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#humans can climb
marlynnofmany · 5 months
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Arboreal Species
We had plenty of options for ways to keep occupied while waiting for the client to show up and collect his delivery. Several of the crew were playing card games with the captain, using a delivery crate as a table, and she was beating the pants off all of them. (Though none of these particular aliens wore pants. You know what I mean.) Some of the others waited inside the ship, declaring boredom with this particular patch of exotic wilderness.
The rest chatted with crew from the ship that had arrived after us, which was also delivering cargo for the same late-to-arrive local. They had plenty to complain about. They also had food to share, and a decent chance that it would be edible by those they shared it with.
While Alien Food Roulette was always exciting, I’d found a much better option.
“Hey, they tell me your species climbs things,” the stranger from the other ship had said, long snout curling into a smile. She looked like a mix of 3/4 baboon and 1/4 crocodile.
“They’re right!” I replied easily. There weren’t many climbing opportunities on our little courier ship, and I was curious where this was going.
The alien pointed at a huge tree on the edge of the landing pad, which boasted smooth orange bark with branches every couple feet. “I’m gonna go climb that. Care to join me?”
“Would I ever!” I said, already heading toward it. I called back over my shoulder, “If you guys need me, I’ll be up a tree!”
Captain Sunlight didn’t even look away from the game, just waving distractedly, her scaly face intent on whatever play Mur had just made. He was chuckling about it and rubbing his tentacles together in a way that was probably a bluff. As soon as I looked away, he made a noise that said the good captain had just wrecked his clever plan. Trrili hissed with laughter.
None of them cared that I was about to climb to a dangerous height. None thought this was out of character in the slightest, and all of them were missing out on an excellent climbing experience.
It was a great tree. The bark was smooth but not slippery, reminding me of a madrone tree from back home, just without the flaky outer layer. And it didn’t feel as cold. If anything, it was warm as we scampered skyward, almost as if the tree welcomed a good climb by people who’d appreciate it.
The alien stopped, picking a branch to sit on and leaning back against another. “Now that is a nice view.”
I had to agree. “It is!” I found my own convenient pair of branches, draping my arms over the top one and finding a nice footrest on a third. “Everybody down there doesn’t know what they’re missing.” The forest around the landing pad was bright with oranges and yellows, the kind of vivid colors that I associated with autumn, but which could have been year-round here. Rolling hills lined the horizon, with a river sparkling merrily in the distance. The only straight line was the road. It made a nice counterpoint to all the gentler natural shapes.
My new friend cupped a hand to her snout unnecessarily. “Hey, everybody down there! You should come see this view!”
To no one’s surprise, she got a chorus of “no thanks.”
I shook my head. “Such a shame. They’re missing out on all the knowledge that comes from above, too. Hey, Paint!” I yelled down to the crewmate who had just dropped a box of round things. “One rolled under the ramp, and two are over in the grass!” I pointed them out.
A distant “Thank you!” reached my ears.
The alien nodded. “Wisdom of the heights indeed. What else can we see, that those on the ground can’t?”
We spent a good few minutes pointing things out to each other and swapping stories. Apparently her people were called the Farsights, for exactly this reason.
“Oh, motion on the road!” she declared, squinting into the distance. “Looks like somebody’s in a rush to be a little less late.”
“Well that ship has launched,” I said, following her eyes. “Nice thought, though. Say, is that one car or two?”
The Farsight didn’t answer immediately, which made me worry a little. Then she said “Uh oh,” which made me worry a lot.
“Uh oh what?”
She stood up on the branch and bellowed, “INCOMING! Client’s being chased by hostile fauna!”
“Oh jeez.” Now I could see it too: something large and antlered galloping after the little surface skimmer. Both were headed straight toward our landing pad.
Chaos erupted down below as we slid off our perches and scrambled downward. The bark was still friendly-smooth.
“I think that creature eats these!” my friend said, bounding out toward the end of a branch to shake loose a bundle of round seedpod things. “I’ve seen them before!”
“Will that matter?” I asked, slowing. “It looks pretty mad!”
“Can’t hurt!”
I couldn’t argue that. There were more than a few seedpods waiting on my path down, all of which came loose with a little judicious bouncing of the branches. When I hit the ground, it was in a sea of baseball-shaped plant bits.
The rest of the crew was scrambling to move crates and dash into the ships for anything weaponlike. A handful of beefy individuals from the other crew lined up to stare the thing down as it approached, and my ship’s biggest and scariest hurried to join them. Trrili claimed a place in front with her black-and-red carapace gleaming in the sun, pincher arms spread wide. She left space for the skimmer to zip past, but only just.
