Humans Are Space Orcs

Emphasis

Imagine aliens coming to Earth and having translators that work perfectly. Except they don’t pick up on tone.

Tone has a HUGE impact on a message. Consider the following sentence:

“You look nice today.”

Now repeat it stressing each word one by one.

“YOU look nice today”, implying someone else that you are probably indicating with your body or to whom you’d previously referred does not.

“You LOOK nice today”, implying that you don’t smell/sound it.

“You look NICE today”, thus turning what would otherwise have been a casual remark into a compliment. You don’t just look nice. You look damn fine.

“You look nice, TODAY”, which is clearly an insult purpoiting that you usually look like crap. Damning by faint praise, as they say.

And all of these are possible - and wildly differing - meanings to a simple four word sentence.

In this scenario, super secret plans could be discussed in front of the aliens with them being none the wiser simply by saying it à la Mean Girls. Should war between the two factions emerge, humans would win by the power of passive-aggressive bitching

okay, so like there’s all this stuff about humans and the way we befriend all sorts of animals. but like, think about the way we interact with our pets. what if it’s not just the fact that we made friends with predators but that theses predators made friends with us back. the fact that there is a really clear bond between a dog or a cat and their owners and it’s reciprocal. the absolute love and devotion these companion animals show for us and us for them. think about the way you play with your pet and how an alien species might view it. or the fact that there’s a kind of rudimentary communication between species. the fact that I can tell the difference between my cat’s distressed meows vs. his i’m hungry meows. the fact that he prods me with a paw to get my attention, because he knows it works. that I can tell at a glance that my cat wants me to lay down a certain way so he can sleep on me. or the little greeting ritual me and my cat do when I come home for work – he meows really loud to be picked up… I sweep him into my arms and pet him, cooing goofy nonsense while he makes weird contented cat noises. think how absolutely flabbergasted an alien might be by the relationship between a human and their pet.

Humans are crazy and can do things that sometimes shouldn’t be physically or realistically possible. We relish the chance to break new barriers, to prove someone wrong, to spit in the face of reason and say screw it all for the sake of seeing if we CAN make it work.

But.

The lengths we will go to to avoid doing things we just DONT like? We’ll give away even our most valuable resources. Strike deals with devils hundreds of times over. Employ extreme avoidance tactics. Even go to the point of begging on our knees for aid in avoiding the action. Cousins bargain away their most cherished rations, memorabilia and even monetary items to get out of sitting by that one relative at dinner. Siblings sell themselves to each other for labor, snacks and sole rights to consoles and transportation to get an alibi for a few short hours. Humans will scour every inch of their living quarters and tackle every project in their command in under 24 hours JUST to avoid that load of laundry in the dryer, or that single research paper on the Scarlett letter. Proud friends and family alike will fall to their knees and beg JUST to get out of changing that diaper or watching that one wild child.

Humans may be proud,collected, mad geniuses who break barriers and physics just to see if they can and stare death in the face to see who flinches first But there is nothing on earth or heaven above we will not do to avoid the tiniest things. And i think that’s beautiful.

Interstellar Cultural Exchange

A problem that we might have is the importance of food. There are certain things that I’m quite certain will be constant from culture to culture, and, barring the possibility of aliens taking control of  their evolution in such a way that they no longer need to eat, I think food would be one of them.

People would be careful in the beginning, but eventually some people would break more and more quarantine and contraband laws, resulting in unusual fusion which we might not be able to predict.

“What’s this apple-looking thing I’m eating?” 

“It’s actually an animal that sucks sap out of trees. Think of it as a vegetarian tick.”

“What is that?”

“It’s called chocolate, want some?”

***Two Hours Later***

“I see colors!”

“Chocolate is space cocaine. Got it.”

“Human, I have made gumbo using ingredients from my planet. Would you like some?”

“Isn’t your biome arsenic-based?”

“Your point?”

“Want some chips?”

“Are you insane human!? That has SALT in it! Are you trying to kill me!?”

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

He’s so talented! Reblog for amazing rolls, and crits all night.

alright alright alright, @space-australians asked for some humans are space orcs re: adrenaline and tonight you shall receive because it’s 1:15 in the morning and my brain clearly does not believe in sleep!!!

After some time of observation, the Intergalactic Fleet happily welcomed the Terrans. While their uncontrollable pack-bonding instincts had caused some… incidents… they were mostly a boon. In dire straits, the flimsy little two-legged things proved themselves capable of surviving in any inhospitable climate and either pulling their comrades out of danger or summoning help for the danger even while suffering from their own grievous injuries. 

So when Medical Chief Sylatn-Dra’xxort got to share an important dinner with a human called Commander Geralt O’Brien - a rarity, because the Fleet was generally segregated by breathing requirements and her people favored chlorine - she was very excited to pick his brain on how his species could go from “let’s put a knife on this cleaning bot and name it and promote it” to a facsimile of the Terran folk hero “Terminator” in a manner of seconds.

