insane-male-alphabeticalsymbol:
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.”This would be an interesting read if this was a book.
Like, an alien invasion is about to start and the book is a chronicle of how the aliens couldn’t handle both humans in general and the range of environments and ended up being destroyed through the eyes of one of the aliens.
Like a caption from the book would be something like
“So we sent a recon team to this place called Russia, but all we’ve heard back thus far is about the temperatures, giant monsters with fur the humans call “Bears”, and that once again, we have been reminded of how heavily well armed almost ever human settlement is.
Thus far we have lost more than a good chunk of our forces through experiments gone wrong, unsuccessful fire fights, and above all else, the humans seem to be more worried about these strange variation of their species calling themselves “Clowns”.
I don’t know what a Clown is, but sounds as if it is the dominant faction of this planet, and considering we only just found out humans practically poison themselves with this thing called beer and only get stronger and more violent, I don’t ever want to encounter such a being.
I believe this invasion was a mistake.“
I’ve been reading a bunch of these and all I can think about now is aliens finding out about our insane ability to walk away from accidents.
“Human Colony SDO435**, this is Gxanimi survey vessel 3489. We regret that we must inform you that the wreckage of your ship ‘Gecko Flyer’ has just been detected on planet F56=K=. We offer expressions of sympathy for this catastrophe.”
“Shit, thanks for telling us, we’ll be right there.”
“Why?”
“To find our people, of course.”
“… you wish to retrieve the corpses for your traditional death rituals, of course, we understand. We have sent the coordinates.”
“What do you mean, bodies? No survivors at all? There must be some.”
“Official mouthpiece of Human Colony SDO435**, the ship has crashed. It has impacted the planet’s surface at speed. Moreover, this might have happened as much as five vek ago. We do not understand why you speak of ‘survivors’.”
“Oh, there’ll be survivors. There always are.”
“(closes hyperspace voicelink) How sad that they are unable to accept the reality of their loss.”
*
“Hey, Gxanimi survey vessel 3489, thanks for letting us know about the Gecko Flyer. More than half the crew made it!”
“Made what?”
“They survived! A couple of lost limbs and so on, but they’ll be fine.”
“… but that vessel was destroyed! Images have been examined!”
“Oh, well, everyone in the fore-below compartment was crushed, obviously, but the others made it out.”
“… but the crash was vek ago! Excuse we… at least eighty of your ‘days’! How could they survive without a ship? Without shelter and supplies?”
“Well, the wreckage gave them some shelter, and of course the emergency supplies kept them going until they could start growing stuff. It’s actually a nice little planet, they said. Quite a lot of edible flora and fauna. T-shirt weather, in summer, too.”
“What is… t-shirt weather?”
“Oh, you know, when it’s comfortable to go around with only modesty covering over the epidermis. Exposed limbs.”
“That planet is so cold that even water solidifies in its atmosphere!”
“Well, in winter, obviously. But we like that. Listen, our people have been raising crops down there, and that’s usually how we rule a planet as ‘colonized’…. is anyone else using it, or can we call it?”
“Er… we have claimed the warmer planets in the system, but we believe we could come to some arrangement.”
*
It was really nice, the humans thought, how carefully most of the aliens kept an eye out for downed ships after that, once they found out that humans tended to survive anything less than explosive decompression or… well, explosions generally. They’d immediately inform the nearest outpost of a wreck’s location, or even ship survivors back themselves. It was very thoughtful.
They didn’t find out until a long time later that the Gxanimi had put out the word to every species they were in contact with. It was vital that everyone knew the things they had learned about humans after that first encounter.
1. Humans can literally walk away from an impact that renders a space-worthy hull so much scrap and would have actually liquefied a Gxanimi.
2. Humans will eat just about anything not immediately fatal to them – including, in extremis, the corpses of their dead crewmates. In fact, most human vessels keep a list of those willing to be eaten and those whose socio-religious scruples forbid it. They have a ridiculously high tolerance for dangerous substances, and if they can breathe on a planet they can probably eat something on it too. They also have something they call the ‘Watney Protocol’, which requires them to carry live soil samples, seeds, and simple tools that will allow them to start farming their own native foodstuffs on any remotely habitable planet immediately in the event of an accident.
3. Once they’ve farmed a planet, they bond with it. They’ll be polite, but it’ll take significant effort to get rid of them even so.
Conclusion: If a human ship crashes on a planet you like and want to keep, get other humans to come and get them immediately. Remove them yourself if you have to. Even the worst crash can result in a thriving colony in a few vek.
And don’t, for the love of gravitational regularity, try to solve that problem by killing off the survivors. Just don’t. It won’t work and it just makes all the rest of them mad.
