New Sentient Alien Meeting For The First Time: *growls*

Human:

Human: *snarls*

New Alien: *shook*

Crewmate Alien: I thought your species didn’t communicate in growls and snarls anymore?

Human: I ain’t about to be disrespected by someone acting a fool

ya know what, i think i do kinda have an April fools thought for ya

we know the humans are space fae au? what about the humans (especially kokichi) introducing the aliens to the holiday, they encourage them to participate in it and everything.

i imagine the holiday's existence certainly would add alot of backing to their preconceptions about humans being some sorts of trickster fae. i mean, what kind of species would have a day dedicated to pranks and trickery but a trickster fae species?

What I haven't seen yet, are space Monsters. Not like cool Aliens (there isn't enough of them either though 🤣)

But like, space Ork/werewolf/centaur/etc pirate/scientist/captain

And the fantastic world building options! Centaur space suits! Or how does the many moons/missing earth moon influence lycanthropy??

How do the fae/unseely(?? Sorry dislexya and not English, i hope you know what I mean 😅) fit into the cyber future?

maybe fae-advertisment-dytopia thingy???

Ooh!! Interesting concepts! I think the fae advertising is such a great concept!! Promising much and not technically lying but boy do you have to read the small print carefully…

So, something I learnt the other day. So, you know how dinosaurs supposedly can't see you if you stand still? Well that myth is based on real-life lizards/etc and how eyes in general work. So, once my dad starts infodumping, here comes some other cool information. We, humans, can in fact, also not see something unless it's moving. We fixed this by having our eyes constantly shake. And then our brain compensates for us, so we don't have to have shaky vision.

What if aliens don't have this? Like. What if they find out when one of us was looking at something in the distance, and they walk around this thing that's in front of them, and the alien is confused so they bob their head and oh, there's a thing there, but how did the human know that, and then we explain and they're like, horrified.

Humans are apex predators. They can hunt in packs. They can hunt in pairs. They can hunt on their own. They're persistance predators, which is unheard of. They get stronger when they're mad or scared. They have this thing called 'body language' which acts like a type of hivemind, even if they'll claim it isn't. And. They can see you. When you're not moving. They can still see you. If you ever find yourself in a fight against a human, for whatever reason? Run. Run as fast as you can. And hope, pray if you have a religion, that they won't follow.

I feel like any aliens that were prey at some point in evolution would have an odd fear of humans. Mostly cause they look like predators, act a bit like predators, and ARE predators. One perfect example is when we're focused on something like a mosquito that's been bugging us for a long time and we are just done.

Alien: "What. What..?"

Human: *HUNTING down a mosquito it saw*

Alien: ".... yeah I am really uncomfortable...."

Human: *quiet footsteps, pupils dialated, intense focus,*

Alien: *WAR FLASHBACKS*

Human: "Found you." *absolutely desimates the mosquito, squashing it into a million pieces as it's guts and various body parts liquidize into blood of the bloodthirsty, now stained on the palm of the human. A living being now reduced to a useless corpse as the human wipes the remains on their pants*

Alien: "I feel like I've just gained trauma."

I just love the "they're more scared of you than you are of them" thing because, yeah, Earth is a Deathworld filled with very dangerous beings, but also everyone in it is scared and would rather not interact with each other unless necessary

Alien: This is a very dangerous animal!

Human: Don't worry, we'll just walk away.

Alien: But it's watching us!

Human: It's hoping we leave already, so we're leaving.

Alien: It... It is?

Human: Yeah, it is more scared of us than we are of it. Let's go before the fight instinct kicks in because then it'll become a dangerous animal

Alien:...

Humans are weird

Have yall noticed how we somehow have strange aversions towards lights?? Like maybe not all of us, but we kind of know that if someone is sitting in the dark, you either leave them or join them. Like last night, I walked into class and there was just one guy there and the lights were off so i just sat down, 30 minutes later everyone else was in and the lights were still off. Only turned it on when the professor came in...

So like imagine aliens finding us huddled in a dark room, with our phones and what-nots, silently laughing at something we read, maybe there are other aliens with us who doesn’t really like light but we don't know that cus it's dark and also we didn't bother to check. Then one crewmate just turns on the lights and we all collectively hiss like a vampire or hide like bugs, so they just turn it back off and stumble blindly into the room until they find—feel through whatever they came for and leaves. No one ever mentions it.

