– human young will turn anything into a weapon to mock battle their peers, broom sticks, straws, even their food
– when in large groups human young will display games of mock hunts against each other. The two most common being “tag” where one young will try to catch the other young acting as prey, and “mob” where all of the young will try to catch a single young who acts as the prey. This suggests an instinctive ability for both pack and solo hunting
– human young will often hone their stalking and hunting skills by hiding or attempting to sneak up on others and pouncing with loud sounds meant to intimidate and frighten. This is considered amusing for the attacker and victim
– adult humans will often mock attack their young with their hands or objects to train the young to protect their vital areas and avoid injury. The young find this amusing and will quickly learn to train each other in this manner
– young humans will often attack and attach themselves to an older human’s legs, arms, or back, hanging on despite being dragged or carried while the adult human walks away. Both humans seems to find the experience entertaining
– young humans are extremely territorial and will attempt to drive off others from food, toys, and areas they have claimed as theirs with physical and verbal attacks. Fortunately, most adult humans actively try to train this behavior out, insisting the young come to an agreement or share resources and territory.
– young humans constantly search for new territory, dens, and resources. They will climb trees, shelving, anything they can reach. They will climb under and behind things. If there are no suitable hiding areas they will construct them out of blankets and cushions or any other available item.
– young humans display a strong pack instinct, quickly forming social groups and defending their group against other groups. Often they will split their own group in order to mock battle each other in contests
– HUMAN YOUNG WILL BITE IF DISTRESSED OR ANGRY AND EMIT LOUD NOISES THAT CALL MATURE HUMANS TO AID THEM
– human young will beg for domesticated carnivores as companions, and if gifted with one will pack bond with it to an extreme point.
– human young will carry a toy and try to protect and nurture it as if the toy was their own young
– human young require constant stimulation in the form of games or information. They will constantly question things and can spend extraordinary amounts of time asking “why”, often while poking the subject in question
– human young will try to eat anything at least once. Anything. If it will fit into their mouth they will attempt to eat it. If it will not fit into their mouth they will lick it.
-human young will voluntarily deprive themselves of oxygen to the point of unconsciousness in an attempt to trigger protective instincts in older humans so they get their way
– human young display great interest in mimicry, often dressing up as different professions, species, and objects. They also display great skill in mimicking the calls and body language of other species.
*Example: one human young had me quite concerned there was another Treawalbil in distress and I searched for quite some time before I discovered that the young was mimicking a Treawalbil distress trill with complete accuracy.
*Second Example: Human young have begun to wear wear “hats” with artificial crests similar to a Treawalbil and some have begun painting colorful patterns to their arms in imitation of our camouflage.– human young communicate constantly and spread information quickly not only among their own social group but other social groups as well.
*Example: The human young who mimicked a Treawalbil distress trill taught their social group and soon I was surrounded by human young calling out in distress. This caused the Treawalbil researchers much anxiety so the adult humans suggested teaching the young other calls. The human young learned enough for basic communication at an astonishing rate, but then other social groups we had not taught began using the same calls as well. Even adult humans began using the calls to communicate with us without translators.– Young humans will gift beings and creatures they believe to be in their social group with handmade objects, interesting specimens they have collected, or food. Strangely enough, a being does not have to be human in order to belong to a human’s social group.
@scarvenartist – I feel like you’d get a kick out of this, somehow. ^^
Tag: human beings are strange to aliens bc Reasons
Humans are weird: babies
So I’m a big fan of the idea that humans are “space orcs”, and today it got me thinking about something else.
Human birth is pretty unique among mammals. Not only are our birth canals narrower than standard due to being bipeds, but we have a larger head to body ratio then any other mammal. As a result of this, the only way to fit a baby’s head through a person’s birth canal is for them to be born very early, and massively underdeveloped.
Other mammals are capable of walking and running within the first day of being born, where as a human baby doesn’t even have strong enough neck muscles to hold up their own head.
They can’t see, they can’t crawl, they don’t have the coordination to grab things, and they have a soft spot on the skull that leaves part of the brain incredibly vulnerable. And while an adult can adapt to a range of temperatures, babies have to be constantly monitored to make sure they aren’t chilled or over heating.
Can you imagine you’re an alien, who knows humans as these highly adaptable endurance machines that can eat almost anything and survive tremendous physical pain and injury, and you learn that their young are so fragile. That they emerge from the womb barely able to function biologically.
And suddenly you remember all those humans on your crew who get attached little creatures. The toughest, burliest people who will coo and coddle over fluffy little cats and call lizards babies. And you realise that their whole species developed to care for these tiny, vulnerable, defenceless babies, and that kind of attachment tends to spill over a little.
And now you understand that old adage, that the most dangerous humans are the ones whose young are in danger. Because if they’re going to stand a chance at surviving until adulthood then human parents have to be willing to defend their children with their lives, and that is exactly what they do.
Holy crap. That means that we’re like pouchless marsupials (though not as extreme in the underdeveloped infant department).
It fits that we’re called Space Australians.
