The truth is out there - Diorama, Caroline (@ahouseofwonders) (because)

You know that whole trope where like, the protagonists get teleported up into the aliens’ spaceship or base or whatever and the alien appears to them only it doesn’t appear as it really looks like but rather, since it doesn’t want to scare the protagonists, it takes the form of something we find familiar and pleasing and is like, “I look like your dad or whatever–is this form okay?” Like I think about that trope a lot and I think like, what if the alien couldn’t pick out a form via telepathy and only had earth media to try and decide what form would scare its human guests least and be accepted almost immediately and honestly the more I think about it the more options for what form that might be are just really fun to me.

“I have chosen the form of your earth playwright and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda–do not be afraid. I come in peace.”

“Greetings. I am Glofnorbo of the cloud you call the ‘Pegasus Nebula.’ I have scanned your earth media from afar and empirically decided that you would find the form of the one known as Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson most pleasing. I have come to confer with your leaders.” 

“Do not be panic. I come in peace. I have assumed the form of your insectoid demigoddess ‘Hatsune Miku’ so that we may communicate peacefully without my true form horrifying you.” 

“It was decided that I would assume the form of your ‘Mister Rogers’ in order to best welcome your world to the galactic neighborhood without frightening your kind.”

“…So did your colleague take on the form of Jack Black for that reason too?”

“No, that is the actual Jack Black. We do not know how to make him leave.”

“…So did your colleague

take on the form of Jack Black

for that reason too?”

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

You’ve been getting abducted by aliens at night for months now with the aliens performing all sorts of medical examinations on you. But, hey, it’s cheaper than health insurance.

“I think there’s been a mistake. Maybe you’re new here. Can you tell the receptionist that you have Heather Martinson in examination? Or you could just ask Mil’kan’it if she’s here.”

The insectoid alien stared at me for a long moment. It was funny how a look of stunned confusion was so often similar across species. All it included was a strange lack of movement and their eyes, whatever form they took, examining what was in front of them as if it might change into something more sensible. “I… What?” Their chittering translated back to me, as my English had to them.

“The straps aren’t necessary,” I told him, giving him finger waves from both immobilized hands. “Everything goes a lot faster if it’s easy to move the patient, right? And muscle relaxants and anesthesia mess with results. Plus, Mil’kan’it said some of the stuff they use on humans gets put on backorder so often.”

The alien glanced at the data on their tablet and then looked back to me. “If you’ll…excuse me.” With a final glance, they left the room through the automatic doors.

Leaning back into the headrest with a sigh, I stared at the smooth metal ceiling of the examination room in the alien spacecraft, feeling as if I were at the dentist. The biggest difference being that the lights in here weren’t shining directly into my eyes. One of the scientists had laughed when I told him about that issue. I guess when you’ve got a certain level of tech, needing sunglasses to have work done on your teeth would seem hilarious.

They had actually done a couple scans on me over time that took a while, leaving me laying down with nothing to do, but unlike the dentist, the folks here were delightfully generous in entertainment. I’d been able to see two movies so far that had hadn’t even been released on streaming services yet, projected on the ceiling above me. When I explained it was no problem for me to lay there for two hours if I had something to watch, they’d immediately asked me for my to-watch list. Apparently, there was even one special request from their psychology department for a brain scan to be done specifically while I was watching a movie, and the more complex and emotional it was, the better.

The doors smoothly opened, and I heard a familiar voice say, “Heather! How are you?”

“Ixira,” I said in surprise. “I thought you were heading back home?”

The scientist’s antennae flicked in what I recognized as irritation as she came over and used her graspers to unlatch the straps on my wrists, ankles, and forehead. “I did. Then I came back, because apparently this place falls apart without me. It’s a whole mess, forget it.” I sat up, stretching. “I’ll be off on my vacation for real soon enough.”

“All right then. Introduce me?” I asked, motioning to the alien beside her.

“Right. This is Unkiwar. He’s been with us for…about seventeen…Earth days? I think that’s accurate.” She motioned to me. “Unkiwar, this is Heather. She’s a regular here. We pick her up once every {six weeks} or so, ever since that first abduction when we worked out she’s fine with it.”

