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bonny-kookoo · 11 months ago

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Jungkook

Re:Birth | Re:Start [Part 1]

He's just a vulture, searching for scraps to survive, when he finds more than he could've ever thought of finding. This could turn his whole life around- but oh no...

Tags/Warnings: Post apocalypse AU, Alien AU, Alien!Jungkook, Human!Reader, Angst, Fluff, Adult Themes, mild Violence and Blood, mentions of death, sci-fi, romance

Wordcount: 5.7k Words

There is no taglist for this fic.

-> Masterlist

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“Everything that’s in it is yours.”

That was what he was told when he bought the pile of scrap, all of it junk from ages ago still valuable to someone like him. He trades this stuff after all- a member of the ‘Vultures’, a group of people who take on trash to pick out the most vaulable parts of it all. This time, Jungkook got his hands on something special- an old abandoned rescue ship back from when earth first fell to nuclear weapons. That was hundreds of years ago by now, planet completely abandoned and only inhabited by intergalactic clean-up troops trying their best to save whats left of it all.

Opening the once automated sliding doors in the back is tough, but Jungkook makes do with some of the equipment and knowledge from years of experience, eventually finding his way inside. It’s small for someone like him, but probably spacious enough for a good amount of humans, which this was made for after all. The lights don’t work, and he doesn’t really expect them to- but what does surprise him is the still glowing red emergency lights further in the distance, down a small hallway kind of way.

The moment he reaches a door that’s sealed heavily, he’s a bit stunned. It’s known that humans have made a certain type of energy preserving system to keep ships like these going for hundreds of years, but many if not most of them all either crashed, or opened early on other planets during their great escape from earth centuries ago. And with the rather short lifespan of humans, there’s as of now no record of a surviving full blood human on any of the planets of this solar system.

Aex 3 is Jungkook’s home planet- he never had to adjust to anything here. He was born here, and most likely, he’ll spend his dying years here too, whenever that happens.

As he tries to find a way into the large bunker-like room, he has to think of what he might find. Most likely corpses he will have to report to the government so they can be disposed of in a proper manner considering that research on humans is still going on, and its also not like he hasn’t seen a dead body before. He’s well aquainted with rotting flesh and decay, after all, that’s what he’s living off of in a way. But he can’t say that he likes it- not at all. He’d love to avoid the sight and smell, if possible.

When the doorlock hisses at the strength he uses to pry it open with a metal tool he keeps around for cases like this, he know he’s close to finally opening it. But what he’s met with once he’s finally in, squeezing through a rather tight opening since the door has rusted so badly to the floor that it just can’t open any further, leaves him stunned yet again.

It’s cold in here, and most of all dark, if not for a few pity lights still glowing, although some are flickering on their last breaths. He instantly puts on a facemask just in case there's anything dangerous in the air- just as a safety measure. Many of the to him familiar cryo-chambers are fogged, empty, leaking or partially opened- and the smell is familiar too, flesh of the poor souls who never made it out alive still faintly in the air. The humans once inside the pods died long ago, long enough to only leave mostly bone and clothing behind, but what Jungkook’s glowing eyes keep their attention to, is a single cryo-pod, small digital panel still active, though it’s covered in dust.

He’s walking closer, because if that think is still working, he might have a chance at recovering those energy cells humans used back in the day still intact. That would fetch him a fortune, for sure- there's rich collectors of these things on his planet, and on others close by.

Though, his hand stutters the moment he removes dust- because the information on the panel cannot possibly be correct.

It displays a name first, and then a year and a date. He assumes this must be your date of birth- which is so long ago he’s sure his own lineage wasn’t even created yet. He’s born a species of alien-human connection, after all; a species created from very early attempts at specially modifying human DNA to make them more capable of intergalactic travel. It was considered failed at first, but after generations, Jungkook’s species has become stronger, healthier, taller and most of all- exactly what they aimed for.

There is no planet he couldn’t survive on. His body is capable of adapting to the most unfriendly environments.

It simply took time- and humans are said to have been terribly impatient.

He slides his finger over the panel, sucessfully swiping to another set of information, most of it telling him that the system is still active, still running. But there’s also other info that causes his warm-blooded body to cool down signitatively.

‘Starting SYSTEM_STOP:HIBERNATION-EXIT'

“Wait, no no no no-” He panics, tapping away at the screen until he manages to somehow not have the whole thing unfreeze on him, leaving him breathless for a good moment or two. With an unsure hand, he wipes at the glass front, to uncover a soft, red light inside, and most of all-

A body. And it’s most certainly not dead-

It’s a full-blood human.

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It’s been two days.

Two days since he found you in there, still kept in your little pod, still completely unaware of what’s going on around you.

Do you dream? According to a friend of his who researches humans, you could be, but apparently the chances of that are very low due to your brain being kept at a stage of being not active. Jungkook faces a very bad situation here, because technically, he should absolutely report this to his local research office- but he’s also sitting on an amount of money that could change his life forever.

No more scrap metal. No more sleeping in his small apartment that’s falling apart. No more fighting on the streets over pitiful amounts of change.

He sighs as he sits down close to your pod, opening a bag of snacks for himself as he looks over at the clear top. Your eyes are closed, and you seem to be in a very good shape. If he was to calculate correctly, you were about his age when you left earth and got put into this thing- and yet, you look to be very small compared to modern day human-descendants and most species of humanoid beings. He himself is a little above average, sure- but that’s besides the point.

If you woke up now, you’d probably be traumatized.

Namjoon, his friend who studies humans, had told him once that humans can die from emotional trauma alone. Their own immune system can just one day riot against its own host and kill it from the insides. And DNA can mutate from nothing all of a sudden and create tumors that burden the body so much it cannot continue normal function.

Humans are so frail. Should he just.. Do you a favor?

Your family, your friends, everything you knew is gone after all. You’re alone, a sole survivor, and once the institute gets a whiff of your existence, you’ll probably be kept like a laboratory animal in a sterile environment for testing and research. It’s fucked up- but Jungkook isn’t a murderer.

The next day, when he’s back again, he watches you once more- taking you in for a moment, mesmerized by the simple fact that you are existing. The odds of this are so incredibly small that it fascinates him to no ends. He’s asked Namjoon about some stuff last night over drinks, and apparently, most humans who exited the hibernation protocol all lack any memories. They have basic knowledge of functions, they can speak and they know how to balance and have basic reflexes- but they all have to re-learn more complicated tasks like tying shoes, or even how to calculate and tell time. So maybe, if you were to wake up, the trauma wouldn’t be so bad?

Jungkook is conflicted. The price you’d fetch for him would be astronomical. He’d be set for life, and some. It’s just a call. Or even just a text to namjoon.

He’s killed a guy before. Shot him right in the chest for having attempted to sell his own kid on the streets, and Jungkook felt not a single drop of remorse. And yet, he can’t do this. He can’t just be the same as everyone else.

You don’t deserve this.

But do you deserve to live like this too?

You’ll never have a normal life, not at all. You’ll either have to be on the run forever, or set yourself into the laboratories- both options aren’t ideal. Jungkook scratches his head for a moment, before he sighs, and slides one of his hands over his face in agony. This issue isn’t letting him sleep for a second. What’s he supposed to do?

Can he trust namjoon enough to file him in on this?

Sudden light makes him snap his face towards where you’re still in hibernation however as the panel seems to malfunction for a good second or two, causing him distress. The light inside your pod are now off as well, putting you in complete darkness- and he doesn’t know what posesses him as he taps and swipes once more, frantically trying to find a single setting to activate. And then-

‘Starting SYSTEM_STOP:HIBERNATION-EXIT'

This time, he lets it happen, steps a bit aside just in case, even though he doesn’t know what might happen now. Maybe you’re dying in there, or maybe this is simply the course of nature in a way? He doesn’t know, as the pod hisses and clicks, something sounding as if it snaps apart or breaks, worrying him. After a good little while of this, there’s silence, lock on the clear top clicking, but never opening.

Should he take a look? It won’t hurt, right?

The small panel is now dark, and as the inside of the pod foggs up, Jungkook realizes that it might just be stuck- hands of his forcing the acrylic glass upwards until it finally opens with a painful cracking sound of the hinges protesting against his aggression.

It’s silent, again.

He can’t hear anything out of the ordinary, if anything he hears even less noise than usual with the ventilation of the system and the flickering lights finally having given up by now. As he looks inside, he notices just how.. Clean everything is still where you’re laying, looking like you are simply asleep. But what concerns him is the fact that, while one touch offers him the knowledge of your body temperature rising and heart beating again, you’re yet to gain consciousness.

Jungkook knows next to nothing about human health. Why would he?

So, minutes later, he’s guarding the tight squeeze at the entrance to the room you’re in, Namjoon looking at him with suspicion and crossed arms. “You have to swear first.” Jungkook almost growls threateningly, holding out his hand.

“I swear I’ll report nothing.” His friend replies, before he hooks his ring finger around Jungkook’s, and pulls till there is a quiet crack- a way of proving that he means his ‘promise’.

“Okay.” Jungkook sighs deeply, panic still present in his bones as he lets his friend into the chamber.

“Wow. This is all incredibly preserved..” Namjoon says, already distracted by the remains of a human with mummified flesh still present, when Jungkook makes an almost growling sound to get his friend’s attention. “Right. What do you have there?” He asks, walking closer- before his eyes widen, and his steps become longer, quicker, like he can’t get closer fast enough. “That is..! Is she alive?!” He gasps, frantically looking around before he steps around the pod for a better angle to look at you.

“Yes? No?” Jungkook struggles. “I don’t know. The whole thing.. Made weird noises and I think the system gave up, so I made it exit the hibernation stuff-” Jungkook explains, while Namjoon puts his glasses on.

“She was still in hibernation when you found her?” He asks, and Jungkook nods. “That is.. So she just exited.. I- Jungkook, I would’ve brought more equipment if I had known-” He mumbles to himself as he seems to gently turn you a little in the cushioned bed you’re in, specifically designed to move and tilt to not cause any pressure on the body over time. “She’s a bit cold I believe.. And considering that no one has ever survived in these pods for so long, there might be damage to either internal organs or her brain..” He says, before he steps back. “Either way, she can’t stay here.”