OKay this is my favourite response so far
To be fair, the mammals “born able to run within hours” are the terrestrial ungulate mammals. They are newcomers and parvenus and they die when they step on a bee. They only showed up when grasslands became common, the meme-loving fucks – they’re all matcha lattes and YEET. Like, okay, we get it, hoofed ungulates: you’re vegan, you really like synthpop, you’ve “discovered” a “new” continent, you ran fifteen miles this morning, your baby walked within eight hours of birth, sure. Fine. You’re cute, diversity is important, you can stay. We need something to eat, after all.
But ungulate mammals are REALLY poor representation of Mammalia.The ancestral Mammal, rodentlike, that gave rise to Placentals and Marsupials, would have been more like – well, more like today’s Placentals and Marsupials. More like us. More like badgers and dogs and monkeys and hamsters. Born blind and naked, and hidden discreetly from polite society, until the horrible alien thing looks more like a Real Animal.
Consider the mouse: born completely naked, hairless, blind, deaf, helpless, only able to drag itself to a nipple with terrific effort. Consider the cat: born as a thinly furred sausage with eyes and ears glued shut for weeks. Consider the newborn dog. Big cats. Rats. Bears. Squirrels. Sure, consider the marsupials; also, weasels and rabbits and porcupines and pangolins. All the mammals that aren’t the bloody ungulates.
Rodents are born practically fetal, their limbs mere buds, their skin see-through, their eyes bulging in their transparent skulls. Their bones aren’t even opaque! You can see their dark livers, the white milk in their bellies! Their eyelids are welded shut, their heads too large to raise. They are a lot more alien than a human baby – a liminal animal indeed. Certainly, rodents grow quickly, because they die so young. Their helpless childhood is still proportionately a large chunk of their life – nearly the same proportion as ours, actually. But they are born like uncooked eggs. I would add a picture of a newborn rat pup here, but young and impressionable children read this blog.
And we are not the weakest of the Furry Mammal clan, if we zoom out. It takes about two weeks for a kitten to open their eyes. It takes about four weeks for their hearing to come online. This is because these senses are still developing. They’re born undercooked, too!
By contrast with many mammals, human babies come out with their senses active (unless that specific baby is blind or deaf or has another sensory disability)*. It takes a while for human babies to focus their eyes, because we usually have a lot of apps installed (color vision, facial recognition) that take forever to boot up the first time, and focusing requires muscle control – but human babies are goggling at the world with open eyes, and processing what they see, as soon as they come out. Human babies come out able to hear, if hearing is included with that specific baby. We are born able to record and process sensory information, where our other mammalian cousins can’t.
I mean, I am so guilty of this trope too, I love it to pieces and use it all the time. Even more hypocritically, I personally agree with the “Fourth Trimester” theory, which is that human babies need about three months to adjust themselves to life outside the womb. Thus, the first three months are the “Fourth Trimester,” where you just carry the baby around, and it boggles helplessly at the world and goes “ugh!!” That is the part that makes sense when you look at the birth canal etc, and you go “oh, we’re so undeveloped,” and you mope because you can’t see yourself ever getting your life back. But the first three months is only a small piece of the longer story of human babyhood, and the “weak, helpless” stage is not particularly unusual among our mammalian family. It just seems so terribly long because we compare it to horses and rats, which is unfair on everyone. And at some point we get our lives back, and can’t remember where the time went. And it isn’t as bad as it could be. I mean, we can usually shit on our own. So that’s something!
No, it really is something. Many baby mammals cannot excrete on their own. Cats, for example; the mama cat must lick certain areas of the baby to stimulate it to poo and pee. They can’t do it by themselves. Mama cat must lick them religiously, to make their bowels and bladder work, or the waste will back up and the kitten/cub will die. This is relatively common among the Furry Mammals. Every kitten on Earth had to be forcibly poo’ed for the first three weeks of its life. Every tiger took six weeks (!!) before it could pee by itself. And that’s just the felids. Don’t talk to me about werewolf cubs unless you’re ready to make the decision on whether they need diapers, you cowards.
Humans, though, are born perfectly capable of shitting by ourselves. Which is rather nice, when you consider the alternative.
So if you take us in context of the other baffling and amazing animals on Earth, we are not really particularly “undeveloped,” taken as a whole. Not particularly in comparison to our cousins, whom an alien would find just as strange and foreign. We humans are simply hitting milestones at our own pace – sometimes faster, sometimes slower, always legitimate, always because an ancestor dodged death once by doing something slightly different. Our infants are for carrying in our arms, so it doesn’t matter that they can’t hold their heads up – but they are born shitting, and boggling with their enormous eyes.
Anyway, aliens would probably regard all this nonsense in the same way as the dinosaurs did – “Lord, what fools these mammals be,” at first, and then “OH FUCK THE MAMMALS DID WHAT?”
