope [6/7] ➼ "Hope is kindled."

Humanity has finally reached the stars and found out why no one had contacted us. The universe is in a sad state. As such, Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, and many othe charities go intergalactic.

The thing the recruiters don’t tell you about space battles is that you die slowly.

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

I followed the being in the suit.

Took me well over a minute to realize "low frequency right angle shape" was Red Cross.

I love how this shows the weirdness both of language and of culture. Excellent writing!

"Soil Starship Nichols"

This is what took me a moment.

Earth Starship [Nichelle] Nichols

absolutely obsessed w the doctor just seeing the master every time and going “i could fix them. by putting them in a cage. and keeping them with me forever and ever. so they could never leave me. but they’re definitely the one with problems. i’m totally fine.”

Changing of the Guard✨

WE ARE SO BACK

In honor of our very first sneak peek of the movie Wicked, my nostalgia kicked into high gear and I'm honoring one of my earliest fandom crazes with a silly little comic I'm calling "Fiyero Doesn't Get Enough Recognition For All The Shit He's Been Through."

Enjoy Fiyero having the weirdest 72 hours of his life.

Sequel comic here.

🔹 Saying that it's okay to write or read about dark and taboo topics but only when they're portrayed in a certain way is still censorship.

🔹 Wanting to ban or forbid media that you believe portrays a negative topic in a positive light, by glorifying, romanticizing, or fetishizing it is still censorship.

🔹 There is no objective metric to decide if a story is portraying a negative topic the 'right' way.

🔹 Just because a piece of fiction doesn't explicitly condemn or portray an evil action in a bad light in the text doesn't mean the author thinks its good or is trying to persuade the audience that it is good.

🔹 Survivors of trauma will not always write fiction about their trauma in a way that seems 'right' or 'normal' to you.

🔹 Banning fiction because it portrays dark, taboo topics in a way you consider gross or disgusting is still censorship.

[Tags reading, "#I've said it before and I'll say it again #I create art for adults #and as an adult I expect you to already know that hurting people is wrong #I'm not gonna hold you're hand through that like you're a toddler #"hurting people is wrong" is something you should have learned in kindergarten #not at 24 from an m-rated dark romance novel"]

i propose; what if hadestown got animated

Them <3

Two Time Travelers Stuck in the 60’s???

popular holotuber spacebomberguy has uploaded a new five hour video essay! it starts as a critique of the new “dress like a senator” fashion line and it’s place in pro-republic clone wars propaganda, before spiraling into a discovery that chancellor palpatine is a sith lord!! reactions on the holonet are mixed, with macewinduofficial declaring the video “necessary viewing for all of coruscant” while anakinskyyyy3534 replied to a link with “TLDW”

…..i wrote it

literally going to think of this 4ever

tag yourself im outerimjob

A little drawing of them. For me. As a treat

on the road to hell there was a railroad track

I think maybe I missed the birds and the bees talk after all, I don’t remember this part

that’s the Hawks & Hornets discussion, the more advanced version that covers kinks.