Humans are the weirdest aliens?

OK BUT @BunjyWunjy if your average alien is -3 feet how do they go about face to face interaction because i have 4 theories

-some sort of arch for the person to stay on
-just both standing on the ground awkwardly
-human lying down on the floor or just, slav squatting
-last alternative is human just frikkin picking them up and them both pretending to not notice how weird it may be

 

Spoiler

 

two aliens in a trenchcoat

 

Actually expanding on that idea with something from Planetocopia: if a world has three or more sapient species, they tend to tolerance and being chill with acknowlodging their strengths and weaknesses and letting things/people with different capabilities do what they do best, and also tend to wanting to modify their environment as little as possible. The downsides of this are that they don't modify environments to suit-that is to say, if a sapient species doesn't evolve to fit a niche, nobody lives there. These societies don't terraform. The idea literally never occurs to them.

If a world has two sapient species, they tend to develop a stratified society, where one species rules and the work the other species is good at is devalued, unless their niches are so different they cannot share habitats at all and instead war over resources. These modify their environment and are willing to designate things as "robot's work", but the ruling species considers itself the best and is generally willing to enslave others.

If a world has one sapient species, they modify their environment but do not learn very early on the idea of relying on things with very different capabilities than themselves for survival. These guys don't get into space, because their bodies can't go into space and they don't get the idea of "make a thing that can bring you there" usually. Things like plows still show up, since it's just a force multiplier for them. But computers, cars, etc? nope.

And then there's humans, who are a singleton sapient who domesticated animals early and for purposes other than eating and so learnt to be able to rely on something with different capabilities.

If other sapients domesticated animals, they don't generally use them for things other than food. Farming plants is common, though.

Humanity therefore weirds interstellar society out.

 

aliens assume children are the Actual Sentient Beings, and adults are just more random fauna the humans brought along. at first they cant connect that the normal (to them) size human is just a younger version of the Towering Monstrosities. the alien boggles.

 

i wonder how aliens would react to smiling and laughing? it could be part of the "amoral, dangerous giants" reputation, like "you never know what will set a human off, one moment they'll be fine and the next for no reason they'll bare they're grinders and make this horrible rhythmic wailing/hissing noise"

 

i wonder if they would process human faces at all? if they dont have the same anatomy, the face might just seem like just another body part that SUDDENLY EMITS NOISE when the human is exposed to certain stimuli

 

smiling and the act of showing off teeth is usually an agression display among other stuff on earth. i can think laughter would be a pretty pant shitting experience if you dont know what it is especially if its loud and the human is banging on stuff and wheezing

 

Imagine an alien from a world with a much lower biodiversity visiting earth and being amazed by the fucking breadth and variety of life we have here, and that in some places we're not the dominant species.

"So you're not the largest species on earth?"
"No, elephants are a lot bigger than us."
*sees picture of an elephant* "...oh." *nervous*
"Wait, I forgot about whales!"
*sees picture of a whale with a human for scale* "OH GOD!"
"Haha, don't worry. They eat little shrimp and things. They won't go after anything as big as a person."
"Oh, that's a relief."
"Man, let me tell you about dinosaurs, though. It's a good thing you guys didn't visit a couple billion years ago."
*suddenly having a flashback to a horror story about a fleet of colonizers that mysteriously disappeared a couple billion years ago* "I think I'd like to leave now."

 

human inviting alien over for video games


"wait,, you have vritual humans with the sole intent of simulating en masse slaughter.. is this some sort of military strategy??"
"nah dude its just for fun"



"you pretend to kill youR SPECIES FOR FUN???"

 

aliens that are photosythesing/etc etc

"so are those small white bones for a more flexible vocal range or to keep debris out of your voicebox?"

"actually they tend to be for deconstructing and ripping up other living things"
"yeah no dude youre just fucking with me right"

 

Yup! I also read the guy's Witch of the Iron Core story and the thing with the shaman doing a low-budget survey by astral projecting to different planets and yelling in Chinese and English to see if anybody recognized it (with the assumption that anyone whose previous life was on Earth would recognize at least one of the words used and react).

 

Witch of the Iron Core is actually really great-very short but useful for any sci-fi writer. It's such a great mental image, too-riding a train to space.

 

in that vein kisses are seen as basically the before stage of being brutally murdered by less savy people and its not before they realize its only done to allies and people who are close to the human that its probably not some horrific pre death ritual

 

what about aliens that are like birds and feed their babies by vomiting into their mouths? human mouth-to-mouth kisses would probably look like food transfer to them.

 

Aliens whose only real study of human culture is romantic comedies and the first time they meet their human friend who they've been talking to online for a while they go for the openmouthed kiss.

 

shit shit shit they're on to us

 

One really random thing-what if aliens had all their neurons in their brain, as opposed to humans whose stomach has enough neurons to be responsible for half our dopamine production?

 

That would mean nerve damage could easily kill them, though. Well, more easily than humans. Reflexes would also take much longer to happen. (This is not to be intended as criticism, BTW, just as reflection on how it would affect them)