This, That And The Other Thing

There is no way to describe this blog, other than; "HEY, look at this!" 37 they/them/she/her Trans lesbean massively huge nerd that will inflict upon all of you my Fandom whims at any given moment.

[valentine-leclair]

humans are space orks: musicals

Alien: "You promise it won't be too loud?"

Human Named Glen: (Leading them to their seats in the theatre.) "I promise, this show is super chill. It's literally in the name - Be More Chill."

(This was a lie.)

Alien: "Okay... But, just in case, I'm keeping the ear plugs out."

Alien: (Sitting calmly in their seat. Until.) "... Why are they singing?"

Human Glen: "Did you... Did I not tell you?"

Alien: "Tell me what? Why are they SINGING the words?"

Human Glen, Remember This: "Uh... Shh, can't talk during the musical."

Alien: "Mu-si-cal... hm. It's kinda catchy. C-c-c-come on, go, go..."

After that, they became increasingly obsessed with the idea and evolved into an alien theatre kid. The entire human crew would glare at Glen (Did you remember?) everytime time the alien starting singing their sentences instead of speaking.

[valentine-leclair]

humans are space orks: textures

To make this make sense, I'll use a race such as the Eridians as an example. Eridian people don't see like us humans do; color isn't a concept to them. So now imagine we have an alien race who's skin is made of such material that they can't really "feel" things. Got it? Good.

These aliens, they were fascinated to find that humans had this concept of feelings things and certain textures because of their sensitive outer layer of skin. And, wow, they have preferences! Tell me it wouldn't go like:

Alien: "And how does this one feel?"

Human: "Umm... it's... oh, it's kinda ticklish. Can I... Oh, it's crunchy!"

Alien: Holds the patch of space grass away. "Well, don't break it, silly human. Try another."

Human: "Don't patronize me. This one - ew, it's slimy! Ew ew ew!"

Alien: Holds back a laugh. "Alright, alright, last test."

Human: "Will it be another weird thing? Because I will wipe it on y- ooh."

Alien: ...???

Human: "I like this one. It's warm and fuzzy. That's... what is this?" Starts to cradle the item to their chest. "It's very soft."

Entire alien crew: Simultaneously go "awwww".

[valentine-leclair]

humans are space orks: earth weather

Alien: "You're an asshole."

Human: "I didn't 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 there would be a thunderstorm today."

(The odd pair wait sitting across from each other under the roof of a bus stop. Rain pitter patters loudly on the walls.)

Alien: "How did you not know? You have an app to check the weather."

Human: "Ah, yeah. I forgot."

Human: "It's usually wrong anyway. Just give it thirty minutes."

Alien: (Resting their elbow on their knee, and their face in their hand.) "Thirty minutes? Try an hour. I haven't seen a storm this bad in all the months I've been assigned to Earth."

Human: "Eh, the rain is kind of wishy washy in Florida. What looks like an hour long thunder storm could turn out to be a ten minute shower."

Alien: "Really?"

Human: "Oh, yeah. And then out of nowhere you get hit by a hurricane because it randomly changed directions."

Alien: "... What."

Human: "And then if you live in a cold enough place, you get a surprise snow in - or sometimes on the one day you want snow, absolutely nothing comes down."

Human: "In some places it gets so hot that fires start all on their own."

Alien: "I'm 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘺? The temperatures sometimes reach the point that fucking 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦 just... spawns??"

Humans: "Oh, and in some places, there are these giant funnels of wind that destroy everything in their path. Something about hot and cold wind blowing together... not totally sure what causes that."

Alien: "𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘮𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺."

Human: "S'just weather."

Alien: "... How are you people not constantly afraid of death, living here?"

[bringmethepeculiar]

Humans being such a social species that, to aliens, it sometimes comes across as a hivemind.

Humans are attention seeking by nature. Attention is sought after because there is historically safety in numbers, so humans are naturally inclined to mimic the behaviours of others in order to subconsciously identify ‘hey, look! I do as you do just like the rest of your group so you can trust that I am not dangerous. Can I be a part of this group??’ and the other human sees this and says ‘Ah yes, another one who does as we do so they must be safe, come sit with us’.

Aliens see humans copying each other’s behaviour so fluidly that it almost comes off as creepy. It’s even creepier when humans mimic THEIR actions, too. Like, no, do not rope me into your mind melding species cult, please and thank you.

Even to the modern day, this intensely social instinct is still alive and well, as humans will unconsciously mimic positive actions of others even when they don’t understand the context. For example, clapping.