“Oh wow I would’ve never guessed.” Jungkook sarcastically responds, rolling his eyes before he looks around. “How do we get her out of here without anyone noticing?” He asks, as he picks up a blanket. “Can we just.. Wrap her up and I don’t know.. Maybe say she’s a friend from Vinos? They’re pretty short people too..” He tries to come up, and Namjoon seems unconfident.

“I’m not sure what the dust might do to her skin, since she has been kept in isolation for so long, and she might not react well to the environment here..” He thinks, when Jungkook looks at him urgently. “..but you’re right. Yes, lets.. But be careful.”

“I’m always careful-” Jungkook complains almost childishly, though he hesitates a bit at approaching you with the blanket, a little worried now.

“Let me do it-” Namjoon tries, but Jungkook shakes his head, and carefully moves you into a sitting position, where your body leans heavily against his own, a form of physical contact he’s not quite used to, especially from the opposite sex. “Care-”

“I am careful.” He huffs, as he makes sure to wrap the blanket around you as best as he can, before he scoops you up to carry you. “Alright, lets get out of here then.”

Namjoon seems a bit hesitant at first, torn between staying and leaving-

But ultimately, he chooses the last option, and leaves behind Jungkook.

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“Alright I made sure it’s not connected to any of the servers anymore, so now I just have to-” Namjoon begins, as Jungkook jumps up to your defense at the sight of the needle. “-Jungkook, I have to take at least some blood to make some research as to her current state.” He reassures his friend, who only reluctantly sits down again. Somehow, with you being unable to really do anything, let alone consent, Jungkook feels incredibly protective.

He knows he wouldn’t like someone poking around on and inside him either while he was unconscious.

But Namjoon is right- there's no real other way to check up on you other than this- so he lets his friend continue, tests soon bringing in results as you’re hours later asleep on a mattress Jungkook usually sleeps on in his home. Namjoon had brought his equipment along with him, fearing that his own home that’s paid for by the research institute might be too dangerous for you to reside in.

While Namjoon is busy looking at the results in Jungkook’s little open kitchen a bit further away, Jungkook himself is busy thinking about what life will look like for you, if you survive. Somehow, you remind him of himself when he was born- tellings of his mother reminiscing about how he had been born underneath the open skies, with no place to call home, and no guarantee of survival. He ultimately did simply because she took him in as her own- but if it was any different, he wouldn’t exist today.

How will your life play out now?

In a way, he believes this might be the universe giving him a chance to pay back that second chance at life he’d been given so many years ago. Maybe now, he can be that person to pick you up and help you gain your footing in the world. He might not be the best person considering his job and own struggles- but he surely wants to try.

Because all other options just don’t sound right.

“It seems like she has an infection currently.. Her white blood cells are elevated.” Namjoon says as he walks closer with a digital tablet containing all the information from the tests he made. “Her kidneys don’t seem to work properly.”

“Does that mean she will die?” Jungkook worries, and Namjoon sighs.

“No, and if she does it won’t be from a mere kidney infection, at least not in the stage she’s in.” He explains. “Her temperature is a bit high and when she wakes up she will definitely feel uncomfortable, but nothing that can’t be treated with standard antibiotics.” He says.

“Antibiotics?” Jungkook cringes. “That’s.. Ancient medicine.” He says, and Namjoon nods.

“She’s technically ancient too, Jungkook.”

Right.

“So, when will she wake up?” Jungkook wonders, as Namjoon measures your heartrate with a small electronic device close by to keep him constantly updated.

“Probably in the next few hours. Her body is slowly adjusting to the change in her environment, that’ll take some time.” He says, and Jungkook is a bit reassured by the clear calm attitude his friend has while making sure to keep an eye on your vitals.

“Namjoon?” Jungkook asks, as his friend looks up at him. “I’m.. Glad you’re here.”

“Well, you should be.” Namjoon proudly smiles, happily accepting that praise when you suddenly squeeze close your eyes, the first sign of life you gave until now. Jungkook is instantly sitting up, standing somewhat over you as Namjoon pushes him back with a hand on his chest. “Give her space. We don’t know how she’ll react.” He says calmly, as Jungkook worriedly watches you slowly wake up.

It visibly takes you a while to open your eyes, but when you do, it’s like Jungkook is caught up in a moment of timelessness.

It’s tough to explain- the second your eyes meet, he’s caught off guard like an animal staring right at it’s biggest predator, unsure what is about to happen now. He’s not fearful of you, absolutely not- but he’s frozen in place, and it only takes a moment until he realizes what’s happening.

“Well, at least she won’t have issues finding someone to look after her.” Namjoon says, having noticed from the way Jungkook’s pupils dilated to the slight parting of his friend’s lips, that he’s clearly just imprinted on you. It’s common for his age and species after all- and it’s also not very surprising, considering that he has a good amount of human DNA in him that survived all those centuries.

“I- uh, wait, no..” Jungkook stumbles over his words, as he clears his throat, and shakes his head. “I can’t. I don’t have any funds to really feed another person, and neither can she live here-”

“We’ll take his step by step. For now, this is where she’ll stay.” Namjoon decides, before he walks closer to you. “Hm. Do you understand what I’m saying?” He asks you, and you look at him for a moment, visibly turning a little unsure and even fearful of the situation.

You.. Kind of understand them. But it’s like they’re speaking with an incredibly strong accent that makes it tough to really pull apart the words and their meaning if they speak fast.

“We are friends.” Namjoon explains, as Jungkook walks closer. “This- that’s Jungkook. I’m Namjoon. And you?” He wonders, as you think for a good while, causing the older alien to worry that you might not understand common language.

After all, from what he knows, humans used to have many very much different languages in which they used to communicate in, before the interplanetary counsil decided on a single language to be spoken and taught to everyone. So maybe you weren’t taught universal language?

But then you meekly utter your name, and Namjoon sighs in relief.

“Good. Very good, thank you.” He says, as Jungkook adjusts your blanket when he notices you shivering. “Can you sit up?” Namjoon wonders, and you do, slowly, with the help of Jungkook’s hand on your back- the researcher quickly moving to check you over a little more, just to be sure.

You just let it happen, instead looking around the rather dark and small apartment for a moment.

You have no idea where you came from- only having some faint memories of putting on a very standardized set of clothes and laying down in a very cold bed? You don’t quite remember what exactly it was, but you do know that you went to sleep in there- last sight that of someone with a facemask tapping on a digital panel, before you went to sleep. And then?

Darkness. There’s nothing else.

You don’t really feel frightened by those two people any longer as you take a proper look around and at them both, curiously watching the way Namjoon seems to lift your arms to test your reflexes and strength. Jungkook next to you keeps an eye on things, and for some reason, that makes you feel protected.

You lean into him a little while Namjoon seems to talk about something incredibly complicated, way too fast for you to really understand it- but Jungkook appears to understand, so you’re not worried about anything for the moment.

After all, you also don’t know that your life didn’t just begin again-

But that it just got a whole lot more complicated.

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“There. That should be more comfortable.” Jungkook offers, having finalized his task of putting another mattress down onto the floor next to where he usually sleeps.

You now have your own blankets, pillows and mattress- after just a few days, Jungkook has quite clearly decided to keep you around, and make your situation a permanent one. He’s learned a few things about humans and their health from Namjoon who had to go back to the institute in order to not have them get any suspicions.

Jungkook has, since then, begun to dig through the rest of the thing for valuables- wrecking the open pod as well just to make sure that the government officials won’t look too much into things once they pick up the other remains.

“Where do you.. Go?” You ask Jungkook, as he sits down on his own bed next to where you sit. He seems to have equally a bit of trouble understanding you properly, but he tries hard, and you appreciate that. “like, during the day. Where do you go?” You ask, and at that he seems to understand.

“I take apart things, and sell the most valuable parts.” he explains. “Uh.. Like..” He takes a box of screws and tools. “I take this, see?” He says, before he takes out the tools of the tiny metal box, putting them into their own spots. “And then I sell everything. This for ten, this for fifteen, and so on.” He attempts to explain, and you perk up at that, nodding.

“I see!” You say, making him smile almost shyly at seeing you happy. He carefully puts everything back into the box before putting it away, when he hears your stomach growling, causing him to look at you with wide eyes for a second before he realizes that you probably haven’t eaten anything today.

“Oh! I don’t.. Have anything here you can eat.” He mumbles a bit disappointed, before he looks around.

Should he do this? He probably shouldn’t, but he could always just pass you off as a someone born on Vinos. And to be fair, everyone would absolutely believe that considering that you do fit them mostly. Not quite, but mostly.

But oddities define the norm, as they say.

“To be fair, you do need clothes too.. You can’t keep wearing mine.” He says, before he gets up. “Come on, I’ll carry you since you don’t have shoes yet.” He offers, and you accept that, letting him carry you on his back with his hands steadying your legs at your thighs on his sides, while your arms are over his shoulders. It’s your first time outside, and Jungkook doesn’t really think about it for a good moment, until you seem to hide in the crook of his neck. “Oh- right, the sun must be really bright.. I forgot. Sorry.” He says, as he hurries to walk in the shadows of the buildings as to not have you burn into a crisp on his back.

He wonders what the weather was like on earth before it got poisoned. Was it nice? What was nature like? Or the cities?

What was your life like before all of this?

“Alright- in here you can walk, the floors are relatively clean. Let’s get you some shoes..” He mumbles, as he leads you around with a hand on your upper back right between your shoulders, as he looks for anything that might fit you.

You don't remember where you came from, and neither do you remember if you've always lived here. Everything looks foreign but also familiar to you, as if the world you're currently in has shifted just enough to be different, but not enough to become strange. You struggle to read most signs and labels, but you also realize that you don't have to be able to do so, as Jungkook walks around a corner with a pair of shoes for you to try on.

“They should technically fit? I don't really have a good eye for sizes..” he mumbles, as he watches you slip into the shoes that fit surprisingly well. There's a bit of room there for thicker socks if the weather gets colder, so you'll be able to wear these in any kind of weather.

