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Tried to make the reference less obvious, but I should've known I couldn't of got it past you. The first set of four words for the second prompt was Soon, Gesture, Hydration and Profit but then I thought that was *way* too obvious a shout out to OWL.

My canonical knowledge is nowhere near good enough: I haven’t read all the books and those that I have I got from the library.

... animals don't... have... sex?

hS

His sexual awakening removed him from nature, and made him a man—not in that sense, as in he's human.

In the version I remember, after Enkidu had sex non-stop for a week, he left the forest because none of the animals wanted anything to do with him anymore.

"Are you absolutely sure this isn't cheating?"

"Of course it's not. People from other species have got just as much right to play as anyone from World One. It's just a shame that Meyerpire in ESAS went and got herself turned into a human, to be honest, she would've been really useful to have around-"

"Yes, okay, we get it. We got it the last time you brought that up."

"I was just saying-"

"You were just repeating yourself. About twelve times."

A third speaker broke in. "Can we PLEASE focus on the task at hand, ladies? Thirty seconds until kickoff and we're in the Pacific Trials if we win this. Sound off."

"Yeah, okay. Maturin, projectile DPS." Maturin's tone let everyone know she was the first speaker, mostly on account of her exasperation and how it wasn't doing much to mask her nerves. "Going Brig."

"MoonGerbil, hitscan deeps, Zarya." Gerbil was the second speaker and had a pronounced Valley Girl accent, which seemed rather at odds with what was going on.

"DGale, offtank, D.Va." This was a fourth voice, slightly spiky and tired-sounding. "Like I'd give up the chance to pilot a giant robot mech suit thingy."

"ThingWithAllTheTeeth, flex support." This voice was, unlike the others, male. It was older, too, warm and slightly accented. "I'm picking Torb. You know I'm picking Torb-"

"AL!" DGale all but screeched.

"Kidding, kidding, I'm on Lucio, don't worry."

"Um. Is my mic too loud? Um. Hi everyone, I'm Drakie, and I'm a heal support and I'll be playing Moira today! This'll be fun!" This last voice was just... sweet. And even nervier than Maturin's.

"Drakie, your mic's fine the way it is and so are you. Right then. OzCOM. Main tank. Going Rein, because GOATS is good on attack and we can run it on control very easily. We set?"

"All systems cleared for takeoff and Caroline's running smooth as you like," ThingWithAllTheTeeth said with more than a hint of pride. "Let's do this!"

And the team barrelled out of spawn on Sanctum. Four women, one middle-aged man, and one very fluffy Flareon. What a bunch of misfits and freaks they had here.

They loved it.

---

Now, I'm pretty sure Nova follows competitive Overwatch just as much as I do, so he won't mind me mentioning that Apply, Effect, and Hydration are the monikers (or handles, if you prefer) of professional Overwatch League stars. The vignette just kinda flowed from there. Just so everyone's on board, the agents are as follows:-

Maturin: Cass Aubrey, DMS (Aubrey and Maturin are the protagonists of Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander series, and Cass was named for the former of that pair.)

MoonGerbil: Em Perilled, DMS (Em is a weregerbil, which comes up from time to time when she shows up in my board vignettes.)

DGale: Karen Shawcross, NPC (Karen's overriding LO is Ace McShane of the Whoniverse, real name Dorothy Gale McShane.)

ThingWithAllTheTeeth: First Technician Albert Sproggins, NPC (The Thing With All The Teeth is one of the many horrible things, or possibly Things, that haunts the A/V Division courtesy of Wobbles the Clown; Al was a former member of that Division before his transfer to Non-Propaganda Communications)

Drakie: Gabrielle, DWT (Drakie is Gabrielle's nickname for Draco Malfoy, upon whom she has an inexplicable crush. You nickname your favourites, you see.)

OzCOM: Field Commander Lola McCandless, DIA (Lola is ex of XCOM: Enemy Unknown... sort of. Her homefic (again, sort of) was a mega crossover based on crossing XCOM with a bunch of Weird Things. She's from Australia, hence the name.)

And, because this drabble is a bit short, here's the strips for if/when they get into the Overwatch League Itself:



Presenting the HQ Generics!

Poorly designed in Flag Maker Junior and MS Paint!

I am Bad At Things! =]

Prompts. Let's see what you makes of these, and thank you to everyone who suggested a prompt to me in the last fortnight or so.

Today I'm going to use (I believe it was) Delta's idea of giving you four semi-random words and seeing what you come up with.

Prompt 1: Salmon, Anger, Custard, Hand.

Prompt 2: Handle, Apply, Effect, Hydration.

Have fun.

Novastorme

...much like crew served artillery.

...besides, if anything untoward happens, its armor is paper thin if I remember correctly/If War Thunder's specs for it are accurate.

... of people giving me amazing ideas for OFUs that I know full well I would never, ever be able to write.

So you can have this one. ^_^

hS

at the Agatha Christie OFU. Their schemes will never last ten seconds without the grey cells figuring them out and thwarting them in the most ironic way possible.

...then again, that’s more or less what happens at every OFU.

Listed here and here. The latter list includes the original summaries of the fics killed (if possible), so that might give you a better shot at finding what you're looking for.

Reading more missions of the type you're interested in writing is always a good idea. {= )

~Neshomeh

It is all of those things. As Mitchell notes (and this is fascinating, which is why I'm borrowing it), sex in this mythology isn't an act of savagery, or something sinister. Sex is noble, and a civilizing act.

It's also notable that that prostitute isn't really a prostitute: she's a priestess. Sexuality isn't just civilizing, it's actually holy.