Deathworlders everywhere but in Space

This is sitting in my brain because I haven't seen anyone else do this, but take a second to think about this: There are other deathworlders in space, terrifying ones, huge monster orc things. They are massive and nightmarish and impossibly strong. So thats why humans stand out. Thats how we survive. Human's are terrifying because we aren't built for one biome, one climate or even one planet. We aren't necessarily the strongest or fastest or scariest looking, but we're built to survive fucking everything. What if other deathworlder's are almost always only made to survive in one climate? (similar to some of the most deadly predators on earth currently) All the other deathworlders are terrifying, yes, but the second they step off their planet they're weak. Massive aliens of hulking muscle but their planet's gravity is a lot lower than the standard, so they barely meet the average strength bar whenever they go outside their gravity zone. Aliens that have venomous spikes all over their body and look gnarly as shit but their venom has practically no effect on 99% of discovered intergalactic species. Deathworlders whose planet is the nether from minecraft IRl, but they can't survive in any other temperature for any amount of time because their body just can't handle the cold and regulate their temperate (or, vice versa for tundra species). Aquatic species that are kraken-like nightmares, giant sirens and deadly squid-like beings. But they can't leave their home at all, because theres a very specific chemical makeup of their water that isn't currently found within their life-span distance travel. Deathworlders that genuinely can barely survive off planet and are frail compared to even the most docile prey species whenever they have to travel. Their called deathworlders because going to their planet is certain death, but if they leave they'll be meeting death just as quickly. And then along come humans, and everyones like, oh, another deathworlder, nothing to worry abou- wait. These guys dont seem to loose any of their natural strength off planet... and their fast and strong... and- AND THEY CAN SURVIVE IN PRACTICALLY ANY CLIMATE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE??? HELLO? Oh and of course their predators. Of course most of their planet is completely uninhabitable for most of us. Mhm, yep. thats fair. Totally Basically, deathworlders are a thing, the more common 'terrifying alien monster' type, but their harmless because they can't survive like everyone else. They can't thrive like humans can. It scares the shit out of everyone for a wholeeeeee while, after all, no one ever expected a deathworlder that doesn't die.

Prompt 274

You know what is fun? Baby Ghost Jason. You know what could be even more fun? Ghosts are Dragons. 

Jason? Aware of none of this. 

He was on comms, y’know listening and rolling his eyes at Dickwing, who used his real name, really Dick, he mocks. It’s just a stakeout, nothing new there, honestly boring when he could be blowing something up instead. It should have just been a stakeout. 

Yet there’s something suddenly there, something behind him. Something that causes his hair to stand on end and his comms to spark into static like some sort of horror movie. Something, something with clawed hands with corpse-pale skin tipped in black, stained or dead or something else, tilting his head up and up and up as he’s frozen. 

“A child, out here? Alone?” a voice crackles, hisses, hums, and purrs, somehow all at once, unnatural in its tone. He can’t move, he needs to move, he has to move, but it’s like the space around him has gone cold and dead, like he’s stuck in the Pits once more as claws hold his head and his vision blurs. “Sleep, child. Rest- we’ll be home soon.” 

Centaurism is when over many generations, a pair of front limbs goes from being used for support and locomotion to being permanently held off the ground for grasping, object manipulation, or other purposes. Basically turning a pair of front feet into a pair of hands.

Having four legs is often considered to be the ideal number for large animals, being very stable and resource efficient.

Therefore, it stands to reason that intelligent aliens with six limbs (4 legs, 2 hands) or more would be very common, and tool use on planets where the equivalent to Earth's vertebrates have 6 legs would be much more common among species than it is on Earth.

Aliens would be astounded by our ability to balance on merely two feet and our incredible flexibility. They would also be fascinated that some species of birds of all things figured out how to use tools.

"How did your raven use the key card?! Its front limbs are wings! Its back limbs are legs! It doesn't have hands!"

"She used her mouth."

"Ohhhhhhhhhh... Amazing."

Concept: most aliens can get anxious, can get scared, can get fight-or-flight. What most aliens do not get, however, is stress. Stress is a weird thing even by human standards. It can build up over time or be something tied to a very limited situation. It can be caused by a lot of things, and it comes in a lot of different ways. But it's a core human reaction, when a situation is wrong, it causes stress until it is righted. And it even affects different people differently!

Cue Human Cassandra, on a ship with her friend and co-worker Human Pauline. The ship is crewed with a mix of species. It's a cargo ship - load up in a space port, unload in another, get news and supplies during their stops, and live as an ever-shifting family as some of the two dozen crew members, give or take, get replaced. Some leave come payday, and new ones come looking for the thrill of low-level adventure, experiencing warp drives across the safer roads of the known universe.

But getting the supplies you need, or want, in stops is never so easy. Humans are new to the galactic community, and their needs misunderstood. Most broad-edibility food is bland for them, but that's okay. A big enough bag of their condiments can last them years. But ADHD meds... now that's less easy to get, the further from Earth you are. And a contract too big for their captain to pass on came up, much farther than the two humans expected.

