do you ever see someone in some quiet intimate moment and suddenly love them so desperately you feel like you’re dying
#like when they pass a mirror and make a face and mess with their hair a little #or when you hear someone singing in their car with the windows rolled up as they drive past you #i don’t know how to express this i just. people are people and it makes me so sad and filled up sometimes
I love seeing grown humans setting about little creative tasks out of boredom and then looking quietly pleased with themselves, like maybe a middle-aged woman on her train home from work manages to make a tower out of empty coffee creamers and gazes at it proudly for a few seconds.
I love seeing other people make the overblown OOPS I FORGOT SOMETHING performance for no-one that most of us do when we have to turn around in the middle of the pavement.
I love seeing stony-faced people in queues unable to contain a smile when a baby looking over its mother’s shoulder in front of them locks eyes and does that astonished stare.
– when someone is standing in line and they don’t quite dance to the music playing, but you can SEE their head bop and them mouthing the words
– when someone thinks no one’s paying attention and they sing-talk themselves thru a task
– when they laugh or try to hide a laugh when looking at their phone
– when someone does the thing where they enter another space (such as a supermarket aisle) striding with total purpose, then suddenly forget what they’re doing/looking for, and stop there looking blank for a millisecond while they reboot.
– when people are looking for scissors, in their home or in a store, and they make the scissors gesture with their non-dominant hand as an aid to remind them what they’re doing.
– when automatic social interactions glitch, like when you tell a waiter that you hope he enjoys his food too, or tell the stranger on the phone that you love them.
– the hand gesture people make when they’re thinking at their computer, not typing, and their elbow rests on the table, and they feel the edge of their fingernail with their thumb. This is such a lovely little gesture and to my knowledge I have never seen it in fiction. You’d think it would come up all the time in fic.
– when you’re sharing an experience with a complete stranger (like watching a seagull throw up in public, or waiting for a late train) and you make eye contact, and some comment to each other, and then you guys are, like, ALLIES now. Like you would willingly ride to war to save them. You can’t make eye contact again, but you are very aware of them.
– just evidence of other people’s rich, baffling and complex inner lives.
i love watching couples or friends walking in tandem. i love seeing when they make each other laugh
This is what Hozier means when he says ‘I fall in love just a little bit everyday with someone new.’
Ok the accidentally saying I love you over the phone is the cutest thing ever and I never realized just how much it happens irl until now. Like I’m pretty sure I’ve done that.
I love these, the idle animations of humans
I love the little song we sing to ourselves while we’re working. The one with no words, just a little bop you sing without realizing
Tag: humans are weird
i just think the world would be a better place if we would all take a bit of time to examine how we personally interact with stories
I, for one, am a complex network of interconnected stories stored on a meat based drive.
that is quite possibly the most terrifying way of describing a human but honestly same
That’s not scary. What’s scary is that you’re a ghost and a skeleton working together to Pilot fleshy power armor made by your mother
You know, I expected to regret making this post for entirely different reasons than I actually regret making this post.
The Discourse Derailed, 2018.
collaborative art performed by collective
Asshole Ghosts Direct Mother-Manufactured Meat Suits to Disturb Other Ghosts at a Distance Using Agitated Electrons to Modify Stories on Domesticated Sand
Humans Are Weird
So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia
Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”
“What, the molten rock?”
“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”
“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”
“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”
Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.
“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?”
“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”
“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”
“… well, actually…”
“… what?”
“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”
“…”
“…”
“…what?”
“we sent-”
“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”
“y-yeah”
“and they didn’t… die?”
“Well the first few did”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
My new favorite Humans are Weird quote
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”
aka The History of Russia
aka Arctic Exploration
aka The History of Alaska
Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:
1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.
2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)
3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.
4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)
5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.
“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?”
“Those worthless rocks? Yeah.”
“80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”“I’m telling you, they terraform for fun!”
“Don’t be ridiculous”
“No, seriously. Some of their most celebrated cultural loci are built on swamps. They have an entire city that is literally in a body of water. Not, like, an artificial pontoon city, they literally sunk the foundations into water. For Grilp’s sake, they build elaborate structures out of frozen water AND THEN SLEEP IN THEM.”