Thanks to the airflow manipulation technologies of the bird-like Aarkorysh people, Commander O’Brien’s voice was only slightly warped as he responded to her questions. “Well, obviously you know humans are full of hormones. When things get dire, say because of a tunnel collapse for example, there’s a hormone called adrenaline that gets released.”

Sylatn-Draxxort listened intently to O’Brien’s explanation of how this ‘adrenaline’ was in many ways a biological equivalent of a starship’s emergency lockdown mode. Terran psychologists called this state “Fight or Flight Mode” and while in such a state, a human might even be able to shrug off pain that would kill other organisms as their body was flooded with a veritable cocktail of substances that blocked pain while providing additional blood sugar to perform feats of strength that impressed even Golretzi soldiers. 

“Now the problem with adrenaline is that it’s really only good for you in short bursts,” O’Brien continued, and took a sip from his glass of red liquid - another human curiosity, their fondness for substances toxic to other species with similar biology. “If a human is under that kind of stress for too long they start producing adrenaline and other stress hormones even when they’re out of danger. At that point, the constant elevated heartrate and stuff ends up becoming a medical issue.” 

He smiled to himself while Sylatn-Draxxort took a few bites of her own meal. “Although on the other end of the spectrum you get adrenaline junkies who seek out that kind of reaction.”

The Medical Chief turned a few of her eyes back to look at the dark-skinned commander, who sounded fond. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah, we call them adrenaline junkies. These are the people who do a lot of base jumping and crazy ski jumps and stuff.”

“Yes, I recently read about a Sergeant injuring herself ‘skiing’ on Pyrhatsdis…”

O’Brien made a face of discomfort before laughing. “Yeah, I read that too. If I remember correctly, she got out with just a little concussion and some scrapes. I’ve had worse skiing injuries than that, though it was partly just because I didn’t do the straps right.”

“And people seek out the sorts of situations that cause this physiological reaction, even though too much of said reaction causes damage to your circulatory system?”

“I know, right?”

Sylatn-Draxxort reached out one of her many arms to take a sip of the cool mercury brew she was fond of while she considered how to respond to this politely. “How strange,” she said softly.

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. 

((Start at 1:51))

One day more!

One day more to revolution

We will

nip it

in the bud!

We’ll be ready for these schoolboys

They will wet themselves with blood!

One day more!

Watch ‘em run amok Catch ‘em as they fall

Never know your luck when there’s a free-for-all!

Here’s a little “dip” There a little “touch”

Most of ‘em are goners so they won’t miss much!

One day to a new beginning (Raise the flag of freedom high!)

Every man will be a king (Every man will be a king!)

There’s a new world for the winning (There’s a new world to be won!)

Do you hear the people sing?

My place is here, I fight with you!

One day more!

We will join these people’s heroes We will follow where they go

We will learn their little secrets, We will know the things they know.

One day more!

Watch ‘em run amok Catch 'em as they fall Never know your luck when there’s a free-for-all!

One more day to revolution We will nip it in the bud We’ll be ready for these schoolboys

Tomorrow we’ll be far away,

Tomorrow is the judgement day

Tomorrow we’ll discover What our God in heaven has in store!

One more dawn

One more day

One day more!

Humans are ridiculous

I just want to throw my hat into the ring about the Humans Are Space Orcs trope that has been going around and I’ve been enjoying immensely.

You know how a large percentage of us have a fear of spiders? Even cripplingly so, like “kill it now I’m crying and breathing into a bag” kind of fear. So what if the aliens are monitoring our transmissions before making first contact, and see, for example, a bunch of Tumblr users discussing how scary spiders are? Put that with how badass humans generally are (seriously, we invented surgery before we invented anesthetic and consume literal poison because we like the taste), how freaked out would the aliens be to learn that there’s something we truly fear? I can see it going down like this: Human Steve: Tell us about FTL travel and your culture, we have much to learn from each other Alien: Yeah yeah in a minute tell me about the spider threat are we safe right now or

Even better would be if Human Steve is not one of those people who is afraid of spiders at all. Like, he has a pet tarantula and puts wild spiders outside safely when they come into his bathroom, if he bothers with them at all. And the aliens are VERY CONCERNED about the little guys and he’s like ???? They aren’t??? A threat???? But then they consult with Human Bill, and Human Bill is basically Professional Spider Hater and goes on for a weirdly long time about how spiders are the actual devil and how black widows are really dangerous and let’s not even MENTION Australia. He gets the heebee jeebies and starts twitching and itching as he begins to feel phantom bugs on his skin. Both Human Steve and Human Bill insist that the other is the weird one. The aliens are more concerned than ever.