This is the best one yet!
Tag: human beings are strange to aliens bc Reasons
What if by alien standards we are really cute?
And I don’t mean like attractive cute, I mean like baby otter cute. What if the stumble upon us and go “ohhhhh my god!!! Oh my god!!!! I’m dying this is- look at it! Look at them!!! Oh my god!!!”
We usually imagine having to come up with some Devils trade or unholy arrangement to get tech and trade with aliens, but the instant they see us the aliens immediately set out into conservation efforts. They’re like “their habitat is becoming harsh and unlivable for them! We have to save them!” And everyone just puts a picture of us next to this information and they all agree “Look at them! We have to save them!!” We become like the panda mascots of intergalactic conservation efforts.
Simultaneously, our main export is just streams, videos, holograms, and photos of us. Aliens lose their composure completely over videos of us sneezing or yawning or eating pop tarts or playing video games or taking care of our kids.
There are lines of aliens who would LOVE to have a human in their home or on their ship. It’s a little condescending (we’re not sure if we’re guests or well treated exotic pets) but still a good opportunity, and any human who wants can go to space at any time basically for free or even for profit, and the aliens will go out of their way to give you anything you ask for.
There are obvious downsides. We struggle to be taken seriously. While it’s usually shut down pretty quickly, every once in a while some alien group sees the demand for us and tries to start an illegal trade. But at the same time, it’s neat that somewhere out there is an alien (or usually a LOT of aliens) that would love you unconditionally, find every flaw and idiosyncrasy endearing, be worried about you and do anything they could to make you safe and happy. They work hard to make our planet and our personal lives better and don’t ask for anything in return. They just do it because they decided we are important and worth saving just for existing. It’s an odd relationship, and we’re not always sure what to make of it, but honestly it goes a lot better than we worried alien contact would.
I’m down to be a spoiled pampered alien pet.
It would be a lot easier to get “fixed.”
We’re all a bit confused by the cute human memes, which are usually just pictures of some random human with a phrase in alien cuneiform next to it, but which many of the aliens think are hysterical. Photos of the Lincoln Memorial are particularly popular for this for some reason, and it’s a little unsettling to see the alien spaceships with pictures of Lincoln plastered across their forcefields, saying “g+gnor’gax!” and the humor just doesn’t translate at all.
I mean, it’s not bad, exactly. Just…odd. And fortunately alien music is mostly outside our hearing range, so the sad commercials with the interstellar equivalent of Sarah McLachlan broadcasting over them, explaining how the humans are suffering at this time of rotation just look like a rather puzzling montage of normal people. It’s just the aliens get so sad when they see it and their temporal glands leak and it’s…well, a little messy.
I love the idea that we are SIMULTANEOUSLY batshit-bonkers space orcs and the alien equivalent of Red Pandas or kittens.
Like, “Oh they’re adorable!” “Yes, but for the love of zornax, don’t let one bite you! My pod-cousin lost a hand that way!” “Do you think they evolved this way to surivive the terrifying fauna on their world?” “I saw a holovid of one riding one of the so-called “moose” one time!”
#wait #we’re big cats #giant murder cuteness
Oh my god that’s exactly it! 😀
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.
Just thinking about how it’s cool that our brains can process information instantaneously then it occurred to me that a measure of time we consider “instantaneous” may only seem instantaneous because that’s the limit of how quickly our brains can process information.
Need a better way to phrase this but our brains only seem super fast because the speed they run is literally the fastest thing we brain-dependent organisms can comprehend.
To a faster system, a second may seem excruciatingly long, and we humans appear to be stuck making dial-up noises for most of this excruciatingly long existence.
Someone make this into one of those tumblr alien stories where the aliens process everything at like, twice the speed of humans (so all aliens are basically low-key the Flash?) and whenever humans have to stop and think about what they’re going to say next or pause on an “um,” or “uh,” it is a test of the aliens’ patience.
“Should we be concerned for the human’s health, Kwo’nor? He has been making a pause noise for a very long time now”
“Do not worry, Kwo’sha, they just… do this sometimes”
The Quixnor are an ancient species.
Their dusty clay relics set the earliest civilizations back 50,000 generations. Every edge and isle and rocky new shoreline has been discovered, rediscovered, populated and decimated in the endless ebb and flow of time. Every corner of their red globe has been touched by Quixnor hands. Every moment packed brimming and dense with political action, scientific discovery, advent and breakthrough and progress. It would take 1,000 Quixnor lifetimes to understand even a fraction of their history. It would take unfathomable amounts more to understand the yottabytes of information stored in the species’ silicon archives.
