From the Wikipedia page about the Fermi Paradox: Given the high scientific probability for alien existence, why can we find no evidence of their existence whatsoever?

A poem about loneliness

Today on twitter: give me twileks or give me death

I would KILL for some Twi'leks or Togrutas in the ST.

“Padme would be ashamed of you” is my new favorite line. Also YES I know Star Wars is more a fantasy than sci-fi story but still spending all that time creating and developing aliens just to push them aside in favor of more human characters in a SCI-FI setting is just a complete waste. GIVE ME ALIENS OR GIVE ME DEATH

For Halloween, you may well be making use of fake blood as part of your costume. Blood’s always red, right? WRONG.  Here’s a look at the range of different colours of blood in different organisms, and the chemicals behind them. Larger image and more info here: http://wp.me/p4aPLT-Fc

meeting an alien

Humans: hello, we come in peace. we are from a planet we call Earth.

Alien: oh yes! the bagel planet!

Humans: … what?

Alien: you are the only planet in the known galaxy that has invented bagels. we would like to make trade agreements right away.

Humans: i… okay then.

Okay but we have these posts about humans being super weird compared to aliens and I’m just picturing meme culture

Humans, these terrifying space orcs, are prone to temporary and sometimes destructive lapses of reason. The aliens, by inference, realize the human word for this madness. “Aesthetic”

“Human, please stop misspelling your words on purpose. I can not understand.”

and somewhat linked to that, our tendency for calm overstatement. “I’m pretty sure she’s an actual goddess.” “As a standard, we do not allow religion to influence our mission.” “I’d let her step on my face” “Human, please stop with this aesthetic behavior.” *giggling*

Or our tendency to be ridiculously vague but understand anyway, and relate to inanimate things. *compacted trash cube gets ejected into space* “Same” “Human what do you mean.” “That. Same.” “Commander, what’s wrong with the human?” “He’s having an aesthetic fit, I think. He’ll be back to normal soon.”

The top one is a beautiful beautiful gal. One of the core races in “Starfinder,” the Vesk have color patterns as the main form of sexual dimorphism  with the females being more colorful.

The male Vesk is also sporting some nice crop top armor and a pretty skirt/kilt.

this is truly a mitzvah. Big angry aliens have shown up and they do not care for mammalian notions of gender.

I can’t wait to be a big, buff lizard.

I Had a Great Idea

for a Humans are Weird story.

So human babies REALLY need to be touched. Its totally critical for development. Small babies can literally die if you don’t cuddle them enough.

But imagine that the aliens are more like reptiles, in that they just sort of hatch and their parents feed them or stay around (and presumably, like, educate them, since they’re intelligent aliens), but don’t carry them around or cuddle in the same way.

So one of them gets stuck with a human baby that they’re responsible for and of course, they go ask a xenobiologist or someone ‘what do you do for a human baby, they’re all weird and squishy’.

And the scientist says: well, you have to stroke them. Like actually pick them up and stroke their skin.

Why, says the alien, what could that possibly accomplish. Does it make their skin tougher. Will they grow proper scales.

No, no, that’s just what human skin is like, you just… you have stroke them or they won’t grow right. They get a stroking-deficiency and can die.

Suddenly our obsession with petting everything makes sense to them.

“Why do they ask to pet our fur? Why do they touch every animal we find? Humans are so strange!”

“No, no, Pod Leader, we have discovered the reason for this. Humans require tactile contact for health. Their young will actually die without frequent touchings of skin, Even as adults, their health deteriorates if they are isolated from touch. Human Technical Adjunct Rupert is trying to nurture us and preserve our healthfulness with this touching they offer.”

“… they actually believe that touching our fur with their grubby paws is healthful?”

“For humans, Pod Leader, it is.A little unsanitary, we are understanding the reservations, but it is kindly meant. We think it is actually very nice of Human Technical Adjunct Rupert to be so concerned with our healthfulness.”

“We are still not sure we believe this. That sounds like a weak attempt at deceit to us.”

“Let us show you this vid of humans nurturing their young, it is very instructive.”

Some time later, Human Technical Adjunct Rupert is bewildered but pleased to find that fur-petting is now encouraged provided they have washed their paws. This seems reasonable to Human Technical Adjunct Rupert.

I LOVE THIS ADDITION SO MUCH!

Humans Are Weird

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! 

Humans Are Weird

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.”

“I’m telling you, they terraform for fun!” “Don’t be ridiculous” “No, seriously. Some of their most celebrated cultural loci are built on swamps. They have an entire city that is literally in a body of water. Not, like, an artificial pontoon city, they literally sunk the foundations into water. For Grilp’s sake, they build elaborate structures out of frozen water AND THEN SLEEP IN THEM.” “Dear Thilak. Think we could get them to terraform our moons?” “Psh, they’d probably pay for the privilege.”

