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
‘This place needs a dartboard.’ *darts is explained* ‘You… throw sharp objects at a tiny point on a circle with the expectation of hitting it and mock those who do not achieve this amazing feat.’ ‘It’s better if you’ve had a couple of beers.’ ‘You insist that you’re more accurate when partially intoxicated. I have seen you intoxicated. Fine motor control is not something I associate with intoxication.’ ‘The one sport where doping is actually encouraged.’ ‘Humans. How. Just how. ’ ‘You think this is hard, try throwing cards.’
I’m now super enchanted with the idea that there are all these alien racs out there that basically didn’t do projectiles until at least they had geometry and aerodynamics worked out– no throwing stones or slings and arrows, nothing range until catapults with some heavy maths calculations behind them because they couldn’t eyeball it. And some of them not even having that– going from hand-to-hand to computer-targetted bombs, pretty much. And then coming to earth and finding out about spears and bows and arrows and slings and skipping stones– and suddenly there’s a rush on their homeworlds of all these really bad pop-xenopyschoanthropology books about the effect of being able to kill at a distance on our pyschocultural development, how it effects our perception of ourselves and the universe – all these bad science, lurid explanations about how this has effected our strange alien minds to give us warped senses of territoriality or death or social-unit-bonding.
Of all the humans are weird I like this one the most. Feels mundane enough yet just weird enough without making us out to be supersoldiers because I dunno I guess aliens have weak constitutions now or something..
Most ‘humans are weird’ things try to focus on the things humans can do that most animals can’t, but like, they kinda blow it out of proportion. Like sure humans are sturdier than most animals but not by THAT much.
Personally, I’ve always like the combination of facts that A) We’re obscenely flexible compared to anything with else with bones B) We have crazy endurance and C) We’re DTF pretty much whenever. And whatever, for that matter.
Super soldiers nothing, I’m pretty sure Humans would be the Weird Sex Alien.
Those ones are also decent and reasonable “humans can be cool space alien planet of hat biological archetypes too!”
humans:
internal organs are full of acid
eats poison for fun
can throw things like woah
can run for a long time even when normally you would get tired
Yet another installment in humans being fuckin weird compared to aliens: humans give blood, organs, and tissue to each other, because our race is built around being able to function under as much stress as possible.
So of course, what do we do when another human will die without something we could live without?
We go to our local hospital and undergo trauma to provide them with it, for no compensation.
Sure you might need to eat and drink more, take antibiotics or anti rejection drugs, but hey!
B’ril over there had to wait until HIS race figured out stem cells and lab grown organs, because ALL their organs are vital, and losing a pint of fluid flat out kills them or sends them into shock.
“You… you lost… your toxin filters?”
“Well, we’ve got a few things that do that, but yeah, like… four of them?”
“….Four?”
“Well, counting tonsils.”
“You are… How are you alive, again?”
“You make it sound so weird. I still have two kidneys- One’s synthetic, the other was donated.”
“…….donated?”
“Yeah, my girlfriend was compatible.”
“Donated.”
“….Yeah? Like, we had the same blood type and everything, and she volunteered. What, you guys don’t do that? What do you do when someone needs a liver, or something?”
“We… clone one.”
“Okay, sure, but what did you do before cloning? You didn’t just like, give someone a piece?”
“….. we died? Wait, what do you mean, ‘give someone a piece’?”
“Well, our livers can grow back. You can give someone a piece of yours, and they can grow their own. You guys don’t do that?”
