Melanie. She/her. Born in the early 90's. This is my personal blog. // I often refer to myself as “rose” here, a holdover from the days when this was an anonymous fandom blog. I cowrote Averting The Flame Wars, an illustrated blog about how to talk constructively online. These days I mostly wrestle to access medical care in the US. When time allows, I content edit novels. // I value all people, but some are much closer to the front of my mental triage line than others. A-spec & trans inclusionist. Black lives matter. I claim to be a feminist, with mixed reviews. // You can follow me as long as (A) you don't look like spam or wildly destructive propaganda, and (B) you won't use my blog to hurt, bully, or exploit anyone.
I was thinking about an idea someone else had for a Project Hail Mary AU where the Grace-Rocky dynamic is reversed. (I think it was a post about Grace being Rocky's dog.)
And it occured to me to wonder what an alien would name a human based on our texture. (The way Grace named Rocky after rocks.)
I honestly think that a human would likely get named something akin to "rubbery."
Okay, hear me out. I know it's upsetting. But once I explain it, it will be both logical AND upsetting.
It's pretty easy for soft, blobby life to develope. The oceans are full of soft animals. The forests are full of soft fungi. I'm no expert, but it seems like for squishy things to evolve, you just need a fluid environment and a lifeform that isn't picky about the difference between its insides and its outsides.
"Squishy" would probably be a common texture of life for an alien to find before meeting us. They wouldn't find it outlandishly remarkable.
But most of earth's land-dwelling vertebrates have very specific skin protiens. (Keratins.) It was difficult for land animals to evolve, partly because we needed skin that was:
Insoluble enough to separate our seawater-based insides from a dry environment.
Flevible enough to let us move under our own power.
Sturdy enough to resist and/or survive physical trauma.
It's rare and tricky set of competing demands. Even after evolving keratins, most animals kept their squishier skin underneath, and covered up the outside with something rigid and/or fluffy. (Scales, feathers, hair.)
Humans have evolved back from the hair-coated stage, to have most of our skin exposed all over again. (I'm guessing it happened because that made for better temperature regulation once we started wearing other animals' skins on cold days? IDK) There are other hair-sparse mammals, but not many.
To sum up: The weird mix of squishiness, springiness, smoothness, and dryness in human skin required a couple of improbable evolutionary twists.
So I posit that an alien would take one look at our surface texture and immediately think of their own planet's closest equivalent to soft, dry tree sap.
I just got a jump scare when my doctor saw my blood tests and was like, "Nah, I don't think you need an increase in your thyroid medication."
Cue me writing a frantic multi-paragraph essay listing 5 medically sound reasons why an 8mcg increase would be a good idea actually, here is the name of a another medical professional who will vouch for me, please please please 🙏🥺.
She almost immediately responds with, "Sure, that's fine."
Me, for years: "Man I wish I was like those other adults who can just tell when kids are open to an affection touch like a hug or a back pat. How do they know???"
Me, a few months ago in trauma therapy: "I still have this really intense cringe response in my body from all the times teachers would hold my shoulder when there wasn't a socially acceptable way for me to ask them to stop touching me."
Me, just now: "OHHHH 😮🤯"
They don't know when touch is okay. They just do it anyway.
Does it ever bother you to think that simulation theory is mostly redundant, because the brain is already a virtual reality simulator creating an intricate but wildly inaccurate representation of the world outside itself?
Like, you're already in the matrix. It's called your body and you're (probably) the only one in there. A bunch of cells got together and built it to convince you to eat nutella or whatever.
This post is me acknowelging that some people go onto tumblr to escape the real world and to soothe themselves after stressful experiences, so if they block or ignore social justice and news stories so that their decompression isn’t interrupted with yet more stress, it is not only no one’s business but it makes perfect sense.
When I was in the hospital, they gave me a big bracelet that said ALLERGY, but like. I'm allergic to bees. Were they going to prescribe me bees in there.
So there's a medication called hyaluronidase. It's used to make other medications absorb better, because it makes the cell wall more permeable.
One common usage is to make local anesthetic more effective during surgery, for instance. It's used in a number of injected medications.
Bee stings contain an enzyme very similar to this medication, so sometimes, people with bee allergies have an allergic reaction to hyaluronidase.
This is called cross-reactivity, where your body mistakes something for the thing it's actually allergic to, and has an allergic reaction anyway. For instance, sometimes people with latex allergies also are allergic to bananas and other fruits. They don't actually contain latex, but there are some similar proteins.
