I simultaneously love and hate the conceptual genre of “humans are weird” because actual well-written cultures playing off each other can be an incredibly enriching piece of worldbuilding, telling us what’s normal to both sides, and potentially injecting humor by lightly poking fun at something harmless we take for granted as ‘normal’ that is in practice, actually weird.

The problem is it feels like way too many posts seem to operate on the idea that aliens are completely stupid and that humans are just vastly and wildly more interesting and special than any other sapient species and everyone else is poorly-equipped to deal with us…. including when you have aliens who have visited multiple planets and other sapient life interacting with modern day humans who haven’t left our own solar system and the humans are treated as the ones who are calm / reasonable / aware of social boundaries about this.

Basic bodily maintenance is not going to be weird. If you have an ungulate alien doing hoof care, you might go “so what are you doing,” but that’s easily answerable with a five-second “trimming my hooves, I’ve gotta do that,” and you’ll just go ‘oh’ and go on your life. It’d seem ridiculous for you to barge in going “kethari Stillex, why are you cutting off your feet?!” so likewise it’s unlikely a hypothetical non tooth-having animal would throw themselves into the bathroom at 3AM trying to save you from an electric toothbrush.

Especially because of the simple fact of, even if it’s not a trait they have, for them to be completely unfamiliar with it, not only would they have to not have teeth, but nothing on any planet they’ve seen has to have teeth- not just the sapient races but also every inanimate object. Humans don’t grow tusks or lay eggs or reproduce by budding but we have words for all those things and know a fair bit about them because plenty of life on our planet does that. Even if a single planet might for some reason not have anything that does live birth- pretty weird and unlikely- without a very in-depth thesis as to why, it’d be absolutely ridiculous to suggest Earth is the only planet whatsoever where live birth is a thing. And even then, it’d still make anatomical sense. 

And I’ve seen ‘humans are weird’ posts that seem to suggest, flat-out, that humans are the only people who know how to have fun or play games or sing or express emotions in any way, and that isn’t worldbuilding, it’s, if anything, the complete antithesis of worldbuilding- it suggests that every other culture besides ours is so shallow the idea of singing a song to celebrate something is not only something they haven’t heard of but it’s a wild preposterous notion.

And the reason that makes me so mad isn’t because I care deeply about hypothetical aliens, if I’m being honest. It makes me mad because, as an autistic person, it feels like this presumption that aliens don’t think like the “normal humans” and because of that, they must be naive, gullible, have absolutely no ability to perform simple exercise in logic to understand thermodynamics or germ theory or anything, and, they especially don’t have any fun, or hobbies, or interests.

Because it suggests an assumption that the aliens aren’t real; that they’re only thought of as shallowly as the punchline of a joke.

Thank you for putting my angry scatter-brained thoughts about this phenomenon into words.

never forget the one that had the aliens not understand the concept of heat

These are really good points.

… to be fair, that one was (IMO) more about the aliens not understanding humans’s remarkably narrow and type-of-food-specific preferences for heat. Still not good. 

I feel like some of this may have been a response to a certain genre of children’s scifi novel that, for whatever reason, seems to be totally unheard of in a world where literally everybody except for me discourses about the Animorphs a lot. The premise of this genre of scifi novel, many of which were written by a particular author, included: 

- Aliens have a sophisticated galactic society, but humans are not included. 

- This society isn’t really weird in any particular way, most aliens have a way of thinking that’s fairly familiar to humans. 

- Humans are horrible barbarians for not having achieved world peace, and aliens view them with a mixture of contempt and fear for this, and potentially other reasons

- The conclusion is reached that humans are variously uninteresting or dangerous in a variety of ways, but they have some vaguely defined essentialistic “power of heart” or the like that the aliens don’t have. The material question of why humans fight wars is mostly ignored in favor of “they aren’t using the power of heart properly”. 

- The conclusion is reached that the best possible outcome is for the aliens to take over the Earth and administer it under the principles of Space Colonialism. 

yeah. 

—————————————————–

(One example where I think it was done well: An alien for some reason sees a human man, who’s known to be under a tremendous amount of stress, trying to shave with an improvised straight razor and freaks out, thinking he’s committing suicide, and was confused because 1. they didn’t realize that men needed to shave bc they didn’t see it happening and 2. they were more familiar with less scary-looking shaving implements. Notably, this was in a fanfic for an established setting, that does not have too many different kinds of aliens.)

