Whenever I see a post on tumblr suggesting aliens don’t have gender, I always think–‘but what if also the reverse. What if aliens also have some fundamental social construct we don’t’.
Like, they come and meet us and they’re like ‘hey this is an awkward question but what’s your gooblebygark?’
And we’re like what.
‘You know, the… the thing. Your goobledygark. The thing that dictates whether you’re gnarfgnoovles or brubledoopes’
What. What. What the fuck, those words don’t even mean anything??? What are you talking about?
‘Look, your ridiculous human languages don’t seem to have the words for these! But they’re totally a thing, they’re like, fundamental aspects of social life for our species, just… just let us lick you so we can know what verb tense to use when we speak to you.’
What does one thing have to do with the other??? That makes no–
‘UGH, nevermind, you’re totally brubledoopes, I can just tell, I don’t even need to taste your bacterial skin colonies.’
And then another alien overhears and is like ‘holy shit, you can’t stereotype like that, that’s SO NOT COOL’
‘yeaH BUT THEY WON’T LET ME LICK THEM’
it is time once again to think about Par%l:
the non-binary alien in Immortal Hulk in the next universe, who is the very last being in their universe and dares to ask the unspeakable horror who murdered the universe to explain why, and perishes to fling a desperate hope into the past to prevent it all from coming to pass
what we see of their species is genuinely very alien and they would make an EXCELLENT xenofiction protagonist; the whole chapter is, in fact, xenofiction, as they have never seen a humanoid form. you see them, in the narration, struggling to make sense of a bipedal figure, describing an arm being pulled back as an act of incomprehensible strangeness. The sadistic grin of the One Below All is equally unfathomable to them (as Par%l’s people do not have faces to emote with), and you get a real sense of dawning horror when it realizes that the monster that did all this… enjoys the suffering and pain it has inflicted.
what we hear described of their species is apparently reproducing in trios, in a fashion heavily suggested to be completely nonsexual; part of their story involves them trying to reconnect with a former lover, both of them affected by the loss of the third, that is heavily laden with the sense of hopelessness and despair that pervades the issue as all the stars in the sky have, literally, been broken.
they’re deeply inhuman, and drawn to be completely unrecognizable by any human standard, and nonetheless they are people in a very obvious way, and its a terrible tragedy what happens to them, and what they end up doing is hoping that something prevents this all from happening
Ya know what I hate? How in Science Fiction if there are aliens and humans, then the humans are ultra super special for whatever reason. Like they can’t just be there they have to ether be the main focus or the only species that matters! Apparently people can’t relate to aliens unless they are inherently superior.
id wreak mayhem for a really good scifi where sight was considered as exotic and numinous as telepathy by the protag species
Happy May Day all. Solidarity and all that jazz. For your brain, some history on May Day and how it came to be: 1. The Zinn Education Project: May 4, 1886: Haymarket Tragedy
2. IWW Historical Archives: The Brief Origins of May Day
3. NPR : What is May Day? For the most part, the opposite of capitalism
In the dimness he woke and knew it was too late. Morning never came so late unless the world was ending.
Fortunately, he knew what to do about that.
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Another brilliant video.
I may save some of those cultural/society ideas he included as blueprints for some future stories I may write someday.