Apparently, hyraluronidase used in humans is derived from one of four sources: sheep testicles, cow testicles, cow testicles again, and GMO hamster ovaries.
tl;dr: They won't inject you with bees, but they might inject you with purified cow testicle juice, and your body might say 'eh, cow balls are BASICALLY bees' and try to kill you anyway.
I've been watching playthroughs of Subnautica 2 early access, and I'm having fun trying to figure out the plot. I haven't heard all the lore yet, but I've seen the early access ending a couple times.
Spoilers below.
So for starters, I think the PDA (the British femme AI) is in league with the world tree & Masefield Syndrome. I think every human is set up to get the syndrome as soon as they start gene alterations, before the opening sequence is even done. The PDA is the main one encouraging you to keep absorbing more adaptations and to kill the bloom virus. Possibly the PDA voice even IS sometimes a hallucination caused by Masefield.
I think the PDA's loyalty to the tree is part of why, early in the game, she makes a couple comments to undercut your trust in NoA. She points out that NoA's alerts are annoying, and that you have to remember he's not in charge.
Now for NoA. NoA is symbolically tied to the biblical Noah, who (at least in some mythologies) cooperated with a devine plan to purge the world of cross-breeds between humans and angels.
In the Bible, humanity originally started problems by eating the fruit of a very tempting tree.
Angel combs are part of the World Tree, and the first time the player has a choice about mutating with one, it's so you can eat the food.
(I wonder if in the full release you can get a different ending by never voluntarily changing your genome. We know from speed runs that it doesn't make a difference in early release, but I wonder if that changes later.)
Anyway, to sum up, I think the humans in Subnautica 2 keep "cross-breeding" with the angel-combs by absorbing their genes, thus infecting themselves in a way that NoA keeps having to reverse.
Both the human logs and NoA himself say that NoA needs to support his purpose of keeping the humans revived and building toward a colony, even if that means he has to alter his own perception of reality to support that goal. The logs say that NoA appeared to get more erratic over time with the previous colony.
I think that it's impossible to build a sustainable colony, because the only possibilities for any human are to (1) to die of biological incompatibility or (2) to accept adaptations and die of Masefield syndrome. I think NoA keeps discovering that truth, erasing his own memory to keep from knowing his purpose is impossible, and then starting over again to try and solve the mystery of his own past behavior.
This is why he's not overtly against the adaptations. He KNOWS that they are the only option, and so he keep erasing his own knowledge that that option is a dead end.
The main thing I'm still wondering about is the ecology itself. Is the tree a parasite that's causing the ecological collapse, and is the bloom virus a healthy counterbalance to its ecological dominance? Is the tree native to the ecosystem and are the humans the main parasite? Did we humans (as someone on reddit theorized) either purposely or accidentally create the bloom virus to combat the Tree? Are all of the aliens on the Tree's side? Are there 5 separate biological forces in competition? Planet, Tree, Bloom, Human, Alien?
I feel like I've got my take on the AIs ironed out. But I am dying to know what the deal is with the tree. Maybe if I just swim towards it...
k but imagine Rocky wanting to learn about how humans became the apex predators of their planet so he has Grace “hunt” him in the biodome as an experiment and during it he thinks Grace isn’t trying or taking it seriously which is bad bad bad because this is for research purposes
only for Rocky to get more and more tired as the experiment goes on just to realize that Grace isn’t which makes him panic so he puts as much distance as he can between them and finds a (hopefully) safe spot to sleep and when he wakes up the human is crouching over him like “got youuu” and Rocky has never shrieked so damn loud before in his life
sooo this inspired me and then prev's tags did too:
so there's a mini fic under the cut I smashed out in like an hour. kinda low effort but whatever. might keep it going on ao3 with more little experiments
At some point, Grace of course realizes it's living in a zoo enclosure. Then comes a Discussion.
"Rocky."
Rocky is totally panicking - it told the xeno team to not let Grace know! Now Grace is going to be offended or mad about being a zoo animal! There's no way to sugarcoat this! - and screeching out apologies. It won't be able to withstand Grace being mad at it, because the last time Grace was mad at Rocky Grace ignored Rocky. IGNORED. The silent treatment had grated so bad on Rocky's nerves it felt like it was going to go insane.
"ROCKY! CHILL OUT!"
Rocky slows. Grace is still kneeling from where it had settled after first saying 'we need to talk' (worst words in the universe, by the way). Rocky doesn't get any closer, just fiddles nervously with its fingers.