“Parenting is important,” reply the badgers and the bears and the humans, aggressively cuddling something they call a baby, although they might be taking the piss: “Really, we will bond with and nurture ANYTHING that meets our vague criteria. Isn’t cuteness just the best thing you’ve ever seen? Don’t your hormones just SQUISH when you see something with specific proportions? You know what’s inherently rewarding? HOLDING SMALL THINGS AND MAKING A SOUND ABOUT IT.”
“Erm, I guess?” replies the alien or the dinosaur. “I guess… I guess your baby…. thing…. is very …. important? To you??”
“YES I LOVE IT A LOT”
“I …. see that you do. It’s … cute.”
“Cuteness is a powerful weapon,” the mammal says seriously. “Oh, also? This is our planet now.”
* Many humans are born without the ability to hear, see, see in color, eliminate, socialize, process sensory information, etc. Or they may lose these abilities later. They are valid, human and loved. These “space Australian” posts are about generalising humans, so I generalise here, but I don’t want to make anyone feel bad.
id wreak mayhem for a really good scifi where sight was considered as exotic and numinous as telepathy by the protag species
#everybody else uses sonar or long whiskers and that thing with the sensing electrical impulses#meanwhile: humans can ‘see’ which is a thing which is like and yet unlike ordinary perception#it would also only ever come into play in the same frivolous ‘VULCAN STRENGTH’ sort of way as Spock’s extra attributes#for maximum effect vision would be faithfully written as 100% an asspull in the best waywhat the fuck dude this is awesome i want this too now
Okay, but what about those deep sea fish that produce light at a wavelength that *only they can see.* Predators that can somehow sense you in a completely undectable and unfathomable manner to you; they might as well be psychic.
YES, EXACTLY–vision is SUCH an asspull?? Sometimes it’s “"dark”“ and we can’t see anything. And also we’re impaired for plot reasons! Sometimes ALIEN WEAPONRY or otherwise-innocuous ship components are ”“too bright”“ and we yell and try to hide, subject to some sort of obscure, tortuous imperative. The rest of the time we can UNERRINGLY tell when anyone is trying to play pranks on us, the names and emotional/physical status of EVERY SINGLE BEING IN THE ROOM (or, when outside civilized warrens, ”“line of sight”“)–and yes, of course, can’t forget about our nigh-mythical fighting arts revolving around insane dodging skills.
And SNIPING. And also, god, fuck–don’t forget about completely arbitrary “”””atmospheric disturbances””” (fog, smoke–the new “ionic interference”) ALSO plottasatically rendering our abilities moot.
Plus, some people have more powerful Vision than others, but some people have a very short effective range of Vision. However, humans have come up with devices that “change the angles of refraction” of the “light” so that the naturally impaired have their skills enhanced–but they can always be knocked off their faces or be broken.
Also some people are terrible at normal Vision work, but have excellent night vision and are skilled at working under adverse conditions.
Oooh, and human art is almost entirely Vision based. Think about non-seeing aliens trying to access the majority of human art!
IM!!! SCREAMING!!! GLASSES. Glasses are SUCH another great Weird Alien Gimmick. God–you get all used to your Human friend and their bizarre abilities, you just start to really trust in and rely on them in tight places and problem-solving a little bit, then you get fucken marooned on a fucken planetoid somewhere and they just in this very small little voice, after you have pulled them from the wreckage and sat down to go over your options, inform you that they’ve lost their glasses.
Oh my god and an episode where we’re up against Evil Humans and our heros turn to their humans like ‘you can see them, right, you can tell when they’re near? you can counter them?’ and our hero is genuinely shaken and worried— they’ve got high-tech military mechanical enhancers, the devices strapped to their heads let them see anywhere, they can operate in near-absolute ‘darkness’, they can operate in near-lethal ‘brightness’, they can see through walls— not doors, not glass, but walls.
Then we have a heroic scene where the crew’s human is the scrappy, desperate underdog for once instead of the cool and collected superbeing. It is super cool. The human and the captain probably mack wildly on one another in medbay after this. Roll credits.
Person 1: I dunno, dude. This ‘light’ stuff sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me. I mean, how do we know it’s even real?
Person 2: Seriously, how can something be a wave and a particle? That doesn’t even make sense.
Mysterious Human: Even if you cannot perceive the light, you can feel its warmth–
Person 1: Oh my god, please shut it with the mystical hoo-hah. You’re insufferable.
Mysterious, somewhat exasperated Human: the ‘light’ enters the sensitive paired apertures in our faces, passing through biological lenses and chambers to stimulate specific nerves we call ‘rods’ and ‘cones’. one set of nerves tells us the volume of light we’re perceiving, while the other estimates the wavelength frequency. the total input creates in our mind a continuous sonarscape of immense complexity, where we can perceive ‘textures’ that are impossible to understand with mere sound or touch. this is why my people’s communication devices are small, flat, silent boards: we ‘read’ the patterns of light they emit as language and ‘watch’ the patterns of light they emit as sonarscapes.
Captain: okay…. sounds fake, but okay…
And they just keep on making up new bullshit rules for how light works, like
Navigator: Warp drive engaged. We are approaching 90% of the Lorentz limit.
