What if a lot of alien species didn’t actually evolve as pack species, and just adapted to living in communities out of necessity? So they can still work and live together, but they don’t have all the little instincts humans have that help them work in a group.
And they are freaked out by us.
We all wear the same clothes. It’s not a uniform— we just somehow all seem to like roughly the same outfits. We fit in so naturally with the people around us that you can use a human’s clothing to tell what country and what time period they are from. Aliens have no idea how we know what clothes are appropriate— they end up having to hire humans to act as fashion consultants after several incidents where diplomats showed up wearing mismatched clothes from various time periods and countries and looking totally ridiculous.
And what about yawning? Aliens who work on human ships say they never fully get used to hearing one human yawn and then having the whole room start yawning along with them. Or telling a joke to one human and seeing humans who say they don’t find the joke that funny cracking up anyway because “their laugh is so infectious!” It’s a common practical joke to tell new nonhuman crew members about this horrible disease humans get, where they feel tired and have an uncontrollable urge to open their mouths. It’s deadly, they say, and very contagious.
New safety procedures have to be worked out for the humans because, on the one hand, you don’t have to go around telling each individual to leave. Humans will just follow the mob. On the other hand, though, you have to be careful not to spread panic, because if one human runs, they all will, and they’ll trample anyone who isn’t fast enough to stay ahead.
Aliens hear humans tell their kids not to give into peer pressure and just get really confused. “Why would they do it if they don’t want to?”
“Because their friends are telling them to do it!”
“But why do it just because they’re telling them to do it?”
“Because they’re their friends!”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
When aliens see earth movies about people being indoctrinated or turned into zombies, it takes them a while to realise that these are horror movies because, from their perspective, that’s just what humans are like.
alien stories
in stories featuring aliens, they’re always like “on my planet this never happens!” or “in my culture, this differs from your human culture.” and that’s neat and all because i like worldbuilding and all that jazz but wouldn’t it be fun if they just. couldn’t do that?
i want a story where humans encounter an alien who frustrates them because they don’t know enough to tell them anything concrete
like humans will ask “tell us about politics in your planet!” and the alien’s all “uh… hold on it’s been a while since i took gov. um….”
“what sorts of plants grow on your planet?”
“i dunno i grew up in the suburbs. they’re like… purple? idk what you want me to say”
“tell us about the culture on your planet!”
“do you have any idea how many fucking countries are back home, i don’t even know where to begin”
“your planet is obviously much more scientifically and technologically advanced than ours. is it possible for you to enlighten us on certain matters concerning space travel, or would that be a form of interference you must avoid?”
“naw it’s cool, it’s just that, um, i’m a philosophy major”
OOH OOH AND
“take me to your leader”
“…we have like hundreds of leaders like which one? my country’s leader? another country’s leader? the director of our space program? my country’s military leader? my mom??”
my mom
@soapwortflower my mom
Alien 1: On my planet, we have no need to waste large areas of land on agricultural production. What we do not 3D-print, we grow in vast skyscrapers with perfect climate control.
Alien 2: Says the guy who never left Vrlov. Pay no attention to him; my entire hive and like the five around it were farmland.
Alien 1: We have evolved past scarcity.
Alien 2: Must be nice. I wish someone had told me during the Blight.
Alien 1: And yet, I sometimes wonder if in achieving total efficiency we have not lost something of ourselves. Humour… spontaneity… joy…
Alien 2: That’s it, Jrg. First Contact is cancelled. Excuse us, humans; my colleague urgently needs to attend a kitchen party. We’ll be back when we get him sorted out.
Imagine telepathic aliens. Imagine aliens who have no concept of language, who maybe didn’t figure out writing or math until they were figuring out electronics, who still struggle with the entire idea of symbolic thinking, and then they find us. And they’re going “I can see the technology and cities, and it all looks made for and by these bipeds, but where is the sapience and WHAT IS ALL THIS EFFING HOOTY MOUTH NOISE?!” until someone wonders if the hooty mouth noise has meaning in it.
Imagine aliens going “OMG they’re communicating by noise” and “OMG they’re using code naturally” and “OMG they’re using open-ended productive recursive code how is that POSSIBLE” and “OMG writing” and “OMG they have THOUSANDS of codes”, and it’s all paraoxysms of academic delight and then someone discovers metaphor, and someone discovers encryption, and someone discovers slang and l33t and txting and emoji, and this entire telepathic species has its minds completely blown and the one who went “what if the hooty noise has meaning” wins the alien Nobel.
*hooty mouth noise of approval*