"Rocky, look. This isn't- I'm not mad about it. Honest! I kinda…" It rubs the back of its 'neck' with a hand. "Kinda already figured it out a while ago."
Grace laughs, flashing its 'teeth'. "I mean, we'd do the same thing on Earth if this was all reversed. I get it! I'm an alien, I knew this was a possibility."
"Along with dissection," Rocky grumbles. "And starving to death. Does not mean good thing. Does not mean Grace happy about it."
"But I am! Look, Eridians are learning from me, right?"
Rocky hums a begrudging confirmation.
"Then I'm happy about it! You know me. Once a teacher, always a teacher. Plus, it could be worse."
That is true, all of it. Rocky sighs. "Okay. If Grace is sure Grace not mad at Rocky…"
"I'm sure, buddy. C'mere." Grace reaches forward and wraps Rocky in a 'hug'. Rocky accepts it, reciprocates, feeling the familiar noises of Grace's organs.
"Team will ask more questions," Rocky warns. "Want to do experiments on human behavior."
"Oho, boy. I'm looking forward to that."
And Grace isn't lying, and neither is Rocky: within days of the conversation, the xeno team is approaching Grace and asking many more questions about human biology, about enrichment. They already were, of course, but something seems to have emboldened them.
What everyone finds most ridiculous is human evolution, though.
"Sorry," Historian Lilith wheezes out. It's almost laughing too hard to keep going. "You're saying- you- humans just walk your prey to death? And you became the apex predators on your planet? How does that work?!"
Every other member of the team present is cackling, including Rocky: Grace alone stands sober, pouting in the way it does when it's offended.
"What's so unbelievable about that?! It's a very effective way to hunt!"
Rocky snorts. "Grace lying. No way walking is efficient! Ambush is better. Example!" And Rocky lunges for Grace, relishing the squeal and the scramble backwards. Then Grace stands up taller. "Okay! I'll show you. Who wants to get hunted?"
Everyone instantly steps back, leaving Rocky at the forefront. Figures. All that talk about how it's not realistic and yet they scatter at the idea of being the prey. Frankly, Rocky can't blame them - nobody wants to be hunted, after all, especially by an alien that breathes oxygen - but it raises a hand anyways. "I volunteer. Grace hunt me. Then we know truth once and for all."
The grin that split Grace's face somehow seems even creepier than usual. It goes off to prepare, murmuring about contacting the substitute teacher that takes over when Grace gets sick. Huh?
Rocky disregards that and prepares by simply making sure the atmosphere suit is fully ready. It knows Grace isn't really going to hurt it, but it has to reassure several members of the xeno team and Adrian, who's come to watch, of that fact. "Seriously? It's Grace. Grace won't hurt me. Grace can't even hurt me!" It starts to mutter about how ridiculous they're all being when someone points out that Grace could potentially break the atmosphere suit with the abundance of rocks in the enclosure, trapping Rocky in the deadly Solean-safe atmosphere, which stops Rocky dead.
It's Atmosphere Specialist Superman, well-known to be paranoid even at the best of times. Eridians have no 'faces' like Soleans, but Rocky deliberately rotates towards the idiot just to hammer in the absolute stupidity of what Superman just said, and then smacks Superman so hard several team members have to pull it off of the scientist. It's swearing and screeching the entire time, and it takes a few Earth hours to calm down properly.
The very idea of Grace deliberately hurting Rocky in such a way - when Rocky knows for a fact the scars from the Adrian Incident are still fully apparent to the Solean senses, when Grace spent months freaking out over every little sneeze or cough Rocky made when in the prototypes of the atmosphere suit - is preposterous. Grace would never ever hurt Rocky like that, would never do anything to expose Rocky to its atmosphere ever again even accidentally. They're both so very careful about it. Rocky is still steaming about Superman's insinuations when it walks inside Grace's enclosure.
Grace is waiting by the airlock. Rocky huffs. "Unfair. Go farther. Too close for start, cheater."
Grace holds up its hands in the almost-happy movement ("When I put my hands up like this, this means surrender.") and steps away a good distance. It's still smiling. "Not gonna matter, Rock," it calls. "I'm about to get you back for alllll those times you ambushed me on the trip here."
"Yeah, right!" Rocky shifts, preparing to run. "We see who is better predator."
"Ready?"
"Ready!"
"GO!"