Human: What now?
Navigator: Oh, uh, it’s really complex, but lemme try. So, matter can only move so fast through space, right? Like absolutely, nothing can ever ever possibly go faster than like about 3 hundred million meters per second–
Human: Ah yes. The speed of light.
Navigator: …oh for fuck’s sake.
Captain: My god! Time! Has… frozen!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
Captain: What?
Human: Remember how light is a wave and a particle?
Captain: Yes, we mention this every episode.
Human: Yeah, light’s frozen along with everything else. I can’t see shit.
Captain: My god! Our sonar doesn’t work either! The soundwaves— they can’t propagate through this frozen air! We’ll have to use just our whiskers!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
The fanfiction for this show has to be amazing.
“Shh. Don’t try to hide your needs, Captain,” Hue Mann soothed. “My sight has told me all about your traumatic memories of the war.”
“What?” Captain gasped. “But…how…?”
“The light knows all,” explained Hue. “Time slows down at the speed of light. It sees all of the past..and all of the future.”
“And what is it telling you now?” questioned the Captain.
Hue leaned in close. “It tells me, ‘Mate with them now, you lovestruck fool!”
“Damn you, Hue Mann. Damn you and your penetrating ‘eyes.’”
“Oh,” breathed Hue, voice husky and sexual. “That’s not all my eyes can…penetrate.”
goddamn, you people amaze me.
I love the idea that the protag species has telepathy as ‘boring normal standard’ senses and they can’t understand why human thoughts seems so strange, fragmented, occasionally blank… until they realise that a great of human thought is ‘visual’ and so can’t be heard…
“Lori, what do your Human eyes see?”
“Coupla billboards, and it looks like it might rain.”
This keeps getting better
This is so cute. Your human crewmember is getting a crush on another human. Time to observe the humans’ weird yet endearing courtship rituals.
“Tell me all about them! What do you like about them?”
“Well, they have these amazing eyes…”
“Yeah? Better at the the wavemapping thing than yours?”
“…I don’t know how good their eyes are at seeing. They’re just this beautiful shade of brown.”
“Wait. You wavemap each other’s wavemapping organs? And have opinions about what nice frequencies they refract the waves at?”
“Yes? What’s so strange about this?”
“I thought your ‘vision’ was passive. Do you listen to each other’s ears too? And like the smell of each other’s noses?”
“Like you’ve never touched someone’s whiskers with your whiskers.”
“…That’s different.”
I just really like the idea of sighted humans telling their friends-who-don’t-see about how interesting-looking they are. Like, “You’re awfully pretty, you know that? You’re such a lovely shade of blue.”
And the friend’s like, “YEAH sure buddy” but they are secretly charmed, like someone discovering a new form of astrology that suits them really well – quietly thinking it over later when they’re alone, like I’m blue!! Yeah!! What’s blue?
@unmarkedcards isnt this the plot of a short story you read?
Imagine trying to explain colors when they do ask though
“What’s blue?”
“It comes in many forms? Light blue is like how rain feels when water is needed”“What the HELL that’s beautiful! So what other forms does it come in?”
“There’s dark blue, that feels like sadness and remorse”
“Shit… How are they so different?”
“Light comes in many forms and colors and each human sees them a little differently”
“You sound insane… you know that right?”
“You look insane rubbing your whiskers on everything”
“Touché ”
Mom Friend
Ok but imagine how the aliens would react to the idea of the “mom friend”. Like the crew is losing their mind over the fact their human is reckless, doing so many dangerous things that would have killed any other race but of course it’s fine because it’s a human and those things are so hard to kill anyway.
The only planet that is a danger to a human is the one it came from.
So when the human-Kat comes into the control room with that adorable hopeful face a lot of the crew members are instantly on guard. The last time Human-Kat had that expression they almost lost Xe’rex to the waves of that one planet that Human-Kat just had to “Surf”.
“Can my friend Lola come meet us for the 34-OJ mission? She’s right in our pathway to that new planet? Please?” Huamn-Kat says and though they want nothing more then to say no, the crew of 626- Launch can’t say anything else other then yes. They know how humans react when left alone for too long. Humans claim that their greatest criminals are placed in “solitary confinement” as punishment which goes very far to show how much bonds affect their life spans.
Human-Kat needs human interaction to stay alive and sane (or as sane as humans can be)
So the crew agrees to have Friend-Lola on the voyage, slightly terrified of having two humans. But when the new human arrives it is not what they expected.
“Kat, have you finished your paperwork? Come on man, you know it’s due in like a day. Get on it.”
“Whoa dude, I love you ok. But no. You are not going to go surfing down there. It’s for your own good.”
“Girl you got the promotion?! Yes! Ok Ok! We need to celebrate with girls night in!”
“Hey I have some tissues in my bag somewhere hold on. There ya go.”
“Look at this game I picked up on RE-vr’. It’s just like Cards against Humanity but space!”
“Go. To. Sleep. Kat.”
