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A 4762-post collection

Challenge #00522 - A147: Sympathy for the Monster

Rule of Fiction 13: Any monster, fictional or real, will have a romance written about it, often one where it turns out to be “not that bad”. A lot will be absurdly well-written and thought out, and a lot will be barely-readable trash.

Pre-Amity humans and Galactic Alliance again, I’d rather see well written (because your stuff is always well written) but there’s always the Twilight in Space option if you feel like it

[AN: The problem with any Twilight parody is that it gets mistaken for great literature. See: 50 Shades of Grey]

They froze, staring at each other across the open space of the plains between them. He was a brute of a human. All muscles and hair. She was not. All she had in her favour was her height which, thanks to her injuries, she could not use.

He could charge at any moment.

She remembered from her lessons that humans would not attack something that appeared to be docile, so she quickly adopted a submissive pose. Perhaps there was strength in weakness.

There was already strength in eye contact. The beasts’ eyes never left her glowing amber–

*

“Glowing amber? Two pages ago, her eyes were livid blue?”

“They change colour,” grumped Z'chedda. “That’s gonna come out in the next chapter.”

“Mmmm…” Chorish mumbled doubtfully. “You also said this was a rewrite of the movie. I’m not seeing a lot of similarities.”

“I’m making it better.”

“By putting a female lead in who looks exactly like you? Except with the kaleidoscope eyes.”

“Shut up. I think I’m doing okay.”

“I think it’s a little… out there.”

“Really. Why did I even bother showing this to you?”

“Because you wouldn’t shut up about it for three weeks? Because you keep telling me all about this story? Because everything that was wrong with The Beast From Outer Space has been the only thing you ever want to talk about? Because despite that, you’ve seen it like thirty times?”

Z'chedda made a rude noise to her friend. “If you keep being that critical, you won’t get any nest-mates.”

Chorish rolled her eyes. “Whatever. It’s good enough writing, but… kaleidoscope eyes? Really? You had to go there?”

“It happens sometime, okay?”

“Shyeah. With a bigger budget than Beast had… What are you calling this thing, anyway?”

“Beauty and the Beast.”

“O my Gods… That is the worst title ever.”

“What?”

“Nobody in their right mind would want a story with that title.”

“Tell that to my two hundred readers.”

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Challenge #00521 - A146: Necrotheque

“they’re British skeletons of course they’re dancing sarcastically. ”

The place was alive. But only technically.

Crowds of “people” flooded the dance floor and the air was full of the unique miasma of a dance club. Music, people shouting to be heard over the music, stale alcohol and even staler cigarette smoke.

This was Club 86. Where the undead went to live it up.

Maia was busy trying not to freak out. She was the only person&

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Challenge #00520 - A145: Given Enough Rope

Observe - a Mad Scientist that’s cracked a little more than usual, and has completely stuffed up their cost-benefits analysis:
“This weapon accelerates the round - any variety of tree nut - up to point-eight-cee in the direction of the target. Observe! An average walnut. Walnuts average between five and ten grams, while this particular specimen is right around the middle at seven and a quarter. If I place this nut here - you’ll see the machine analyses the

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Challenge #00520 - A145: Two Types

http://devisamarama.tumblr.com/post/81454106149/nightvaleradiostation-pewdiepiesfanblog

A character that uses every opportunity to throw her prosthetic arm at people, hand it to them etc.

The Membletak used to be a race of conquerors. As far as manifest destinies were concerned, they were mostly benevolent. They did not, for instance, use germ warfare or treat their conquered planets as dump sites or their conquered people as second-class citizens.

They did rely on heavy taxes, but you can’t have everything.

That is,

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Challenge #00519 - A144: Unreasoning Profits

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

-George Bernard Shaw

If he doesn’t blow himself up in the process.

-Anonymous — c/- RecklessPrudence

Ax’and’l often struggled to find something nice to say about the human race. His usual compromise, that they were profitable mammals, did not always make it seem like enough of a boon.

Especially when Hwell had managed

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Challenge #00518 - A143: Salvation From the Lessers

(since you’re a DS9 fan like I am) It was ironic that after the war, the Cardassian/Bajoran hybrids that Cardassia had neglected and cast out were instrumental in its rebuilding, and its rebirth.