(Also, aliens who are in the alien military, unless its a really decadent organization or they are very inexperienced with war, should be not be shocked to total nonfunctionalness by near-suicidal tactics.)

I remember being in a tabletop games thread years ago that started by asking “What if humans in sci-fi settings had a hat other than the Generics/Diplomats/Second Besters/Luckies? What would it be?” There was some discussion, and the thread soon focused on our endurance, outlasting other animals at overland travel because we can sweat and whatever else, so some writing started popping up about aliens being impressed by human stamina in survival situations. But then it got more “humans are impossibly tough and shrug off high-tech weapons meant to kill other species” or having aliens be afraid/misunderstand human biology for comedic effect, while adding that Earth has very high gravity for a planet that can be escaped using chemical rockets so humans should also be super strong compared to aliens, and we come from a geologically active planet with violent weather and dangerous plants sd animsls alike so Earth is condidered a deathworld by the rest of the galaxy and humans are these friendly but terrifying party animals, pack bonding angels to their friends and incarnations of divine wrath to their enemies, unstoppable in a universe of species that can’t understand camoflage or really any deception or doing anything for fun or… the list goes on.

A question about giving humans in a game a niche other than “adaptable to anything but second best at everything” evolved into discussing a race of superbeings in a universe of naive, tissue paper aliens just waiting to tell stories in terrified awe of how awesome humans are.

There’s potential for these ideas about humans being weird by galactic standards but too many of them overshadow it with humans being vastly more competent/powerful than anyone else rather than just weird.

you know what i need??? more myth and superstition in scifi.

give me starship captains like the sailors of old, weathered and wary of the vast beast that is deep space, who religiously keep their own personal traditions and rituals to appease her and guide their ships safely through her vast depths.

give me wide-eyed ensigns eagerly drinking in tales of great creatures of the void, space whales and other more malevolent leviathans, dismissed as tall tales by more cynical cadets who only trust the sense of their own eyes.

give me whispered accounts of ghost vessels, lost long ago in great battles across the universe, populated by a literal skeleton crew.

give me a space bermuda triangle.

give me a universe as cold and unfathomable as the ocean, and no less mysterious and forboding.

okay: space “Bermuda triangle” needs four points so you can define a volume of creepy unexplained-happenings space

Excellent: space “Bermuda triangle still has three points, and the creepy space is the infinite triangular prism that goes through the triangle between the points. Just an enormous corridor of space that people either get super weird and edgy about navigating through, or will expend significant effort to go around.

If anyone is having trouble practicing self care or struggling to adult, then something I've been doing lately is pretending to be an alien who is trying to mimic humans. "I forgot to shower" turns into "Ah, I forgot my meeting with the domesticated raincloud." And I have fun later when I shower instead of beating myself up over the mistake.

Don't know if it'll work long term, or if it'd help people less weird than me, but I wanted to share it incase it did.

petition to replace gritty sci fi with aliens having hour long groupchat style arguments over minor cultural differences

what if the new animal species we discover each year are actually being dropped off by aliens? like they have an over abundance of yeti crabs or something and so they brought some to earth because they knew we’d get a kick out of this

This is the cutest conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard

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!

What if: We really have had contact with aliens, already?

Roswell, New Mexico.

Okay, okay. I know it’s cliché.

But hear me out. Besides, I’m offering this as a “What if–” a story prompt, if you will – not a revelation of some nefarious conspiracy, nor a claim that I’ve figured out the Truth that They don’t want anyone to know.

If there is a  single “Big Truth” out there, a) I don’t think anyone can know for sure what it is, and b) if we ever do find out, I don’t think it would be anything terrible or scary, after all (maybe a little sad).

Anyway –

On July 3, 2017, the BBC World Service rebroadcast an interview with the son of one of the men who found the remnants of the “alien craft” (Major Jesse Marcel).

I won’t link to it here, because Tumblr buries posts with links, and the website itself is inaccessible (audio with no transcript). But if you want to look it up, the keywords I used just now were “BBC World Service,” “Witness” (the name of the program), and “Roswell.”

Jesse Jr. was 11 at the time, and at the time of the interview in 2010, he came across as sincerely convinced that the bits and pieces his father brought home to the kitchen table were: a) actually alien, and b) not at all like the scraps of weather balloon that were revealed to the public shortly after.