This kind of history–rich and overflowing and incomprehensibly massive–is only to be expected of a species which has survived for 100 trillion Quixnor Eons.
Or, in metric, 5.28374 minutes.
The Quixnor, in that time, have learned much, discovered much, conquered much, mastered much, but some things remain forever outside the edges of their comprehension. At the forefront of this is the Frozen Ones. In the ever-scientific minds of the Quixnor people, there is no natural phenomenon more marvelous, more wondrous, and more terrifying than the Frozen Ones.
The Frozen Ones are an alien species. They are similar to the Quixnor in shape, and structure, and anatomy, and society. They are far off on an enormous watery planet easily visible on the scopes of the Quixnors vastly advanced telescopes. The Frozen Ones are easily observed, yet impossible to study, as their individuals have existed for timescales the Quixnor cannot represent in words or numbers. Scientists say the Frozen Ones’ kind have existed for Eons whose numeric representation contains millions of digits. No one truly understands what this magnitude means, not even the scientists.
The Frozen Ones do not move. They do not breathe. Their hearts do not beat. Their synapses do not fire.
The Frozen Ones are not dead.
They are, as best as the Quixnor scientists can reason, still very well alive, and somehow living on a timescale so enormous that millions of Eons may pass unheeded between inhales, between heartbeats. The Frozen Ones can do this without dying. On a more incredulous level–they can do this without even noticing.
The Quixnor have sent out countless contacts to the Frozen Ones, spanning thousands of Eons, two-dozen generations. They understand they will never see the result in their lifetime, nor their children, nor their grandchildren. The hope is only that some day, some Quixnor may hear a word back from one of the great, anomalous Frozen Ones…
…
James Buckman hitches up his pants and sniffs experimentally at his right hand as he leaves the men’s room. There’s a tepid cup of coffee getting colder on his desk and a buzzing plastic fan fluttering the edges of a few dog eared reports. His pen fell while he was gone.
He drops back into his seat, hand to his stubbly chin and attention set to the half-stack of documents he’d abandoned ten minutes earlier. He pauses, watery eyes shifting to the little satellite receiver angled on his desk. James does a double-take, chest tight at the tiny, green blurb which has appeared on his monitor.
Hello, Frozen One. We have learned your language from the great frozen world around you. You are remarkable to us. We are called the Quixnor. We’ve attached a humble, 1,293 page report of our species’ history for perusal at your leisure. The report includes instructions to contact us in return. We are greatly eager to hear from you, and to understand what your life is like on a timescale so massive.
The text begins to scroll. James’s eyes dart along at the flood. He blinks, baffled, and stares out at the cloudless sky for any visible source of the signal.
There is none. James’s bathroom break had lasted 11 minutes. The entire Quixnor civilization had birthed and died in less than 7.
Another humans are weird space orcs idea because I really like thinking about it. What if aliens have no idea how to hide their emotions? Like, they suck at poker because they can never keep a straight face or anything. or, on a darker note, their ship is hijacked and they can’t keep the fear out of their faces, but all the humans look cold and emotionless to them. Other aliens hating having to bargain with humans becase we can bluff and keep our emotions in check so well, but when they get frustrated it’s all over. Pirates threaten the space ship and they send the human to do negotiations, and the pirate talking is super confused because no matter what threat he makes, the human just doesn’t seem to be fazed one bit.
Someone please, feel free to add to this, I love to see what else people come up with!
Okay, but now I’m thinking about how this ability is used in the context of animal training/hostage negotiation/teaching/customer service. Not just looking stone-faced, but completely lying with affect, body-language and vocal tone to seem calm, friendly, relaxed and in control of the situation in order to build rapport with an animal or person and to de-escalate aggression in a situation.
Proximity alarms start going off. A vessel is approaching.
Camilian: <looks at viewscreen> “Oh zark it, it’s the Parg.”
Egrat: <Dashes over> “Oh erting fraknabs, we’re dead.”
Human Crewmember:“The who?”
Camilian: <shudders>: “The Parg. Remember the civilisations living on those five planets Lei-ward of Helios 6?”
Human: “No? I thought that system was empty of sentient life.”
Camilian: “Exactly.”
Human: “…ah.” <looks at flashing lights on console> “They appear to be hailing us.”
<Camilian and Egrat scuttle backwards away from console.>
Human: “…thanks a bunch, guys.” <presses hail pick-up button> “This is Communications Officer Haley Makini of the Starboat Fribling, how may I help you?”
Parg ship: “This is Zek of Parg.”
Human: “Hello Zek! How are you feeling this day-cycle?”