Eventually, it occurs to someone that humans are the perfect terraforming shock troops, as it were. They think it’s fun to be sent to horrible planets! They’re really good at surviving and then taming them! All you have to do is sit back and wait until the planet is habitable, and then move there yourself! It’s genius.

It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.

“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.

“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”

Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.

“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”

“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”

Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”

“They’re so cute!” the human says, brightening. “Have you met mine? Her name is Spot!”

Humans are told of some planet or region of space that is considered “completely and utterly inhospitable - it would be folly to try and settle there.”

Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible. 

“This moon is still forming as such it is primarily soft - by that I mean most of the magma is close to the surface and-” ‘OH BADASS you mean its like Mustafar right!?!?!?! I’m totally going to build a castle there.’ “What. I mean. There is NO fertile ground there whatsoever. No ecosystem. It is molten rock and minerals only.” ‘Which will make my castle there look METAL AS FUCK am I RIGHT!?!??! Come on. COME ON. I TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISTBUMP COME ON.’ “….you….you are going to die, you know this right?” ‘I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to come to Lava Castle for some reason?’

This is the quality scifi I sign up for.

Okay so here’s one of those rare gems of moments where retail is actually kind of okay. 

I’m gonna start by revealing the well-kept secret that I live in Ohio… in case all the buckeye references flew by you. And Ohio… is obsessed with space travel. I mean- it makes sense. We’ve got a couple astronauts in our history, there’s the National Aeronautics and Space Museum in Dayton, and on those quiet summer nights, where the sky is clear and the stars are twinkling in the distance, it is hard to not look up at the darkness and wonder if there is intelligent life out there. (Not here.)

Anyhow, all the fourth graders have a big space-related project around this time of year and this means that we, as craft retailers, have to be problem solvers. The number one problem is ‘oh gods, please tell me that you’re going to put a primer down on that styrofoam before you spray paint it.’

Because- you guessed it- everyone is making a damn solar system model. 

That is to say… their parents are making the solar system model. 

I was just finishing up explaining the use of a styrofoam primer and which spray paints are safe to use with styro to the mother of one ten-year-old when the mother of another ten-year-old rounds the corner looking desperate. 

“Is this a good paint for cardboard?”

It’s not. So I round her back to where her son and daughter are waiting and explain them what will work. She needs green, and there are three different kinds of greens. The mom holds them up and has her daughter choose. 

“Which one do you want for your face?”

I freeze because putting acrylic on your skin is a great way to get a rash. “Hold on, you’re not putting this on your skin, are you?”

“No, gosh no. We’re painting a box and putting the box on her head.”

…

Okay, I’m curious. “Can you explain what you’re making?”

The daughter chimes in. “We have to do a project for school and I’m gonna dress up like a alien!”

Instantly, I love this child. Not just because she considers dressing up as an alien to be an acceptable school project, but because she’s not leaving it to her mom to do all the work. 

So we talk for a minute about project stuff and she tells me that her brother is going to be the first man on Mars. Her brother is five. Her brother concurs- he is going to be the first man on Mars. Their mom tells me about the Neil Armstrong museum nearby. Like… this is a family of people excited about the future of space travel.

“Did you hear about those new planets,” I asked. 

The little girl starts jumping up and down. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Mom: “Can you remember what they said about the new planets?”

“They said…. they said that they can… uhhh… sustain life! There might be aliens!”

Mom: “Now, they said they can sustain life, but I think they also said that it isn’t very advanced life.”

The little girl looks off into space- contemplating this new information. She is formulating a very important thought. 

Very softly: “We get to be the aliens this time.”

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! :D

But imagine that last bit as two different groups. Okay, so to one species of alien we’re adorable, right? And to another we’re orcs. Imagine the conflict of those two cultures. Team Orc is talking to Team Cuddles about how useful we are on dangerous field missions and Team Cuddles LOSES THEIR SHIT.

“You sent my cuddle-fwumpkin WHERE?!? to do WHAT!?!”

“They’re uniquely qualified to explore dangerous territories that are uninhabitable to most lifeforms … ”

“I don’t caaaaaare! Hfjfjfj HD bf!!!”

Like, foreign policy issued specifically for the proper utilization of human laborers. How would human cultures engage differently in these circumstances? Like, in the US would people look down on the humans that hang out with Team Cuddles as looking for alien handouts? Would they be blamed when Team Orc humans don’t get taken seriously on expeditions?

