#humans are space orcs

[thefuckingduckgod]

Saw someone say that most intelligent alien life forms are likely prey animals, so I wanted to add something after falling down the humans are space orcs rabbit hole for the millionth time.

Humans are predators right? But in our day to day lives we don’t really act like predators very often. Very few of us actually have an experience with hunting, with one exception; bugs. Especially flies or mosquitoes.

Imagine you board a ship and all of your crew mates are life forms from other planets, all of them just so happen to be prey. You’re an engineer and general aren’t seen as very threatening. You’re the first human the crews ever had on board so they have no reason to think you would be. That is until somehow a fly gets onto your ship.

It’s meal time and this fly just will not stop bothering you. No one else seems to be doing anything so you decide to be the one to kill it. You go dead still and track it with your eyes, watching to see where it lands. Once it does you move slowly until your hand is directly above it, holding your breath before slamming your hand down. Finally the pesky bug is gone and you can go back to eating. To you it’s no big deal. I mean it’s just killing one bug right? But when you look up after rubbing the dead fly off the table with your shirt, everyone’s staring at you with a look of shock, horror, or fear.

After a minute or two everyone seems to unfreeze and go back to what they were doing, still nervously glancing over their shoulders at you every minute or so.

After that your crew mates seem to always be slightly on edge around you. Listening to you more often than before, and letting you lead in situations where violence might need to be resorted too. While it’s not technically your job on explorations, you in no way mind being able to protect your crew.

Plz tell me how to tag this is my first time posting something I actually spent time thinking about.

[el0wyn]

A common thing I see on here is "adrenaline is unique to humans and terrifying to everything else".

Now I know realistically it's unlikely other alien species don't have some sort of survival hormone as well, but in the chance that they don't I feel like there's a lot of untouched potential for this.

Because adrenaline has been discussed for fight-or flight situations before; mothers protecting their children, people lifting cars or buildings off other people, surviving in bullshit situations out of sheer willpower; but the way we play with it has to be a cause of conversation amongst other intergalactic species too.

Like we have rollercoasters, theme park rides, horror movies. We jumpscare each other and teach our kids little hunting games like tag, hide-and-seek, and red light green light. We play video games where we hide from a pursuer in a threatening environment and our bodies react like we're actually being stalked in real life, and we do it on purpose.

Because most other earth animal species have adrenaline (or epinephrine), but none of them really seek it out for thrill purposes like humans do. It makes you wonder what aliens would think of us, since we're apparently little freaks that like to be scared on purpose.

[artsy-writy]

Humans fucking breath oxygen!?

Imagine oxygen being to aliens what chlorine gas is to us.

Human: We're finally here!! The planet we've been looking for 2 million light-years!

Alien: *talking into earpiece* I still don't know why the human captain wanted to come here of all planets- wait- don't take off your helmet!! *closes their eyes*

Human: *takes off helmet and breathes in the fresh oxygen* Oh wow. So this is the fresh air our ancestors breathed when the Earth was still a young one.

Alien: *slowly peaks with one eye, scared* Y-you're not dying?

Human: Yeah, I'm not. Why would you think-

Alien: *trembling* Because this planet is filled with...oxygen

Human: Yeah, I know. That's why we came here in the first place!

Alien: Y-you can breathe this poisonous gas?

Human: Not only that, we need it to survive

Alien: Oh damn, I can't imagine someone breathing any gas other than chlorine-

Human: CHLORINE!? THE SWIMMING POOL THING!?

Alien: the what-

[definitlynotaplant]

Pack-Bonding with Plants

So, we all know that humans pack-bond to the weirdest things imaginable like Roombas or stuffed animals, or god knows what else. But what if aliens didn't know that yet? Or what if they knew about it but didn't know that it could apply to quite literally Anything. Like plants for example. 

“No! Clark! What are you doing!” Screams Human Charlie in pure horror as the alien known by the humans as “Clark” (Because humans physically can’t pronounce his real name) stands over a trashcan with an upside down flower pot in his hands. 

“What do you mean?” Clark’s transmitter struggles to convey through the confusion. “I”m getting rid of a hazard and a waste of space. I found a biological threat with spines and a brightly colored “Flower” on top that could very well be poisonous!”

“Noooooooo Frank!! Screams the human, running to the trash can and staring down at his fallen brother. “Guys! Frank! He’s… he’s… he’s dead!” sobs Human Charlie as the other humans come sprinting out of god knows where with their faces visibly falling as they took in the scene. Some cried. Others sank to their knees in grief. Yet another just turned around and walked away to his cabin, disappearing for at least an hour, 

In the following days, a funeral is conducted for the cactus known as “Frank” (Much to the bemusement of the rest of the creatures aboard the ship). The deck falls quiet. Grief seeps into the floorboards of the cabin for their fallen brethren. And a new protocol was put into place.