Parg Ship: “…”
Human: “I for one have been missing my family lately, I got a vidcall from my little sister and my cousins – same-generation kin-people – and they told me that cousin Wendy is getting married to her girlfriend Mila, isn’t that nice? So I’m really hoping I can make it to the wedding – that’s romantic lifebond ceremony – because otherwise they’d all be sad, they told me so. Do you have any family – lifemates or brood or other kin-people back in your home-system Zek?”
Parg Ship: “…Zek of Parg has brood of five. All Smallings, but soon Biglings. Soon.”
Human: “Oh! You must be so proud of them!”
Parg Ship: “… Yah. Good future replacements for Parent-bodies for Glory of Parg.”
Human: “And that’s all any of us could want! Imagine how sad our kin would be if either of us were to fail to make it back home! That’s why I want to help your ship Zek, in any way we can. The Fribling is only a small ship, but we have some surplus goods and skills to offer if you need anything from us.”
<long pause>
<No one on board the Fribling speaks, but Egrat has anxiously chewed their claws to the quick>
Parg Ship: “Have Lucrum cable? Parg Ship underengine in poor condition, jury-rig not hold, need hitch-tow to Dellar System.”
Human: “Oh, that’s only 8 parsecs away. Sure, hah, we can manage that. No problem.”
<78 minutes later, after the two ships have been attached via Lucrum cable>
Parg Ship: “…What kind you?”
Human: “Huh? ….oh, I’m a human. I’m from Sol 3, Earth.”
Parg Ship: “… Parg remember this. Parg remember Haley Makini. Parg remember Human.”
Human: <blinks> “…thank you!”
<communication connection closes from Parg end>
<Human sinks to ground, hand on chest, hyperventilating slightly>
Human: “HolyfuckhowdidIpullthatoffohholyfuck!”
Camilian: “Wait, you were scared too?”
Human: <glaring> “Cam, we’ve worked together how long? I’d have thought that by now you’d trust my threat assessment abilities. Phew! That one was so close I felt the breeze going past.”
Egrat: “…how. How did you just do that?”
Human: “It’s not hard. Stay calm, just keep smiling, and build rapport by pretending to care about their problems, and meanwhile showing that you’re a real thinking being. Tends to defuse situations rather than escalate them.”
Egrat: “…I think I saw what you did, but where did you learn how to do that?”
Human: “5 years customer service experience.”
Okay the last line got me.
Humanity and aliens
So I was trying to sort out just how many different headcanons of “humans in space“ I’ve stumbled across so far. And I’m loving it, because they’re all amazing and so very much “base humans are bizarre“ instead of the old sci-fi cliché of “base human is base alien”.
But yeah, there are a whole lot of them.
- Humans are determinators.
Unstoppable and tireless monsters who can ignore broken bones, and
whose biology is quite simply put terrifying on multiple levels.- Humans are ancient giants, whose
spaceship are often colonized by smaller species who can live for generations in certain parts of the spaceship before traveling away from there.- Humans are galactic cats, hanging
around on other species’ spaceships and including them in their
“packs”.- Humans are complete nutters with
crazy science and utterly insane experiments, and the scientific
leaps they make are a thing of wonder.- Humans are impossibly lucky for as
long as nobody tells them about it. They’re put in charge of
everything with quotes such as “leadership”, when in actuality
the aliens just want things to turn out fine despite the odds.- Humans are casually selfless,
throwing their own lives away to save the lives of others for no
other reason than that “it was the right thing to do”. It’s so normal for them that heroics like it are kind of tossed aside when something “more interesting“ comes along a week later.- Humans will laugh at their own
injuries because they honestly consider them amusing.- Humans will form emotional bonds
with literally everything.- Humans will attempt to pet even
the most infamously lethal creatures in the galaxy, because “it
looked cute”.- Humans will question literally
everything, for basically no reason other than “just because”. But is also fully inclined to believe people at the drop of a hat, despite the absurdity of their claims.And then there are the more “aliens are not like us“-theories.
- Humans are the only creature with
light-based senses, meaning that they perceive the world in an
entirely mysterious way, filled with things like “color” and
“the speed of light” and “transparency”.- Humans are the only creature to
ever develop a decent throwing-arm, and is as such the only one to
instinctively comprehend the concept of “ranged combat”.- Humans are the only creature with
pattern-recognition, and will see familiar things in random
patterns, as well as being the only species to understand
“camouflage”.- Humans are the only creature to
reproduce sexually. Everyone else is creeped out by how this causes
their children to mutate seemingly at random.- Humans are the only creature with
a story-based imagination, meaning that they basically hold the
export-monopoly on all produced fiction in the galaxy.
what i do is not up to you 