What If A Lot Of Alien Species Didn’t Actually Evolve As Pack Species, And Just Adapted To Living In

“Humans are weird” idea

It seems to always be the case that aliens have names that are “unpronounceable by the human tongue.”  But, y’know, humans are actually really good mimics.  We can do impressions of anything, and some of us are really good at it.  What if that was a special skill of ours that was constantly surprising the aliens?

Alien talks about human like s/he’s not there, only to be shocked when its own language comes out of that strange little mouth.

Alien can’t figure out WHAT that noise onboard is, only to find human crewmate pranking it.  (“As soon as he leaves, I’m gonna do the sound of a failing hover engine, okay?  Just see where he looks first!”)

Alien hears a different noise and a thud, then “Sorry, I tripped.”  (”But you squeaked.”  “Yeah, didn’t mean to.  Sounded kinda dumb.”)

Alien is alarmed to hear the sound of two Dangerous Animals coming from the containment room.  Thinks the one has multiplied.  Runs in, find human yowling back at it.  (“It seemed lonely, so I was talking to it.  Reminds me of a cat I had once.”)

The away team is threatened by a Large Animal protecting its young.  Alien Captain knows what to do.  Shoves the human up front and points.  “Make the noises that the little ones are making.  This is your time to shine.”

Are cats considered holy in human culture? I do not understand.

A story about a weird human thing

Scene: space, a spacecraft, this mostly Tizrah crew has a few humans

•A bell sounds, signaling the humans aboard that its time for them to eat • The humans, scattered about the ship, make their way to the mess hall • another crew member, tizrah-Sine, takes count of the humans eating • If a human doesn’t come to eat and socialize, ze might be sick • This crew takes care of their human crew mates • Sine doesn’t see human-Harlo • Sine goes off to find Harlo •Harlo is sitting in the lounge •cat-Dubby is sitting on Harlo

S: Harlo, Why is it that you didn’t come to eat when the bell rang? H: I can’t just get up, Dubs is sitting on me S: Do you not have the strength to remove the cat from your lap? H: I could, but it’s just not right S: What do you mean? H: Its not okay to disturb a cat thats lying on you S: … S: … S: The cats peace is more important than food? H: Its fine, Food can wait until Dubs gets up

•Dubby wanders off not long after this conversation •Harlo joins the other humans •The other humans agree with Harlo’s actions •Sine reports this to zir supervisor • A note is made in the ships guide to humans

- A human might not get up when sat upon by a cat. It is not viewed as acceptable to disturb the cat. Humans will still disturb cats in other situations. This situation is somehow special.

here’s another one i thought of

what if humans are the only ones capable of being offended?

like, an alien says, casually “i don’t like you” and the human… reacts? the alien is all “am… i not using that word correctly? like is to indicate a preference for? and I have no particular preference for you human we just met?”

and the human is like “first of all, how dare you“

and the alien doesn’t understand why the human is angry? there was nothing about the value of human in the statement, so why did the alien’s statement distress them so?? the feeling of liking (or absence thereof) was completely dependent upon the [internal thinking mechanism process] of the alien???

and like 30 minutes of language analysis later, they come to the conclusion that, because the human is new, there is no reason for their presence to cause a pleasant feeling (which is liking? the alien guesses), that the alien wasn’t trying to cause offense (OF COURSE NOT, THEY DON’T HAVE A DEATH WISH), so the human is just like “oh, ok, i guess i’ll just have to grow on ya!” *failwink* and then there’s the lightbulb moment for the alien, like

OH. This is why humans are aggressively social. pets/hugs/touches everything. forms pack bonds so quickly and fiercely. They like things. and they want to be liked in return.

We did it again people, reblog to get some divine intervention and never miss a saving throw again

Why do you insist on doing the most irrational things, and how has it led to you being the dominant species on the planet?

those “monkey brain/human brain” posts except the monkey brain is presented as the rational one

Willow and Tara from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

CANON GAY COUPLES

(please reblog and add more!)