An alien and a human are sitting having a conversation when suddenly hoots and hollers and the clapping of hands erupt from across the room. Immediately, much to the alien’s surprise, the human starts clapping too as they look around trying to see what is happening.

The reaction was so immediate that the alien is taken aback by it before remembering that humans were known to be strangely in tune with each other compared to other species so they just wait it out.

Once it dies down, the alien asks

“So, what was that about?”

“No idea.”

“But you…joined in. You didn’t know what you were celebrating??”

“Well, no, but I don’t explicitly have to know what’s going on to guess that it’s something good and join in. It would feel a bit rude if I didn’t clap.”

And the alien just sits there like ‘It’s NOT a hivemind???’ strangely, that’s somehow worse than if it was.

[bringmethepeculiar]

What if human dexterity is what makes us stand out as an alien species?

Humans evolved to be exceptional at gripping things due to living amongst branches very early in our evolutionary history, and the elongated fingers, wide but flexible palms, and opposable thumbs helped us towards developing the use of tools.

What if aliens didn’t evolve to have our level of dexterity? Of course they would have some level of it, paired with enough intelligence to allow them to be on par with us in terms of technology, but they developed better, more complex tools than we ever did because we achieved the same level of dexterity with simpler tools due to our evolutionary advantage.

Compared to us, aliens have about as much control of their hands (and other hand-like appendages) as a toddler. They hold their eating utensils with their fist, and writing is a full arm exercise rather than the work of just the wrist and fingers. They type with just two fingers and they can’t hold multiple things in one hand because their fingers simply don’t bend and grip enough to allow them to. And it gets them by well enough, but it’s the small things in human culture that we don’t think about much that trips them up.

Shoelaces for example. Try showing an alien the bunny ear method of tying shoes and their brain will short out trying to figure out how the hell we managed to do that.

Games controllers. So many tiny buttons and joysticks to push and pull and humans manage it at incredible speeds, often without even looking, all with such ease. The same applies to our keyboards.

Buttons and zippers and safety pins. All require a surprising amount of precision to operate (hence why very young children often need assistance with doing up their jackets) but they are all so commonplace that they’ve become the first line of defence between humans and public indecency.

And god forbid you ever try to get an alien to use chopsticks…

[savsonfire]

Project hail mary thoughts.

As funny as it is that rocky sees grace and complains about grace and humans in general as a terribly inefficient blob of water and fluids and teases constantly...

I REALLY think this should be a relatively rocky-exclusive perspective. He's watched this incredibly stressed human drip all kinds of tears and goos while they were floating around in space, and grace let down basically all of his guard around rocky personally, have discussed and understood eachother over life threatening missions. To Rocky, grace is Grace!

But grace does have some naturally combative push to him (see, the commentary that got him stonewalled in the scientific community in the first place, and being able to keep up with and handle Eva stratt) and further more, when an eridian is Not Rocky, i.e. not incredibly socially withdrawn and traumatized and maybe on their own spectrum of divergence before his ill fated mission and was very susceptible to latching onto a strange and unusual creature in just as much crisis as him...

That is to say. The eridians are going to meet grace with wildly different priorities and expectations. And what they're going to get is a human dangerously close to deaths door, and cornered and dying humans aren't always the most friendly or cooperative and kind, even the Nicest Humans You Can Get.

So they get a dying human. And as tumblr loves to say, humans are terrifying to aliens, and fuck do they persist. Rocky's so-described "pathetic space blob" grace is terrifying to most eridians, especially the scientists studying him.

He drinks solvent and breaths combustion. Instead of simply dying when his body runs out of nutrients and calorie stores, it has begun to Digest Itself. His body is pumping chemicals they do not understand and every chemistry panel they run shows new levels of new chemicals and hormones. The human body replaces most of its cells constantly because even breathing, especially at a higher atmospheric pressure, is destroying their own lungs.

This thing "hears" things they cannot comprehend and he is unable to describe beyond "color" and "brightness" which are things you can not contextualize, and calls the strangest things beautiful. It has no entirely discernable traits you can understand ecologically as a predator- no armor, no weapons- and yet it eats meat and that is one of the many nutrients it needs to survive. You as a resident of erid do not have many creatures with "eyes" and so have no idea that the strongest mark of a predator is neither claw nor fang, but forward facing eyes, all the better to catch your prey, to meet a foe head on and fearless. You just know it "sees" and that it eats meat, and many other complicated things.

