Random Headcanon: That Federation vessels in Star Trek seem to experience bizarre malfunctions with such overwhelming frequency isn’t just an artefact of the television serial format. Rather, it’s because the Federation as a culture are a bunch of deranged hyper-neophiles,
tooling around in ships packed full of beyond-cutting-edge tech they
don’t really understand. Endlessly frustrating if you have to fight
them, because they can pull an effectively unlimited number of bullshit
space-magic countermeasures out of their arses – but they’re as likely
as not to give themselves a lethal five-dimensional wedgie in the
process. All those rampant holograms and warp core malfunctions and
accidentally-traveling-back-in-time incidents? That doesn’t actually
happen to anyone else; it’s literally just Federation vessels that go off the rails like that. And they do so on a fairly regular basis.
So to everyone else in the galaxy, all humans are basically Doc Brown.
Aliens who have seen the Back to the Future movies literally don’t realise that Doc Brown is meant to be funny. They’re just like “yes, that is exactly what all human scientists are like in my experience”.
THE ONLY REASON SCOTTY IS CHIEF ENGINEER INSTEAD OF SOMEONE FROM A SPECIES WITH A HIGHER TECHNOLOGICAL APTITUDE IS BECAUSE EVERYONE FROM THOSE SPECIES TOOK ONE LOOK AT THE ENTERPRISE’S ENGINE ROOM AND RAN AWAY SCREAMING
vulcan science academy: why do you need another warp core
humans: we’re going to plug two of them together and see if we go twice as fast
vsa: last time we gave you a warp core you threw it into a sun to see if the sun would go twice as fast
humans: hahaha yeah
humans: it did tho
vsa: IT EXPLODED
humans: it exploded twice as fast
I love this. Especially because of how well it plays with my headcanon that the Federation does so much better against the Borg than anyone else because beating the Borg with military tactics is nigh-impossible, but beating them with wacky superscience shenanigans works as long as they’re unique wacky superscience shenanigans.
Yeah, I love this.
Reminds me of the thing I wrote a while back about Humans in high fantasy realms – they’re basically Team Fuck It Hold My Beer I Got This.
Impulsive, passionate to a fault, the social structures they build to try and regulate this hotheadedness ironically creates even greater levels of sheer bull-headedness. Even their “cooler” heads take action in months or weeks.
All their great heroes of the past were impossibly rash by galactic standards. Humans Just Go With It, which is their great flaw but also their greatest strength.
klingons: okay we don’t get it
vulcan science academy: get what
klingons: you vulcans are a bunch of stuffy prisses but you’re also tougher, stronger, and smarter than humans in every single way
klingons: why do you let them run your federation
vulcan science academy: look
vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores they don’t do experiments on one and save the other for if the first one blows up
vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores, they will ask for a third one, immediately plug all three into each other, punch a hole into an alternate universe where humans subscribe to an even more destructive ideological system, fight everyone in it because they’re offended by that, steal their warp cores, plug those together, punch their way back here, then try to turn a nearby sun into a torus because that was what their initial scientific experiment was for and they didn’t want to waste a trip.
vulcan science academy: they did that last week. we have the write-up right here. it’s getting published in about six hundred scientific journals across two hundred different disciplines because of how many established theories their ridiculous little expedition has just called into question. also, they did turn that sun into a torus, and no one actually knows how.
vulcan science academy: this is why we let them do whatever the hell they want.
klingons: …. can we be a part of your federation
Come to think of it, I mean. Look at the “first human warp drive” thing in the movie. That was… Not how Vulcans would have done it.
you know what the best evidence for this is? Deep Space 9 almost never broke down. minor malfunctions that irritated O’Brien to hell and back, sure, but almost none of the truly weird shit that befell Voyager and all the starships Enterprise. what was the weirdest malfunction DS9 ever had? the senior staff getting trapped as holosuite characters in Our Man Bashir, and that was because a human decided to just dump the transporter buffer into the station’s core memory and hope everything would work out somehow, which is a bit like swapping your computer’s hard drive out for a memory card from a PlayStation 2 and expecting to be able to play a game of Spyro the Dragon with your keyboard and mouse.
you know what, I’m not done with this post. let’s talk about the Pegasus. the USS Fucking Pegasus,
testbed for the first Starfleet cloaking device. here we have a handful
of humans working in secret to develop a cloaking device in violation
of a treaty with the Romulans. they’re playing catchup trying to develop
a technology other species have had for a century. and what do they do?
do they decide to duplicate a Romulan cloaking device precisely, just
see if they can match what other species have? nope. they decide, hey,
while we’re at it, while we’re building our very first one of these things, just to find out if this is possible, let’s see if we can make this thing phase us out of normal space so we can fly through planets while we’re invisible.
“but why” said the one Vulcan in the room.
“because that would fucking rule” said the humans, high-fiving each other and slamming cans of 24th-century Red Bull.
there
must be like twenty different counselling groups for non-human
engineering students at Starfleet Academy, and every week in every
single one of them someone walks in and starts up with a story like “our
assignment was to repair a phaser emitter and my one human classmate
built a chronometric-flux toaster that toasts bread after you’ve eaten
it.”
Humans get mildly offended by the way they are presented in non-human media.
Like: “Guys, we totally wouldn’t do that!” But this always fails to get much traction, because the authors can always say: “You totally did.”
“That was ONE TIME.”