And yeah, Gilgamesh is definitely less refined. The version I read was primarily based on the "standard version" which was a later Akkadian version. The earlier Babylonian versions are actually separate stories, and have their own mix of information that's a little different: namely, they're a lot more independent, being a chronicle of several stories rather than a single epic.

In that respect, they're comparable to the XIIth tablet of the standard version, which tells an entirely different story and actively contradicts the rest of the epic (Enkidu dies in a totally different way), and is primarily used as a device to explain the grim details of the underworld to the reader or listener.

... a PPC Training Session, with agents from different departments coming in to demonstrate crucial techniques, all leavened with a healthy dose of humour. Some possibilities:

-As you say, DOGA's Agent Dafydd demonstrates the use of a flamethrower. He's supposed to demonstrate the safe use of a flamethrower, but, well... Dafydd.

-A Slasher demonstrates an exorcism, with a bit of smoke-and-mirrors tech to show the wraith.

-An Assassin or two show off hunting a Suvian in a pantomime-style section. "She's behind you!"

-An Untangler attempts to demonstrate use of a portal to return canons to their own worlds... but the canon characters are mischievous and the Remote Activator plays up. I'm seeing glowing blue doors on both sides of the stage, with identically made-up actors popping in and out of them.

-A demonstration from the Department of Redundancy Department gets interrupted by the Repetitive Department of Repetition. A verbal battle ensues, which has to be broken up by a DIA team.

-A DoSAT tech demonstrates some PPC tech. She calls in various other agents to find the Suvian the CAD is detecting in the crowd.

-A hapless FicPsych nurse attempts to teach the audience meditation and calming exercises - while some of the agents from earlier muck about behind her. (I suspect Dafydd.)

-A recurring gag where the OOC Hobbits agents keep thinking its their turn to do a section now, only for someone else to be announced. Because why not pick on DOOCH?

hS

Theme parks do do those—Celestina Warbeck performances at Universal, lightsaber demonstrations at Disney, etc. It could be a fire-eating demonstration with lots and lots and lots of pyrotechnics. :P

I was trying to come up with a DOGA ride, but I've just got Dafydd in my head listing off different ways we could play with fire for it, so yeah, no.

hS

*hides face*

I really love the Adopt-A-Mini idea, though! Would special variants also include povs?

Of course, there would be a Rudi's Pub and a Cafeteria for food courts at the theme park...

For another ride, what about the Sue Safari? It'd be like that Men in Black ride where you get into a vehicle and you race past aliens shooting at them, except this time you're taking out Sue targets. Instead of a big red button at the end saying "Do Not Push", you have the option blow up a CAD for a bonus round of points.

A ride through Rina/Ave's missions, with the steepness of the track at any given moment determined by how much angst and/or drama is found in that mission. The Little Miss Mary drop is the tallest in the country.

(The country is probably New Caledonia, which as far as I can tell doesn't actually have any theme parks. So I'm technically correct, which is the best kind of correct!)

As for shops: in the style of the Build-a-Bear chain, how about Adopt-a-Mini? You look through the catalogue and select one of the many, many types of mini, which is brought to you to stuff and dress as you please. You choose a name for it - which has to be a plausible misspelling from its canon, of course! - and get a lovely adoption certificate (and a voucher for a half-price bacon/fried egg sandwich at the Cafeteria, naturally).

For the kids, I propose one of those rides where individual cars move at a steady low speed around a flat, twisting track, through a landscape of plants, statues, and anamatronics (there's one at Legoland Windsor which is full of Lego dinosaurs). Obviously it would be the story of a mission, perhaps a classic Jay and Acacia tale?

(I hope anyone who still plays Rollercoaster Tycoon or its relatives is paying attention here!)

hS

I haven't read the particular translation you mention, but I own a different version, so here: talking!

The Epic of Gilgamesh is, to a modern reader, a deeply weird story, but it has resonances. If you're Judeo-Christian: remember how Genesis randomly includes stories like that of Onan (who was killed by God for doing sex wrong), or how Lamech just wanders up to his family and says, "You know how Cain was a murderer and God hated him? Yeah, I'm like that, only much worse", or how there are multiple scenes where some ostensibly sympathetic character gets blind drunk and people do stuff to them while they sleep (Noah and Lot spring to mind)? Or if you're not Christian: you know how Greek mythology has this endless litany of 'and then Zeus turned into a different animal which some girl happened to be really into and/or maybe it was rape, who knows'?

Yeah, Gilgamesh is like that. One of the opening scenes has the gods deciding that Gilgamesh needs a best bud to fight (so he'll stop ignoring his job), so they create a super hairy man named Enkidu. But, problem! Enkidu is quite happy to just chill out in the countryside, hanging with his wild animal besties.

Solution: a hunter who ran into Enkidu asks Gilgamesh if he can borrow a prostitute, then takes her and has her get naked to lure Enkidu away from the animals. After a literal week of constant boinking, Enkidu agrees to go over to Uruk and meet this Gilgamesh bloke. And Gilly and Enki fight, and then they kiss and make up, and then they go off to fight some monsters for kicks.

None of this is hyperbole or subtext; it's all right there on the tablets. It's all like that. Seriously. (Oh, and the prostitute is named 'Sham-hat', because history is awesome.)

The thing about Gilgamesh it's that it's a lot less refined than the Greek myths (or the Biblical ones). Homer, Hesiod, or Moses have a textual tradition behind them: they've been continually recorded, translated, and altered for thousands of years. Gilgamesh, in contrast, is known from original, 4000-year-old clay tablets. It's a record of a sprawling oral tradition at the time it was current. It's fireside stories told by a bunch of different people, all crammed together into an only crudely-joined narrative.

hS