And in place of not receiving all those nutrients, it's body will litterally digest itself and keep going without them. Oh, this new chemical in it's latest blood panel allows it to ignore it's own pain to the point it won't realize it's injured. It can wake up from a dead sleep if you are too loud or too "brightness" around it. It speaks in an archaic graveling noise and is capable of imitating the strangest things, including a haunting near-vocalization of the eridani language of its own, which it calls "singing" and it does this at the strangest of times, when happy and when nervous. It is neither fast nor slow, but over time and observation, you realize this strange towering bipedal creature expends an entirely minimal amount of energy to walk, a process of controlled falling turned mobilization. You hypothesize that for lack of predatory weaponry like claws or sharp teeth, this thing simply evolved to follow you. To "see" you with it's forward facing eyes even in total stillness, total silence, and follow for as long as it takes: it won't spend much energy, and it won't starve waiting for you to exhaust. It'll start digesting *itself* while waiting for it's prey to lay down and have to sleep. It will "watch" you sleep with "eyes." You cannot wake up the way it can, and it will eventually catch up to you.

Also sometimes it cries excess amounts of saline rich solvent when you compliment it's latest research paper. Rocky calls him an idiot and the overseeing eridian scientists watch on with a sense of morbid eldrich horror. Right, right, just a "leaky space blob", sure.

They're kind of terrified of the future delegations with this planet. They litterally get to space by explosion. Not only are they scary- they're INSANE. And they're told the one they have is "a push over".

[greatness942]

I know "Humans are Space Orcs" is a popular trope, but here's one that doesn't get as much mileage.

Aliens reacting to our wildlife.

Because, god, if they think we're Space Orcs, wait until they see the shit that could scare or amaze us.

Like:

Alien: "Human, I was looking over my notes..."

Human: "I have a name-"

Alien: "Your closest living ancestors are of the genus Pan, yes? These "Chimpanzee" and "Bonobo" creatures."

Human: "Uh, yeah. Funny story, they wouldn't be living nowadays if it wasn't for NATO signing the ENCR Preservation Act-"

Alien: "In 2031, yes, I know, that's not what gets me. What gets me is, uh...I was unaware your empathy and barbarism was genetic. Chimpanzees enter into societies and build tools, yet also cannibalize weaker factions and have "hair-trigger" tempers."

Human: "Yeah, Chimps are fucking terrifying."

Alien: "...They're what?"

Human: "They're...fucking terrifying?"

Alien: "They scare you?!"

Human: "Why wouldn't they? They have super-strength and sharp teeth, not to mention the grey matter. Piss off a Chimp and you could, literally, lose your face."

Alien: "YOUR KIND ROUTINELY BUILDS SUPERWEAPONS AND INGESTS POISON FOR FUN, AND YOU'RE SCARED OF YOUR PRE-SAPIENT RELATIVES?!"

Human: "Wait 'til you find out how we feel about bears!"

Alien: "HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT WHATS?!"

[bringmethepeculiar]

Thinking about humans and aliens. Too hard.

Imagine an alien species that evolved to be semi-aquatic watching humans (a species evolved to climb and run on land) jump eagerly into the water to swim with them. No safety equipment, no flotation devices, just a thin modesty suit and sheer glee.

And humans, by the alien’s standards, are terrible at swimming. Just…truly awful. They can’t hold their breath for long, their bones and muscles are dense, their lungs make them too buoyant, their hair creates drag, their gangly limbs are slow and clumsy, and they can’t open their eyes underwater because the water will hurt them.

And yet the human laughs and splashes with their alien friend and alien can’t help but marvel as the human seems to adapt in real time right in front of their eyes.

The human streamlines themself to glide through the water as best they can, trying their best to turn their grasping hands into paddles, their feet into flippers. The human watches and copies how the alien moves and mimics them, learns and copies them until they move almost gracefully.

Often, they break away from these learned skills and become a land mammal flailing in the water again, but something about the human willingly defying their nature, learning to be more than they are in a bid for connection with another species, makes the alien light up with something that feels an awful lot like fondness.

[penpaladinjules]

“Commander Arcturus reporting back from Earth, sir.”

“Yes, Commander? Do you recommend initiating contact with them?”

“To be honest, I am torn on the issue.”

“Do explain.”

“As you know, they are mortal flesh containing a consciousness. But sir … their consciousnesses don’t pass on to a different flesh when the flesh dies.”

“Mmm, they return to one great consciousness, do they?”