I grabbed seedpods, making a basket with my shirt. “Will we need these? Is it going to stop?”
“Beats me!” said my new friend. She grabbed an armload and ran. “Let’s find out!”
I raced after. We joined the lineup just before the gigantic whatever-it-was skidded to a halt, rearing to paw the air and roar thunderously. The guy in the skimmer was trying to park behind our ship. The various scary aliens yelled back at the huge moose-rhino.
“How well can you throw?” asked my friend, not waiting for an answer. She dumped her armload and started chucking seedpods.
“Pretty well!” I didn’t bother dropping mine, just grabbing them one by one from my shirt basket and aiming for the head.
I didn’t count how many of those direct shots were me, but I’m going to say most of them. The pods burst into squishy fruit with a solid core, doing a great job of annoying the creature as well as coating it with presumably-tasty purple goo.
Its forefeet hit the ground with a teeth-rattling thud. It roared some more, but half-heartedly, like it was just trying to save face at this point.
My friend the Farsight had run out of seedpods, so I gave her some of mine. While our crewmates did their best threat displays, we pelted the dangerous beastie with fruit until it turned to lope in the other direction. I made sure to throw a few on the road near it, in case it felt like picking up a bite to eat on the way. It didn’t, but I did see a tongue lick out as it turned its back on us.
Belatedly, Kavlae and Eggskin skidded out of our ship with stun guns at the same time as a couple people from the other — was that a rocket launcher or a flare gun? — none of which turned out to be necessary.
“Take that and eat it!” crowed the Farsight.
“Yeah!” I agreed. “It’s probably delicious!”
“It probably is, actually,” she said as the congratulations started to pour in.
I picked up a seedpod I’d dropped and sniffed it. “Smells a bit like kumquat.”
Captain Sunlight, busy trying to coax the client out of his vehicle, yelled across the landing pad, “Don’t eat that until Eggskin runs it through the medscanner!”
“Aw, really?” I complained, perfectly in synch with my new friend.
“Yes really!” She shook her lizardy head. I couldn’t make out her muttering from here, but I could guess it was about omnivorous habits, self-preservation instincts, absurd treeclimbing species, or all of the above.
The Farsight said, “If these are safe, I’m taking some back with me.”
“Even if they’re not, the seeds would make good souvenirs,” I pointed out, pulling at the pod where it had separated. “Look how perfectly round they are.”
“Oh yeah, those are nice.”
Trrili stalked past with a haughty tilt to her antennae. “You two get along far too well.”
“Like two seeds in a pod!” the Farsight quipped.
That made me smile. “Hey, my people say that too!”
We had plenty to talk about while everybody else handled the actual delivery we were there for. Eventually Eggskin did check the thing with a medscanner. It tasted like sour kumquat. The seeds cleaned up nicely.
And most importantly, my new friend had family with a whole enclave at the next space station my ship was planning to visit. And they had a climbing structure three stories high. I couldn’t wait.
The rest of the crew thought that sounded pointless and dangerous, of course, but none of them had ancestors who danced through the tree branches, so clearly they have no taste.
~~~
The ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. More to come! And I am currently drafting a sequel!
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ineed-to-sleep · 1 month
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Blacked out in front of my tablet and woke up with sketches of my Touchstarved mc + Kuras my beloved. woops
#I found out dr. kuras is 6'6 I said hold on lemme get a stool so I can climb this man#touchstarved#touchstarved game#touchstarved kuras#kuras#sleepyscribble#oc.emma#my mc is meant to be a self insert but also like. I wanted to come up w a design and character arc and everything jkvkvk#so I ended up basing her on my personality/looks but taking her into a direction that would fit the game#she's like. me but 'characterized' and a bit exaggerated for the sake of being a character yk#the way she turned out is that she's basically a friendly happy go lucky mage who laughs at her own misery but hides#a deep layer of self loathing underneath all that bc of her curse#having been cursed all her life she believes she's a monster and the sunny personality is a way for her to 'make up for it'#but at the same time she feels like a farse. like she's only luring ppl in to an inevitable demise#and she thinks she's selfish bc despite knowing the danger she poses she still goes out there and puts herself among ppl#bc she craves human connection. even tho she feels guilty for 'indulging' in it#anyway I love the cursed mc concept in this game <3 it's been really interesting to think abt how that would affect someone#also I kept her physical features looking pretty much like mine#bc I wanted to draw myself in a cute way. teehee#but the clothing I was basically thinking like. early game simple clothing that she didn't rlly pick for herself#and maybe later I can have an updated design w something she would actually pick for herself
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webonchin · 7 months
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OoOooooo I've been feeling weird(⁠・ั⁠ω⁠・ั⁠) (bad kinda way) so excuse me
Dreamling daddies as a treat for myself from my nightmare child au, bunch of doodles I had there lying around about their little (literal) nightmare,they grow so fast *wipes tear away*
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wtfforged · 1 month
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ive been seeing a lot of mermaid zoros lately and i like him and i think that silly octopus that he let cling to him in the jaya arc should be his little-mermaid-flounder-sidekick friend
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idk-bruh-20 · 1 year
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Irondad fic ideas #125
AU where Thanos never happened and the Rogues eventually return. They've been pardoned and they're supposed to get the team back together, but there's still tension. A lot has changed.