“If plants are aboard ship, do not exterminate them without first asking a human about any cultural significance, no matter how dangerous or trivial the biological specimen may appear.” The aliens have earned. They have helped to prevent the re-appearance of the loss felt that day. But it’s still there. The grief will never be gone. Only scarred over. They will never forget Frank. 

[gehenna-checklist]

I like to imagine a scenario where humanity just never developed energy guns and has stuck to kinetic weaponry forever and at some point some alien species thinks about messing with the wrong apex predator species.

Alien 1: "Captain, I assure you, our ships can't be breached by anything weaker than a concentrated proton beam. They barely have lasers. We'll be fine."

Alien 2: "Sub relativistic projectile incom-" gets hit by a railgun shell at mach fuck

[injuries-in-dust]

And here we find a rare instance of a Humans Are Space Orcs post from Tiktok that isn't an AI voice reading a reddit post over a minecraft video.

[disasterdrow]

aliens in a star trek/space type setting that are giant insect people or something equally non-human, use neutral pronouns and aren't particularly sexually dimorphic - until you meet one that goes by she/her. she looks exactly like all the others but she has a little bow glued to her carapace, minnie mouse style

upon questioning, her species doesn't have a concept of gender but when she met humans she decided to be a woman. "it just seemed like fun!"

[captain-ultimat-doggo]

Humans entering space and realizing we are so small. We are mice compared to these giant races with their advanced machinery and technologies and experiences beyond us- except that we're humans. And our engineers dive into the new tech and once we learn the principles we also soon realize how Inefficient everything is. Their "microchips" are the size of cars, their storage drives are basically buildings, and they somehow store less data than ours. So, human companies take advantage, and tech starts rolling out. Massive and there's a lot of wasted space so that it can be managed with larger hands/pincers/claws/tentacles, but also so much more efficient than anything the galaxy has seen before.

Human technicians start hopping ships and upkeeping the general maintenance, the stuff that most aliens put off or don't notice because they never access the crevices of their ships. As human companies become more popular and lead the tech world in everything from warp cores to game stations ("it's so compact! How are the graphics so good?" Says a 60' tall grimbleback, holding a new VR headset that has all of its components included because it's so BIG by our tech standards), soon many things have accessibility ports for humans to be able to use as well. This means that these shiprats hoping ship to ship cause such a huge improvement in everything running smoothly, and there's a huge downtick in pests on ships because those "pests" are not only big enough and aggressive enough to bite a pitbull or a person in half, they're invasive to so many planets and humans hate nothing more than dog killing planet overrunning monsters.

All the while, from the Aliens perspective, humans are an elusive race that don't fraternize much with them. You almost never see a human as most places aren't exactly safe for the little things to run around in. They do export so much stuff though, and the custodial staff at the Central Galactic Outpost insists that there's more humans around than any other race if you just know where to look.

And sure it's somewhat known that some of the little daredevils hop ships and help out in exchange for room and board, usually without permission, but that can't be that common, can it?

Maybe your ship is running better this cycle ever since you stopped at the last station, that just means that tuneup was better than you thought. And maybe for some reason that program you were working on last night is finished when you wake up, but you're so tired maybe you finished it before you passed out. Somehow that faulty light in the galley has fixed itself as well, which is odd, but maybe the Engineer finally got to it. You'd know if there was someone else on your ship.

Right?

... You leave a little bowl of berries out as a thank you, just in case. You're not sure what humans like but you've heard they have a sweet tooth.

[kodygash]

Humans cracking their knuckles as an intimidation tactic against aliens

Can you imagine being an alien and this thing just broke its bones at you?????

I'd be scared tbh

Why did it make that noise

That's a bone breaking noise

It's like those ppl who bite off their acrylics before a fight

[bisexualbaker]

we are ALSO insanely good at smelling rain

Wait, does this mean that elementary school me has vindication for claiming to be able to smell when it was going to rain? Because I swear that's a trick I used to be able to do, but I fell out of practice long ago.

hi gang. reminder that we are some of the best sweaters in the animal kingdom (second only to equines) allowing us to stay cool and keep moving in hot weather. we have 10 times the density of sweat glands compared to other great apes.

we are ALSO insanely good at smelling rain (specifically geosmin, found in the soil and activated by rain) with the ability to smell 10 parts per trillion. this is speculated to have helped our ancestors survive!

we ALSO have absolutely batshit diets compared to most other animals. caffeine and chocolate are completely toxic to most animals but we can eat it without even feeling sick. even avocados are severely toxic to many animals to the point where it can be fatal to eat, but humans love it!!!