“Fine?” he echoed. “That’s not the typical…reaction.”

I chuckled. “This is free healthcare, my alien friend,” I said. “Free hyper advanced alien healthcare. You know what that means to an American Earthling?”

Ixira gestured her agreement. “Where she lives on her planet, the health issues she struggles with cost an extraordinary amount of currency. So, she’s happy to donate time to our research when she also benefits. It was an easy deal to make. Being able to pick up the same subject for repeat examinations, with full cooperation? It’s been fantastic. Two other humans have the same deal and we’re working to increase that number. Heather advised us to go to certain territories on the planet, where healthcare is sparse.”

“Yeah, and as soon as you explain the whole colonoscopy thing, you get a much less pervy reputation.”

“Pervy?” Unkiwar exclaimed. “It’s an examination of where your waste exits your body!”

I grimaced and glanced to Ixira. “Just tell him later.”

“Yeah,” she said dismissively.

“Teeth health is a big deal too,” I said, clacking my jaws together twice. “I lost the genetic lottery, and even brushing and flossing like it’s a religion only does so much.”

Unkiwar turned to Ixira. “I don’t understand. Why are the bones in her mouth difficult to maintain?”

“They’re not bones,” she explained. “Human skeletons are protein collagen and calcium phosphate. Teeth are dentin, enamel, and cementum.”

The male alien shifted in a way that indicated an irritated dismissal. “So?”

“So,” I sighed, “they need maintenance because they can’t heal themselves. If they get infected under the tooth, it can be agony. And if they get damaged it costs somewhere between my cell phone bill and a new car.”

“I…don’t know what that means,” Unkiwar said slowly, “but it doesn’t sound pleasant.”

Ixira looked down at her tablet to poke and swipe at it. “It’s all in this seminar lecture I watched a while ago,” she said absently. “There. You should watch that one and…this one. Human biology is fascinating, despite the nonsense their evolution has put them through.”

“Anyway,” I said, drumming a beat briefly on my thighs, startling Unkiwar, “what’s on the agenda today?”

“Let’s see… Standard examination,” Ixira said with a nod, reading something on her tablet. “We’ll also need four blood samples, because not only have the labs not gotten their act together about sharing yet, but we have a fourth lab that just qualified to assist in research.”

Grinning, I chuckled. “Ah, I’m just too popular.”

“Indeed. Today is Muscle Day, so we’ll be taking those samples as well,” she said slowly, “and it’s time for another full body scan.”

I sat up straight. “Do I get a movie?”

Ixira’s body language shifted to haughty delight. “I got you the new Mean Girls movie.”

My jaw dropped. “That’s not even in theaters yet!”

“Apparently stealing a film is not as difficult as stealing a human,” the scientist chuckled. “Go figure.”

/r/storiesbykaren

Five bucks says aliens discovered us years ago and are just like

“Nah bro these beings are a mess, let’s make contact when they aren’t fighting about who can wear crop tops and murdering people because of skin colors”

I've long had this idea in my head for spaceships inspired by anvil-shaped cumulonimbus clouds. These are the first two proper renderings of the concept.

I think there'd be just a few of these, each of a unique shape. Each one is a generation ship the size of a small city, capable of travelling through a hyperspace/slipspace type of dimension at great cost. Everywhere they go, they act as the base of operations for a resource collection operation taking many years, eventually gathering enough energy to make another jump and repeat the cycle. Who knows why they go where they do?

👉 https://www.catsonsynthesizersinspace.com/shop

Scientists tagging birds with colored bands and accidentally making the tagged birds more appealing to mates is so funny. Imagine being abducted by aliens and they give you a gucci belt

#that’s the best alien cover story I’ve ever heard great work alien mom

I love these comics by Nathan W. Pyle.

Imagine a group of humans and aliens talking about their home worlds while in the ship’s canteen. One world is covered entirely by water (the crew members from there have to wear special masks to help them absorb the oxygen they need from the air); one is full of rare minerals and littered with what, on any other planet, would be precious stones and one is carpeted with dense vegetation and has the more biodiversity than any other planet.