Tony has told them repeatedly to never call in Spider-Man for backup. Steve doesn't understand or approve. He assumes Tony is just holding a grudge, trying to keep this new, obviously powerful recruit on his own side. 
One day, Tony is caught up in SI business somewhere when a mission comes up, and they need extra hands. Steve decides to call in Spider-Man.
At first the mission goes smoothly, but then of course things take a turn. All hell breaks loose.
Tony taps into comms not long after to tell them he's on his way. He's left his meeting and is flying as fast as he can, though he's still a long way out. Somehow, Tony figures out that Peter is there. (Maybe he overhears Peter quipping, maybe Steve casually references Spider-Man.)
One way or another, he figures it out. He goes deadly quiet, then switches to a private comm with just Steve.
Tony is betrayed, aggravated, terrified and trying to bury it (and not doing a very good job), and honestly kind of bitter and insulted that Steve can't hear his obvious fear. Steve is annoyed at Tony's childish stubbornness, assumes the man is just mad at things not going his way. Still in the midst of battle, he dismisses Tony's concerns.
Then, Spider-Man gets hurt. Bad. Tony had already been frantically trying to get there faster when he heard the kid was there, but he still doesn't arrive in time.
At some point -- maybe there on the battlefield, maybe later in med bay when Steve arrives to chew Tony out for leaving with Spider-Man instead of staying to help -- at some point it becomes abundantly clear that Peter is Tony's son.
(Bio, adopted, emotional, doesn't matter)
It becomes clear that Tony wasn't making Spider-Man off-limits for selfish reasons. Steve, blinded by his own view of Tony, was unbelievably wrong. 
It turns out, he had just been trying to keep his son safe.
Bonus:
If the reveal does happen later in med bay, there could even be a moment after the battle where Steve, fuming about Tony's lack of help and general inability to be a team player, is intercepted by Rhodey.
Maybe Rhodey arrived just after Tony (flying from the same meeting, but Tony freaked out and raced ahead) and then stuck around to help finish the fight. His reaction to Steve's unempathetic and baseless reading of his best friend is stone cold.
Bonus 2:
Steve fails to notice or understand Rhodey's meaning. Then he gets to med bay and is faced with the image of Tony holding a sleeping Peter on the hospital bed, glaring right across the room at him.
Both of them completely aware of what Steve had assumed, all these years, about the kind of person Tony was
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swan2swan · 1 year
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Ariel: the Strongest Disney Princess
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elanormcinerney · 7 months
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Introduction by Emily Wilson | Homer | The Iliad
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esleep · 3 months
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the whole "cats choose their owners" thing is really funny to me because ivy very much did NOT choose me. she was a slightly dim-witted and very rambunctious feral kitten, and that combination led to her getting herself stuck inside an old chipmunk nest halfway down the steep bank of the creek by my parents' house. from there she proceeded to scream her head off until both my mom and i came out to see what on earth was making all that racket, then we excavated her out of that hole like a sad little potato. she was grateful for the rescue, but definitely NOT grateful for the ensuing flea baths and conversion to indoor cat life at my apartment, which she reminds me of regularly. ivy i'm sorry for saving you from an early death due to predation/disease/cars, but can you stop biting me every day of my life please
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how did your version of peppino get his super strength?
Id love to just say it follows the law of cartoons (hes only strong bc its funny as hell and thats literally what the game does) but in my case, he probably just did alot of handyman work. Being unable to afford contractors for things or car/home repairs means that hed be the person doing those projects. Its from a long time of heavy lifting, and conveniently being built like a brickhouse. Hes a wall of muscle w some fat; simultaneously an immoveable object AND unstoppable force
I also like that he has some silly, fancy wrestling moves too; kinda makes it easy to decide that he used to wrestle in his youth and that some of the shit he learned stuck with him in his later years.