“Remember that pact we made in high school? The one where I would stop you from doing something that will get you arrested or killed? Yeah well I’m calling it into action and saying that you do not lick anything on a unknown planet!“
This Human…holds common sense? That is possible for that race?!
After Friend-Lola leaves they ask Human-Kat about this and she merely laughs while swiping through photographs she had taken with the other human.
“Well Lola is the mom friend.”
And the crew of 626-Luanch are so confused because they have already seen photos of Human-Kat’s birth givers and they look nothing alike not to mention Human-Kat already has a Mom. Do humans have more then one “Mom”?
“Oh you know a mom friend is the one friend in a group that keeps everyone else from dying.” Human-Kat jokes.
But the crew is amazed. They have learn the reason humanity haven’t killed itself off. They send a message to every out post in the area.
If xe have a human on-board make sure that they are accompanied by a Mom Friend. These are the humans in charge of keeping other humans alive and well-behaved.
Oh my god
The human classification system is in constant evolution, but the addition of Mom Friend has helped with establishing parameters for the care and well-being of human crew members. There have been cases of incompatibility, especially with sub-class Asshole of the designation Cranky, but the provision of a designated “Ship Mom” has generally created greater stability for vessels with multiple humans on board.
An important note for Mom Friend humans is that they must be provided with designated human crew to care for. Even with said provision, some will expand their interest to monitoring and nurturing all sapients on board. Such monitoring may include anything from restructuring the mess to provide optimal nutrition with occasional “treats” to engineering a way to ease molting with the application of a warm, nubby cloth and soft cooing. Some Mom Friends can be stopped from this; there is a ritual surrounding the phrase “I was just trying to help” that is still being investigated for potential use after it is properly translated and understood.
Care should be taken to ensure that Mom Friend sub-class “Mama Bear” is kept away from weapons storage if there is any interest in survivors after a ship is boarded.
Any Mom Friend designated human using “that’s it” in a declarative manner should be treated with level III diplomatic protocols. If the phrase is accompanied by some variation of “had enough,” evacuation of the immediate area is advised.
Humans are adorable.
Supporting evidence:
1. Humans say ‘ow’, even if they haven’t actually been hurt. It’s just a thing they say when they think they might have been hurt, but aren’t sure yet.
2. Humans collect shiny things and decorate their bodies and nests with them. The shinier the better, although each individual has a unique taste for style and colouring
3. Humans are not an aquatic or even amphibious species, but they flock to bodies of water simply to play in it. They can’t even hold their breath all that long; they just love to splash!
4. When night falls and the sky goes dark, humans become drowsy and begin to cocoon themselves in soft, fluffy bedding.
5. Some humans spend time in each other’s nests! Just for fun! It’s not their nest; they’re just visiting each other.
6. Some humans use pigments and dyes to make their bodies flashy and colourful! They even attach shiny dangly bits to their cartalidgous membranes!
7. Humans are very clever, and sometimes adopt creatures from other species into their family units. They don’t seem to notice the obvious differences, and often raise them alongside their own young!
8. If a human sees another creature in distress, they can commonly be observed trying to help! Even at their own risk, most humans are deeply compassionate creatures!
9. If a human hears a particularity catchy sound or tune, it will often mimic it, even to the point of annoying themselves!
10. Sneezes are entirely involuntary, and completely adorable. Especially when the human in question becomes frustrated
11. Humans love treats!!! Some more than others. Many humans will save these treats specifically for a later date when they are in need of comfort or reassurance. IE, pickles, pop tarts, Popsicles, etc
12. They’re learning to travel in space!!! They can’t get very far, but they’re trying!!! So far, they’ve made it to the end of their yard, and have found rocks
this sounds like it was written by a really enthusiastic alien humanologist
i love this because it makes me look at seemingly mundane things from a totally different perspective and appreciate humans so much more
this is actually so precious ohmygod
something i think about a lot is what if alien species have less biodiversity on their planets. like if they’ve got maybe 20, 25 species of bugs, total. so they come to earth and they’re like “whoa.” or they’ll like be like walking down the street and they’re like “ok what’s that” pointing at a st bernard and you’re like “oh that’s a dog” and they’re like “whoa, neat, i’ve heard about dogs.”
and you walk for a while longer and then they point at a yorkie and they’re like “what’s that?” and you kind of have to be like “…that. that’s also a dog.” and they’re like “wait, really?” and you’re like “yeah.” and it takes them a while to absorb this but then you just keep walking.
and like you’re going for a while and somebody’s walking their bull terrier and you’re like trying to walk faster hoping your alien friend doesn’t see but no dice they’re like WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT and you’re like “that. that is a dog” and they let out an anguished wail
and like every time after that they see a weird four legged creature they’re like “that BETTER not be a goddamn dog” and half the time you gotta wince and be like “actually,”
“Humans are weird” idea
It seems to always be the case that aliens have names that are “unpronounceable by the human tongue.” But, y’know, humans are actually really good mimics. We can do impressions of anything, and some of us are really good at it. What if that was a special skill of ours that was constantly surprising the aliens?