Wait. Do the seasons even change here?

“You like them?” Jungkook asks, and you nod, because you genuinely do. When he walks to pay for them, you instantly put them on near the exit of the store while Jungkook pays for them at the counter, where a young lady with silver strands in her hair takes his money to count and then nod. When he walks towards you, you kind of feel like the canine creature outside the store tied to a lamppost by its owner just seconds ago, seeing your person again. There's a strange mix of relief and happiness when he takes your hand to walk through the town with you, the man looking around for what you think might be something to eat.

He finds it, after some walking. Though he hesitates to enter.

“Is it dangerous?” you ask, having to repeat your question as he leans down to hear you better over the sound of talking people, honking vehicles and construction work nearby. He shakes his head- though it doesn't convince you.

“its not dangerous, no. I just.. don't know if you can eat any of what they offer.” He explains, before he walks inside. “lets see.. you can surely eat something we get for children…” the tall man mumbles to himself, before he orders something. The hood of his sweater has been pulled over your head this entire time as if to hide you- and you can see some other people, shorter than you, wear clothes in a similar way. One of those people waves at you with an odd gesture that catches you off guard- but you try and repeat it the best you can, causing the small table to erupt into laughter of endearment.

Someone walks closer, stands next to jungkook. He instantly holds onto your hand.

“A fellow Vinoson. Didn't think you'd be that kind of guy, Jungkook.” The young man seems to joke, making Jungkook laugh as he squeezes your hand a little.

“ah, what can I say? I guess you were right when you said you can't resist their charm sometimes.” He says, and you’re not quite sure what he's hinting at. But you also trust him- so maybe this is simply for the best to play along, as you push yourself into Jungkook's side a little like you've seen another couple do earlier when you entered.

“ah, well she seems to be charmed by you just the same.” The man nods, before he nods to you. “Do you by chance have any cobalt-capsules in your stock?” he asks, and Jungkook agrees with a head-gesture.

“actually, I do. But i'll have to raise my usual prices a bit these days, since the quality is high for these, and you rarely get them in that state anymore.” Jungkook says while waiting for his order of food to arrive. “they're all between 70% and 85%. Got them checked at Yoongi's.” he proudly says, clearly confident in his tone.

“My, that sounds indeed like a rare gem you found there. How much for five?” the man asks, and Jungkook picks up his order of food in the silver lined paper bag, before he turns fully towards his apparent costumer.

“1.4 Kay. I gotta feed two mouths these days, hope you understand.” Jungkook appears to joke- though that glimmer in his eyes tells you that he's genuinely serious with the price, almost hopeful.

“you now what?” the man says, before he nods to you. "Alright.” The man agrees. “Though only for a chance to meet your child, once its there. I cannot imagine what a Vinoson and a Humanoid would create.” He jokes, making Jungkook cringe a little as he nods however.

“deal. Though, that might take a while.”

Back at home, now with the food in front of you, and the thick long sweater-poncho kind of situation off of your body, you take your first bites of food. “according to the notes left by Namjoon, local produce and oil should be fine for you to consume.” He offers as reassurance. “So this has no meat in it. I'll do some research later- or you can have a tiny bit of mine, and see how you do?” he asks, and you nod at that, causing him to laugh. “did you even understand me, or are you just agreeing to anything?” he jokes, but you shake your head.

“no, I understand.” You answer, almost a bit offended. “I just.. you talk fast sometimes. Then I struggle.” You explain to him, and he nods.

“i'll keep that in mind then.”

Later during the rest of the early day, he turns on the radio- while you still struggle to somewhat understand the fast speech especially with the occasional static cutting the announcer off, you listen to it.

“-have come to the conclusion that the remaining human bacteria in the cryo-pod found at Ainum-Square last week, have simply been remains that were well preserved due to the system's battery system still being intact. Researchers have also examined the other human remains at the site, and told ACS-Station that the passengers of that flight most likely died shortly after impact due to pressure changes and lack of oxygen.”

You listen to it still, when Jungkook walks up behind you, clearly curious, but also hesitant.

Do you remember those passengers? Or do you not?

“I'm human too, right?” you ask Jungkook, who nods. “And you're a.. humanoid?” you ask, making him nod, though he shrugs his shoulders.

“that's the broad term. In reality, there's different humanoid races. I was born here on Aex, so i'm technically an H3. The third Humanoid species to inhabit a planet.” He explains. “take it as.. every humanoid started from humans, right? And then they kind of.. began travelling. Some stayed on Cepheid, and became very resistent to the harsh climate and hot temperatures. They're H1. H2 are the ones that eventually populated Chronos 16, those are really sensitive to light, but they can endure freezing climates. Have a weirdly arrogant attitude though..” Jungkook mumbles. “and then, well, H3 are people like me, who were born here on Aex. We grow a bit taller, our bodies can adapt to changes in atmospheric pressure and we have more.. I guess, complex social behavior?” he wonders. “huh, but I'm rambling. You probably didn't understand half of it.” He sighs with a smile, though you shake your head.

“so.. where are the original humanoids then?” you ask.

“they're on earth, mostly. Helping in the cleanup efforts after the nuclear disaster of 2245.” He explains.

“and.. humans?”

Jungkook grows silent for a moment, before he turns a little to you, as if to invite you for something you're not sure of. “Most of them.. died during the disaster, or from the health effects of exposure. Many fled to neighboring planets, and eventually.. well, they got scared to be wiped out entirely, I guess? So they began to try and enhance their DNA to create stronger and more resistant generations. It.. took them too long though. They got impatient, and abandoned the project after not even a century.” He says.

“So, no humans are alive anymore?” you ask, making him laugh.

“they are. In my DNA, and many of the other Humanoids.” He offers kindly. “and, well, in you. A pure human, so to say.” He offers.

It takes you a moment to take all of it in, really think about it and process that information. What Jungkook is saying is that the project never failed- but simply took too long for any human to ever see the results it brought. You're the last of your kind, possibly.

“Why did you.. say I was from Vinos?” you ask, and he sighs.

“because.. a lot of human history got lost in the disaster. And a lot of it, no one can read.” He explains. “I’m.. worried. About what the research institute might do if they knew you existed.” He simply says.

“will you.. can I stay here?” you ask. “for now?”

And jungkook nods, with a kind smile.

“of course.” He says, putting a gentle hand onto your head.

“I’ll try my best to keep you safe.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━.~°👽°~.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

#bts imagine #bts fanfic #bts fic #jungkook imagine #jeon jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook imagine #bts jungkook imagine #bts jungkook fanfic #alien jungkook #alien!jungkook #re:Birth

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marlynnofmany · 1 year ago

Text

Confidential Human Questions

I was walking past the door to the cockpit quietly because I heard Captain Sunlight on a video call with a client, but then I heard, “Was that a human? Call them back; I have a question.”

This ought to be good, I thought as I spun on my heel.

Captain Sunlight was just calling my name as I reached the doorway. ��Ah yes, thank you. Would you mind answering a human-related question?” She stood in the middle of the room, yellow scales bright in the good lighting. She managed to look up to my height without making it seem awkward.

“Sure,” I said. “What’s the question?” I stayed in the doorway. The room was a little crowded, with Wio in one pilot’s chair, tentacles manipulating many controls at once, and Kavlae doing something to fix her own chair with a hand tool. Judging by the way her head frills were flaring with frustration, she wasn’t done yet.

The client on the big screen curled his own tentacles. “I’m concerned about my ship’s human,” he said, turning his pointy squid head to make sure he wasn’t overheard. He lowered his voice and spoke closely to the screen. “We only have the one, you see, and I don’t want to ask any awkward questions directly.”

“I understand,” I said with a nod. Captain Sunlight ushered me into the room, then stepped out to talk to Zhee about something. I heard the distinctive click of his bug feet.

The client was still talking, with agitated twists of his pebbly gray tentacles. “We don’t have a medic onboard, just an automated medical suite. The human will be going home soon — limited time work contract, you know — but I’m honestly worried about infection spreading there, since I think this human caught it by meeting up with another. I gather that this other is on good terms with ours, and may be going to the same place either way, but I don’t want to contribute any contagion from my ship.”

“What kind of symptoms are we talking about?” I asked, mentally going over the short list of diseases that I knew of which could jump between species. This might be worth consulting our own medic. “No one else onboard is affected?”

“No, just the human,” he said, making vague loops with his tentacles. “There’s a malignant-looking growth, along with fatigue and gastrointestinal distress. The human has been acting a little… unpredictable.” He looked behind himself again. “I very much don’t want to cause an incident by prying, especially if this is something she knows to be terminal.”

I opened my mouth then closed it, choosing my questions with care. “Is the growth about here?” I pantomimed a roundness at my own stomach. “How long since she met with the other human?”

“Yes, exactly there! It’s been approximately half a standard orbit. What is it? Do you know?”

He was so sincere and worried that I had to smile. “Good news! In my opinion as a professional human, that’s not a disease at all. Your human is going to be a parent.”

Instead of relaxing, he looked confused. “Humans gestate eggs for that long? Shouldn’t she have laid them by now? She looks awfully uncomfortable. Oh no, are they stuck?” Now he was getting alarmed. “I had a relative who got eggbound once, and it was dire!”

I raised my hands in a calming gesture that I hoped he understood. “No, no eggs. Humans give live birth.”

“Live what?”

“Just — we lay the babies, already hatched.” I looked to my various crewmates for support, and found four different sets of eyes watching in curiosity. “All of you lay eggs, don’t you?”

Several nods answered me, along with, “Well not personally,” from Zhee. “But yes.”

I sighed and turned back to the screen. “It’s extremely normal on my planet. Just think of it as carrying the nest around internally. There are pros and cons to the whole thing, but yeah. At any rate, it sounds like she’s planning to join up with her mate at home, and raise their offspring together.”

The client looked fascinated. “Is there anything I should do? Or not do? I can make sure my crew is informed.”

“I understand it’s an uncomfortable process. Just be gentle, and encourage rest,” I said. “Oh, and have other crewmembers handle anything that involves bending over or moving heavy things.”