Rocky bolts. The sand is hard to traverse, its arms slipping both from the xenonite covering and the loose grains, but it already knows it's a faster runner than Grace. And when it clicks to see where Grace is, Grace is so far behind it's laughable. Oh, this is gonna be easy.
Rocky reaches the edge of the biodome, a little worn out. Luckily, it just had a sleep cycle, so it won't need to sleep for another few Solean days. Grace is out of range. HA!
It meanders back closer until it can hear Grace, leisurely strolling along the beach. "What wrong, Grace? Too slow?" It calls out.
A ripple of laughter comes from Grace. "You'll be eating your words soon enough." It sticks its hands in its pockets.
Rocky snorts, and decides to continue to be a little shit. It goes back and darts around Grace, mocking it, staying juust far enough away where if Grace lunges Grace won't even be able to touch it. Grace does give chase eventually, but Rocky just carefully climbs up the cliff face. Damn, humans are stupid! Every time Rocky thinks they're not so bad, Grace does something like this. It's not even chasing Rocky! It's just slowly following.
The biodome cycles over to night, Rocky can tell by the click! of the flashlight Grace carries. It settles on top of the cliff, enjoying the sounds of Grace trying its damndest to climb the cliff. Technically it's well past the time Grace should be asleep, but they're both too stubborn to call quits and the xeno team isn't in a hurry to interrupt this glimpse into human evolution.
Rocky has to run again when Grace reaches the top of the cliff and starts to chase it again. This keeps going, Rocky running and mocking Grace, Grace just continuing on, unshakable. Rocky only starts to worry when night falls again and Grace is still able to catch up to it!
It yells to Grace, who's some distance behind. "Grace need sleep."
"Grace has slept." Grace shouts back. "Remember, I can wake up easily. I've been sleeping and eating regularly, I promise."
"Good!" Rocky lets itself feel some relief that Grace isn't neglecting its health for this experiment. Then it goes right back to insults. "Then Grace have no excuse to be so slow!" It makes a 'fart' noise in Grace's direction and scuttles off, laughing at the offended sound Grace makes.
Day comes again, and Rocky gets frustrated. What in the actual fuck?! Something's not right. Grace has been at this for two Earth days and nights now. If Grace was going to catch Rocky, shouldn't that have happened by now? Is Grace even taking this experiment seriously?
Well, Rocky does know Grace is taking it seriously, because Grace is doing it. Hasn't given up. Hasn't called it quits. So the only reason why the experiment is still going must be because this persistence way of hunting is, in fact, not effective, and Grace is just too stubborn to admit it! HA! Get wrecked, Grace.
Frustration turns to glee, which then curdles into nervousness as the day still goes on with no sign of Grace stopping the pursuit. They've both been running in circles: the biodome's not that big, all told, and Rocky can't access a quarter of it due to the fake ocean. And Rocky can feel a sleep cycle is imminent. It's exhausted. All the running it's been doing must have brought the sleep cycle on sooner. And Grace, last Rocky heard, still shows no sign of tiredness. Shit!
Rocky pushes itself just a little harder, until Grace is far beyond Rocky's range of hearing and Rocky is well hidden: Grace is still on top of the cliffs by the wall of the dome, while Rocky's down below nearer to the water. Then it finds a cave. It knows this cave in particular has a room beside it where the xeno team has been watching on the camera feeds and listening to this whole debacle.
"Must sleep," Rocky manages. "Can't keep going." It collapses, and the world vanishes. No worries. Grace won't catch up, and if it does, it won't think to look for Rocky here.
When Rocky wakes, it first hears a clamoring from the observation room. Many voices shouting over one another. It sends a spike of fear through Rocky, and it taps at the floor to hear better - and nearly has a cardiac failure then and there, screaming louder than it's ever screamed before in its life.
Grace is standing right. over. Rocky. Looming, really, and it's never sounded taller or more ominous.
"Hiiii."
Then Grace plunges down, wraps its arms around Rocky. "Gotcha!" It opens its mouth and presses it to Rocky's carapace, leaking all over it and pressing its tongue to the xenonite as if it's trying to eat Rocky.
Rocky shudders in disgust and cusses Grace out with every word it knows, smacking it lightly with an arm. "CREEPY! Scared Rocky, nearly kill Rocky with attacking heart! No no no bad Grace! BAD BAD BAD GRACE!"
Grace is laughing, sending vibrations through Rocky's body. "I told you," it says in that light singing kind of voice it likes to do. "I tooooold youuuu! Persistence predators, baby!"