Alien talks about human like s/he’s not there, only to be shocked when its own language comes out of that strange little mouth.
Alien can’t figure out WHAT that noise onboard is, only to find human crewmate pranking it. (“As soon as he leaves, I’m gonna do the sound of a failing hover engine, okay? Just see where he looks first!”)
Alien hears a different noise and a thud, then “Sorry, I tripped.” (”But you squeaked.” “Yeah, didn’t mean to. Sounded kinda dumb.”)
Alien is alarmed to hear the sound of two Dangerous Animals coming from the containment room. Thinks the one has multiplied. Runs in, find human yowling back at it. (“It seemed lonely, so I was talking to it. Reminds me of a cat I had once.”)
The away team is threatened by a Large Animal protecting its young. Alien Captain knows what to do. Shoves the human up front and points. “Make the noises that the little ones are making. This is your time to shine.”
It’s early in the morning and nobody will probably read this but I just had the greatest ‘humans are space orcs’ idea
Imagine if humans are the only species that experiences impatience.
Think about it. Most prey animals are extremely patient. Ever meet a deer or a rabbit in the woods and hold still to try and out-wait the thing? I can guarantee your brain starts sending bored bored bored messages very quickly, and your instincts start telling you to give up and find something else to do. Humans can do the patience thing- as evidenced by our endurance hunting methods- but our instincts tell us not to. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this feels like a predator development. I have the idea that if aliens are mostly prey-based, and we’re predator-based, then the aliens will be very patient and we just aren’t.
As an evolutionary development, being impatient can be brilliant. It means that we didn’t sit around and wait for the ice caps to warm up, we knew we didn’t have the technology to survive that level of cold, but we did it anyways. We were trying to send people into the sky and then into space before we had fully figured it all out, simply because we didn’t want to wait and think it out, we wanted SPACE and we wanted it NOW. And personally, I tend to be extremely productive and inventive when I’m feeling impatient. Mechanic is booked for a few days? I’ll figure out how to change my oil and tires and tint my car’s windows myself. Strawberry season is still 4 months away? I’ll get a heat lamp setup and grow them myself. Friends can’t visit and help move furniture for a week? I’ll build a trolley out of some toy cars, tape, a chessboard, and do all the lifting myself.
This impatience is what made us design faster cars, faster computers, faster internet, faster communication, methods of growing food faster, of processing food faster, we’re always looking for the quickest and most efficient thing simply because we are not patient.
Impatience leads to a type of creativity and persistence that patience just doesn’t have.
Imagine aliens starting to realize this.
“You got to your moon before you had developed LED screens??? You didn’t even have computers that could do basic math?!”
“Well, what else were we gonna do, sit around and wait?”“Your planes don’t have gravitational control? Don’t you experience discomfort from the acceleration and directional changes?”
“Sure. But we needed to get on the other side of the planet in a decent amount of time.”
“So… what you’re articulating is that you’d rather have physical distress than have to have a long journey?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”“Human____, our mechanical teams will be on site in several of your earth hours, so we won’t be going anywhere until then.”
“Screw that. Where’s the manual for this thing? I bet I can fix it.”
“But you don’t have any mechanical training.”
“I also don’t feel like sitting around on this rock for ages.”“You’re back already? I thought your medical representative told you to not be walking on that limb for another of your weeks.”
“Ugh. I just can’t anymore. I’ve got to get up and move and do something, anything.”
“But doesn’t that hurt to walk on?”
“Absolutely.”
“…You would choose pain over waiting?”
“What can I say, I’m not a patient person.”Like aliens just being baffled that humans would rather work hard or struggle with a problem or even experience pain and discomfort. They, as prey species, are used to just waiting it out. They don’t have the same impatience driving them to get up and go and to fight through things just because they can’t wait any longer.
Bonus:
Human: Ain’t nobody got time for that!
Alien: Why don’t you have time? Is something scheduled soon?
Human: No, I just don’t feel like wasting time.
Alien: But… it’s not wasted. It’s time well spent. And you do technically have the time to spare for that. If there’s nothing scheduled, then you do ‘got time for that’.
Human: No. No, I don’t. It’s just… no.“Isn’t one of your most famous phrases ‘good things come to those who wait’ why do none of you wait?”
“Because our response to that phrase is ‘fuck that’ so nobody actually says it unless they’re being a jerk who doesn’t want to help.”
okay, so, I love all the posts that run off the assumption that humans are the most ridiculous sapient species in the galaxy
but what if it’s just the other way around
what if humans are notoriously straitlaced and obsessed with protocol. the bureaucrats of the stars.
which is obviously something we would constantly try to complain about and disprove only for some Alpha Centaurian to be like “Captain, your species formalized spirituality, repeatedly, and a recurring theme therein is that the heavens themselves are run as a bureaucracy. Even your rebellions and revolutions are meticulously planned.”
it’s not a bad thing, per se, to have a human on your team — analytical minds, good diplomats (if only because one human etiquette system can be more complex and even contradictory than the vastly varied customs of an entire species) — but be prepared for them to call attention to moral quandaries and loopholes that never would have occurred to you.
and speaking of loopholes, do be careful, because the only thing worse than a human armed with an ironclad system of rules is a human who’s found a gaping hole in them.