By the swift tentacle motions offscreen, he was typing notes.

Another thought occurred to me. “I don’t know how long until you reach her home, but if things take too long, you’d better hope your medical suite is up to overseeing a childbirth. They’re very painful, sometimes dangerous. And messy.”

He stopped typing, eyes wide. “I need to check with someone about changing our schedule. Thank you, goodbye!” The screen went blank.

I looked to the captain. “Were you done talking with him, I hope?”

She nodded. “Yes, business is concluded. Which is good, since I don’t fancy having to track him down because he forgot to pay us.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I said with a glance back at the screen. “I didn’t even get to tell him how loud human newborns are, or how often they cry. I doubt there’s a crib onboard.”

Zhee made a disparaging hiss and wandered off in a cloud of opinions about species without the good sense to hatch at a properly capable stage of development.

Wio snorted. “Judging by the speed they just took off at, I don’t think they’re going to need one.” She pointed a blue-ringed tentacle at a display that showed the other ship departing in an all-fired hurry.

I shook my head. “Best of luck to all involved!”

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

#my writing #The Token Human #humans are weird #haso #hfy #eiad #humans are space orcs #writeblr #writblr

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autumnrainwrites · 6 months ago

Text

The Witch and the Lighthouse

It was a terrible night. Wind howled down upon the coast, pregnant with rain and spitting tongues of forked lightning. Across the city by the sea, people and witches and their dolls huddled together in darkness, left without electricity by the hand of the gods.

High up on a headland overlooking the bay, the lighthouse witch sat in her dining room, reading old pulps on her tablet and listening to the hum of the backup generator below. On the table before her, the last mouthful of tea cooled in her cup beside a crumb-filled dish.

Across the table, by the door, her doll stood waiting, a demure smile on its lips and a yellow rain hat on its head. It was a night like many others the two had faced. Most likely, the tower's automated systems would be enough, but there was always a risk of-

beeeeeeeeeeep!

The witch stood at the first sound of the alarm rang out, setting down her tablet and pulling her raincoat about her shoulders. Wordlessly, the doll handed her the wide-brimmed hat in its hand, and followed her up the narrow stair.

At the top of the tower, they found darkness, and the blaring alarm.

"Lantern, dear," the witch said, her tone brisk as she stepped into the glass cupola. Rain beat heavy against the thick panes, filling the space with a rattling din. A second later, a soft yellow glow filled the chamber, radiating from an electric lantern held in the doll's hand. In the light, the witch knelt and opened a maintenance panel under the great, dark tower lamp.

A whispered incantation sent her mind into the wires, flying at the speed of electric thought through the whole structure of the lamp. There. A bit of water damage, a few corroded wires. It should be an easy fix.

"Cut power, Minaret."

The witch shuffled on her hands and knees over to another panel, this one set into the floor. A tap of her witch key opens the latch, even as her other hand impatiently pulled at the handle. She waited just long enough for her doll to pull the lever shutting off the electric current before plunging her hand into the wires. A few seconds later she had the damaged cords in her grasp. For a witch like her, it was nothing at all to spell-solder them together with a flame chant.

She gave her doll a nod, and Minaret threw the switch back closed. Nothing happened.

Twice more, the witch diagnosed the lamp's system, and twice more her emergency repairs failed to revive the light. They were running out of time. Both witch and doll knew that there was a ship expected tonight, and that the ship needed the light of the tower to safely enter the bay.

"Miss Havershem," Minaret said, its voice soft and quivering, "they will need us. We don't have a choice."

She looked up at it, eyes widening in realization. "No! I will not risk that. We will not risk that. I forbid it."

But the spell-words did not connect, dissipating in the face of a doll's Purpose. Her ban denied, the witch rose to her feet in fear, reaching for her doll, turning to the only other tool she had. Love.

"Minaret, I can't risk what you ask of me. We've given too much to make this life we have together. What if it goes wrong? What if you-"

"Miss," the doll said, smiling with sad resolve, "This one needs you to unbind it."

Wordlessly, the witch clutched her doll and sobbed. Then, with a trembling hand, she pushed her key into the doll's heart, turned, and opened up its being.

A white light filled the space, blinding her entirely. She heard the sound of glass cracking as she fell to the floor, felt wind and wet against her face, heard the howling gale and pounding rain and the memories of a song unsung. The light overwhelmed everything. It burned her on the inside, even as she shut her eyes tight. Her selfishness, her greed, her cruelty, her lust, her drive to dominate and desire to abuse, everything in her which could be called wicked: all of it turned to agony under the touch of the light. But to her kindness and her compassion, her loyalty and her love, the light felt like nothing so much as the kiss of the sun on a sleepy afternoon.

Minutes, hours, she didn't know how long had passed, when the light began to dim at last. For a few seconds, she could not even remember why that was so important. Then, she opened her eyes in dread.

Three panes of the glass wall were gone entirely, or nearly so. Others bore cracks. The rain fell slowly, and in the east the witch could make out the light of false dawn. Shards of glass covered the rain-slicked floor. And by the gap in the wall, next to where a hollow manikin of porcelain and lace lay, there stood the angel.

It had been staring out to sea, but turned at the sound of the witch's stirring, its golden eyes unreadable, ancient... weary? Above its head, a simple halo slowly spun. The space around it was still bright, still painful to look at, but the witch refused to avert her eyes again.

"Minaret-"

"That is not my name, witch."

She flinched, started over: "Joyous Song Resounding from the Minarets in the City of God's Delight, did I not fulfill my promise?"

The angel said nothing.

"We had a covenant. I ask you, was I false to you?"

Still, it remained silent.

"Why are you leaving me?"

At last, the angel simply said, "I have a Purpose to fulfill."

The words hurt. Almost, the witch closed her eyes again, but she resisted. She must not lose sight of the angel, for even a moment.

"You wanted to be rid of it. You wanted my Purpose, not His. I gave you what you wanted. I protected you from this, from Him. I thought I made you happy. Minaret, did I not make you happy?"

Tears mingled with rainwater on her cheeks, hot against cold. But the angel only turned away, spreading its wings. So, with nothing to lose, the witch gathered up all her power and stretched out her arm. A chain of darkness shot from her hand, wrapping around the angel's ankle even as its wing beat once, then twice, then three times.

Then they passed from that space, to another.

Worlds and stars and nebulae whirled past them. The light grew more intense, until it blinded the witch once more, then more intense still. Her whole being burned, body and mind and soul. She realized in terror that she could not hold the angel back, only slow it by the minutest amount. A part of her despaired; a part of her laughed. Imagine that, a witch dragged face-first into Heaven by an angel's shackle. She might even have time to pay respect to the cracked corner of the High God's throne before He smeared her essence across the stars.

In that moment, her only regret was not telling Minaret enough times how much she loved it. So, she said it once more.

"I love you."

Time sped and slowed and spun out of all reasoning. She passed in and out of consciousness. Golden eyes stared deep into her own. She sung something, an old song. Only... who had taught her? She was young and old again. The universe forgot she existed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The witch awoke mid-chant. She was in the lighthouse again, kneeling beside her doll's vessel with her witch key in hand. Chains of shadow and black light and blood connected her body to a white flame studded with golden eyes, but a blue chain connected it to the sky. Somehow, she knew the flame was fighting with her against the blue chain. She redoubled her efforts, singing her spells with every mote of magic in her being, drawing in more and more from the tower, from the electricity in the wires, from the ground below. Slowly, painfully, she forced the flame into the opening in the vessel. Then, she snapped it closed, pushed in the key, and turned the lock.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Neither Raleigh Winters nor Melissa Havershem said anything for the moment, once they'd shared their stories. Instead, the two witches drank their tea in silence, exhaustedly enjoying the clean air and bustle of the city after a rainstorm. Raleigh had the peppermint tea they favored, and Havershem the black tea she needed.

Finally, Raleigh cleared their throat and asked, "So, what of the lamp and the cupola?"

"I tell you about the most harrowing spellwork in my life, and you ask about if I got the windows fixed?" Havershem chuckled, then finished her tea. "I have a work team up there right now. The city's handling it, since despite the issues I did get that cargo ship in safely. And how's Euthamia today?"

Raleigh shrugged. "Better. Still a bit fragile, but you know how dolls can be. I have Aster looking after it, to make sure it doesn't push itself too hard to make up for last night."

The two lapsed into silence again. When Raleigh finished their tea, they smiled at Havershem and said, "Well, I'd best be getting back to them."

"I imagine so. Managing six dolls sounds like a lot."

"It is, but they're all very dear to me. Speaking of, I doubt I'd need to tell you twice to get back to Minaret and give it a good hug."

And so with a few farewells, the witches left the cafe and returned home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the bedroom of the lighthouse, a doll rested in the arms of its witch. It nearly lost her, but it didn't. And nothing made it happier.

#dollposting #witches #empty spaces #not a person #angel #autumnrain writing

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kanguin · 2 months ago

Text

"Wall-E was a fatphobic movie" I'm sorry, where, in all of its run time, did it make the assertion that the humans aboard the Axiom were lazy and to blame for their situation? Where did it mock them or assert they had less value because of being fat? Where were the insults and negative comments directly aimed at the obesity of the passengers? Did I miss the narrative where the fat passengers were completely incapable of doing anything and failed to make a stand against the autopilot? Did we watch different movies? Or did some people just fail so completely at competent media analysis that they saw characters who were portrayed as "fat" and "helpless" unitilizing "mobility aids" and conclude "oh this movie hates fat people".

Before I get into this, a few things:

I am fat. Very, very fat, fatter than 99% of adults in the US. Probably fatter than you, maybe not, who knows! I feel very comfortable determining what does and does not feel insulting to me as a fat person.

I am disabled. I have chronic pain, joint instability, and various other conditions that make my life hell but aren't "literally can never walk". I feel VERY comfortable speaking on portrayals of disability and mobility devices in media because of my own experiences.

I like the movie Wall-E. It is cute, speaks to me in many ways, and can be something of s comfort at times. But it's not sacred, it's a product of Disney, and is not free from criticism. There ARE things to criticize in Wall-E, do not get me wrong, but this isn't one that holds water, imo.