“Dear Thilak. Think we could get them to terraform our moons?”
“Psh, they’d probably pay for the privilege.”Eventually, it occurs to someone that humans are the perfect terraforming shock troops, as it were. They think it’s fun to be sent to horrible planets! They’re really good at surviving and then taming them! All you have to do is sit back and wait until the planet is habitable, and then move there yourself! It’s genius.
It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.
“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.
“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”
Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.
“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”
“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”
Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”
“They’re so cute!” the human says, brightening. “Have you met mine? Her name is Spot!”
Humans are told of some planet or region of space that is considered “completely and utterly inhospitable – it would be folly to try and settle there.”
Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible.
“This moon is still forming as such it is primarily soft – by that I mean most of the magma is close to the surface and-”
‘OH BADASS you mean its like Mustafar right!?!?!?! I’m totally going to build a castle there.’
“What. I mean. There is NO fertile ground there whatsoever. No ecosystem. It is molten rock and minerals only.”
‘Which will make my castle there look METAL AS FUCK am I RIGHT!?!??! Come on. COME ON. I TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISTBUMP COME ON.’
“….you….you are going to die, you know this right?”
‘I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to come to Lava Castle for some reason?’
“Listen, lad. I’ve built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was molten magma. All those aliens said I was daft to build a castle on a molten planet, but I built it all the same, just to show ‘em. It sank into the magma. So, I built a second one. That sank into the magma. So I built a third one. That spontaneously combusted, turned to ash, then sank into the magma. But the fourth one stayed up. An’ that’s what your gonna get, lad – the strongest castle in this solar system.”
“I’m gonna need for you to explain ‘hurricane parties’ to me again. You humans have the technology to track these apocalyptic storms of wind and rain and predict where on the landmass they’ll hit up to a week in advance. And you…have social gatherings during them?”
“Well yeah, but only up to about Category 3 strength. Then it’s time to pack the car and head inland for most people, although a few hardy souls stick around and ride them out.”
“Oh good. Category 3 is what again? Winds up to 75 kilometers per hour?”
“No no, Category 3 starts at 175 kilometers per hour. You left off the one.”
I’m sure I’ve reblogged some version of this before, but I needed the STRONGEST CASTLE IN THIS SOLAR SYSTEM on my blog.
Bad: aliens that insist upon referring to human women as “feeeeemales”.
Good: aliens that insist upon dividing humans into binary categories, but the binary in question is based on something we’d regard as trivial and bizarre.
pro cilantro and anti cilantro
Just to screw with us they refer to have designated half the population as “edible” and the other half is “inedible.”
No intention of eating anyone, they just like how uncomfortable it makes everyone.
Even better: the aliens all agree on who is edible and who is inedible, but the humans have no idea what the criteria is
Even better: there is no criteria, the Aliens just keep a running list of whenever one member designated a human as edible or not. People are baffled because the selection appears random yet all the aliens are up to date, so there must be SOMETHJNG
I love this because it implies the aliens possess either (1) a universal hive mind or (2) an intergalactic group chat dedicated to fucking with humanity
“Hey guys Steve Johnson just laughed at my antennae he’s edible ok?”
“Yum yum Steve ribs”
Id be insulted if i was deemed inedible
No limit..✌
One alien to another: “special affects? Photo shop?”
The other: “Must be”
A human: “nope”
ｈｕｍａｎｓ
hey @emilyenrose this is a meme in your orig universe
i’ll see your space australians and raise you: space eastern europeans.
- like space australians, but comically deadpan
- ‘there was a critical systems failure and now we’re dead in space! we need to evacu–’ *chief engineer antonov thumps control panel with fist* ‘oh, we’re. we’re okay.’
