Consider. A human wakes up in a strange medical bay, with an alien doctor standing over them. Turns out their shuttle crashed, and the alien ship only just managed to teleport the, on board in time.

By some miracle, the doctor explains, they escaped with only minor injuries. Some burns, a few scratches and “several small wounds. We’re not sure what caused them.”

“Wounds?”

“Small holes in your ear lobes. Possibly they were old wounds and unrelated to the accident, but either way, our doctors were able to heal them for you. There’s not even any scarring.”

The human pauses. Thinks for a minute. “Wait… you unpierced my ears?!”

“I… Suppose we did?  Is that a problem?”

“Er, not exactly.  It can be redone. though it’s not gonna be fun.  But my people do that to ourselves on purpose.  It’s self-ornamental…  I don’t know the word.  We decorate ourselves with small stones and bits of shaped metal or plastic.”

“Oh!!  I’m sorry, that’s a fairly rare behavior among sapients.  Why, if I may ask?”

“uh.  It…  Looks cool?  I guess?”

“…My experience with humans is limited, but I gather that’s the reason for many of your behaviors.”

*from the next bay over comes the anguished scream of your co-pilot*

“WHERE THE FUCKING FUCK ARE MY TATTOOS?!”

Captain’s report after the incident above:

Should the crew ever found another Human in a state of medical emmergency and the said Human is not conscious or coherent enough to reliably communicate, the medical personel is required to heal only those wound and bodily abnormalities, which are acutely life treathening or which do actively prevent said Human from communicating. Once these most severe instances are taken care of, for the sake of their mental well being and as a prevention against accidental cultural mishaps, any further surgeries and corrections are to be performed only after recieving a direct aproval from the patient.

Humans are unstoppable…Until they aren’t.

I’m not the most eloquent writer, but I’ve had this idea kicking around for a while and figured I’d put it out into the universe.

A lot of the basis for the “humans are space orcs” stuff is the idea that we’re pretty durable compared to many species, yeah? When it comes to physical trauma, we can bounce back from most things that don’t kill us outright, especially given the benefit of hypothetical space-age technology, and adrenaline is one heck of a drug when it comes to functioning under stress. 

But that doesn’t make us unkillable, and even though we can survive debilitating injuries and not die from shock, it doesn’t mean it’s fun. Dying of shock sucks, but at least it’s probably quick.

So - Imagine a ship, adrift in space, slowly being drawn into a star or something. In order to save the ship, someone has to repair the hyper-quantum-relay-majig on the hull or in the engine or whatever. Bit of a problem though- there’s a ton of deadly, deadly radiation (Wrath of Khan style) or poisonous fumes or, I dunno, electrical current, between the crew and the repair. Like, enough to kill most species instantly, so the crew is just like, ‘welp, guess we’ll die then’. But then.

BUT THEN

They ask the human. Because everyone’s heard the stories - you’re basically unkillable, right? Could you survive long enough in there to fix it? And their human goes real quiet for a second, but still says ‘Yeah, I could fix it’. And the rest of the crew is like, ‘Whaaaaaa, it won’t kill you?’ and the human repeats “I can fix it” (which isn’t an answer, but no one catches that, not yet at least), so they send ‘em in. And the human fixes it, they come back, the ship flies to safety, and the crew is thrilled to survive. If the human is a little quiet, well, they’re entitled after pulling off a miracle. Everyone else is just excited to get to the nearest station’s bar to tell their very own human story, cuz, ‘those crazy humans, amiright?’.

The good mood keeps up until the human is late for their next shift. At first it’s just faint unease, but- but they earned a bit of a lie-in, right? No reason to begrudge them some extra rest, even if it is a little weird for them to oversleep. They’ll be fine. Humans are always fine. 

(Right?)

(…Wrong.)

- What is… help. Help!-

- ake up! You have t-

- been days. You need sleep, you-

- nother transfusion. We could-

- out of sedatives!-

A week later, the crew finally reaches the station. They stumble into the bar, haggard and haunted. And over the next months and years a new rumor about humans starts to make its way through space. A rumor unlike any before.

‘Be careful with your humans’ it whispers. ‘Their strength is not always a blessing. Be sure they don’t do something they can’t come back from, because when a human dies… they die slowly.’

Star Trek: Enterprise S04E11 ↳ RFW's Favorite Star Trek Whump Moments (✚)

Stargate SG-1 S02E07 By Request ↳ RFW's Favorite Stargate Whump Moments (✚)

Star Trek: Enterprise S04E11 ↳ RFW's Favorite Star Trek Whump Moments (✚)

Star Trek: Enterprise S04E11 ↳ RFW's Favorite Star Trek Whump Moments (✚)

The Avengers || Avengers: Infinity War

3/∞ steelatom scenes – 2x03 “Shogun”

Stargate Universe S01E17 :)

Lost In Space - S01E08

Stargate SG-1 S03E04

Mars S01E02, Part One

(Part 2)

Mars S01E02, Part Two

“We dream.  It’s who we are.  Down to our bones, our cells.  We’d come tens of millions of kilometers through the darkness, all of us prepared to sacrifice everything because we knew that making a home in this place was the only chance humanity had to go on dreaming.”

(Part One)