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borom1r · 3 months
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hrm.
i wanna talk abt boromir but unfortunately I am almost 2 drinks deep and I drank that 2nd one wayyyy too fast lmfao and my thoughts at th moment boiling down 2 I need to bite that man hard enough 2 bleed. marking my fucking territory
im just gonna sit here n wait 4 my fucjking tater tots
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marsbotz · 1 year
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ninjago fandom when ppl stop mischaracterising wu as a one note shitty old guy and realise hes a complex character with just as much of his own trauma as everyone else in the show
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#someday i need to make a proper post abt this bc. it makes me a bit crazy LOL#wu is like first and foremost charatwrised by his desire to be like. The Good Child#its been shown wus Default personality is like this cheeky reckless optimist#from like. eps like never trust a human and also. baby wu. in s8-9#hes rude but hes trusting. very naive in conparison to garmadon whos more reserved and responsible at this point#its only once garmadon gets bitten that he starts to change#once again im begging u guys to read the spinjitzu brothers books. LOL#but over them u can rllyyyy see wu losing this kinda .. naive aspect to him and losing hope in his brother as well#u see him start to doubt himself more and more that garm can be ‘fixed’#which. well. wu follows after the fsm in this aspect#wu very obviously aspires to be like his father (wearing his hat and clothes and using his staff etc)#when the fsm sends them to find a cure for garm.. wu goes with it. despite garms protests that hes not broken#wu has a Lot of responsibilty on him from very younv as the son of the fsm#and even more so once garmadon becomes like. a lost cause and source of evil or whatever the fuck#the fsm is not kind. in the books someone mentions being thrown out of his home after being accused of stealing#and the brothers agree that sounds like him Alright#canonically the reason wu woukdnt climb over the wall was bc he was afraid of his father catching him.#and wu feels like. immense guilt for garmadon being bitten int he first place.#it seems wus coping mechanism for anything hes ashamed of is… to just hide it. or simply Not Tell You#hence things like morro. he never spoke of morro bc of the guilt of failing to care for him properly.. and Partly bc he failed as a teacher#circling abck to wu imitating the fsm.#wu makes mistakes constantly bc thats who he is! deep down hes reckless and naive but hides it behind this like … aloof wisdom#also i think the parallels u can draw in s9 from him growing up w the expecations to save the ninja..#w the expectations HE put on the ninja himself… and also similarities w his (first) childhood#very interesting.#i rlly love the line in crystalised when antonia point sout hes recruited children to fight before#bc u can see him Realise. and i dont think its that he just puts this pressure on the ninja bc he doenst care. he just doesnt See#how hes continuing this awful cycle that started w the fsm INT HE FUCKING DRAGON ONI WAR!!!!!!!!!#anyway i cld talk abt this forver but i ran out of tags WEEEEE!!!#farts
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asterouslyaesthetic · 4 months
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I need, in my life, Post-Indigo Disk, Drayton being the only one who realizes this chick who fell out of the sky because of Celebi—who has brown and green hair in a weird pattern that suspiciously resembles two people he knows—is Kiki and Juli's future daughter
Drayton: Hey, don't you think her hair looks kind of...interesting?
Kieran: It's the same shade of brown as Juliana's <3
Drayton, standing in front of him: Okay, but what else?
Kieran: ...
Kieran, who was watching Juliana tell the girl about Miraidon: Well, I'd be able to tell you if you weren't blocking my way!
Carmine does catch on, but a part of her thinks it's funny to pretend that she doesn't get the very logical conclusion he's pointing out because it's so rare for her to be the one with the upper hand??
It gets better when the girl catches on to what Aunt Carmine's doing, and she's like, "sorry, Uncle Drayton, this is for all the times you played a prank on me. Aunt Carmine's my favorite now <3"
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thirteenemeraldcats · 3 months
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I can't remember which team they're playing in the ep with the yellow and blue kit, but football teams have a 3rd kit to wear if they are playing away and their away kit is too similar to the other team's kit so thats probably why we only saw that one once
Hello Nonnie!
Thank you so much for dropping this insight off in my inbox! The wildly talented and endlessly knowledgeable @abubblingcandle was just explaining this to me as well!
In my domestic football code, teams have a home kit, an away kit (which is usually just switching out the colour of their shorts lol), and only one clash kit- any further variations to the uniforms are either charity based or occasion specific, so the existence of that blue and yellow bonus clash kit from 3x07 was just very perplexing to me 🤣
Thankfully there are wonderful people like you and candle floating about on the internet to explain the fantastic chaos that is 'the world's game' to football-naive people like me!
💚💚💚
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neverendingford · 2 months
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