- someone has either pickled a vegetable or distilled alcohol in a container that was intended for neither, in zero gravity
- there’s a little old lady on this crew. nobody knows why. nobody suspects she’s the head of an espionage network either
- *exasperated muttering over comms line during repair eva* ‘what’s that?’ ‘i said this thing has ‘made in usa’ written on it and no fucking wonder *deliberately heavy accent* exkyooz my language’
- improvised electrical device breaks safety regulations in 72 systems. ‘what? it woks.’
- somebody is talking about The Revolution. ‘andrei please that was 2723 years ago’ ‘my father fought in it’
- ‘here’s a good one: is it possible to introduce communism in the frozen world of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb?’ confused alien: ‘i don’t know?’ ‘in principle yes, but after the first five year plan they would have to import ice’
- the trabant, but now it’s a space ship
THE TRABANT, BUT NOW IT’S A SPACE SHIP
👆🏻To me, the trabant as a space capsule is entirely believable.
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?”
“,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,………..no.”
#organ donation is almost real-life necromancy#reduce reuse recycle except with corpses (via @iron-sulfur-world)
I absolutely adore these ‘humans are the hardiest aliens’ stories.
Humanity: tell them they can’t do the thing and they will do it out of spite and then improve the thing until it is Ultimate Badassery. Just to prove a point.
Humans are Loyal if Properly Bonded
I was in charge of feeding the prisoners. This had been my task since the Queen had taken me and 2 dozen other Murania as hostages. The others had not survived long, but I adapted. Obeyed.
The Queen had taken a human. A rare being this far into the Deep, but one feared from one end of the galaxy to the other. According to the Encyclopedia of Sentient Beings Capable of Space Travel, humans needed a diet of roughly 2000 calories a sol served in traditional 3 portions a sol. Which meant that I had to approach the human three times a sol. I could not fail my duties.
The first attempt at feeding the large being ended with a tray thrown at my head with enough force that it would have caved my skull if I had not ducked in time. The human was raging, slamming their entire body against the containment bars with enough force to shake the floor and… and roaring. I cleaned the mess of nutrient paste as fast as I could and fled.
But five hours later found me trembling in front of the human’s cage with another tray of nutrient paste. The human had calmed and was glaring at me intently. I knew they did not speak Murania, but still I spoke my native language as I offered the food again. I did not get to speak it often and missed the sound. “Guria?”
The human tilted their head and to my shock, repeated the word, then repeated it again until they mimicked the sound perfectly, even with the slight whistle at the end.
I offered the tray. “Guria.”
They eyed it suspiciously so I tasted it, showing it to be safe. “Guria.”
They held their hand out and I gave them the tray, scuttling to a safe corner before they could attack me with it again.
They tilted their head again and scowled, then spoke in broken Common. “I thank”
I fled, claws scratching against the shiny floor.
Another five hours passed all too soon and I was back at the human’s cage with the final meal of the sol. They were moving slowly around the cage with their ear pressed to the wall, tapping with their knuckles. I watched them for a moment, confused at the erratic behaviour, but only managed a few seconds of observation before their head swiveled directly towards me and they stopped to face me.
I walked closer and offered the tray. “Guria.”
They took it. “How talk thank in you mouth talk?”
“Meesh Meesh.”
They opened their mouth and let out a loud, short bark, a laugh according to the ESBCST. (I studied it dutifully when they were brought aboard.) “Meesh Meesh!” They pointed to themselves. “Michael.”
My wings ruffled, the sound was so similar! I pointed to myself, “Mikel”
The human shook their head and pointed to themselves. “Me Michael.”
I jerked my head in an upward motion called a nod. “Yes, you,’ I pointed to them, “Michael.” I pointed to myself. “I, Mikel.”
They laughed again. “Michael, Mikel. Much same.”
I chittered. “Very similar, yes.”
Their eyes narrowed. “You work here?”
I bobbed sideways, a bit noncommittal, “As I must.”
“Must work?”
I searched for the simplest way to translate what I meant across the language barrier. “No work, in there.” I pointed to their cage. “Work, out here.” I hopped encouragingly. “You work soon, yes?”
The human bared their teeth and snarled. “No work. Fight.”
My wings flattened against my spine and I fled. Humans were so aggressive.