we are ALSO the best endurance runners ON EARTH out of ANY other species. we beat horses in endurance running. you know, the animals that gradually evolved away most of their toes in order to be the best runners?? yeahhh.

and to top it all off. our lifespan is unusually long for our species' weight/mass. typically, the bigger a species is, the longer its average lifespan (e.g. domestic mice live for 1-3 years, whales can live over 200) but we're very small for how long our average lifespan is. big cats like tigers live around 14-15 years, brown bears 25 years, yet here we are expected to live around 75-85 years. that is NUTS.

humans as a species are so extremely cool. it's not just our intellect that makes us amazing. we may not be the fastest or the strongest in the animal kingdom but we're super cool in many other ways. next time you sweat you can go wow!!! humans are so cool I'm able to keep moving because of my absolutely insane number of sweat glands! thank you evolution!

[cipheramnesia]

I can't find the original post, but one of the Humans Are Space Orcs posts was about how maybe it would be absolutely unhinged that the average human can just approximately judge mass and velocity and distance with eyes and muscles, and throw objects with moderate to high accuracy. Like, no planning, binocular vision only, no triangulation, just toss stuff. They go apeshit over human sports, because that's like if a worm wrote a novel or something, practically a bloodsport.

On the flip side, the fact that most humans can't in any way explain explain mathematically what's happening in a game of catch is infuriating. "What do you mean you just kinda figure it? But it's not a guess?"

The practical result is that it turns out that humans can do the same thing with interstellar travel and skip a starship across the universe without any math, although you want to make sure you don't build anything to close to the approximate landing site.

[eyeofnewtblog]

Things that happen at work:

Spanish speaking customer: *comes up to the counter asking for front brake pads and sparks plugs*

Me, in English: Yeah, no problem! Ano? Marca? *get his car year, make and model plugged in, go find his parts, bring them to him*

Spanish speaking customer: *as he inspects the parts, starts in on some story about his mechanic and the brakes that involves a bit more cussing than most guys usually use*

Me, having to waive him off: Sir, um, no comprende? Un momentito por favor. *pulls up google translate, types out “the only Spanish I speak is car parts and the bad words”*

Spanish speaking customer:*straight up cackles, pats me on the back, pays, and leaves*

Bilingual customer: *steps up to the counter, sees my google translate still up on the screen, also cackles* Oh, nice! That’s adorable!

[sugarcoatednightshade]

Humans are Space Orcs story where humans are known for our storytelling and acting abilities. While these talents are somewhat respected, there’s a major stigma against humans because we’re also the best liars.

“Humans don’t actually feel anything at all, they just mimic emotions to trick others into believing them”

“Never trust a human. They lie like the rest of us breath”

“Humans spend so much of their lives acting, it’s impossible to tell when they’re being truthful”

“In human culture, great respect is awarded to ‘actors’ who are able to mimic other persons and emotions with startling accuracy”

“Some ‘actors’ are able to ‘perform’ hundreds of unique characters”

“Acting is so ubiquitous in the human culture that many consider it polite to lie”

“Sarcasm is a common, casual game played between humans, where one human says something untrue and the other human must guess what truth they are thinking. Humans unable to perform this ritual are often ostracized by their peers”

“If you see a human crying, do not immediately assume they are hurt. Humans have been known to use their ‘acting’ abilities to trick unsuspecting travelers into giving up an unreasonable number of belongings”

“All interstellar travelers are required to read up on popular ‘scams’ or ‘cons’ performed by humans in the region they are traveling to”

[loonarmuunar]

Humans being the first. Not the strongest or the smartest or the weirdest or the most violent. Just the first.

We called out into the dark over and over. We sent out messages in hopes. We searched every planet we could reach, in hopes of any sign of life. Any at all.

We thought, hoped we were the last, because we couldn’t bear the idea of being the one ones this awake and alive in a world as vast as this.

And we died alone.

When the others are born, many many years later, they find us, everything we left for them.

They recover The Golden Record and look at it a million times over, they dig up our fossils and put us in museums, they study us for years and years, loving us as we love our ancestors’ painted hands on cave walls.

In a lot of their languages, the word they use for us has the same root for “mother”.

[nekokotatsu]

Human: I don't get this whole "Earth is a death world" thing. Like, obviously it wouldn't seem like one to us, but why is it one to you guys? Are your home planets *that* much more free of disease and predators and stuff?

Alien: Oh, yes. Earth is far more hostile than our home worlds.

Human: Huh. Wonder why.

Alien: I suspect it's due to Earth's high iron content blocking the fae from disposing of such minor threats.

Human: Yeah, I guess that

Human:

Human: what

Tiny fairy in alien's translator headpiece: Shut up, they think we're mythical, it's *hilarious*.

Alien: I mean... Sure is a mystery, huh?