So basically Star Control's VUX, then? "stop nodding your head like that. We VUX do not share this range of motion and it appears as though your neck is broken and you are a jabbering corpse. Ugh."
I can do that. (I want to believe the noise near the beginning of the video is not coming from my shoulder.)
i'd like to thank my entire genetic heritage for giving me the ability to horrify alien life true, it wasn't something i was thinking about as a twelve year old, popping their shoulder in and out to freak out their friends, but now i definitely am
humans get reputated as readty fight everyone and territorial madmen despite other aliens not really hanging around them with them only because casual interaction gets mistaken for agression -eye contact -showing teeth/smiling -standing on hindlegs -laughing -possibly physical affection such as hugging, friendly pushing etc
aliens read the tumblr post about fighting in a denny's parking lot at 3 am they avoid the restaurant from then on
this is further complicated by the fact that lots of humans are, in fact, constantly ready to throw down. (even if they are initially friendly, all it takes is one aggressive misinterpretation of human body language and it's GO TIME)
even MORE complicated by customs and dif cultures (where i live smiling to strangers is considered kinda disrespectful/mocking, and the custom is basically "be as quiet as possible pls and dont needlessly aknowledge peoples existance"
we can only hope there's a lot of ZEXes in the universe, then man do you remember the bit where the slylandro are embarrassed because the visible light spectrum (for humans) shows their mating bits and they're very discombobulated about that
Something that's been on my brain for a while: Earths moon is kinda weird, not in its composition or anything, but in its position. Its almost perfectly placed to block the disk of the sun, but leave the corona unblocked. I really don't think that happens very often in the universe, and I bet that aliens would be surprised about how much we know about stars simply because we have an easy way to separate out the corona and the disk, and have had that for our entire technological period. I bet we'd know more about stars than some of the aliens we encounter, if only for our technology level.
It's not positioning so much as size. The only stable orbit for it is where it is, it's just sized right to cause an eclipse right now. Now, aliens with only really small moons...
I bet on the scale of intergalactic travel, propulsion rockets like we use now are super low tech. Aliens would either be incredibly impressed or incredibly terrified that we somehow managed to send probes as far as the edge of our solar system using nothing but math and fire. "you mean you didn't alter gravity at all? No folding space? No light waves? You didn't even know how to compress time?" "No, we just pointed it in the right direction and shot it. Worked out pretty well and we learned a lot. Did you know pluto has a heart on it?" "Fascinating"
seebs once reblogged a post that suggested that most aliens don't get to space until they have spacefolding or whatever, because their spaceflight wasn't based on technology for extending the range or weight of projectiles.
Aliens would probably be totally intimidated and baffled by humans always being ready and willing to fight at ANY MOMENT, but then as soon as the fighting is over they're back to normal. My dad once got into a fistfight with his friend that progressed to the middle of the street with my dad hitting his friend multiple times with a chair and next week the dude was eating dinner at our house. Along that line, what about MMA? Kickboxing?? I mean, they're basically modern blood sports. 2 highly skilled fighters just beat the shit out of each other for fun while others watch and cheer. (Not to even mention the whole history of bareknuckle boxing and stuff, oh boy)
Oh man, aliens would be so confused by hockey. Like they get the whole put the puck in the net thing, they're down with it all happening on ice, but why are they fighting? It doesn't score them any points, and depending on how bad the fight is one or both sides might lose a player for a couple minutes. AND THE REFS ARE JUST LETTING IT HAPPEN! and I can just picture their faces when they find out how long and hard players fought against having to wear helmets.
hockey is a blessed sport leading me to my favorite joke ever: I was at a fight the other day, and a hockey game broke out
Spoiler: slightly nsfw joke Why do Canadians do it doggy style? So they can both watch the hockey game. Also I could talk all day about hockey fights as a strategy but this not the thread for that so I will restrain myself. :P