<Caveat>He was 11 at the time, and his father woke him up in the middle of the night to show him what he’d found. It could very well be that he was convinced by his father’s enthusiasm, and his father was motivated by his desire to find something alien, so that neither of them were seeing these artifacts clearly. And over the years, Jr. could have doubled down on his belief in order to defend his father’s honor.</Caveat>

Two details of the interview made my ears perk up, and take the idea that there really was some kind of “alien incident” at Roswell, 70 years ago a little more seriously:

But, as all our most serious-minded scientists (even the ones who are imagining life outside our solar system, and puzzling through ways to test for it) will tell you:  Real-world interstellar travel takes a very, very, long time.

So: here’s what I’m imagining might have happened:

Around the time that predynastic Egyptians were domesticating the donkey, astronomers living on the planet that we are now calling “Kepler-425b” turned their telescopes to the sky, wondering if there were intelligent life on other planets like theirs.

Around the time that Alexander the Great was trying to establish an empire, their technology has advanced enough to  send forth a ship in our star’s direction, carrying an unmanned probe, which has been programed with instructions to home in on any signs of proof of life – especially intelligent life.

The ship is capable of traveling at incredible speeds – almost half the Speed of Light – but even so, those idealistic astronomers know they won’t live to receive any answers that that little probe may discover. It’s all for their future generations, if they are still around, to reap.

That little probe finally makes it to its destination 3,000 (Earth years) after it set out: a little, rocky planet third out from its star – a medium-sized star just like the one it set out from.  And as it gets closer, the signs of life are unmistakable. And closer still: the signature of enriched Uranium, and Plutonium! Exactly what it was sent to find.  It comes in closer, maneuvering with the planet’s gravitational pull, preparing to send its message back home.

Except it crashes. It never gets to send that message. It gets dismantled; its parts get hidden away, and only those Earthlings that are thought to be delusional by others of their species believe it ever existed at all.

But the descendants of the civilization that sent it forth have no idea of its fate. They won’t even start looking for its message to arrive for another 1,400 years.

But (I hear you say)! Isn’t there another star with seven Earth-like planets, that’s much, much closer?

Yes, there is: a star we call “Trappist-1.” But it’s a dwarf star. The planets in its habitable zone are very likely tidally locked. This means that there’s a good chance the civilizations that arose on them have no concept of “Distant Stars,” much less develop the desire and the tech to venture among them.

But I could be wrong about that. Still, if the scenario I outlined for the astronomers of Kepler-435b had played out on one of Trappist-One’s planets:

For a probe traveling at almost half the speed of light to arrive in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, it would have had to leave its home while we Earthling Americans were engaged in our Civil War – killing each other over whether some of us have the right to own others of us.

Those astronomers would’ve started listening for a return signal around the time Ronald Reagan was threatening to bomb the Russians with that same purified uranium. That signal was that was fated never to arrive.

Those astronomers might’ve shrugged their equivalent of shoulders, and wrote it off as a valiant, but failed, attempt.

If, however, they were determined to find us, and make contact, because they’re even more optimistic and friendly than we are, and allowing time to build a second probe to send it chasing after the first one…

That second “message in a bottle” wouldn’t arrive here until almost 2100.

If they already had a second probe ready to go, and their tech advanced in the meantime, and they manage the miraculous traveling speed of three-quarters Light Speed – we might get a second chance to say “Hello. Sorry about the misunderstanding,” in 2042-ish.

…Assuming we don’t destroy our ecosystem and die off, thanks to global warming, by then.

okay.

So maybe this story’s ending is more than a little sad.

Reblogging this again, because that recent documentary about Bill Nye (featuring Neil DeGrasse Tyson) brought it back to my mind.

I also worked hard to write this up.  And I’m proud of it. And I have more followers now than I did then.

So.

I hate in the MCU or anything when the aliens or whatever are attacking and everyone’s just ‘oh yeah we be chilling just cowering over here’ as if seventy percent of humanity isn’t really angry all the time like catch these hands motherfucker I’ve bitten people for trying to steal my chips you think you can just steal my whole fucking planet YEET HERE COME MY TEETH film people be using responses to natural disasters but I promise if human sized things came to throw down humanity would be ready to fuck them up like yeah you got laser guns I got this dope ass stick I just found let’s go you ugly fuck

silentwalrus1: #yeah bicht!!!!!!#gimme the battle of new york with fuckin chitauri comin down and the shift manager of the times sq H&M has finally had Enough#Tracie bout to kill this alien with a traffic cone#’ JUST PRETEND THEY’RE TOURISTS’ she screams choking out goddamn Lizard Lite with her lanyard#10 feet away a park slope mom is beating an alien to death with her four year old’s knockoff eco friendly razr scooter#every single retail employee gets ten years’ worth of therapy in one day#captain america’s kill count: 83 aliens#kathleen from accounting: 94 and also her boss

… huh.