Cassandra's mood deteriorated, her work priorities out of order, her sleep schedule in disarray. Little by little, she grew restless, shifting moods and gears unpredictably. A few weeks in and she was a mess, barely able to keep up with the minimum her job doing maintenance and running safety diagnostics for the route charting team required of her. While Pauline could help with the mechanical aspects of keeping the ship running, picking up the "slack", the safety had to be double-checked by the charting and pilot teams. When the curves of asteroid probability reached beyond a certain level, several hundred simulations had to be run, time-consuming processes had to be used, to avoid any collision at speeds beyond speed c. Some truly exotic things happened to ships that experienced those, but none of them contained the words "surviving crew." A safe route avoided any probability of collision over .1% and when going faster than light, any choice of course required thinking in 3 dimensions plus relative time to navigate dangerous probability fields in one piece, finding time-specific corridors and accounting for a dozen variables at once.

After she had a breakdown over a path she would normally have been able to find in under a minute, Pauline spoke to a concerned pilot team member:

"You have to understand her, this is a stressful situation and she's doing her best..."

"What do you mean by 'stressful'?" Gabalt asked. The furry little creature stood on two arched legs, and barely reached up to Pauline's shoulder, opening three wide eyes with curiosity and concern in equal parts.

"Things are... getting difficult for her, and keep getting more difficult because she does not have medication to help her brain be efficient. It makes her tired, and inefficient, and as it goes on, she's less and less able to cope with the situation. The longer this goes on, the worse it gets, and that is stress. Getting more tired because it takes more energy to deal with the situation, and less efficient because she's more tired, and things get harder because she's less efficient, on and on until something can solve the problem and the stress goes away."

"That sounds... hard. Do all humans have to deal with this?"

"Well, everyone has sources of stress, but she's got a disability. Without her meds, she gets stressed all the time. Not a lot all at once, but it always adds up."

"Oh no! So she'll be stuck like that until we get closer to Earth?"

"Most likely, yes."

But the most momentous thing to happen this day was not her breakdown. Not an hour later, alarms blared up. The simulation holograms all displayed blinking red masses - the less-travelled "safe route" was not as well protected! An asteroid range had been detected cutting through the border field, and it was in their way!

Pauline froze up, not knowing what to do. Gabalt was too surprised to act fast. All the courses from the ship's library of regular manoeuvres suggested a crash chance of over 60%, and mere seconds to act before entering the field!

Before anyone could react, Cassandra came in running from her corner to the front of the bridge, slamming the warp drive shutdown button. Most holograms stuttered and collapsed, the exit from FTL essentially dividing one or several of their dimensions by zero.

Looking quickly at the few remaining ones and gazing at the screens showing the current outside situation like a large window would have - plus a few critical extra points of data - she adjusted the angles manually while everyone still shuddered from the gravitational and temporal whiplash of suddenly coming back into normal time. Unblinkingly, she spotted the asteroids on the route while the ship was still going, if not at relativistic speeds, still fast enough for a single pebble they met to vaporise the Whipple shields, the outer hull, the inner hull, the crew members, and the hull again coming out if they but grazed it. Confirming the angles visually, she played with the reaction wheels, the thrusters, the gravity drives, to divert the ship's course just enough to miss a collision while not risking any grave injury on board. There was no time to react - if anything showed up straight ahead on the "unaugmented" outside view screens, it was too late to not get splatted. After half the crew had had the time to get thrown to the side or on the ground due to the rough handling, she'd managed to avoid any crash.

Gabalt was reeling. While it was surely not impossible, these was the kind of moves experienced veterans would never wish to attempt, and the margins for error were ridiculously low! She'd saved the ship and everyone on it, whereas she'd been unable to do a simple safety run so soon before?

Pauline was white as a sheet, but this was nothing compared to Cassandra, shaking violently and breathing unevenly.

"Pauline? What is she doing?"

"That's... probably the adrenaline."

"What's it for?"

"It's from stress. When it comes it overcharges the body. It's like the traditional, 'fight or flight' instinct from survival in prey-predator paradigms, it lets you move fast but paralyses thought... it feels pretty bad after a lot of it is released though. Now she's crashing down, must be harrowing."

"How did she do that? And you said her thoughts were paralysed for precision manoeuvres?"

Cassandra's voice came, nearly a mutter: "I just... had to. do it."

Gabalt needed to understand what happened.

"What do you mean you had to? Someone had to do it, but why you?"

"It- it was very stressful, I saw you freeze, and so."

"But... but HOW did you do all that? That was extremely complicated, few pilots -whose main craft is directly piloting- would want to even try doing that when given a choice!?"