The next sol I completed my first duties and then found myself lingering outside the containment hall. I was apprehensive about what mood I would find the human in this time. I fluffed my wings out to convey confidence and clicked in with the human’s first meal.
“Mikel! Guria?” They were bouncing on the front part of their feet, hopping up and touching the ceiling, then dropping to the floor and pushing themselves up with their arms repeatedly.
“Yes. What are you doing?” I slid the tray to where they could reach and backed to a… well not safe but safer, distance.
“Work body. Stay strong.” They flopped over onto their back and turned their head to look at me. “Meesh Meesh.”
“Zuan.” I bobbed sideways before deciding to ask them the question I had been mulling over. “You’re Nice, mean, nice, mean.”
Michael laughed. “Yeah. Head bad.” They hooked their fingers like claws and shook them around their head. “Scare, tired, Fight.” They gestured to the bars and glared. “Not like.”
I nodded. “I know that feeling.” A chime sounded, signaling the Queen’s approach. I flattened myself to the floor and made way.
The Queen slithered in, her scaled body scraping against the floor with a sound that made my feathers stand up. She reared to her full two meter height and flicked her tongue out to taste the air.
“Human. You are mine now, you will serve the glory of me.”
Michael looked her up and down and whistled lowly then pronounced in exact Common. “Ugly. Mother. Fucker.”
I gaped at them in horror. They dared insult the Queen to her face?
The Queen hissed, but smugly coiled. “You will serve me, human. I know your kind. You are loyal. I feed you, I provide you shelter. I give you safety. You will love me.”
The human backed up, crouching into a fighting stance. “No love, mother fucker.”
The Queen wiggled and slid towards the exit. “You will serve me.” They paused to pat me on the head. “You have duties, tiny one.”
The next several sols passed in the same manner. I did my duties, I fed the human, we exchanged words. At night I tended my secret garden grown in glasses of water and composted nutrient paste from seeds and cuttings I snuck from the Queen’s hoard. The human was learning not only Common but Murania at a breathtaking pace. We could hold whole conversations now and I was no longer… completely apprehensive about approaching their cage. Michael had not acted aggressive towards me at all since the Queen’s visit.
The rare human plant called a “green bean” plant had fruited after several months of care and pollinating with the tip of my own feather. I was ecstatic over the first fruits of my secret labor and I felt that Michael would appreciate my excitement and maybe a taste of his home planet. Humans were said to be incredibly empathetic and sentimental.
That morning I secreted a pair of bean pods in my uniform and headed for Micheal’s cage. They seemed to notice something was different right away, peering at me with concern. “All okay, Mikel?”
I nodded and nervously whispered. “Secret, right?”
They lowered their voice and moved closer to the bars. “Yeah, secret.”
I showed him the beans. “I grew these. It’s the first harvest from the plant! It’s a huge secret, but I wanted you to have them.”
Michael stared at the beans with an expression I didn’t recognize for a long time before whispering, their voice strangely rough. “You get trouble for these?”
I nodded and tried to shove the beans into their hands. “Yes, a lot of trouble. Take them!”
They took them and smiled. “Meesh Meesh, Mikel. This…. This mean lot to me. I can’t say enough. Meesh Meesh.” They bit into one and grinned, crunching happily. “Very good! You do good!”
I chittered and ruffled my wings, pleased with the praise. “Zuan, Michael.” I gave them their tray of nutrient paste and fled.
The next day (human word for sol) I found a broken something in the Queen’s trash bin. It was silvery and had a lot of moving parts and made me think of Michael. I shoved it into my uniform and snuck it to Michael. They were overjoyed and immediately began fiddling (another human word I find pleasant to use) with it.
I found I enjoyed making Michael happy and kept my eyes out for things to gift them. A broken flute, a torn book, a shiny rock shard, a discarded pipe, a bit of string. It all was random junk, but Michael was still so happy for each item. It… was a pleasant feeling, almost like being back with my brood mates.
Then… Then the alarms sounded one morning and the ship rocked with an explosion. Frightened, I grabbed my precious green bean plant and rushed instinctively towards Michael’s cage.