Once they’ve all finished talking about their own planets, everybody turns to the humans and asks them what Earth is like. They’re only doing it to be polite though. They haven’t heard much about humans (except the usual stories, and only fledglings believe in those) and they can’t really believe that these fleshy bald looking things come from anywhere even remotely as interesting as their own planets.

There’s a pause and then one of the humans speaks up, “well, I come from a part of Earth called ‘England’ and, to be honest, it’s nothing like as cool as your planets sound. It’s alright though. We got some snow last year, so I’m hoping that we’ll have some this year as well when I get back.”

“Snow?” one of the water breathers asks, hissing slightly through their mask, “what’s that?”

“Frozen water that falls from the sky.” The human explains, “it’s really fun to play with. It’s only called snow when it’s soft though— when it’s hard it’s called hail. Nobody likes hail, you can’t do anything with it and it hurts if it hits you. I looked up during a hail storm once,” she adds, “when I was a kid. Huge hailstones and one hit me right in the eye! Hurt like Hell.”

“Is your planet really cold then?” one of the aliens asks, sounding doubtful since nothing has looked less equipped to deal with cold weather than a human.

“No,” she says, “not everywhere. England’s pretty cold, but in the Summer sometimes we get heatwaves. Last year I went out in one and forgot to wear suncream and got sunburn all down my arms.”

“Your planet’s sun… burned you?” a horrified creature asks, “was it painful?”

“Not really, just stung a bit,” she shrugs, “it was fine once the skin started to peel.” (At the back of the crowd that has now amassed around their table a voice says “I didn’t know humans moulted.” and another, horrified sounding voice replies “that’s because they don’t!”) the human continues on regardless. “It was really annoying actually, because it meant I couldn’t go out for a bit without wearing a jacket. Then when my burns had finally healed, I wanted to go to the beach, but when I got there there was this huge thunderstorm and I had to go home again.”

“Thunderstorm?” the word is whispered, mainly because the person asking secretly hopes the human won’t hear them so they won’t have to know.

“It’s when the clouds get all dark and it starts raining,” the human explains and everybody sighs with relief. Most planets have rain. “The clouds make these really loud banging noises,” she continues, “that’s the thunder, and electricity shoots down from the clouds— that’s called lightning. Sometimes people get hit by it, a few people even survive. I once—”

But one of her human friends cuts her off. “God,” he says, “you Brits are so boring, always talking about the weather!”

While she argues with him, the creatures seated around the table stare at them in astonishment and start to give a little more credit to those old stories. Because, though they look pretty harmless, a species would have to be tough to be able to survive on a planet where a person could be pelted with ice, burned by the sun and nearly electrocuted by the sky and then have another person describe those experiences as boring!

Imagine being a human in an alien crew in space and leaving with bright blue or pink hair and the color fades and everybody on board wonders WHY you are losing your colors??? Is it the lack of greens? Are you sad? Angry? They just don’t know??

“Human-Kelly may we have a moment of your time?”

Kelly pauses in her inventorying of the photo-synth plates she’ll be installing after today’s cycle ends. “It’s just Kelly, hellot-Halzar, you don’t have to acknowledge my species every time we talk.” She smiles. “That’s not considered rude for us.”

“Very well hu—Kelly. Erm. May we have a moment of your time?” Many eyes blink earnestly at her.

“Sure. What’s up?”

hellot-Halzar considers. “May we discuss the structural nature of the ship interior and gravity-derived reference values at a later date? At this moment we would like to inquire as to the nature of your corporeal change.”

“Yeah sure—wait my what?”

“There is a mess hall wager.”

“About my –?”

“Concerning your strands,” hellot-Halzar says, gesturing.

“My….hair.” Kelly runs a hand through it. It’s purple as of two ship days ago. “Ok?”

“We wish to know whether the colour change signifies mood, nutritional intake variance, or ….erm….whether your mating season status has changed.”