Parts of Gallifreyan anatomy which are canon:

Parts of Gallifreyan anatomy which are not canon:

What if: We really have had contact with aliens, already?

Roswell, New Mexico.

Okay, okay. I know it’s cliché.

But hear me out. Besides, I’m offering this as a “What if–” a story prompt, if you will – not a revelation of some nefarious conspiracy, nor a claim that I’ve figured out the Truth that They don’t want anyone to know.

If there is a  single “Big Truth” out there, a) I don’t think anyone can know for sure what it is, and b) if we ever do find out, I don’t think it would be anything terrible or scary, after all (maybe a little sad).

Anyway –

On July 3, 2017, the BBC World Service rebroadcast an interview with the son of one of the men who found the remnants of the “alien craft” (Major Jesse Marcel).

I won’t link to it here, because Tumblr buries posts with links, and the website itself is inaccessible (audio with no transcript). But if you want to look it up, the keywords I used just now were “BBC World Service,” “Witness” (the name of the program), and “Roswell.”

Jesse Jr. was 11 at the time, and at the time of the interview in 2010, he came across as sincerely convinced that the bits and pieces his father brought home to the kitchen table were: a) actually alien, and b) not at all like the scraps of weather balloon that were revealed to the public shortly after.

<Caveat>He was 11 at the time, and his father woke him up in the middle of the night to show him what he’d found. It could very well be that he was convinced by his father’s enthusiasm, and his father was motivated by his desire to find something alien, so that neither of them were seeing these artifacts clearly. And over the years, Jr. could have doubled down on his belief in order to defend his father’s honor.</Caveat>

Two details of the interview made my ears perk up, and take the idea that there really was some kind of “alien incident” at Roswell, 70 years ago a little more seriously:

But, as all our most serious-minded scientists (even the ones who are imagining life outside our solar system, and puzzling through ways to test for it) will tell you:  Real-world interstellar travel takes a very, very, long time.

So: here’s what I’m imagining might have happened:

Around the time that predynastic Egyptians were domesticating the donkey, astronomers living on the planet that we are now calling “Kepler-425b” turned their telescopes to the sky, wondering if there were intelligent life on other planets like theirs.

Around the time that Alexander the Great was trying to establish an empire, their technology has advanced enough to  send forth a ship in our star’s direction, carrying an unmanned probe, which has been programed with instructions to home in on any signs of proof of life – especially intelligent life.

The ship is capable of traveling at incredible speeds – almost half the Speed of Light – but even so, those idealistic astronomers know they won’t live to receive any answers that that little probe may discover. It’s all for their future generations, if they are still around, to reap.

That little probe finally makes it to its destination 3,000 (Earth years) after it set out: a little, rocky planet third out from its star – a medium-sized star just like the one it set out from.  And as it gets closer, the signs of life are unmistakable. And closer still: the signature of enriched Uranium, and Plutonium! Exactly what it was sent to find.  It comes in closer, maneuvering with the planet’s gravitational pull, preparing to send its message back home.

Except it crashes. It never gets to send that message. It gets dismantled; its parts get hidden away, and only those Earthlings that are thought to be delusional by others of their species believe it ever existed at all.

But the descendants of the civilization that sent it forth have no idea of its fate. They won’t even start looking for its message to arrive for another 1,400 years.

But (I hear you say)! Isn’t there another star with seven Earth-like planets, that’s much, much closer?

Yes, there is: a star we call “Trappist-1.” But it’s a dwarf star. The planets in its habitable zone are very likely tidally locked. This means that there’s a good chance the civilizations that arose on them have no concept of “Distant Stars,” much less develop the desire and the tech to venture among them.

But I could be wrong about that. Still, if the scenario I outlined for the astronomers of Kepler-435b had played out on one of Trappist-One’s planets:

For a probe traveling at almost half the speed of light to arrive in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, it would have had to leave its home while we Earthling Americans were engaged in our Civil War – killing each other over whether some of us have the right to own others of us.