Only to find they weren’t there. The bars were broken, bent outward and a piece of the wall was torn open, exposing sparking wires and smashed circuits. The lights were flickering and I could hear screaming. I decided to run for the escape pods and hoped that the Queen died in that explosion.
I had barely skittered into the hallway when I found Michael. They were fighting with a guard twice their size, but easily leaped around it’s bulk and stabbed it in the base of the skull with some sort of spear. A primitive weapon, but still deadly in the hands of the human. Michael rode the body of the guard down to the ground and leaped off, brandishing the spear at me.
Frozen in fear, I distantly realized the weapon was made from the shiny rock tied to a piece of pipe. I was to die from a weapon I provided then.
Except, Michael lowered the weapon and smiled. “Mikel! I find you! Come on! We get out of here!”
“Out… Escape?”
“Yeah! C’mon, I stole codes for ship!”
I followed them numbly, too scared and shocked to process that not only had a single human escaped a 1st class prison cell with just bits of junk, but had also destroyed the Pirate Queen’s ship, and was taking me with them.
It wasn’t until we were flying fast and far from the wreckage, headed towards a Trading Station, that I found my voice. “Why… Why would you save me? I…” I didn’t know how to express the fact that I was nothing, tiny, worth only for cleaning while the human was strong, big, and apparently a fearsome and brilliant warrior.
Michael glanced at me from the corner of their eyes. “We friends, Mikel. Friends no leave friends. Also, you trapped like me. On other side of bars, but trapped same.”
“Friends? But Queen provided for you, you were supposed to bond with her?!”
The human looked at me incredulously before laughing long and loud, his head thrown back with the effort of it. “No Bond with Queen, she put me in cage. You! You give me food, you talk, teach, you bring me presents. You good friend. Queen Piece of Shit.”
“Oh.” Michael had bonded with me. And.. I with them it seemed. And we were free. “Meesh meesh, Michael. You’re a good friend too.” I hugged my green bean plant. “What now?”
“I thinking I turn in Queen head for bounty, use money buy good ship again. After, you want go home or you want explore?”
My wings flared in excitement. “Can I have a garden room on our ship?”
Michael grinned and tossed his arm (gently) around my shoulders. “Yes, you have garden room. Grow lots plant in space. Explore! Garden! New Planet! New Seed!”
Humans Are Weird
So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia
Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”
“What, the molten rock?”
“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”
“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”
“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”
Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.
“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?”
“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”
“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”
“… well, actually…”
“… what?”
“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”
“…”
“…”
“…what?”
“we sent-”
“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”
“y-yeah”
“and they didn’t… die?”
“Well the first few did”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
My new favorite Humans are Weird quote
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”
aka The History of Russia
aka Arctic Exploration
aka The History of Alaska
“How did you select these poor unlucky victims? Were they perhaps prisoners, or religionists atoning for some mortal sin?”
“No, actually, they mostly… volunteered.”
“Oh mate, Wait ‘til you find out about the people who live there.”
“WHAT?!?!”
“You breathe what?!”
“Oxygen. I thought y’all did, too.”
“We breathe nitrogen! That’s what the filters we wear are for!”
“Y’know, I was wondering about those things.”
“You honestly breathe oxygen? But that stuff’s so corrosive that we use it to etch glass!”
“Oh, yeah… We do that too. Versatile stuff, oxygen. We also use it to start rockets, since we need something that burns well…”
“You–you understand that the ground is unstable, right? You won’t be able to build on that planet.”
“Earthquakes? How big?”
“We have measured them to be 4.0 on your Richter scale.”
“Nah, that’s nothin’, we’ll take it.”
“You’ll what? The planet experiences weekly tectonic shifts! We’ve recorded spikes equivalent to a 6.0 on your scale!”
“Dude, we get like 500 of those a year.”
“Five hundred?!”
“We don’t even feel anything under like a 4.5, my guy. So let’s do this, where do I sign?”
Humans have terrible battery life. 8 hours of charging, 16 hours of use.
Steel Phoenix Studios 