Anyway. Onto the meat and potatoes.

In reduced gravity environments like a space vessel, even with some form of artificial gravity, people need to do extra exercise to combat muscle atrophy. And as muscle atrophy kicks in, fat stops being burned and starts to accumulate. That's a literal fact of how the human body works in low-G environments, and if you watch the commentaries for Wall-E included on the DVD, you'll know that the writers knew this because they poured research into it to get it right. The writers wanted to tell a story where a megacorporation obsessed with corner cutting and automation left an unfeeling computer in charge of the lives of generations of people, and explore how that mindset in time would lead to the complete reduction in autonomy of human lives. And to do so, they followed muscle atrophy and sedentary existence with constant advertising to its logical extreme.

The chairs the characters move about in are on paper mobility aids, but in the story were explicitly said to be marketed as luxury recliners, and explicitly shown to ONLY be able to follow the predefined paths on the ship, and any deviation on board was very explicitly shown to be met with force and manipulation. Effectively speaking, a mobility aid ceases to be a mobility aid when the autonomy of the person using it is removed. A wheelchair that the user has control over is a mobility aid. But a wheelchair that only allows the user to enter company approved stores and locations is a tool of control. To argue that a movie in which something that COULD be used as a mobility aid, but is instead is being used to control the movements of people, is making negative comments on mobility aids, is about as shortsighted as arguing that a movie where cybernetic augmentations and prosthetics are used to control people is making negative commentary on prosthetics. The issue is corporate control, not disabled people existing.

The most damning thing for the idea that Wall-E's central narrative is fatphobic is that the fat humans on the Axiom are not shown to be any less human than we are because of their fatness. The moment they are ripped away from their 24/7 distractions and the blinders are ripped off, they get up, start looking around, and try new things. They're never once shown to be lazy, inherently lacking in initiative, or unwilling to change their circumstances like fatphobic narratives love to make us out to be. And most damning of all for this idea, in the credits, when everyone has returned to Earth and started growing food, they continue to use the machines that helped them before, and they continue to be fat! It's not even model reuse, brand new 2D animation is made showing years of crop growth and human activity, and the people continue to be fat! Because that's realistic, that's just as realistic as the people being fat in the first place.

At the end of the movie, there's no narrative of the fatness being a problem to be solved, and no abandonment of technology and assistance, because the struggle in Wall-E was never against fatness or reliance on technology, but against corporate control of human lives. Wall-E as a movie is very enthusiastically pro humanity and pro technology. Wall-E's entire existence as a man-made robot character enamored with the things humans left behind, things that reflected who we were, speaks volumes to this theming. Even AUTO was shown in the end to never have been truly evil, because he was just following his orders to keep humankind from going home. The true villain of Wall-E was always Buy-n-Large, and in a broader sense megacorporations as a whole. From how Buy-n-Large created the problem with endless trash and countless satellites, to how Buy-n-Large sold humanity the solution in the form of luxury cruises you just KNOW not everyone could afford, to how Buy-n-Large continued to control generation after generation of humanity, the ire in Wall-E was always focused on corporations, not fatness or disability.

As a fat, disabled person, I'm kind of personally insulted that people will overgeneralize fatphobia and ableism to the point that they will ignore the facts that there are, in fact, negative things that can cause weight gain, and that things that help disabled people can sometimes be used as tools of control. It is such a painfully surface level reading to assert that all stories in which fat people exist but don't have agency or good physical health are fatphobic. In cases like Wall-E, it would actually raise a lot MORE questions if the people weren't all fat. Questions like "how are they not gaining weight?", "why is there a healthy diversity of body types if nobody is active?", or even "why have the writers deliberately chosen not to represent these characters as being fat when they objectively would be?", just to name a few. It's a fairly basic thing to say, but there has to be a clear, coherent message against fat and disabled people in a narrative in order for claims of fatphobia and ableism to hold water. If the story you claim is fatphobic or ableist just has fat people of lesser ability who are fat and less able because their lives are controlled, and no overarching themes blaming them for their circumstances or insulting them for their condition, then you do not have a compelling argument.

#wall-e #ableism #fatphobia #kanguin original

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christopherisfoive · 3 months ago

Text

Static Between Stars

Pairing:Jedi!Han x f!Engineer!Reader (Star Wars AU)

Word count: 2.5k

a/n: originally this header was a gif and it was amazing but I couldn't resize it so here we are....self indulgence.

“Somewhere in the galaxy, a war still raged. But for a brief moment, in a forgotten station beneath a bitter sky, a Jedi and an engineer had stopped fighting. And maybe that was enough. For now.”

The distress call shouldn’t have come.

Your station wasn’t on any chart used by the Republic or the Resistance—and certainly not the Jedi. Varnis-4 was known only to the First Order and the unfortunate souls who got assigned there.

It wasn’t a planet. Not really. It was a rotating graveyard.

Varnis-4 had no real cities, no breathable atmosphere, and no strategic value beyond the secrets buried beneath its crust. The surface was covered in dust that clung to everything—clothes, skin, machines—and heat that soaked into your bones until even metal groaned under it.

The sky was permanently hazed with chemical ash, tinting the horizon in shades of muted red and burnt orange. Storms didn’t announce themselves. They rose like ghosts, loud with static and dry lightning, capable of frying entire relay towers in seconds.

You’d been stationed here for nearly eight months. Alone.

There were rotation teams, in theory. Maintenance crews that would fly in to check your progress, resupply your tools, and inspect the sealed sectors you monitored for command. But in practice, those visits had slowed. Then stopped.

Now, it was just you.

And the silence.

Which made the distress call all the more impossible.

It appeared on your console with no fanfare, no coded encryption—just a high-frequency ping. Something primitive. Desperate. Outside protocol.

You should have flagged it. Marked it for inspection. Let the static swallow it again.

Instead, you traced it.

And something in your gut shifted the moment you did.

The hoverbike stuttered beneath you as you pushed it across the canyon ridge, its engine coughing against the grit in the wind. You hadn't used it in weeks—there hadn't been a reason—but your hands moved instinctively, guiding it toward the signal.

The coordinates led you past the edge of your regular patrol range, where even your automated turrets went dark. The air here was thinner, and the terrain was fractured—old mining scars that had never fully healed.

And then you saw it.

A smear of metal carved into the landscape. Smoke curling into the haze. Whatever had gone down, it had come in too fast, with no stabilizers and no support.

You killed the engine and approached on foot, blaster drawn.

The ship was a single-seater. Scorched. Half-buried in stone. Its wings were snapped, the cockpit cracked open from the impact. You stepped over twisted hull plating, boots crunching against glass.

Then he moved.

Just a shift—a groan, low and ragged, from the shadow of the cockpit.

You saw the edge of his face first. Ash-streaked. Bleeding from his temple. His robe—if that’s what it was—hung off his shoulder in tatters. He coughed once and tried to sit up, hand pressed weakly to his side.

And in his other hand—

A lightsaber.

Your blood ran cold.

"Don’t," you said instinctively, voice sharp.

His head turned slightly, unfocused. “That obvious?” he rasped.

You didn’t answer. Your blaster was steady in your grip, aimed just above his heart.

He blinked slowly. "Are you... First Order?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not if you’re going to shoot me."

He coughed again and slumped back against the wreckage.

“I’ve had worse welcomes.”

You stood over him in silence.

This wasn’t in your protocols.

He was supposed to be dead.

And yet, here he was—bleeding, broken, breathing. A Jedi. A myth. A problem.

You should have turned around.

But you didn’t.

You dragged him back through the canyon with more effort than you’d admit.

He was heavier than he looked, or maybe you were just out of shape—your body used to tightening bolts, not hauling injured fugitives through grit and wind.

The hoverbike gave out halfway. You swore under your breath and walked the rest of the way, half-carrying, half-dragging him until the outer gates of your post came into view.

You shouldn’t have brought him back.

You told yourself that again as you punched in the override code, shielding the panel with your body like someone might be watching. You told yourself again as you guided him down the narrow hall toward the medical bay, the lights flickering overhead.

But when he slumped sideways into the wall, murmuring something you couldn’t make out, you caught him before he hit the floor.

The medbay had never held anything human before. It was designed for field kits and droid repair—functional, cramped, barely enough for one body, let alone two. But it was clean. And quiet.

You lowered him onto the cot and immediately turned to scrub your hands.

He was unconscious before you even started.

You worked quickly. Cut through layers of burned cloth, disinfected wounds, sealed what you could. The lightsaber—you placed it carefully out of reach, though part of you wanted to tear it apart just to see what was inside.

He had a name, probably. But right now, he was just a mess of bruises and blood and something far too dangerous to leave in a ditch.

You ran scans. He had a fractured rib, a mild concussion, and something—some flicker of light pulsing just beneath the skin—that your medical reader couldn’t quite parse. You didn’t need a manual to know what it was.

The Force.

You sat back in the chair across from him and stared.

The Jedi were supposed to be gone. Myth. Propaganda. Warnings passed down in dark corridors of command briefings.

And yet he was here.

A breathing contradiction.

You told yourself you’d wait until morning. That when he woke up, you’d ask questions. That if he tried anything, you’d be ready.

You didn’t realize you’d fallen asleep until the lights flickered back to life.

You blinked awake to the sound of a soft scrape against metal.

He was sitting up.

Barely, but enough to brace himself against the side rail of the cot, his eyes slitted open. The cuts on his face had scabbed, and his breathing was still rough, but he was awake—and watching you.

“Didn’t think you’d stick around,” he murmured.

You didn’t move. “Didn’t think you’d live.”

He gave you a look, half amusement, half pain. “Me neither.”

There was a pause. You expected him to demand to know where his weapon was. Or try something foolish with the Force.

Instead, he looked around the room slowly, taking it in.

“Not what I pictured for a First Order medbay,” he said.

“This isn’t a medbay. It’s a droid patch unit.”

He smiled faintly. “Still... you could’ve left me out there.”