Like, there’s so muuuuuch more to explore here.

“Has anyone seen Human Red?”

“Have you checked the ventilation systems, Captain?“

“Why woul–”

“Human Red was informed of the discrepancy between our ship’s predominant species height and that of humans.”

“That…should be obvious, Lieutenant. Human Red has eyes.”

“Yes, it was, however, Human Red had taken it as an intriguing challenge of a sort, sir.”

“…..what?”

[Elsewhere]

“I live here now.”

[Back]

“It appears to be somewhat similar in spirit of the ‘box incident’, Captain.”

“Shit.”

“Indeed. I am of the belief that security is taking the opportunity to hone their skills.”

[sigh] “Please inform Medical, Lieutenant.”

“Yessir.”

“And have whoever’s on cameras today to send me a copy.”

“To review possible holes in our security, sir?”

[snorts] “No, Lieutenant. Human Red isn’t going to be the only one laughing after this headache – not this time.”

Translating is hard work. Even with pretty simple translations there can be unexpected difficulties if one of the languages has some funny special rules that apply to everyday life like honorifics and proper address, or words with multiple meanings so instead of asking what time it is you’ll end up asking for a potato. A professional translator can deal with this, of course. But for someone who just knows two pretty different languages, translating even something simple suddenly takes time and ends up getting pretty confusing for everyone involved.

And that leads us to ALIENS!

I think we’ve all read one scifi story or another where an alien is explaining some kind of concept that their species has - it might be related to their Special Sense or something else, but they always conveniently manage to put it in words that the character (and the reader) understand. This makes sense from a storytelling viewpoint, because we’re telling the story to human readers/listeners/viewers who need to understand what’s going on and why.

But it might be fun if the character is teamed up with an alien who gets so confused and/or worked up about some trivial translation that it gets turned into this big whole mysterious deal.

Human: “So, what’s this word mean, ‘thnguwe’?”

Alien: “Thnguwe has… special meaning for our people. It refers to a person’s ability to… form a meaningful connection with another of our kind, and our… entire society is built according to the… concept of thnguwe.”

Human: “How profound! Your civilization has much to teach us!”

Alien #2: “It means ‘talking’. Thnguwe means talking.”

Alien #1: “Oh, talking! I forgot what that word was in human language!”

As a linguist and a translator, I can attest: this is how it works in real life. But, also, when you know more than one language, and you are tired or distracted sometimes they just blurr together and you mix them up. Moreso if you are doing something, say reading in A, but then someone speaks to you in B.

Recon Mission went well. Kind of. They are all tired because Scientists human Marja just had to see if that big apex carnivore could be approached to be petted, for ‘Science!’. Or so Marja had explained to their Mission Commander larlik Kri’l, whom was not amused by an explanation so sensible for such an illogical behaviour. But nobody died so Head Scientist, human Cristina, declared it a win for the Science Team.

They were all dragging themselves to the Sustainance Unit in their ship when Scientist Second in Command, globrl Bwir inquired about what earthling cute companion the big apex carnivore - that almost got everyone killed, added Kri’l using only one mouth so only those in close proximity could hear xem - resembled. “Oh, yeah it looked just like, ugh, what’stheword uhm, это канареечный” answered Marja whilst grabbing the concoction that all humans called coffe. The human had certainly started in Standard Interspace Communication Language, but the last words were uttered in Standard Earthlings Communication Language. All turned head(s) to the other human in the Unit, who shrugged “That’s not my mother tongue”. “Head Scientist Cristina, you are human, aren’t you? From Space Aust- I meant, from Earth, right?” “Yes, but, it’s not like I know every language spoken on Earth!” Silence resonated in the Unit. Scientist Bwir dared to ask “W-what do you mean languages, as in more than one?” “What, like in your planets they all speak the same language” was the crossed response xem had. “Yes. Yes we do, because that’s the sensible thing to do. That’s what all sensible life forms who reach interspace travel do. One language, one planet” said slowly Bwird, while all the present crewmembers, who were able to, facepalmed. Of course the deathplaneters had to complicate even the simplest thing.

*blows kiss to space* for the 7 exoplanets orbiting Trappist-1

See, this is what old-timey science fiction never predicted - the human tendency to grow attached. They wrote stories of colonizing other worlds, of exploration and discovery. They didn’t write that four minutes after discovering new worlds, the humans had made up nicknames for them all, given them personalities, and were prepared to fight to the death for their honor.

Sometimes real life is better.

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!

@space-australians

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.”

Read more comics like this at smbc-comics.com

Zach Weiner nails it a lot. Like, a lot-a lot.

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 way

what 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.”