“Nnnnnno, sir. There is no one great consciousness. They just *die*. They’re just gone.”

“BUH — WHA — well that’s preposterous, where do they get the new consciousness from?”

“They make a new one. A brand new one. Every time a new human is conceived, they build a new consciousness, and every time a human dies, that consciousness is gone forever. … … … Sir?”

“How do they have any kind of body of knowledge, then? … … … Well that seems incredibly inefficient, it would take years for one of them to learn enough to be able to do anything! But if you say this is how they do it … My stars, man, that means they would be *aware* that they had an expiration date! It means they would know the *new consciousnesses they made* would inevitably die!”

“Yes sir. Mortality weighs heavily upon them.”

“To think such a time-limited species could become intelligent and not any of the normal ones on this planet.”

“Ummmmm. All life on that planet is the same way.”

“… … … I am tempted to simply mark it down as the saddest goddamn thing in the entire universe and move on.”

“Thank you, sir, yes, I agree.”

“Why the thank you?”

“Frankly, I don’t think I could stand to go back. I … made a friend, you see.”

[totally-cis-offical]

I need a “humans are space orcs” thing where all sentient species are weird like that, but in their own unique ways

And a lot of them are aware of this (like we are when we make these “humans are space orcs” stories)

Maybe one species enjoys getting bit by something equivalent to mosquitoes. Maybe one actively avoids the hospitable places on their planet because it’s boring without a challenge. You get the gist.

I want to see a bunch of aliens (+humans) sitting around a table talking about how their own species is a bunch of freaks

Everyone is space orcs

[carionto]

It'll be "awesome", the Human said

(Continuation/conclusion to this)

____________________________

After the Coalition delegates had been mindblown enough, it was time for them to finally leave and have a nap. But Captain Knoslark had one more thing he desperately wanted to show them.

"So, like, we're a science vessel and we have three of the biggest reactors, right? Right. So, I wanna show you what we recently figured out we can do. C'mon, it'll be awesome."

Awesome - a word the rest of the Galaxy will soon learn to both admire and run for cover whenever a Human uses it.

With trepidation in their steps, and worry in their breaths, they followed the all too eager Captain, who was almost skipping and humming down the halls, dramatically pointing the way. His crew continued to not give him the satisfaction of ever acknowledging his theatrics.

"Once the reactors are in good enough sync, we'll reconfigure the Radiant Dusk to a circular shape and begin!"

Oh. Yeah. Of course their ships can also transform. Why not. The delegates have given up thinking there are things Human engineering can't accomplish. Also, good enough?

"Eh, don't worry about it, we overbuild everything, so a 1 or 2 percent margin of error is fine, most of the time."

They could not imagine themselves to be more worried. At least not until a few minutes from now.

"Captain, she's ready," Chief Engineer Tameki's tone changed to a total blank deadpan for the next words, "to transform. and. roll. out."

With childlike glee, Captain Knoslark tapped the big red button, specifically designed for his pad only, to begin the sequence.

Distant creaking of metal, anguish at the prospect of bending in ways nature never intended, and the unmistakable jolt of mechanical movement, despite the artificial gravity maintaining the same down throughout, once more instilled primal anxiety for the delegates.

The reactors wound up, turning the almost-buzz like feeling beneath their feet to a true all encompassing sense of absolute power. Three small stars at equidistant points along the now 4km in diameter vessel created a singular feeling of something imminent that should never have been possible. The Universe itself wanted to reject this possibility.

"We tried copying your mass field generators from way back when you did the barrier thing. Wanted to see if we could get close to Black Hole levels, there were some theories that time travels was possible with that kinda pull."

I don't think anyone would be surprised if they had succeeded, but, for once during their entire visit, the Humans said they couldn't get time travel to work. Celebration! Then the Captain kept talking.

"So what happened instead is we accidentally tore a hole in time-space, creating a sort of warp gate." He said with both joy and disappointment.

Then the Universe shrieked. A massive distortion in reality now struggled and failed to restore normality between the ring-shaped ship. Swirling coils of matter flickered in and out, ghostly visages of detonations on a solar scale. A sight never intended to be witnessed.

"Still gotta figure out how to set a destination to anywhere. Right now the only stable connection we can get is with massive gravity wells, so any celestial body with enough mass, smallest one is a red dwarf. Problem is the connection steers towards the center, so not really practical right now."