You leaned back in your chair, crossing your arms. “I considered it.”

“Let me guess—you’re not a stormtrooper.”

You didn’t answer.

He shifted, wincing. “You don’t wear the mask.”

“And you don’t wear a cause.”

He actually laughed. Just once. But it cracked the air between you, something sharp melting into something human.

“Touché,” he said. “So... what do I call you?”

You hesitated.

Then gave your name.

He repeated it, soft, like testing it for weight.

“Well,” he said, settling back against the cot, “thanks for not killing me. Yet.”

“Don’t thank me. You’re not staying.”

He closed his eyes again. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

But somehow, you knew he already was.

By the third day, he was walking—sort of. Limping, really, one hand trailing along the wall for support. You tried to ignore the sound of his footsteps echoing through the station.

It didn’t work.

You found him by the storage bay, poking through a stack of ration crates like he’d never seen freeze-dried food before.

"Don’t open that," you said.

He looked up. "Too late."

You walked over and took the packet from him, resealing it with a hiss. "That was two months of protein supplements."

"You’re welcome, then," he said, flashing a grin. "I just saved you from a very bland future."

You rolled your eyes and turned to leave.

"You always this friendly?" he called after you.

"Only when I'm armed."

Later, you caught him in the control room, staring at the relay screen.

"That’s encrypted," you warned.

"I wasn’t trying to break in. Just... watching."

You stood beside him for a long moment.

"You said you weren’t staying."

He didn’t look at you. "I’m not."

"Then stop memorizing my system layout."

That made him grin. "Too late again."

He didn’t ask for a datapad, but you found him with one later. Scrolling through old repair logs, mapping out your work like he was trying to understand how you operated.

And for some reason, you let him.

You told yourself it was harmless.

That he was just bored.

But when he asked questions—about the way you rewired an old transponder, or why your defensive grid used obsolete code—you answered.

Not because you had to.

But because you wanted to know what he’d say next.

The fight came on day five.

You were recalibrating the relay node when he stepped in. He didn’t say anything at first—just leaned in the doorway, watching.

Then, without warning:

"That frequency modulation—it can track Force signatures, can’t it?"

You froze.

"Excuse me?"

"The array. I’ve seen tech like it before. It’s not just for long-range comms. The Order’s using this outpost to help hunt Jedi. Isn’t that what this is really about?"

You stood slowly. "You’re injured, off-grid, and alive because I didn’t leave you in a crater. Don’t start accusing me of things you can’t prove."

"So don’t deny it."

"You don’t know what you’re talking about."

His voice dropped. "Don’t I?"

You bristled. "You think you’re better? You and your dusty myths and Force tricks? Jedi disappeared when they lost the war. The rest of us had to keep surviving."

"You think the Order’s survival is worth what it costs?"

Your jaw clenched.

He stepped forward, expression unreadable. "How many people’s coordinates have you relayed without knowing where they ended up? Or did you know?"

The silence after that stretched long and thin.

"You don’t get to walk in here and decide what this place means," you said, voice flat. "You’re alive because of me. That’s the only reason you get to ask questions."

His eyes softened. Not with pity. With understanding.

That made it worse.

He left the room without another word.

That night, you didn’t sleep.

Neither did he.

The storm came the next evening.

You noticed it first by the static in your comms—a sharp crackle that interrupted even internal frequencies. Then came the temperature drop, quick and steep, followed by wind that pressed hard against the station walls like the planet was trying to peel them apart.

You moved through the corridor, sealing ports, checking pressure locks. You were in the control bay when you saw it—through the reinforced viewport.

Han was outside.

You cursed and ran.

He was standing near the outer antenna, facing the horizon. Ash swirled around him in fast, tight spirals, his robes caught in the wind, hair damp with chemical mist. He didn’t flinch as you approached.

“Are you out of your mind?” you shouted, grabbing his arm. “You’ll fry out here!”

He didn’t look at you. “The sky... it hums when the storm comes.”

You blinked, caught off guard. “You’re going to die listening to weather?”

“It reminds me that I’m small,” he said. “And I need that.”

You didn’t let go. “I don’t care what you need. You want to stand under Force-forsaken lightning, do it after you leave.”

His eyes flicked to you, and for once, he didn’t smile.

You hauled him back inside.

The door sealed shut behind you. The storm hit seconds later—louder now, hammering the roof with a rhythm like blaster fire.

You stood there in silence, breathing hard.

Then Han said, “You’re kind of bossy when you care.”

You glared at him. “You’re kind of stupid when you talk.”

His grin was slow. “You like me.”

“I tolerate you. Because you’re half-dead and can’t outrun me.”

“You’d still chase me.”

You didn’t deny it.

He stepped closer, just slightly. The space between you shrank.

“I could stay until the storm passes,” he said. “Just until then.”

Your voice dropped. “That’s what you said last time.”

He didn’t answer. But he didn’t move away, either.

The storm raged through the night, sealing the station in a capsule of noise and electricity. You didn’t sleep. Neither did he.

Instead, you worked in parallel. He sat at your corner desk with a tool kit, helping you recalibrate power couplings, offering suggestions that were sometimes wrong but always interesting. You adjusted wiring while he passed you parts, shoulders occasionally brushing when space grew tight.

There was something domestic about it. Unsettling, but not unpleasant.

When the lights flickered, he handed you a power cell without being asked. When the comms whined, you were both already leaning toward the controls.

You didn’t talk about the argument. Not directly.

But when he said, quietly, “You’ve done a lot of things you didn’t choose,” you didn’t correct him.

And when you replied, “So have you,” he didn’t deny it.

At some point, you caught him watching you. Not with curiosity. Not with suspicion.

With something like understanding.

You looked away first.

By morning, the storm had passed.

But something between you hadn’t.

The supply drone was late. Then rerouted. Then erased from the delivery manifest altogether.

You tried not to panic. Logged a quiet report. Rechecked your outgoing logs.

Han sat across from you at the console, watching your fingers fly over the keys. He didn’t speak.

When you finally exhaled, leaning back in your chair, he asked, “That normal?”

“No.”

He tilted his head. “Then you think they know?”

You didn’t answer.

But the knot in your stomach did.

That night, you found him standing by the sealed entrance, his pack over one shoulder.

“You’re leaving,” you said.

He nodded. “It’s not safe for you anymore.”

You almost laughed. “It never was.”

He shifted. “Still. You’ve already done more than you should have.”

You glanced at the pack. “What will you do out there?”

He smiled faintly. “Survive. Like you.”

The silence that followed felt heavier than anything either of you had said.

When he finally turned to go, you didn’t stop him.

But when you returned to the control room an hour later, you found something resting on your bench.

A kyber crystal. Fractured. Still pulsing.

And beside it, a small strip of scrap metal. The edge of a wing—burned, carved with a name you recognized now.

Han.

You didn’t call out.

Didn’t chase.

You just sat there in the dark, thumb brushing over the uneven surface of the crystal.

Somewhere in the galaxy, the war kept going.

But for a brief moment, in a station forgotten by both sides, you had chosen something other than obedience.

And he had walked away with the knowledge that someone hadn’t seen him as a weapon.

That was enough.

For now.

#han jisung #han jisung x reader #han x reader #stray kids #skz x reader #skz imagines #stray kids x reader #skz #stray kids imagines #stray kids enemies to lovers #author jules ღ #star wars au

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do-you-ship-it-polls · 1 year ago

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About the blog:

This is created just for fun to poll people on their opinions on ships, because shipping culture is something that I find fun. Please stay civil and remember that the block button exists.

I run too many other blogs but am currently active at: @aretheyqueer & @kyubeys-contract

Fundraiser:

Redeem rewards like queue privilege and posting from banned fandoms by donating a dollar to charity. Please let me know through asks or dms if you make a donation as I don't get notifications for it.

How to send in a ship:

Please use the google form above! I may delete it if you send it through an ask.

Submission Rules:

Most kinds of media is ok, like tv show/movie/book/game etc.

No real people, I recommend @rpfshippingpolls for that. No dsmp-styled mcyt characters either.

Incestuous ships, ships between adults and minors, normal characters x loli/shota are not allowed. Inappropriate age gaps may also disqualify a ship if it's like 11 y/o with 16 y/o. I think using common sense is enough.

Feel free to ask if you are unsure of anything.

Banned fandoms:

Harry Potter, Hazbin/Helluva, Gushing over magical girls, usually mcyt. You can see the full list and reasons for this in the last tab in the spreadsheet below.

Fandom jail

Fandom jail is for fandoms who bother me too much but don't deserve to be banned forever. This means polls featuring these characters will be put on hold. The fandoms currently in jail are:

None!

Other similar blogs (none are affiliated with me):

@do-you-ship-this-book-couple

@worlds-worst-ships

@are-they-queerplatonic

@shouldtheydivorce

@rpfshippingpolls

@proshipping-polls-iv

@do-you-like-this-mha-ship

I also sometimes miss duplicate submissions so if your text isn't included, I apologize! Feel free to let me know and I'll add it.

Here is a spreadsheet with all published ships and denied ships. It gets updated approximately once per day.

and here is a link to the old spreadsheet that includes the vote percentages of everything posted before I stopped updating it. In some time I may figure out a way to automate the process of getting the votes and put them into this new spreadsheet.

Other events

Currently accepting submissions for:

Mini tournament polls

Tags used:

#anime ; #cartoons ; #movies ; #tv shows ; #books etc

#not a poll ; #not a ship

#asks

#fanart friday (feel free to send me fanart you want to be featured)

#crackship poll and #april fools for joke polls

#tournament poll

#polls #shipping #ships #fandom #anime #fandom polls

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morlock-holmes · 1 year ago

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What objections would you actually accept to AI?

Roughly in order of urgency, at least in my opinion:

Problem 1: Curation

The large tech monopolies have essentially abandoned curation and are raking in the dough by monetizing the process of showing you crap you don't want.

The YouTube content farm; the Steam asset flip; SEO spam; drop-shipped crap on Etsy and Amazon.

AI makes these pernicious, user hostile practices even easier.