“You’re telling me there was a mass movement to name a boat something dumb as a joke?”
“First of all, it wasn’t a mass movement, and second of all, the boat was by no means the first time nor the last.”
“…Exactly how much of Earth comedy is based on incongruous branding?”
Hear me out here: Humans as both.
Like most sapient species assume the above; humans are straitlaced, meticulous, and methodical. They follow strict rules which dictate their social interactions and even a slight variation is considered taboo. They are the quintessential bureaucrats.
Except when they’re not.
We’ve talked about humans method of scientific exploration and advancement involving a ridiculous amount of danger for all parties involved. But, ya know, we write it all down in a very orderly manner and get published and peer reviewed. And then other humans copy the incredibly dangerous experiment to see what happens for themselves.
Humans survived the volatile early years of their species rise through community-bonding. They put the needs of a group of individuals over all else; hunting as a group, eating as a group, raising families as a group, and sometimes dying as a group. This tendency to form strong bonds means that while a human’s signed contract can always be trusted. It also means that a human cannot be trusted to not rip that contract up and say “Fuck it” if an individual with whom they have a community-bond is in danger. Other species are baffled to discover that the individual in question need not be human, or even sapient. Stories of humans who have defended what would normally be considered prey animals by other omnivorous species, of humans who have killed to defend their non-human crew mates, even one story (surely just a story, it can’t be true) of an entire crew of humans who elevated a simple non-sapient cleaning bot to officer’s rank and threatened rebellion if it was decommissioned.
So, sure, humans are logical and awfully organized for such a diverse species. They make phenomenal bureaucrats and politicians. They’re highly sought after as strategists and advisors to royalty the galaxy over.
But, they’re also appear to take great pleasure in looking the rules dead in the eyes and very deliberately thumbing their nose as those rules. Because, the rules (and logic) say you probably shouldn’t jump off a cliff into unknown waters and humans have made multiple sports based entirely off that concept.
as an individual: logical, organized
as a species: hold my beer
I love that Stabby the robot has become part of the Canon of “human interaction with aliens”.
On the topic of humans being everyone’s favorite Intergalactic versions of Gonzo the Great:
Come on you guys, I’ve seen all the hilarious additions to my “humans are the friendly ones” post. We’re basically Steve Irwin meets Gonzo from the Muppets at this point. I love it.But what if certain species of aliens have Rules for dealing with humans?
- Don’t eat their food. If human food passes your lips/beak/membrane/other way of ingesting nutrients, you will never be satisfied with your ration bars again.
- Don’t tell them your name. Humans can find you again once they know your name and this can be either life-saving or the absolute worst thing that could happen to you, depending on whether or not they favor you. Better to be on the safe side.
- Winning a human’s favor will ensure that a great deal of luck is on your side, but if you anger them, they are wholly capable of wiping out everything you ever cared about. Do not anger them.
- If you must anger them, carry a cage of X’arvizian bloodflies with you, for they resemble Earth mo-skee-toes and the human will avoid them.
- This does not always work. Have a last will and testament ready.
- Do not let them take you anywhere on your planet that you cannot fly a ship from. Beings who are spirited away to the human kingdom of Aria Fiv-Ti Won rarely return, and those that do are never quite the same.
Basically, humans are like the Fair Folk to some aliens and half of them are scared to death and the others are like alien teenagers who are like “I dare you to ask a human to take you to Earth”.
We knew about the planet called Earth for centuries before we made contact with its indigenous species, of course. We spent decades studying them from afar.
The first researchers had to fight for years to even get a grant, of course. They kept getting laughed out of the halls. A T-Class Death World that had not only produced sapient life, but a Stage Two civilization? It was a joke, obviously. It had to be a joke.
And then it wasn’t. And we all stopped laughing. Instead, we got very, very nervous.
We watched as the human civilizations not only survived, but grew, and thrived, and invented things that we had never even conceived of. Terrible things, weapons of war, implements of destruction as brutal and powerful as one would imagine a death world’s children to be. In the space of less than two thousand years, they had already produced implements of mass death that would have horrified the most callous dictators in the long, dark history of the galaxy.
Already, the children of Earth were the most terrifying creatures in the galaxy. They became the stuff of horror stories, nightly warnings told to children; huge, hulking, brutish things, that hacked and slashed and stabbed and shot and burned and survived, that built monstrous metal things that rumbled across the landscape and blasted buildings to ruin.
All that preserved us was their lack of space flight. In their obsession with murdering one another, the humans had locked themselves into a rigid framework of physics that thankfully omitted the equations necessary to achieve interstellar travel.