"That no count! You wait until I fall… asleep…" A horrible idea begins to dawn on Rocky. "No." There's no way. There's no way. It's too awful to think of, and yet it's the only possibility.
"Well-" Grace settles back, crosses its legs underneath it and turns towards the window to the observation room: where, by the way, everyone's gone silent with their own realizations. "You guys didn't let me finish explaining earlier. See, a lot of prey animals on Earth are very fast, like Rocky here." It gives Rocky a noogie. "So humans evolved to be able to endure long stretches of exercise like this. We chase an animal, track it using its footprints or the direction it was going in usually, and then eventually the animal's so exhausted that it has to sleep, and that's when we attack and kill it for our food. So that's what I just did!" Grace flashes its teeth again. It's terrifyingly happy about all of this.
Meanwhile, Rocky quite literally cannot move from fear. Grace has sparked fear before: their first meeting, when Rocky had no clue what to expect but it certainly wasn't some squishy cold bag of meat that breathed oxygen of all things; over Adrian the planet, when the ship had been sent into an uncontrolled spin and Rocky had known what it would have to do to save Grace and Earth and Erid all at once even if it meant death; for a few moments when Rocky had been floating in its tomb, the original Eridian ship, and heard a cracking thumping sort of noise coming from space, right before it'd discovered that the noise was Grace coming to save it.
All of those instances were tiny bits of dust next to this type of fear. The revelation that Rocky's wonderful and clumsy friend could have, just now, very easily killed Rocky in Rocky's sleep and that its species did so regularly was the singular most horrifying concept anyone could ever have imagined. Grace probably had no idea that the Solean way of hunting was the stuff of the worst Eridian horror stories. Something that just kept going, kept chasing you until you were forced to sleep? Fucking WHY?! WHY did Rocky have to meet AND BRING HOME the ONE species it knew of that DID THAT?! WHY?!
"That-" it weakly starts - still feeling like it was about to, as the Soleans say, 'shit its pants' - "Very… nice, Grace. Thank for demonstration."
It crawls out from under Grace's arm. "Back soon," and lunges for the airlock. It needs… more than a little bit of processing time. That whole thing was fucking disturbing.
Grace just waves, oblivious to Rocky's internal turmoil. "See you later, Rocky!"
I highly recommend developing a tolerance for polite low level conflict, not just because it will serve you well when employers or whoever try to impose bullshit on you with the expectation you'll fold rather than expend energy arguing, but because it will make you a genuine asset to your friends and allies whenever they're in positions where they're less able to fight for themselves.
the first and most important step is learning to stay calm when someone with authority tries to pressure you. take a breath, think about what you actually believe, and respond in your own time. if they try to brush past or talk over you, you can say "excuse me, can I think about that for a moment. I'd like to give you a proper answer." self esteem. you're both just upright monkeys.
Another great line is: "I'm not sure I agree with that."
You reserve the right to later say: "Yeah, I've thought it over, listened to your explanations. I agree now."
You haven't yet said you disagree.
But you've effectively communicated to the other person: "This point is not 100% self-evident. It needs more discussion or explanation if you are to convince everyone of it."
It also doesn't share much about your own viewpoint. It throws the ball back to the other person. Do they want to backpedal and say: "Well, okay, yeah, I was exaggerating. I really mean this other slightly less overgeneralized thing." or do they want to try to explain why they believe it is correct? Or ask you what you don't understand about it? Or ask you what other perspective might seem more compelling?
There are a lot of options and in my experience they all lead to a better place than just letting someone bowl you over with a point you weren't 100% on board with.
A major skill in polite conflict is making sure you're not expecting to convince the other person. The minute you're invested in getting someone else to agree or understand, you're setting yourself up to get agitated.
Your job is only to calmly and gently lay out that no, you don't agree, and no, you aren't going to comply. The other person may or may not believe you, but you are just giving them information so they have the freedom to act on it or not.
Sure, if the other person gives you a good opportunity to explain, then it's great to communicate your perspective clearly and charitably. Someone can take on the task of trying to understand you, and you can support them in that goal.
But you can't dictate any aspect of what someone else is going to think or do.
Accepting that is the first step in not getting stressed and exhausted every time you find yourself at odds with other people.
under US law, it's illegal for anyone who's not a member of a recognised native tribe to own an eagle feather. the penalty is a $100,000 fine.
14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."
and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.
so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.
on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.
probably a good thing I don't intend to move back there anytime soon. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on bird crimes.