Cardassia was in ruins.

It had never been in ruins. Not in all of its glorious history. Certainly, there had been wars in the pre-spaceflight days, but only individual areas ever became ruined.

An entire planet - and entire planetary empire in ruins… Just sucked the very

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Challenge #00517 - A142: Conclusion-Jumping

One of the many early miscommunications when the humans first started to contact the galactic alliance: Alien expresses interest that human is still alive having broken one or more bones, slightly dense human gets the wrong end of the stick entirely and now half the camp thinks people with injuries like that are killed, because why else would something like a trifling broken arm mean you die?

Susan was learning what many in the new proto-city of Wiwazheer were calling Chickenese. Grey

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Challenge #00516 - A141: Dem Dry Bones

Zoology revision prompt! This is an excerpt about what you can tell from just a skull.

“A defining trait of mammals is specialised teeth. Mammals are the only class on Earth to evolve specialised teeth, with specific shapes for vegetation, meat, insects and combination diets. Reptile teeth are all very similar, single-point and peglike, often not as firmly rooted. They vary in size, for instance snake fangs, but in general are all very similar.”

There were skeletons all over this

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Challenge #00515 - A140: Problematic Material

Video Prompt!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WgXN0kO1JEA

The music, such as it was, was a collection of intersecting beats. The man in the white suit danced in interesting ways.

He wore a white suit with black tie and gloves.

And the interesting thing about the otherwise ordinary room was the grass floor.

Shayde sat pondering the video as it played out. And Rael stood pondering Shayde.

“So what is it?” Rael said.

“It&

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Challenge #00514 - A139: One Dank Morning in the Dire Halls of MegaGlobocorp, West Esterly

“Should you choose to accept it, your mission - which you are required to accept or you’re fired - is…”

Working as a faceless minion in MegaGlobocorp was never fun. It was a dangerous lottery before one even made it to the labyrinthine spread of the offices. As unskilled labor, Dar had the marvellous advantage of having twenty bosses to tell her when she messed up. And a random number generator assigned her at random, to one of the

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Challenge #00513 - A138: Poor Unfortunate Souls

In your universe, how do the - as far as I can tell - legal AIs feel about Uplifts being illegal? Considering you could make an argument that they are equally people, and might even have some of the same theory applied to them, in creating/augmenting a consciousness, just applied to silicon or grey jelly.

Especially considering that at least some of the arguments I can imagine being levied against Uplifts could equally be levied against AIs. – RecklessPrudence

Creating life

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Challenge 00512 - A137: Gengineer of Note

Uplifting, as opposed to Augmenting, is illegal in your universe, right? Presumably for how easily both the process and the products of said process can be abused, along with the sad examples of such.

But I refuse to believe that such a transformative technology with so many pitfalls along the way was developed solely for money. Sure, there had to be at least the potential for profit, otherwise the people capable of doing it would never have had the resources to do

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Challenge #00511 - A136: Biochemical Imbalance

That wonderful feeling when you’re on just insufficient meds, or high on fatigue toxins, or had two hour’s sleep per night, max for the last week. After you’ve gone through the feeling-horrible portion, when you’re in the feeling great, can do anything, everything is so clear and sharp and makes so much sense

And then, when you’ve had sufficient sleep, rest, or meds…

How the world actually is, and how you’ve been behaving. – RecklessPrudence

Charlie

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Challenge #00510 - A135: The Wolf's Just a Puppy

Also about domesticated animals.

Almost every domesticated species, whether predator or prey, has been a social animal, with an internal hierarchy. Humans domesticated them by inserting ourselves at the top of the various hierarchies, and doing so consistently for generations, until the species is considered domesticated.
This can lead to absurd scenarios such as a human chastising a predator-species that was behaving inappropriately, one that masses more than they do, with a jaw that could shatter their bones easily, can outrun them

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Challenge #00509 - A134: Domesticated Predators

On “Humans are crazy” in general and pets in particular.

Humanity’s domesticated species are, for the most part, herbivores, right? So what possessed us to decide that the animals we let into our homes would largely be carnivores? Now, imagine a species where that is not true.

“AH! Look out! That predator is near your young!”

“Oh, that’s just Missy, she’s harmless.”

„,And then just when they’ve adjusted to that, they see why even

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