I do feel bad for plants in general. Like, I know they are often as vicious as animals in many ways, just slower. But, I mean, they just show up and they’re like, “I Think I Will Evolve To Eat The Sun And Also Make Oxygen And How Now Is All This.” And, like, everything fucking dies at first (totally not plants fault, btw. okay maybe it was but they didn’t mean to) but then new things evolve. And they’re like, “Fuck it, eating each other suuuucks. Let’s eat the plants which give us life.” And so we start doing that. And plants are all, “Oh Dear No, I Do Not Care At All For Being Eaten. I Will Make Myself Into Poison Sometimes.” But, y’know, stuff kept eating plants anyway so plants, ever the bro, came up with a new idea. “I Have Made A Decision About Being Eaten And You May Eat Me Friends And Here Is An Especially Tasty Bit Packed All Full of Delicious Sugars Which I Have Produced At Great Cost (What They Do Not Know Is That My Seeds Are Within And Shall Be Propagated Near And Far By Their Dung)“ But that’s not good enough for animals, no, not at all. We love the fuck out of some pomegranates but also alliums which are like, “I Have Not Decided To Go In For This Being Eaten Business. I Shall Be Very Foul Tasting And Also A Poison.” But no, sorry, onions, you fucked up. You accidentally wound up with a species that just doesn’t give up or fully comprehend the idea of things tasting “”‘bad’“’ or other concepts like not eating poison. (Sorry, plants, later we turn some of you who are not poison into a poison we consume recreationally. We really enjoy eating poison.) Legit, alliums are deadly to, like, every other species. And we call them aromatics and throw them in everything. Peppers are the best, though. They completely got on the being eaten train. BUT ONLY BIRDS Peppers are like, “You May Eat Me, Fair Avian, For You Are Sure To Spread Me A Great Distance. But, Mammal, Take HEED. Should You Eat Me Then I Will Burn You Most Terribly.” And we were all about that. “The FUCK, burning? I love pain,” said humans, presumably. “You know, peppers, you and evolution have done a good job at burning us but I am pretty sure we could make your chemical agony even more potent. Come hang with us,” humans added to a very confused pepper just before creating the ghost chili.
ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT HUMANS is how we pick up lil quirks from people we’re around often!! i love how u can tell people are close by the way their body language is complementary. i love seeing people start using expressions and words their loved ones use often. i love when you complement someone on something and they say something like “so-and-so got it for me” or “so-and-so introduced me to it.” we’re so deeply entangled with each other, constantly building each other up in subtle ways without even realizing it. how neat is that!! how freakin’ cool are we!!!
Okay, I frickin’ adore the Earth Is Space Australia business, so here’s my two cents. Someone did a great post about laughter as a fear response and how freaky that would be to aliens.
There’s another thing we do when we’re about to go into battle and we’re scared out of our minds.
So Alien Steve is minding his own business as the new guy on the Starship Incandescent. It’s a mixed ship, about half human, a quarter Silesian, and the rest a grab bag of species, but he hasn’t had any major problems so far. Then the pirates show up and shoot out their FTL drives so they can’t escape, and they’re outnumbered ten to one, and he calculates their odds of survival at very low. The comm link is still active, so they can hear the pirates laughing as they get ready to tear the Incandescent open and vent them all into vacuum. At least the end will be quick.
And Human Steve starts chanting. It makes no sense. Human incantations are for birth anniversaries, or aquatic grooming rituals, or for the ancient rite of passage known as “ka-ra-oke”. This is not a time of celebration. It is a time of preparing for imminent and ugly death by gravity cannon. But every human on the bridge starts chanting, too.
The pirates aren’t laughing anymore. Human Steve wraps his fingers around the main gunnery controls, and the crew descends as one into battle.
Teradecads later, his students will beg him for the story of how the Incandescent destroyed the Tyn’x Syndicate. To this day he credits their victory to the invocation of the great Human battle god Queen.
And the damndest thing, Alien Steve will say later, is the way they all knew the chant. Not just knew it, but agreed that this was the right one to use. Because the thing about humans, Alien Steve will tell his student, the thing to remember is that they spar recreationally, and they do it *all the time* and over the most meaningless things. Appropriate chants for a situation are an especially common thing to spar over, and it’s exceedingly hard to tell just how recreational it is sometimes.
(There are reports of sparring sessions that got so out of hand they almost jeapordized entire missions. Alien Steve has a friend whose fur still stands on end in fear at the thought of the human utterance, “Turn that off or so help me God I am turning this ship around.”)
The point is, Alien Steve will say, the humans on that mission had very different ideas about appropriate chants. They were well behaved about it, but Human Janet and Human Steve especially seemed to worship Gods who demanded very different chants. And yet, when Human Steve began invoking the war god, Human Janet was the first to join in.