"I had to. do it, so I did. I couldn't. couldn't make a mistake."

"This makes absolutely no sense."

Pauline interrupted. "She just works like that. Lots of stress and when people freeze up, humans with her condition... sometimes, surprisingly, function better in the moment than others can."

"Ah. So it's a human thing. of course, it's a human thing. NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE WITH YOUR ACCURSED SPECIES" the diminutive pilot pouted.

And so one more story of the humans doing the impossible spread around. Humans of a subtype, more easily harmed, sometimes unstable and needing help for the simplest things... accomplishing odd, unthinkable, borderline heroic feats under duress none could be expected to withstand - but only then. Cursed, blessed? No story-teller seemed too certain. But the "magical" species never stopped surprising all others. And a new proverb developed: "it's not over until the human says it is".

concept for the Humans are space fae au

Humans are like- super expressive, and we have alot of different habits and such, and different humans have different tells. this is somethin' i imagine most aliens don't really have. like- yeah they emote and have body language and such, but it isn't nearly as detailed or complex as humans get..they also probably don't muddle their body language with unique tells like humans do, and if they do have unique tells they are overlooked as they don't realize they're even there.

imagine Alien Shuichi has been having a rough week and has been acting off, but no one can really tell cause they don't know what signs to look for. so it shocks Shuichi when he's confronted by his human almost-mate (boyfriend) Kokichi, who asks him if he's okay. Shuichi is stunned because- one; once agian humans have proven they are mystical beings with powers far beyond comprehnsion, and two; Kokichi cares alot more for him that he lets on.

just fluff, Kokichi gets to make Shuichi feel better

Humans and Socialization

Alien: "So... humans are a social species, right?"

Human: "Yes, why?"

A: "I'm getting there. You also require face-to-face interaction with other intelligent beings or your brain starts to get angry? At you? No, not angry. My apologies, I do not know the correct word."

H: "No worries, you're looking for lonely. That is also correct. It effects our bodies as well."

A: "But also for some of you interaction causes you to require hours or days to recover your energy?"

H: "Oh. Yes."

A: "That makes no sense???"

another humans are space orcs/humans are space oddities who run a care centre for alien younglings

"Excuse me, caretaker Kim?"

"Yes Tarlak?"

"Can Mira spend a night cycle at my home?"

"Uhhh, your gonna have to ask her parents for that. Do you want me to ask them for you?"

"Are you not one of her parents?"

"No..? What gave you that idea?"

"Because she has called you 'mama' 3 times before. As have Fredric, Yasmine, and several other human children...except for Danny...he called you 'papa'."

"Oooh, right, right, uh I'm actually not anyone's parent."

"...then why do they call you that? It does not make sense."

"Well, as you know, humans can form connections with just about anyone and sometimes those connections resemble the ones we have with our family members. So when kids call me mom or sometimes dad even, it's because I remind them of that parent."

"Remind? But you look nothing like Mira's mom."

"Yeah, but I remind her of how she feels with her mom. Does that make sense?"

"Yes, that is understood. Thank you for explaining this to me *whistle chirp*"

"Yeah no problem. Wish I could whistle like that."

A few days later...

"Kim!"

"Oh, hey Max!"

"How did you and every other parent...become a thing?"

"I'm sorry what now???"

"Look, I know you guys have been pretty quiet about it but, come on. Having the kids call you mom or the equivalent of mom in public? Pretty obvious buddy."

"...is that what they've been calling me?"

"You didn't know? How did you not know?? See this is why you should have taken linguistics with me...wait does this mean your not dating every other parent?"

"Max, the fact that you think I have that much game is the most flattering thing anyone has ever thought of me."

You know what’s cool about humans?

For most animals, going blind, deaf, or losing a limb might be a death sentence.

But for humans, it’s like,

“Oh, you’re blind? Have a cane, no biggie. You can hold my arm while we cross the street if you want.”

“You’re deaf? No problem! We can talk with our hands! Yay!”

“You’re blind AND deaf? It’s cool, we can talk with touch.”

“You lost a limb? That’s badass dude. Nice prosthetic btw.”

And archeological evidence suggest we’ve been doing stuff like this since the Paleolithic era. We are just SO DETERMINED to care for each other that we can survive and thrive with disabilities that would KILL other animals. And we do it with love and intelligence.

Honestly, rather than being impressed that we are able to mimic other animals' sounds, I think the aliens would be more impressed with how many animals have figured out that mimicking us, and specially our young, will result in getting help or food or just attention.

Alien: They could've picked any stronger creature, but they chose to imitate you

Human:... I guess? I feel like you're trying to make some sort of poetic, philosophical point here, but I'm not catching it