Rachel and Luce from Imagine Me And You

Waverley and Haught from Wynonna Earp

Magnus and Alec from Shadowhunters

Billy and Teddy from Young Avengers, Marvel

Ruby and Sapphire from Steven Universe

Mitch and Cameron from Modern Family

Holt and Kevin from Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Isak and Even from Skam

Emily and Naomi from Skins UK

Alex and Maggie from Supergirl

Stef and Lena from The Fosters

Humans are Space Orcs

So I’ve been loving the “humans are weird” tag lately and I came up with one myself. Here goes…

Breathe in… Breathe out… The yoga soundtrack on Kenzie’s phone was interrupted by the nervous clicking of a member of the Ghrivak clan. Thnybux, a third-tier member of the clan, approached her on a swirling cloud, as was standard of the Ghrivaks.

“Human Kenzie,” said Thnybux, through the translator in her ear. “Human Kenzie, what are you doing? You will rip your flesh with those movements!”

Kenzie straightened from her yoga position and greeted Thnybux with the series of clicks common in the Ghrivak dialect. “This is called yoga. Humans actually need to move and stretch their bodies. It’s good for us.”

Thnybux regarded her with some confusion. “Do you know why the Ghrivak move only on clouds, Human Kenzie? It is because if we move our bodies too much, our bones will disintegrate from the forces of gravity on this planet. I do not understand this theory of movement. How exactly is it beneficial to your species?”

“Human muscles are connected to hard, quasi-living rods in our bodies called bones. These bones are created by specialized cells, and are both very lightweight and very strong. Our muscles are made of specialized cells, and when they are very minimally damaged, repair themselves so that they are stronger. If a human does not exercise, the muscles will die off, and the human will no longer be able to move.”

“Surely the force of these…muscles…on these living rods will shatter the rods?”

“No, our muscles are not that strong,” Kenzie laughed. “Our bones are much stronger than that. And humans break bones fairly frequently. It hurts but the bone just heals stronger. That’s kind of a theme in humans actually, when we get hurt we just heal stronger.” She returned to her yoga.

Thnybux hid xie’s fear from the human Kenzie, and took note of this new information. What kind of creature becomes stronger when it is hurt? Lesson number one: Do not anger the humans.

Not greeting someone this way is a sleight to their honor.

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’

Humanity is so beautiful

So I learned two cool things about humans:  Humans have stripes! Human skin is overlaid with what dermatologists call Blaschko’s Lines, a pattern of stripes covering the body from head to toe. The stripes run up and down your arms and legs and hug your torso. You cannot see them without special equipment as the difference between the stripe cells and the non-stripes are too subtle for human eyes to pick up. You will also notice them at if something irritates the skin, as rashes and moles can form along these invisible lines.

Humans are bio-luminescent! We glow in the dark. Natural chemical reactions in our cells let out some energy in the form of visible light. Unfortunately this light is very weak, about 1000 times weaker than the eye can see. Scientists still don’t know if there are animals capable of seeing this light in humans. 

So, it gave me an idea, and I will be writing something on it, but I’m also eager to see where others would go with the idea: what if humans met a race that could see our stripes, or our glow, or both!  My take on the idea will involve the aliens adoring these glowing stripy creatures. Humans, meanwhile, are really confused about why these aliens find us so much more attractive than the more colourful creatures out there. Their compliments would confuse us. We literally cannot see what makes us beautiful to them. 

Anyone who wants to write this, feel free to go other places; love, hate, disgust, confusion. Any reaction from the humans, or aliens, can make a good story. 

Humans are Weird

SCIENCE!  Beings of the galaxy research for PURPOSES. How to recreate a sound. How to get into space. Humans? Humans randomly poke into shit and ask questions and light stuff on fire and run it through a blender and a spectrometer. Because they can. Because they’re curious.   MOST BEINGS OF THE GALAXY DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF ‘CURIOUS’.  “Human Steve. What are you doing?”  “Trying to figure out what in hell that rock from Taurus nine is made out of.”  “To what purpose?”  “I wanna KNOW.” 

Beings of the galaxy visit Earth, and get tours of the research facilities. They are so fragmented. And often IN COMPETITION with each other. Their genome was sequenced IN A RACE. Their most useful antimicrobial medication was found BY ACCIDENT, by a human who would let things grow in his petri dishes ‘just to see what happened’. They are ignoring their own health concerns to clone an extinct mammal no one has a purpose for. Their largest, most expensive experiment ever built is to see about sub-atomic particles that may or may not exist. There is no planned purpose for those particles, either way. They just want to figure it out. 

Beings of the galaxy hire as many of these ‘scientists’ as they can, then get out of their way.