Problem 2: Economic disruption

This has a bunch of aspects, but key to me is that *all* automation threatens people who have built a living on doing work. If previously difficult, high skill work suddenly becomes low skill, this is economically threatening to the high skill workers. Key to me is that this is true of *all* work, independent of whether the work is drudgery or deeply fulfilling. Go automate an Amazon fulfillment center and the employees will not be thanking you.

There's also just the general threat of existing relationships not accounting for AI, in terms of, like, residuals or whatever.

Problem 3: Opacity

Basically all these AI products are extremely opaque. The companies building them are not at all transparent about the source of their data, how it is used, or how their tools work. Because they view the tools as things they own whose outputs reflect on their company, they mess with the outputs in order to attempt to ensure that the outputs don't reflect badly on their company.

These processes are opaque and not communicated clearly or accurately to end users; in fact, because AI text tools hallucinate, they will happily give you *fake* error messages if you ask why they returned an error.

There's been allegations that Mid journey and Open AI don't comply with European data protection laws, as well.

There is something that does bother me, too, about the use of big data as a profit center. I don't think it's a copyright or theft issue, but it is a fact that these companies are using public data to make a lot of money while being extremely closed off about how exactly they do that. I'm not a huge fan of the closed source model for this stuff when it is so heavily dependent on public data.

Problem 4: Environmental maybe? Related to problem 3, it's just not too clear what kind of impact all this AI stuff is having in terms of power costs. Honestly it all kind of does something, so I'm not hugely concerned, but I do kind of privately think that in the not too distant future a lot of these companies will stop spending money on enormous server farms just so that internet randos can try to get Chat-GPT to write porn.

Problem 5: They kind of don't work

Text programs frequently make stuff up. Actually, a friend pointed out to me that, in pulp scifi, robots will often say something like, "There is an 80% chance the guards will spot you!"

If you point one of those AI assistants at something, and ask them what it is, a lot of times they just confidently say the wrong thing. This same friend pointed out that, under the hood, the image recognition software is working with probabilities. But I saw lots of videos of the Rabbit AI assistant thing confidently being completely wrong about what it was looking at.

Chat-GPT hallucinates. Image generators are unable to consistently produce the same character and it's actually pretty difficult and unintuitive to produce a specific image, rather than a generic one.

This may be fixed in the near future or it might not, I have no idea.

Problem 6: Kinetic sameness.

One of the subtle changes of the last century is that more and more of what we do in life is look at a screen, while either sitting or standing, and making a series of small hand gestures. The process of writing, of producing an image, of getting from place to place are converging on a single physical act. As Marshall Macluhan pointed out, driving a car is very similar to watching TV, and making a movie is now very similar, as a set of physical movements, to watching one.

There is something vaguely unsatisfying about this.

Related, perhaps only in the sense of being extremely vague, is a sense that we may soon be mediating all, or at least many, of our conversations through AI tools. Have it punch up that email when you're too tired to write clearly. There is something I find disturbing about the idea of communication being constantly edited and punched up by a series of unrelated middlemen, *especially* in the current climate, where said middlemen are large impersonal monopolies who are dedicated to opaque, user hostile practices.

Given all of the above, it is baffling and sometimes infuriating to me that the two most popular arguments against AI boil down to "Transformative works are theft and we need to restrict fair use even more!" and "It's bad to use technology to make art, technology is only for boring things!"

#ai

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harvestmino · 11 months ago

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hey remember 11 years ago when i was going to make a harvest moon clone starring minoriko but it didn't go anywhere because I was too busy doing absolutely nothing of value instead?

well say hello to the week 1 build of HARVEST MINO, complete with dogshit tiles and the ability to grow a turnip. we're doing it man. we're MAKING THIS HAPPEN. me and my esteemed investors, that is!

I've created this dev blog to talk about the game, so follow if you're interested in seeing this get made from the ground up.

read on for more details!

HARVEST MINO* is Studio Hexeye's next project! it's a touhou-themed farm sim starring Minoriko Aki! The release is targeted for summer 2025.

*(working title that will change later; i doubt natsume's lawyers would like this one very much)

THE STORY

With more youkai and gods seeking refuge from the outside world, Gensokyo's population is growing! That means they need more humans to go around, too. To address this, a number of big name youkai have gotten together and agreed to back off from the HUMAN VILLAGE for a few years and allow it to expand.

Although they're causing fewer incidents, that doesn't mean some of them aren't keeping busy! For instance, KANAKO YASAKA has built YASAKA RESORT TOWN on the side of YOUKAI MOUNTAIN to bring in money from wealthy youkai finding themselves with too much time on their hands.

You are MINORIKO AKI, Gensokyo's lowest-ranking harvest god. With the HUMAN VILLAGE growing, this is a prime opportunity to increase your popularity! KANAKO YASAKA has decided to invest in your venture by granting you a prime piece of farmland near YASAKA RESORT TOWN. If you can ship enough of your divinely-blessed(?) produce to the HUMAN VILLAGE, you're certain to make a name for yourself, leading to faith and riches beyond your wildest dreams! Good luck!

HARVEST MINO DESIGN GOALS

Alternate gameplay modes: CASUAL and SERIOUS

despite being a genre in which you essentially cannot lose, a surprising amount of people find farm sims stressful due to the time management aspects. i intend to cater to this audience with some simple rules changes in an alternate gameplay mode.

SERIOUS is your standard farm sim experience - each day is on a timer, and you'll complete the game and have your performance evaluated after two years. this mode also includes a few additional restrictions to make the resource management of the game a bit more involved.

CASUAL removes the time limits. the clock on each day stops when it hits midnight (like in SNES harvest moon!) so you have all the time you need to wrap up before going to bed, and you complete the game by reaching a certain story goal, whenever you get around to it. it is also more friendly towards filling out your farm with automated stuff like sprinklers, since time doesn't matter anyway.

More choice/depth in farm design

lemme get this out of the way: i hate stardew's endgame. the biggest moneymaker in the game is filling your greenhouse with ancient fruit and turning it into wine; the bulk of your profits come from tossing your fruit into kegs once a week and ignoring your farm otherwise. i think this sucks and one of my design goals is to make the value of income sources proportional to how much manual effort they require.

another thing that has always bugged me about farm sims is that the way you lay out your farm is generally decided for you by the way your tools work. if your watering can upgrade targets a 3x3 of tiles, then all your plots are going to be 3x3. in harvest mino you'll be able to choose from multiple upgrade patterns for your tools, so you can have crops in rows, blocks, the ol' C pattern, or whatever you like. we're going back to old harvest moon rules, where you can't walk through crops after they sprout, so plan your layout well!

Harem end??

let's get real, when it comes to farm sims, the girls are what we're really here for, right?

to be forthcoming, I'm not planning to have marriage in the game per se - I don't think it makes a lot of sense for creatures that are hundreds of years old to make a commitment like that after knowing each other for only a year or so - but the end goal is functionally the same, to get them to move in with you.

now, few, if any, farm sims feature the coveted HAREM END. this is understandable, it would be a design nightmare to have 5+ NPCs pathing through your house at any given time. however, by planning around it from the start, we can make it a reality! in this game, in addition to the usual requirements, each girl you're interested in will require you to build her a specific addition to your house to accommodate her. this gives them their own space to move around and will really improve the vibe that you're living together.

(don't forget that you will need a steadily-increasing bed size as well.)

Fast travel!

you're a 2hu! you can fly! you'll be able to open up your map, just pick a spot, and fly there! (in SERIOUS MODE, this will cost a small amount of daytime).

Adventure!

you're a 2hu! there's gotta be shooting! the game will feature "adventure zones" where you can blast through enemies while searching for forage and loot. exactly what this gameplay will look like is still up in the air, but right now I'm thinking room-based twin-stick shooting, Smash TV style. (don't worry about the difficulty, it'll be approachable for anyone. ASTROLANCER was a learning experience.) plus you'll be able to bring a girlfriend along to help!

Additional note concerning the cast:

the game is currently in very early planning and as such is in roster hell!! the cast is not set in stone so I won't be revealing too much yet. i have to limit how many characters are in the game to keep dev time under control so try not to be disappointed if your favorite 2hu doesn't show up.

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alexanderwales · 9 months ago

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I've had a number of jobs that I would consider blue collar, mostly when I was younger, just not skilled blue collar work. I worked at my uncle's landscaping company for a summer (planting bushes, repotting stuff, watering plants), and on my other uncle's farm for a few years (feeding animals, helping hook up equipment, being an extra pair of hands, doing a lot of the various odd jobs that farming seems to consist of). I was a janitor for two years when I was taking a break from college, and did enough manual labor that I had some actual muscles from it.

When I worked as a janitor, one of my duties was to bale cardboard, which means taking all the cardboard generated by the store and placing it into a baler, having it crushed flat in bulk, then tying the bale of cardboard up with wire so it could be placed in a corner of the loading bay and later, shipped of somewhere else for processing. I imagine that before the baler was invented, this was a lot more labor, and even with the baler it felt like a significant amount of labor. And I did always think that it could have been easier, simpler, faster, except that it was cheaper for a human to do everything. Even the very primitive baler probably cost thousands of dollars, and it was just a glorified hydraulic press. But I didn't respect the work, and would have been happy for that to no longer be a thing that humans had to do.

I guess my opinion on automation is that it's generally good insofar as it means that people can stop doing things that they would rather not be doing, things that they do because they've been coerced into doing them for money.

But I do think there's something to working with your hands and seeing some tangible results from your labor. I took wood shop in high school, and every now and then I have cause to use those skills for something, even if I am outcompeted by giant factories that can make the same things by the hundreds with better precision. There's also the question of customization: my wife is far more handy than I am, and is always making little custom things for us, either 3D printed or with tools at the local Makerspace that she helps run. I think it's good to look back at something you've done and being able to say "yes, I have done that". And of course there are other ways to compete against a factory that's shitting out things by the thousands, and not just by having things bespoke: there are things that benefit from not having to be made in quantity, or with fresh ingredients, or locally sourced products.

I guess there are a lot of things that I would replace with robots, if I could, but also a lot of things that I wouldn't, because I place some value on doing them myself, or having a process that I can control, or an end product I can take credit for.

