They may be ‘smiling’ all the time, but their real emotion needs to be determined from their fin and tongue language. Pupil stuff depends on context; normally it’s a way to show you’re annoyed/give a warning/show shock or anger, but it can also be done when very excited to make it clearer you’re looking at the other person. Vocalizations are also more a part of their expressions than they are for humans, with some facial movements not hitting the same or meaning something else if you don’t make the right noise.
Fun fact: that big facial gland was a lot more useful back when they were living in salt water and had to expel a lot more excess salt. Now, it mostly just helps their endocrine/ excretory system with getting rid of concentrations of spent copper and urea (from their blood) and other contaminants that seep in through their skin. And for crying, of course. Much like humans, emotional mucus discharge is similar to emotional tears in that it is chemically different, containing stress hormones and being thicker. The viscosity helps it bubble when pushed from the gland, which makes their intense emotion more visible to other Kixeli.
spent my noon watching a nearly adult movie twice as old as me and some scene along these lines made me think of these two. i don't actually know if Kixeli can get piss drunk. or puke. if alcohol isn't a thing for them then Lep is on uhh New Hot Drugs That Make You Hurl. just enjoy my weird gay frogs being weird and gay and frogs. especially gay
unrelated except for Wreck Hounds but i wanna draw Sundyne so bad. it's like resisting raiding the pantry again after i just ate from it but they're so they're so... AND muttreazik look fun to play with.... pained hiss....
all species pictured and mentioned in the above paragraph by @b1asho (am i to tag them every time i draw these shits,,, is that annoying guillotineable behavior,,, they follow me anyway rubs chin)
I think Tui and Merad were the first ones I designed?
Tui is an Arasit Muttreazik who grew up in a multi-species orphanage with a lot of hexapods and hexapod media, so its brain worm decided that it also needed to be a hexapod. It has many other friends, including other Kixeli, but its BFF since early childhood is Merad, a Prectikar. It loves to climb on Merad, and Merad loves to be climbed on. They play a lot of video games, and maybe make a career of it? Idk
Tui can't really glide and I'll never draw its patterns the same but it paints itself all the time so w/e
Tiger is here again, alongside their siblings, Metrodora and Berossus (their parents probably also named Tiger after an ancient scientist but they like the silly nickname better). Fun fact: their stripes aren't from the Muttreazik changes but from residual splice genes.
Tiger uses their Mancer abilities and big cat muscles to do building/demo work. Dora doesn't use her Conduit abilities much, focusing instead on legal work to improve treatment of and accessibility for Muttreazik, especially those with less congruent bioplans. Bero does something I'm sure but I dunno what yet lmao
Attraction is very subjective human-to-human, and so obviously things get even more subjective when different species weigh in.
This is kind of an insane question to pull on a xeno, because most of them do not think of humans in that way at all. But if made to think about it, you could get some results. These are just random examples from random people, but the general idea is that they focus on stuff that we don’t immediately view as an instant appeal/something worth looking at.
The wider consensus is that it’s a little weird (or gross and unnatural, depending on who you’re talking to) to find another species attractive, but relationships do happen. They’re just fraught with a few more problems than the average couple.
Some other misc info:
Prectikar are by far the least interested in humans attraction-wise. We’re too unnerving for most of them.
Kixeli ears are a lot like frog ears (aka smooth and flat. The earrings they have are attached to the loose ring of skin around them.)
The Sundyne guy is speaking using an implant, which is why the speech bubble is coming from his neck in the second image. You can also tell he’s with egg from the bright yellow sash covering his back(where they are contained). Compared to the other guys, humans are kind of “hard to tell apart” since there’s no particular color or exposed body part that immediately signals if they’re male or female (Kixeli have their skin markings, rossetians have their horns, Dorest and Rox look drastically different, Prectikar are close but they tend to wear clear gendered jewlery for identification purposes). A human with things like thick clothing or body fat can make it less obvious “what they are”, something that a Sundyne would find unnerving.
As you can imagine, GEIA’s thoughts on humans are uhh complicated. She’s very normal about them.
“Met arch” is a Drecu term for addressing your lead Rox (sort of like“my leader” ), and their up-tilted heads+ little antenna tap is an affectionate gesture.
Rossetians have hair that’s similar to an earth mammal, but it’s Only on their privates and in Tha Pouch. So they have a very strong sexy connotation for it. rossetians and humans are pretty similar, and Rossetian/human relationships are also the second most common inter-species pair!
The most common inter-species pair is humans and muttreazik (because most muttreazik are raised by humans and look like humans with a few quirks.) Things get really complicated really fast, though, when we start talking about the low-congruency guys who don’t have a human body plan.
Some simple human face expressions and how they’re commonly (mis) interpreted by the other guys. I haven’t drawn in a while so the faces are ehhh imo but it’s fine.
This human is a splice, featuring some broken skin pattern and ear hair mods.
Obviously, the aliens can use other context clues to figure out what the expression means, but the original misinterpretations can lead to lasting confusion/mistakes (such as wondering why that human is so mad at you when they’ve just been smiling.)
I’m working on the expression sheets for the other species, so we’ll be able to see what I’m taking about with their equivalents.
Just for some preview/fun facts about the most common things that humans misinterpret about the alien expressions : Sundyne crying is read as snarling, Rossetian laughter is typically not noticed at all because it’s not vocal, the Prectikar scared face is seen as a threat, Kixeli aren’t fully paying attention to you if they’re facing forward, and Drecu/Sundyne are read as being pissed off all the time because of the eyes.