Humans have been scientifically determined to have no hivemind or psychic abilities, but sometimes Alien Steve has to wonder.
theres a big martian dust storm rn and its not clear if opportunity will survive
sci fi writers: humans dont care about robots
me, crying: OPPORTUNITY HONEY YOU CAN DO IT I BELIEVE IN YOU
Important clarification
1) Mars Rovers have to run heaters constantly (especially at night) because Mars is cold and they have sensitive electronics. Opportunity has had to shut down its heater because it hasn’t been able to draw enough power over the past few weeks; the danger is that Opportunity may not survive the few days its expected for the dust storm to clear up. The other currently operating rover, Curiosity is younger and has more advanced panels, batteries, and, most importantly, an onboard RTG (tl;dr: nuclear power source) that means dust storms aren’t as threatening to it. Opportunity has some radioactive heaters too, but they’re older, smaller, and have less power output. It’s survived dust storms in the past but every one is always a risk.
and 2)
THEIR OFFICIAL TWITTER CALLS IT OPPY, OPPY I BELIEVE IN YOU!!!
This is why I constantly say the whole trope of “robots as slaves to humans” and all that is bullshit because the instant one of our cute idiot mechanical children is in danger we have a goddamn conniption, even WITHOUT AI.
Oppy has stopped responding as of last night (it’s currently Wednesday, June 13, 2018). There is some hope that he will recharge when the dust storm passes, but that’s going to take a while
I was sitting at my desk just a few minutes ago, drawing, and a really loud crack of thunder went off–no power surges or anything, just thunder–and my roomba fled from its dock and started spinning in circles
I currently now have an active roomba sitting quietly on my lap
Humans will pack bond with anything.
I had a teenage girl come into my tea shop with her mother the other night. She purposely grabbed a teamaker in the most crunched-up looking box on the shelf (got banged around in shipment) and carried it protectively over to the counter. “If something’s in a damaged box I have to get it because I’m afraid no one else will love it,” she laughed nervously.
Not only will humans pack bond with anything, the empathy level of adolescent girls in particular likely has puppy-saving, world hunger-solving, war-ending powers.
I once saw a really bumpy lime at the grocery store, just a real ugly fruit. Later that night my boyfriend & I were driving home from rehearsal at like 11:30pm & passed the grocery store & I stared crying & he said “is it that lime? Do you want to go back and get it?” And I nodded and pulled the car around and bought the lime.
All dominant species in the galaxy has something that sets them apart. From healing broken bones and severed flesh, losing 2/8 of our blood, to being infected by literally billions of parasites, Humans have the gift of simply refusing to die. It freaks the heebie-jeebies out of everyone else.
“What do you mean average life expectancy is 80 years?”
“Umm, it’s not really that long is it? I mean don’t turtles and stuff live for over a hundred years?”
“Yes, but you have blood drives, where you just give away your blood in case someone else needs it. and apparently it’s normal for you children to break their limbs.”
“… yes…”
The Captain looked at the small screen in her hand as some new information popped up. “And it says here you survived a severe bout of tonsillitis? How would you eve–”
“Oh yeah, had to have them out when I was eleven. I got to stay in bed for a week and a half and eat all the ice cream I wanted, it was kind of fun.”
“Fun?” the alien shook her head, amazed. “And your file also says you’re living with only one kidney, somehow?”
“Yeah, my cousin needed one because his was shot, so I just figured–”
“–that you could give one up, just like that. Amazing.”
There was a sudden commotion outside the room, and then an alien crewman threw open the door, his tentacles standing right up and his normally violet complexion now looking much more blue, a clear sign he was in some distress. “Captain! They poison themselves for fun!”
The Captain looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
“They– they regularly, like… several times a year, a lot of them… just… they drink alcohol, Captain! For fun! It damages their livers and kills brain cells and makes them feel awful the following day, but they like it!”
The Captain’s face was now also quite blue as she turned to face the human sitting across from her. “Is this true?”
“Well, yeah, a lot of people drink alcohol for fun. I just drink a couple times a year, now, but back in my college days, I could’ve shown you a really good time.”
“Amazing,” said the Captain. “They really do poison themselves for fun.”
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