“My mating season status, huh?” Kelly lifts an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

“Did Jerry put you up to this?”

“Human-Jerry refused to answer our questions about your strands, citing some phenomenon known to your homeworld as ‘famine in missed eek’.”

Kelly snorted. “Tell Jerry he can shove his archaic ideas about ‘feminine mystique’ where M-series stars don’t shine. As for your bet: sorry, it’s none of the above. I changed my hair because my last box of dye was about to expire and because I felt like it.”

hellot-Halzar considers. “chinret-Zer wins then, by technicality: that reason falls within acceptable parameters for ‘mood’.”

“I suppose it does.” Kelly pauses. “Who bet on the ‘mating season’ one?”

“Hmm?” hellot-Halzar had already turned to go and deliver the verdict. They turn one set of eyes back. “Oh that would be Drannuc. He said he smelled a difference in you.”

“Delightful,” Kelly says, instead of explaining menstruation and how that can affect mood, diet, and that technically it correlates to what most of the species on the ship would consider a mating season. “Next time, instead of betting, maybe just ask questions? And not Jerry. He’s a jerk.”

“Reclassifying human-Jerry as jerk-Jerry. We will approach you with all human queries from now on,” hellot-Halzar says and then continues on their way.

Probably for the best, she thinks with a lopsided grin, and then continues sorting the photo-synth plates to install on her space walk tomorrow.

“Reclassifying human-Jerry as jerk-Jerry” 

Pure. There is no other word.

to add to this “humans are weird” thing did you know that humans are the only species on earth with the ability to throw things with any significant degree of accuracy and force (apes can throw with about the force of a human ten year old, but cant lock their wrists well enough for accuracy)

and we just never really think about it bc its so easy and simple to us that pretty much all of our sports are based around the concept of throwing things accurately

so what if the concept of projectile weapons takes most species FOREVER to get the hang of, or even come up with in the first place. a human goes onto a ship and throws some trash into the nearest reclaimer, shouts “kobe!” and all the other aliens on board absolutely LOSE THEIR MINDS

I definitely didn’t know this about humans but it’s actually really neat

My theory is that Aliens just really like cows 

my fav trope is like, nonhuman characters not understanding human needs/customs but still being super supportive of their human companion

“look what I found while exploring this planet’s surface!” “kilrak please I’m trying to sleep” “ah yes your human circadian rhythm. *stage whispering* I am supposed to be quiet during this time in your rhythm, yes?”

“the book I purchased on ragnok V says humans require physical touch when upset. therefore, I shall engage in a ‘hug’ with you.” *supremely awkward five-armed hug ensues*

*human sneezes* “OH MY GOD SIL'EEN GET THE MEDIC OUR HUMAN IS DYING”

“this pamphlet I received recently says that humans require companions and packmates in the form of small earth creatures. you should have told me this before we departed earth, but it is no worry. we will have to stop at the next trade planet to get you one of these ‘cats’ or ‘dogs’.”

imagine the aliens really purchasing a kitten for one of their rough and world-weary scifi badass human companions and watching in helpless wonderment what ensues 

“she’s been cuddling that small animal for the past fifteen minutes just going ‘kitty, kitty’. did we - did we break our human?”

a more seasoned alien puts one of their tentacles around the younger one as the rest of the team gathers to watch their human make kissy noises. 

“no, kilrak,” the alien says. “we did good.” 

“Human-Steve! I have heard that today is the anniversary of your hatching! According to my human culture pamphlet, it is customary to set a sugary pastry on fire while chanting your species’ growth incantation and presenting sacrifices wrapped in shiny paper. I am afraid to ask, in case this ritual is sacred and this request therefor insensitive… but may I be allowed to participate? It sounds much more fascinating than molting.”

It got better!

Concept: a shapeshifter that has excellent craftsmanship but poor judgement. It can flawlessly impersonate a washing-machine, for instance, but doesn’t understand that a 1994 Whirlpool washing-machine is not very good camouflage on the slopes of Mt. Rainier.

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.

This happens in an episode of Bee and Puppycat :)

This happens in an episode of teen titans