Those astronomers would’ve started listening for a return signal around the time Ronald Reagan was threatening to bomb the Russians with that same purified uranium. That signal was that was fated never to arrive.

Those astronomers might’ve shrugged their equivalent of shoulders, and wrote it off as a valiant, but failed, attempt.

If, however, they were determined to find us, and make contact, because they’re even more optimistic and friendly than we are, and allowing time to build a second probe to send it chasing after the first one…

That second “message in a bottle” wouldn’t arrive here until almost 2100.

If they already had a second probe ready to go, and their tech advanced in the meantime, and they manage the miraculous traveling speed of three-quarters Light Speed – we might get a second chance to say “Hello. Sorry about the misunderstanding,” in 2042-ish.

…Assuming we don’t destroy our ecosystem and die off, thanks to global warming, by then.

okay.

So maybe this story’s ending is more than a little sad.

I’ve been thinking about this post a lot lately… Not sure why.

Maybe I just want an answer to the question:

To be anything other than:

Maybe we’re all trying our best against impossible odds.

Also: I just watched an episode of Nova about the history of what we’ve learned about black holes, and it turns out that moving at three-quarters light speed is even more miraculous than I realized.

Because the accretion disc of stars being spaghettified – moving fast enough to generate blasts of x-rays across the universe – is “only” half light speed.

in stories featuring aliens, they’re always like “on my planet this never happens!” or “in my culture, this differs from your human culture.” and that’s neat and all because i like worldbuilding and all that jazz but wouldn’t it be fun if they just. couldn’t do that?

i want a story where humans encounter an alien who frustrates them because they don’t know enough to tell them anything concrete

like humans will ask “tell us about politics in your planet!” and the alien’s all “uh… hold on it’s been a while since i took gov. um….”

“what sorts of plants grow on your planet?”

“i dunno i grew up in the suburbs. they’re like… purple? idk what you want me to say”

“tell us about the culture on your planet!”

“do you have any idea how many fucking countries are back home, i don’t even know where to begin”

“your planet is obviously much more scientifically and technologically advanced than ours. is it possible for you to enlighten us on certain matters concerning space travel, or would that be a form of interference you must avoid?”

“naw it’s cool, it’s just that, um, i’m a philosophy major”

OOH OOH AND

“take me to your leader” 

“…we have like hundreds of leaders like which one? my country’s leader? another country’s leader? the director of our space program? my country’s military leader? my mom??”

my mom

@soapwortflower my mom

Alien 1: On my planet, we have no need to waste large areas of land on agricultural production.  What we do not 3D-print, we grow in vast skyscrapers with perfect climate control.  

Alien 2: Says the guy who never left Vrlov.  Pay no attention to him; my entire hive and like the five around it were farmland.  

Alien 1: We have evolved past scarcity.

Alien 2: Must be nice.  I wish someone had told me during the Blight.

Alien 1: And yet, I sometimes wonder if in achieving total efficiency we have not lost something of ourselves.  Humour… spontaneity… joy…

Alien 2: That’s it, Jrg.  First Contact is cancelled.  Excuse us, humans; my colleague urgently needs to attend a kitchen party.  We’ll be back when we get him sorted out.

Bad: aliens that insist upon referring to human women as “feeeeemales”.

Good: aliens that insist upon dividing humans into binary categories, but the binary in question is based on something we’d regard as trivial and bizarre.

“Hello, Human Free-lobed-Ear! How do you fare? I am wondering where Human Attached-lobe-ear by the name of Jon is currently residing. Do you know?”

*gently gathers everyone who writes Humans Are Weird/Space Orcs/Space Australians fics* WRITE A BOOK GODDAMMIT

JUST FUKIN DO IT

Listen we’re working on it ok.

It’s kinda hard with the conflicting timelines we’ve individually created but we’re doing the best we can

Guess what came out this summer!

I’ve read it.  It’s great.  A dozen short stories written by some very good authors, with That Original Tumblr Post as the introduction. 

I’m sure there are tons of amazing novels in progress (including mine), and that will take time.  But in the meantime, humans are weird short stories!!

YES

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

honestly, I’m shocked that I never heard of this!! why has nobody told me? 

Holy shit, @apollymi, I need this

I really hope everyone got credited and are sharing the royalties.