We're entering a new era of automation, assuming that AI doesn't just fail and escape from the public consciousness like a weak fart. I'm hopeful that it can kill a lot of grunt work, things that people didn't ever want to be doing, and worried that it will kill the kinds of enriching labor that people actually enjoy. But of course I worry that it's going to be like a lot of automation has been, making an inferior product at prices so low that only the very rich can afford what humans do.

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dailyinsightsuk · 1 year ago

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Streamlining Tax Compliance: Using Quaderno to Automate Taxes for Businesses Shipping into the EU.

Quaderno is a powerful tool designed to simplify the process of managing taxes for online businesses. It automates the calculation, collection, and reporting of sales tax, VAT, and GST, helping businesses stay compliant with tax regulations around the world. Introduction: Automating taxes for businesses shipping into the EU can be a game-changer in streamlining operations and ensuring…

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bethrnoora · 8 days ago

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can u tell me. who are hal and dave and What is their Problem

oh man. anon this is such a question. I was trying to NOT have this be a million years long but i ended up going down a rabbit hole and this turned into something i wasn't intending.

IN BRIEF dave bowman and hal 9000 show up in roughly the third act of both the original 2001: a space odyssey movie and first book (then later in the subsequent novels of varying continuity: 2010, 2061, and 3001) on a mission purportedly to study the jovian system (saturn in the book and jupiter in the film), hal is the supercomputer that controls the functionality of the discovery one spacecraft that dave is mission commander of. I go back and forth on just HOW much I agree that the astronauts read as totally robotic but as a parallel/foil to hal I do really like that interpretation and I think it adds a fascinating dimension to dave and hal's dynamic as the mission's captain being somewhat like an automation himself and the sentient, living tool on board the ship who grows to become more perceptibly human-like with time.

hal is programmed for complete rationality though, and is given a command by mission control prior to takeoff to keep the actual objective (that the discovery mission is intended as a first-contact mission and is liable not to return in the detailed timeframe), essentially lie to the awake crew. this goes against his protocol and starts making him flip out, make increasingly more "irrational" decisions and errors until he goes through what is functionally a mental breakdown and kills frank, disconnects the life support of the other astronauts, and locks dave out of the ship temporarily which forces dave to make his way back in and manually shut hal's higher logic center down. genuinely kind of devastating, especially how it's portrayed in the movie and in conjunction with the fact of the matter that this man just had to kill his last living friend on a long, lonely mission to outer space. interestingly there's very little malice held towards hal on dave's part (especially in the novel) and I feel a common interpretation of that scene is that dave reads genuinely mournful during it, indulging hal as he's losing his higher brain function and asking if he can sing "daisy bell" to dave as he was trained to do in early development. something of an ill-fated pair of lovers to say the least.

this is where things start getting longer and even more rambly so the rest is under the cut. pulling from a few things, including dominic janes's "2001: a queer odyssey" which is a queer reading of the film that i find interesting in many ways even though i dont find all the points totally (or um. at all) salient within the reading. but that is beside the point, we're picking and choosing because u dont need to agree with everything in a source to cite it and this isn't getting turned in for peer review. tl;dr they have So Many Problem and i'm so used to reading between the lines for them that the gaps in the lines are ten miles wide to me. but they did shape my formative ideas about love. do with that what you will

I'll talk subsequent books in a minute but what does get me about the two of them, hal in particular - especially from a visual sense, particularly in tandem with the film's composition - is the sense of a combined curiosity and slight voyeurism we get from hal's presence on the ship. he's basically just a camera with a voice insofar as physical representation goes so we see the astronauts thru his eyes to start (dave literally so, since his introduction is in the camera reflection) we see their weird stilted daily routines we see them in kind of quiet/idle moments, it's easy to read into it as like ok all this computer is doing is Looking At Men huh. it's perhaps low hanging fruit but it's an element I think one could easily pick up on nonetheless AND there is something interesting about being a sentient (heuristic, as the H in his name textually indicates hehe) computer with an all-encompassing perspective of this ship you've been put in charge of, basically learning human mannerisms and understanding behavior in an enclosed natural state from the astronauts you're interacting with every day who have in turn come to think of you as a fellow crewmate. it's charmingly intimate and walks a line of being that additional crew member (seen as "alike" wrt humanity) while also kind of being an accepted voyeur (seen as "other") who sees all the people in your care 24/7 including at their most vulnerable.

I feel like im losing the plot a little but also want to note this idea of hal being in a role of relative servitude also which dominic janes highlights in his queer reading of the film as an interesting parallel to a thematic trend in media of the time with the "perceived perversity of a male who chooses to be in service" as seen in the 1963 film The Servant which i also presume he is reading into as having themes of queerness due to the question and reversal of master/servant roles in it (not unlike the dynamic between hal and the astronauts, dave especially being mission commander) and the lead's closeted homosexuality at the time. ok im done with that tangent i just thought it added an interesting dimension.

anyway um. dave. we get a little more focus on him as an active character in the film and in the immediate sequel novel 2010 than on frank (who I do love but we just kind of don't get AS much textual info about him prior to the 3001 novel. I haven't forgotten about him but he is sort of tertiary to the dynamic in this spiel). we don't really get anything in the film in particular about dave's family versus frank's, who we see sending him a transmission (they do mention dave's parents in passing but that's kind of it), but in the novel 2010 we get more information on his childhood and how his older brother died tragically, how he only ever had one romantic connection during his life (his brother's ex girlfriend, which is so weird and has its own baggage and implications I could go on about for days), how his father died in an accident too, how his mother seems to be the last living person following his disappearance with any significant tie to him and she's been left on her own in a nursing facility.

he's just got this profound, singular loneliness to him as a character, which I think works well even taking into consideration the "impersonal" or "robotic" character interpretation because whether it's his stilted mannerisms or this sense of tragedy and loneliness about him, there is something that reads as "other" about dave. in addition, janes describes his presence in the film and early drafts thereof as "positioned outside the family unit", something i think rings true even taking into account these details we glean from his background as told to us in 2010. which all loops back around so bitterly when dave has to be the person in 2001 to witness the rest of his crew members die and be the one to deactivate hal, a crew member in his own right, and be alone on a derelict ship for MONTHS in the wake of that before reaching jupiter/saturn and the alien dimension that opens up there, getting sucked into it and turning into what is basically a cosmic research probe by ancient disembodied aliens.

so okay. we have doomed astronaut/doomed supercomputer yaoi i guess, per the original book/movie, endcapped with a scene that can be read as full of regret and even compassion as said computer functionally dies in dave's arms after racking up a very sudden paranoia-induced body count. we got one guy dead another disappeared via god-aliens by the end of this whole thing. so it goes into 2010: odyssey two, which i wont describe in great detail but does resurrect hal as a new crew of astronauts try to retrieve the abandoned discovery one ship currently orbiting jupiter. dave shows up as a newly-awakened sentient "star-child" altered as a living probe for these god-aliens (the firstborn) to assess emerging species/civilizations as fit for their interference and allowing for higher steps of evolution. it's a whole thing, this is where the black monolith i only mentioned in brief previously comes from, clarke has a whole Thing with evolution as an almost religious phenomenon in these books and in childhood's end which is interesting but for another time.

anyway. we finally get the dave/hal reunion tour near the end of 2010 when - despite the purported change in dave's nature to be "beyond" human emotion - we're told that he could never truly hate hal or hold his wrongdoings against him and even goes so far as to take an act of confrontation/rebellion against the firstborn's insistence on using him as a tool for their weird extraterrestrial evolution proving schemes and flat out requests that he be allowed to take hal with him so he won't be alone in this new life.

which like. this is a moment that really gets me in that hal is given a second chance by the person who had to put him down and would realistically possibly still hold that against him, yet doesn't. and dave willingly instead questions the extradimensional alien overlords in order to give him that chance and basically spend foreseeable eternity with hal. HELLO. also peep the dog motif lol

i'm kind of glazing over 2061 to skip very briefly to 3001, where dave and hal show up for the last time to issue a sort of last heads-up warning to humanity about an impending Evolution Event triggered by the firstborn. this time they're a little different though, as through only vaguely-explained means they've become a singular data-based lifeform from the monolith dubbed halman. there's probably a number of ways you can take that, but my take is just that you really must love someone a lot to achieve a level of closeness that leads you to becoming a single godlike entity of dual consciousness.

jay boylan wrote a really lovely essay called "Hal in 2001: a space odyssey: the lover sings his song" where he posits "the emotion which is the sign of HAL’S “humanness” is love. As the craftsman cherishes his tools, so the tools would cherish the master if they could" which just makes me absolutely SICK (complimentary) thinking about. and i do think it rings true of hal as a character and of his parallel/cyclical relationship with dave. when "all" hal was was a computer he explicitly states he enjoys working with people, he did and does care about humanity and the astronauts who care about him in turn. when dave ascends to become the star-child - a tool for the firstborn - and hal joins him, freed of the constraints of being "only" a machine, this is a decision made out of love on the part of someone who now understands what it is to BE the tool in question and recognizes hal in the text as a vestige of humanity in and of himself.

dave and hal are this simultaneously heartbreaking and heartfelt ouroboros of a master-servant-man-machine-human-inhuman dynamic that devours itself in search of an answer to "what are we" only to find that eventually the answer is "you/me/everything". slightly delusional perhaps but i DO think that clarke was aware in some capacity of the implications and possibilities of their dynamic as he wrote the subsequent books just because the care and closeness encapsulated in the small details of their dynamic feels. hard to ignore. this all has enchanted me and driven me insane since picking up the movie and the books in 2015. i'm sorry this turned into something probably entirely deranged but i have never properly put the emotions and thoughts on these 2 in my mind into any kind of organized words so. here they are. they have so many problems. this is what's up with hal and dave. thank you for your patience if you made it this far

#ask #anon i am SO sorry to have dumped a yuge analysis on you in response to a simple question but also thank you for inspiring me to get into i #space odyssey #long post #hence the readmore. but if you do decide to read it well. i appreciate you

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