They became our bogeymen. Locked away in their prison planet, surrounded by a cordon of non-interference, prevented from ravaging the galaxy only by their own insatiable need to kill one another. Gruesome and terrible, yes – but at least we were safe.
Or so we thought.
The cities were called Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the moment of their destruction, the humans unlocked a destructive force greater than any of us could ever have believed possible. It was at that moment that those of us who studied their technology knew their escape to be inevitable, and that no force in the universe could have hoped to stand against them.
The first human spacecraft were… exactly what we should have expected them to be. There were no elegant solar wings, no sleek, silvered hulls plying the ocean of stars. They did not soar on the stellar currents. They did not even register their existence. Humanity flew in the only way it could: on all-consuming pillars of fire, pounding space itself into submission with explosion after explosion. Their ships were crude, ugly, bulky things, huge slabs of metal welded together, built to withstand the inconceivable forces necessary to propel themselves into space through violence alone.
It was almost comical. The huge, dumb brutes simply strapped an explosive to their backs and let it throw them off of the planet.
We would have laughed, if it hadn’t terrified us.
Humanity, at long last, was awake.
It was a slow process. It took them nearly a hundred years to reach their nearest planetary neighbor; a hundred more to conquer the rest of their solar system. The process of refining their explosive propulsion systems – now powered by the same force that had melted their cities into glass less than a thousand years before – was slow and haphazard. But it worked. Year by year, they inched outward, conquering and subduing world after world that we had deemed unfit for habitation. They burrowed into moons, built orbital colonies around gas giants, even crafted habitats that drifted in the hearts of blazing nebulas. They never stopped. Never slowed.
The no-contact cordon was generous, and was extended by the day. As human colonies pushed farther and farther outward, we retreated, gave them the space that they wanted in a desperate attempt at… stalling for time, perhaps. Or some sort of appeasement. Or sheer, abject terror. Debates were held daily, arguing about whether or not first contact should be initiated, and how, and by whom, and with what failsafes. No agreement was ever reached.
We were comically unprepared for the humans to initiate contact themselves.
It was almost an accident. The humans had achieved another breakthrough in propulsion physics, and took an unexpected leap of several hundred light years, coming into orbit around an inhabited world.
What ensued was the diplomatic equivalent of everyone staring awkwardly at one another for a few moments, and then turning around and walking slowly out of the room.
The human ship leapt away after some thirty minutes without initiating any sort of formal communications, but we knew that we had been discovered, and the message of our existence was being carried back to Terra.
The situation in the senate could only be described as “absolute, incoherent panic”. They had discovered us before our preparations were complete. What would they want? What demands would they make? What hope did we have against them if they chose to wage war against us and claim the galaxy for themselves? The most meager of human ships was beyond our capacity to engage militarily; even unarmed transport vessels were so thickly armored as to be functionally indestructible to our weapons.
We waited, every day, certain that we were on the brink of war. We hunkered in our homes, and stared.
Across the darkness of space, humanity stared back.
There were other instances of contact. Human ships – armed, now – entering colonized space for a few scant moments, and then leaving upon finding our meager defensive batteries pointed in their direction. They never initiated communications. We were too frightened to.
A few weeks later, the humans discovered Alphari-296.
It was a border world. A new colony, on an ocean planet that was proving to be less hospitable than initially thought. Its military garrison was pitifully small to begin with. We had been trying desperately to shore it up, afraid that the humans might sense weakness and attack, but things were made complicated by the disease – the medical staff of the colonies were unable to devise a cure, or even a treatment, and what pitifully small population remained on the planet were slowly vomiting themselves to death.
When the human fleet arrived in orbit, the rest of the galaxy wrote Alphari-296 off as lost.
I was there, on the surface, when the great gray ships came screaming down from the sky. Crude, inelegant things, all jagged metal and sharp edges, barely holding together. I sat there, on the balcony of the clinic full of patients that I did not have the resources or the expertise to help, and looked up with the blank, empty, numb stare of one who is certain that they are about to die.
I remember the symbols emblazoned on the sides of each ship, glaring in the sun as the ships landed inelegantly on the spaceport landing pads that had never been designed for anything so large. It was the same symbol that was painted on the helmets of every human that strode out of the ships, carrying huge black cases, their faces obscured by dark visors. It was the first flag that humans ever carried into our worlds.
It was a crude image of a human figure, rendered in simple, straight lines, with a dot for the head. It was painted in white, over a red cross.
The first human to approach me was a female, though I did not learn this until much later – it was impossible to ascertain gender through the bulky suit and the mask. But she strode up the stairs onto the balcony, carrying that black case that was nearly the size of my entire body, and paused as I stared blankly up at her. I was vaguely aware that I was witnessing history, and quite certain that I would not live to tell of it.
Then, to my amazement, she said, in halting, uncertain words, “You are the head doctor?”
I nodded.
The visor cleared. The human bared its teeth at me. I learned later that this was a “grin”, an expression of friendship and happiness among their species.
“We are The Doctors Without Borders,” she said, speaking slowly and carefully. “We are here to help.”
what i do is not up to you 