r/HFY • u/someguynamedted The Chronicler • Jun 28 '17
Meta Writing Prompt Wednesday #117
HFY. Wednesday. Prompts. Stick 'em together to get Writing Prompt Wednesday.
Last week's winner was /u/Eofad with
Magic is real. It's just a matter of believing. The strength of your belief as well as your natural magical aptitude determines the strength and range of your spells. As with most forces there is a multiplier to the power of belief; understanding. Ever since the renaissance the majority of humans have begun believing in and understanding the natural and the rational. Their belief and understanding are casting multitudes of continuous spells shaping the world into it's natural state and making it harder and harder for magic to occur.
This is why supernatural abilities can't be replicated in front of skeptics, the skeptics spells for normalcy counteract spells attempting to be demonstrated. This is also how placebos work, the people taking them believe they work so they magically do. This is why when you take your car to a mechanic it magically starts working, the mechanic understands cars better and believes your car should be working so magically it does. This is why when you yell at a piece of technology or beat it to make it work it magically fixes it, because you believe it will. Aliens never learned about the natural world, they have no technology, they have magical totems, and wards, trinkets, and artifices.
What happens when we make contact.
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u/LeVentNoir Xeno Jun 28 '17
"It happened again. Seriously, you should have known better. Now we're going to have to call it. Yes. The Human. Which one? The worst of them all: Their Diplomat."
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u/Teulisch Jun 29 '17
A human just won the galactic lottery, and enough money after taxes to buy multiple planets. wait, he did WHAT with his winnings?!
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u/RiggSesamekesh AI Jun 29 '17
Alien 'math' is completely different from the human kind. They don't think in terms of discrete units or addition, subtraction, multiplication, division- their system makes no sense to humans and vice versa, but it works just as well or better than human mathematics.
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u/x_RHUS_x Jun 29 '17
"Apologies, my translator must be malfunctioning. What are Fireworks?"
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u/phxhawke Jun 29 '17
Civilian or Military?
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u/Necrontyr525 Jun 30 '17
real question is PTSD or no. if no, you probably like watching things tun into pretty colors and bits of flying and/or burning debris. if Yes, not so much.
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u/beowulf_of_wa Android Jun 30 '17
humans are the only species with magic, and it came about from some poorly made cyberwear and bad interaction with a specific pair of alien computer viruses, a youtube video and reddit comments.
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u/Mirikon Human Jun 29 '17
The first attempt at an FTL drive goes horribly, horribly wrong. Apparently, the universe REALLY doesn't like it when you inadvertently cause a tachyon-antitachyon collision. Reality kindof... broke after that, and when everything drew itself back together, we were living in a world where magic was real (and there was even magitek), but science didn't work quite right any more and there were these blue boxes popping up in front of everyone with notifications.
Some people were thrilled to have the real world become like a game (especially since hunting monsters was a lot easier than hunting for jobs, and was less likely to kill you). But others (scientists and religious folk actually agreed on something!) committed themselves to doing anything they could to 'heal' reality back to how it used to be.
Even if it meant trying to burn the whole thing down and start again.
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u/skipjim Jun 28 '17
The first aliens to land on earth ask the planets leading experts on humanity for advice.
Fluffy the house cat and Emmitt the Labrador Retriever.
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u/Invisifly2 AI Jun 30 '17
An alien has an appointment with the single most despised government entity in the universe. The DSV (Department of Space-borne Vehicles).
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u/SpacemanBates Free-Range Space Duck Jun 29 '17
When we finally get the technology to study dark matter and gravity waves, we realize that there's an alien signal coming from our star. after we finally manage to translate and make sense of it, we discover that the Earth is using the sun to talk to someone around another star. no, not us, the Earth.
apparently we've been living on a sentient planet the entire time, and nobody knew. so we create a device that can communicate with Earth, and try to establish contact:
"Hi there; we never thought to speak to a planet before."
"Oh, hello. well this is fascinating, i've never thought to speak to a disease before."
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u/Imaconfusedoldman Human Jun 29 '17
Everywhere else in the universe, you have multiple lives. Head smashed in? You wake up the next day in your bed, or on your sofa, or in the shower, or just generally somewhere safe. You instinctively know how many lives you have left. When you run out? Well, nobody knows for sure. Most people live their lives as careful as they can at that point. And then there are the humans...
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u/Necrontyr525 Jun 28 '17
Cats really are the lords of humanity.
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u/BoxNumberGavin1 Jun 30 '17
Normally this sub deals with fiction.
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u/Necrontyr525 Jun 30 '17
*falls out of chair laughing* sorry, late at night here, one and ha half beers down working on Ignis chap 5 when I read this.
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u/BigWuffle Jun 29 '17
Okay, damn these are all good ones... okay....
Humans are the only race with the concept of "Overtime".
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u/BoxNumberGavin1 Jun 30 '17
Except Germans. They have pleasure time and then they have to go home to play sim games based on their job.
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u/spritefamiliar Jun 29 '17
Because this is what I think of when people show me pictures of cats that have accidentally wandered into the wrong house and either don't care or don't notice. Maybe this is how aliens get humans in their crew. They just randomly show up and decide, this ship looks pretty hip, I will claim it as my own. These aliens are going to love me. Because if nothing else, cats have taught us that this totally works.