@freedomisscaryshit I'm fucking dying I think you forgot the word "feathers" in your tags?? or do you just wish you could grab whole ass eagles that land in your yard??
As an Indigenous person, it continues to astound me that there are such strict laws (written by White people) in our name, laws against...picking up things just found on the ground. Like, stop pretending this is "for" us. We don't want this.
so, for clarity, that's not what this is. the law against possessing feathers is an anti-poaching measure, derived from a North American treaty protecting certain migratory bird species from hunting. that treaty has an exemption for indigenous people to allow tribes that use eagle feathers in ceremonial or religious practices to continue doing so.
i used to collect feathers (illegally) as a teenager and the thing is that it's incredibly important for feathers from wild birds to be illegal to possess because it ensures that they never become fashionable to wear. the reason we passed the migratory bird act was because the american and european fashion industry was driving species to extinction in a timespan of years. not just decades. the ecological devastation of exporting birds for hats was absolutely insane and people were watching wetlands and forests and meadows just empty out in realtime. look at the wikipedia article for the plume trade.
the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.
these laws, as harsh and ridiculous as they seem, saved flamingos, spoonbills, egrets, and all kinds of hawks and eagles from extinction. the minute these laws weaken and people can make money off killing them again, they're fucked.
this is one of those "no actually this regulation exists for a reason" laws much like work place safety and building fire codes (that Republicans keep trying to roll back) and is written in blood just like them as well. it's just not human blood this time, and the fact that people actually cared enough about long term future over short term profit to get it put in place is nothing short of astonishing. That it didn't get put in place in time to save several species is heart breaking.
Pathologizing: Hey sorry I yelled at you. I have this ADHD symptom called RSD that makes me really sensitive.
Humanizing: Hey, I’m sorry that I blew up like that earlier. In the moment I felt really attacked and overwhelmed and I reacted badly, but I know you didn’t mean to offend me with what you said, so that behavior is on me.
Because I just saw a post bitching about this one, I want to add: this post is saying that you need to take accountability for the way you hurt other people, even if it happens because of a symptom of your disability/illness. It's also saying that using terms (especially acronyms) that aren't common knowledge isn't a helpful way to explain yourself. It is NOT saying that you need to let people walk all over you because "your disability isn't an excuse."
If you're diabetic, you don't have to eat the honey glazed ham that will send you into a coma (their example). But you also can't yell at the person offering it and accuse them of trying to kill you. You can just say "thanks, but my body can't handle that kind of sugar intake, so I'll pass"
I was thinking about an idea someone else had for a Project Hail Mary AU where the Grace-Rocky dynamic is reversed. (I think it was a post about Grace being Rocky's dog.)
And it occured to me to wonder what an alien would name a human based on our texture. (The way Grace named Rocky after rocks.)
I honestly think that a human would likely get named something akin to "rubbery."
Okay, hear me out. I know it's upsetting. But once I explain it, it will be both logical AND upsetting.
It's pretty easy for soft, blobby life to develope. The oceans are full of soft animals. The forests are full of soft fungi. I'm no expert, but it seems like for squishy things to evolve, you just need a fluid environment and a lifeform that isn't picky about the difference between its insides and its outsides.
"Squishy" would probably be a common texture of life for an alien to find before meeting us. They wouldn't find it outlandishly remarkable.
But most of earth's land-dwelling vertebrates have very specific skin protiens. (Keratins.) It was difficult for land animals to evolve, partly because we needed skin that was:
Insoluble enough to separate our seawater-based insides from a dry environment.
Flevible enough to let us move under our own power.
Sturdy enough to resist and/or survive physical trauma.
It's rare and tricky set of competing demands. Even after evolving keratins, most animals kept their squishier skin underneath, and covered up the outside with something rigid and/or fluffy. (Scales, feathers, hair.)
Humans have evolved back from the hair-coated stage, to have most of our skin exposed all over again. (I'm guessing it happened because that made for better temperature regulation once we started wearing other animals' skins on cold days? IDK) There are other hair-sparse mammals, but not many.
To sum up: The weird mix of squishiness, springiness, smoothness, and dryness in human skin required a couple of improbable evolutionary twists.
So I posit that an alien would take one look at our surface texture and immediately think of their own planet's closest equivalent to soft, dry tree sap.
It says weird things about my special interests that I am far more upset about Dropout featuring Legal Eagle than I was about the "The Rookie" crossover.
