When I was a child I was afraid of the moon. I used to think that the sky was a giant raven and the moon changing phases was its slowly blinking eye, watching me.
Draw the giant space raven.
This one gave me a lot of inspiration.
SKY RAVEN!! HECK YEAH!! Favorite bird and an awesome concept? Heck yeah. Awesome art? Double heck yeah!! Thank you so much for sharing this with the rest of us! I love it so much!
@absoluteradman If this is not an idea for a short story, I don’t know what is
Corvids collect treasures. Shiny things, pretty things, precious things. And what could be more precious than life?
Life which learns.
Life which grows.
Life which builds.
Life needs to be coddled at first, of course. Giant space birds don’t just pop out of the vacuum, ready to take wing on the stellar winds and soar through the universe. Life needs time, and air, and a shield from solar radiation- life needs a planet. And a planet doesn’t produce a race of giant vacuum defying corvids in a millennium.
So the Raven settled in to wait. And wait a long time, it did. It didn’t mind. The Raven had always been a patient bird, a watchful bird. It stared down upon the planet, slowly blinking, always watching.
The Raven watched as the planet was settled by its ken. They moved from treetop to treetop, forest to forest, spanning all across the world. The Raven watched as the corvids learned cognizance, understanding, and communication. The Raven watched as the other animals settled into their usual roles.
But then The Raven saw something strange.
The direwolves and the direbears were not hunting their prey, the humans, as well as they should have been. And the humans were changing- they began to make their nests in places they normally wouldn’t. They began to construct farms, and villages, and towns, and cities! And the corvids, intelligent as they were, watched the humans develop and build and create- and settled into a role as scavengers!
The Raven was perplexed! The strangest chain of events unfolded as the humans began to dominate the world. They spread and spread, growing and growing, conquering and settling the world as if they were the corvids, and the corvids were left in the dust!
The Raven was confused, and concerned. Perhaps it should do something to right this scenario. Perhaps it should reach down and correct this mistake. But then, perhaps not? Mayhap the direwolves and direbears would rise up and strike down the humans after a while. Mayhap the corvids would rise up in the humans wake and take their place at the top of the food chain.
And yet, as The Raven watched, this seemed less and less likely. And then in the blink of an eye, the predators were gone. The direwolves were hunted to extinction, the direbears driven to the poles, and the lesser wolves domesticated! Domesticated by the humans, of all things!
The Raven felt outrage, disgust, and disappointment. With a sigh and a caw, it spread its wings to catch the wind and float away, in search of some new treasure, some new planet.
And then it saw.
The Raven blinked. It paused, midflight, to be certain. And there it was. A point, no smaller than a pin-prick, of light.
Real, genuine light. Not from the stars, but from the planet itself. From the humans.
They had discovered electricity.
The Raven watched, perplexed and amazed, as the planet spun. When a part of the planet drifted from the light to the dark, the lights would come on. And when that part faced the sun again, the lights would go back out.
The Raven folded its wings. It let the flow of gravity take it, spinning around the planet, always watching, slowly blinking. And as it spun, the world began to glow. The planet, when darkened, would shine. The humans made it shine.
The Raven let out a joyous cry! What greater treasure could there be than life which was shiny? And with contentment, The Raven still floats, watching us. And though we are not corvids, we are still precious.
So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia
Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”
“What, the molten rock?”
“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”
“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”
“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”
Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.
“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?”
“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”
“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”
“… well, actually…”
“… what?”
“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”
“…”
“…”
“…what?”
“we sent-”
“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”
“y-yeah”
“and they didn’t… die?”
“Well the first few did”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
My new favorite Humans are Weird quote
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”
aka The History of Russia
aka Arctic Exploration
aka The History of Alaska
Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:
1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.
2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)
3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.
4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)
5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.
“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?” “Those worthless rocks? Yeah.” “80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”
“I’m telling you, they terraform for fun!” “Don’t be ridiculous” “No, seriously. Some of their most celebrated cultural loci are built on swamps. They have an entire city that is literally in a body of water. Not, like, an artificial pontoon city, they literally sunk the foundations into water. For Grilp’s sake, they build elaborate structures out of frozen water AND THEN SLEEP IN THEM.” “Dear Thilak. Think we could get them to terraform our moons?” “Psh, they’d probably pay for the privilege.”
Eventually, it occurs to someone that humans are the perfect terraforming shock troops, as it were. They think it’s fun to be sent to horrible planets! They’re really good at surviving and then taming them! All you have to do is sit back and wait until the planet is habitable, and then move there yourself! It’s genius.
It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.
“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.
“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”
Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.
“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”
“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”
Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”
“They’re so cute!” the human says, brightening. “Have you met mine? Her name is Spot!”
Humans are told of some planet or region of space that is considered “completely and utterly inhospitable – it would be folly to try and settle there.”
Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible.
“This moon is still forming as such it is primarily soft – by that I mean most of the magma is close to the surface and-”
‘OH BADASS you mean its like Mustafar right!?!?!?! I’m totally going to build a castle there.’
“What. I mean. There is NO fertile ground there whatsoever. No ecosystem. It is molten rock and minerals only.”
‘Which will make my castle there look METAL AS FUCK am I RIGHT!?!??! Come on. COME ON. I TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISTBUMP COME ON.’
“….you….you are going to die, you know this right?”
‘I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to come to Lava Castle for some reason?’
This is the quality scifi I sign up for.
I honestly had to doublecheck that wasn’t me.
This feels like that Monty Python & the Holy Grail part about the castle in the swamp…
When I was a child I was afraid of the moon. I used to think that the sky was a giant raven and the moon changing phases was its slowly blinking eye, watching me.
Draw the giant space raven.
This one gave me a lot of inspiration.
SKY RAVEN!! HECK YEAH!! Favorite bird and an awesome concept? Heck yeah. Awesome art? Double heck yeah!! Thank you so much for sharing this with the rest of us! I love it so much!
@absoluteradman If this is not an idea for a short story, I don’t know what is
i was looking for the perfect swan painting for my wall and i couldn’t find it and then i remembered i’m a fucking artist and designer and oh yeah i can do it myself and now i’m painting something that isn’t a comic for the first time in forever and it feels great
bath time motherfucker.
please let us buy this
that is an amazing painting and i would totally put that on a wall somewhere.
this feels like the sort of piece that art historians would get all into and be like “the openness of the mouths corresponds to the political affiliation of the swans; the central swan, with the most open mouth, is the only one depicted with feathers, calling to mind the delicate interplay between political and sexual awakening in young adulthood. the vase is clearly intended to be an upside-down silhouette of the scream, reminding us that even great art can be decapitated (spiritually) and repurposed as mere decoration. the pink bathtub itself is a womb metaphor.”
and then you read the title, which is “bath time motherfucker” and wonder what the fuck is wrong with the drugs the art historians are on.
Why is this even a problem? If you need more citizens, take in more immigrants or refugees. It’s not like America has a shortage of either wanting to come in. If you can’t make your own citizens, imported is fine.
How Millenials are killing the baby industry
“If you can’t make your own citizens, imported is fine.”
this is why white supremacists want to make abortion illegal again, by the way. the whole “white genocide” fantasy is rooted heavily in outrage that white women aren’t producing enough white children
^^^
Which is also one of the reasons immigration isn’t a proper “solution” to most Republican voters. And why Donald and his crew want to kick out non-white credentialed immigrants as much as they want to kick out informal ones. It all comes back to white supremacy.
just moving along like everyone else 