"If we try to point at empty space the gate just kinda wiggles and you end up getting spaghetti-fied on the other end. Still, once we get enough ships like this one around the galaxy, we'll solve that whole trips taking more than a few hours thing we got with the hyper drives."

At this point the delegates decided to be escorted away, as most had became a crying mess. One stumbled onto a automated cleaning unit and at this the Captain, whose mood had soured a bit now that his time as tour guide was over, rose back to heights unseen before. With his most official sounding, yet at the same time most joy filled tone ever, he declared:

"Sergeant Ying Zhao, issue an official notice. Today at 20:30 ship time there will be a grand ceremony for the promotion of Captain Stabicus to Special Envoy of the Galactic Coalition. Ready all relevant paperwork, and his new badge, and inform the chef to prepare a feast. We have done much today for the sake of Human-Coalition relationships, and so much more for the Radiant Dusk at Everest and her crew and staff. Tonight, we celebrate!"

[bringmethepeculiar]

Human brains being the envy of the musicians of the Galaxy due to the fact that music of all things comes to us so easily.

Human brains pick up rhythm and patterns so quickly compared to other species and alien musicians are heinously jealous. That’s not to say alien species don’t have music in any capacity, of course they do, but it’s less omnipresent in their cultures compared to ours. Music and singing to aliens are held to the same standard as sculpting marble. It’s a very difficult and precise art form that takes years of practice to get ‘right’.

And then there’s human children singing with each other as they jump a skipping rope. Using the beat to keep perfect time.

Humans sing to show each other every emotion under the sun. They sing to show reverence to their gods or ancestors or spirits. Humans will sing to anything that will listen and even things that won’t. Hell, Humans sing to pass the time. They sing when they can’t get a song out of their head.

That’s right, humans are so perfectly wired to understand music that their brains get hooked on musical stimulus and continually loop it. Involuntarily. Sometimes for days at a time. To the point of annoyance of the human.

Humans use music and rhythm to help them remember things because remembering something with a beat is easier than remembering something without one.

That’s like solving rocket science equations for fun to aliens.

[bringmethepeculiar]

Humans having the incredible ability to fall asleep pretty much anywhere. So long as isn’t actively on fire or made of broken glass and wasp stingers, it’s good enough for a human to conk out on. It not exactly good sleep, but it’s sleep either way.

Which is very odd to the galactic community.

Rest comes in all sorts of forms across the galaxy, some having sleep similar to ours, some having hibernation/brumation cycles, some going into meditative states, some retreating to cocoons, some photosynthesising, some even being technologically advanced enough to simply just plug themselves in and literally recharge. But the seeming inescapability of human sleep is…a little concerning.

If a human is tired enough, they will be able to sleep just about anywhere. Bed, sofa, armchair, the floor, a table, three chairs lined up, propped up like a doll against the wall, on top of another person, on a rock that’s even vaguely flat, on a gnarled tree branch, sometimes even floating in water or suspended by a harness. Wherever. So long as we can breathe, we can and will fall asleep.

The same can’t be said of aliens, they’re a bit more picky by comparison, or they can stave off their exhaustion through emergency chemical reactions long enough to find somewhere appropriate to rest. Some are so specialised that they require their environments to be utterly perfect before their body allows them to rest. Those aliens are deeply jealous while waiting around at the Spaceport for their shuttle to start boarding and seeing humans clumped together on a bench in a very uncomfortable looking pile, snoring away.

And then, an alien species named the Khak’Cthrax, a species known for their aggressive behaviour and bodies covered in rocky scales and dangerous barbs, discovering this aspect of humans.

One Khak’CThrax soldier being deployed to assist in saving some human civilians from a war zone and ending up having to carry a teenager for a while due to there not being enough gurneys. The juvenile human ends up nodding off in the soldier’s hands and at first he thinks the teenager has perished because the Khak’CThrax are not the type of person you would consider comfortable to rest on much less feel ‘safe’ around inherently, but after the field medic explains that the child is only asleep, unsurprisingly from the day they had had, the soldier practically becomes a broody mother hen for the human. This little one trusted him??? Enough to rest while held in his arms??? They are his baby now???

Made worse by the fact that humans are half the size of the average Khak’CThrax when fully grown, so a scrawny juvenile was practically the size of a newly hatched whelp to the soldier. All tiny and soft and squishy. The soldier nearly took another Khak’CThrax’s arm off for trying to poke his new human baby.

[writersisland]

Human Quirks for Non-Humans to discover

the chain reaction a single yawn can cause

the sense to recognize something that looks human but is not quite human (uncanny valley)

getting songs stuck in their heads

the urge to sneeze but being unable to do so

not being able to breathe from laughter sometimes

the reactions caused by tickles

acting fairly casual about pain in their most vital body parts (head)

neurodivergent symptoms as a whole

[shinobicyrus]

When your entire species is so hyper-engineered to be supergeniuses you have to outsource your “so stupid it just might work” plans.

[radioactivepeasant]

@authorbettyadams I think this really taps into the spirit of the Humans Are Weird anthologies 🤣

[radioactivepeasant]

On the topic of humans being everyone’s favorite Intergalactic versions  of Gonzo the Great: Come on you guys, I’ve seen all the hilarious additions to my “humans are the friendly ones” post. We’re basically Steve Irwin meets Gonzo from the Muppets at this point. I love it. 

But what if certain species of aliens have Rules for dealing with humans?

Don’t eat their food. If human food passes your lips/beak/membrane/other way of ingesting nutrients, you will never be satisfied with your ration bars again.

Don’t tell them your name. Humans can find you again once they know your name and this can be either life-saving or the absolute worst thing that could happen to you, depending on whether or not they favor you. Better to be on the safe side.

Winning a human’s favor will ensure that a great deal of luck is on your side, but if you anger them, they are wholly capable of wiping out everything you ever cared about. Do not anger them.

If you must anger them, carry a cage of X’arvizian bloodflies with you, for they resemble Earth mo-skee-toes and the human will avoid them.

This does not always work. Have a last will and testament ready.

Do not let them take you anywhere on your planet that you cannot fly a ship from. Beings who are spirited away to the human kingdom of Aria Fiv-Ti Won rarely return, and those that do are never quite the same.

Basically, humans are like the Fair Folk to some aliens and half of them are scared to death and the others are like alien teenagers who are like “I dare you to ask a human to take you to Earth”.

[disappointingcake]

Humans are unstoppable…Until they aren’t.

I’m not the most eloquent writer, but I’ve had this idea kicking around for a while and figured I’d put it out into the universe.

A lot of the basis for the “humans are space orcs” stuff is the idea that we’re pretty durable compared to many species, yeah? When it comes to physical trauma, we can bounce back from most things that don’t kill us outright, especially given the benefit of hypothetical space-age technology, and adrenaline is one heck of a drug when it comes to functioning under stress. 

But that doesn’t make us unkillable, and even though we can survive debilitating injuries and not die from shock, it doesn’t mean it’s fun. Dying of shock sucks, but at least it’s probably quick.

So - Imagine a ship, adrift in space, slowly being drawn into a star or something. In order to save the ship, someone has to repair the hyper-quantum-relay-majig on the hull or in the engine or whatever. Bit of a problem though- there’s a ton of deadly, deadly radiation (Wrath of Khan style) or poisonous fumes or, I dunno, electrical current, between the crew and the repair. Like, enough to kill most species instantly, so the crew is just like, ‘welp, guess we’ll die then’. But then.

BUT THEN

They ask the human. Because everyone’s heard the stories - you’re basically unkillable, right? Could you survive long enough in there to fix it? And their human goes real quiet for a second, but still says ‘Yeah, I could fix it’. And the rest of the crew is like, ‘Whaaaaaa, it won’t kill you?’ and the human repeats “I can fix it” (which isn’t an answer, but no one catches that, not yet at least), so they send ‘em in. And the human fixes it, they come back, the ship flies to safety, and the crew is thrilled to survive. If the human is a little quiet, well, they’re entitled after pulling off a miracle. Everyone else is just excited to get to the nearest station’s bar to tell their very own human story, cuz, ‘those crazy humans, amiright?’.

The good mood keeps up until the human is late for their next shift. At first it’s just faint unease, but- but they earned a bit of a lie-in, right? No reason to begrudge them some extra rest, even if it is a little weird for them to oversleep. They’ll be fine. Humans are always fine. 

(Right?)

(…Wrong.)

- What is… help. Help!-

- ake up! You have t-

- been days. You need sleep, you-

- nother transfusion. We could-

- out of sedatives!-

A week later, the crew finally reaches the station. They stumble into the bar, haggard and haunted. And over the next months and years a new rumor about humans starts to make its way through space. A rumor unlike any before.

‘Be careful with your humans’ it whispers. ‘Their strength is not always a blessing. Be sure they don’t do something they can’t come back from, because when a human dies… they die slowly.’