There’s that movie where humans invented vaccines by just testing them on people. Or the one about those two humans who invented powered flight by crashing a bunch of prototypes. Or the one about electricity.
And human historians go, “Oh, uh, this is historically accurate, but also kind of boring.” To which the producers respond: “How is doing THIS CRAZY THING boring????????”
There are entire serieses of horror movies where the premise is “We stopped paying attention to the human and ey found the technology.”
reblog for new meta.
RE that last line: McGuyver.
“MacGuyver” is the equivalent of Vulcan vintage human horror television.
during orientation at a human college, vulcans are presented with a list of swear words.
“what is the word ‘fuck’ for,” the innocent young vulcans want to know. “surely there are more logical intensity modifiers.”
“yeah, you’d think so,” say the weary, jaded vulcan professors. “you’d really fucking think so.”
there is a phrase in vulcan for ‘the particular moment you understand what the word ‘fuck’ is for’.
I hate in the MCU or anything when the aliens or whatever are attacking and everyone’s just ‘oh yeah we be chilling just cowering over here’ as if seventy percent of humanity isn’t really angry all the time like catch these hands motherfucker I’ve bitten people for trying to steal my chips you think you can just steal my whole fucking planet YEET HERE COME MY TEETH film people be using responses to natural disasters but I promise if human sized things came to throw down humanity would be ready to fuck them up like yeah you got laser guns I got this dope ass stick I just found let’s go you ugly fuck
silentwalrus1: #yeah bicht!!!!!!#gimme the battle of new york with fuckin chitauri comin down and the shift manager of the times sq H&M has finally had Enough#Tracie bout to kill this alien with a traffic cone#’ JUST PRETEND THEY’RE TOURISTS’ she screams choking out goddamn Lizard Lite with her lanyard#10 feet away a park slope mom is beating an alien to death with her four year old’s knockoff eco friendly razr scooter#every single retail employee gets ten years’ worth of therapy in one day#captain america’s kill count: 83 aliens#kathleen from accounting: 94 and also her boss
Humans are biolent, angry little creatures who live under a constant state of stress and have very little sense of self preservation. #whatsmykillcount would be trending in Twitter while people posted videos on every available platform. Like honestly Earth is not the one.
You never know you’re from a Death World until somebody tries to conquer it.
If you’re gonna go down, you take out as many of them as you can. Means the next guy has a bit less shit to deal with.
Another humans are weird space orcs idea because I really like thinking about it. What if aliens have no idea how to hide their emotions? Like, they suck at poker because they can never keep a straight face or anything. or, on a darker note, their ship is hijacked and they can’t keep the fear out of their faces, but all the humans look cold and emotionless to them. Other aliens hating having to bargain with humans becase we can bluff and keep our emotions in check so well, but when they get frustrated it’s all over. Pirates threaten the space ship and they send the human to do negotiations, and the pirate talking is super confused because no matter what threat he makes, the human just doesn’t seem to be fazed one bit.
Someone please, feel free to add to this, I love to see what else people come up with!
Okay, but now I’m thinking about how this ability is used in the context of animal training/hostage negotiation/teaching/customer service. Not just looking stone-faced, but completely lying with affect, body-language and vocal tone to seem calm, friendly, relaxed and in control of the situation in order to build rapport with an animal or person and to de-escalate aggression in a situation.
Proximity alarms start going off. A vessel is approaching.
Camilian: <looks at viewscreen> “Oh zark it, it’s the Parg.”
Camilian: <shudders>: “The Parg. Remember the civilisations living on those five planets Lei-ward of Helios 6?”
Human: “No? I thought that system was empty of sentient life.”
Camilian: “Exactly.”
Human: “…ah.” <looks at flashing lights on console> “They appear to be hailing us.”
<Camilian and Egrat scuttle backwards away from console.>
Human: “…thanks a bunch, guys.” <presses hail pick-up button> “This is Communications Officer Haley Makini of the Starboat Fribling, how may I help you?”
Parg ship: “This is Zek of Parg.”
Human: “Hello Zek! How are you feeling this day-cycle?”
Parg Ship: “…”
Human: “I for one have been missing my family lately, I got a vidcall from my little sister and my cousins – same-generation kin-people – and they told me that cousin Wendy is getting married to her girlfriend Mila, isn’t that nice? So I’m really hoping I can make it to the wedding – that’s romantic lifebond ceremony – because otherwise they’d all be sad, they told me so. Do you have any family – lifemates or brood or other kin-people back in your home-system Zek?”
Parg Ship: “…Zek of Parg has brood of five. All Smallings, but soon Biglings. Soon.”
Human: “Oh! You must be so proud of them!”
Parg Ship: “… Yah. Good future replacements for Parent-bodies for Glory of Parg.”
Human: “And that’s all any of us could want! Imagine how sad our kin would be if either of us were to fail to make it back home! That’s why I want to help your ship Zek, in any way we can. The Fribling is only a small ship, but we have some surplus goods and skills to offer if you need anything from us.”
<long pause>
<No one on board the Fribling speaks, but Egrat has anxiously chewed their claws to the quick>
Parg Ship: “Have Lucrum cable? Parg Ship underengine in poor condition, jury-rig not hold, need hitch-tow to Dellar System.”
Human: “Oh, that’s only 8 parsecs away. Sure, hah, we can manage that. No problem.”
<78 minutes later, after the two ships have been attached via Lucrum cable>
Parg Ship: “…What kind you?”
Human: “Huh? ….oh, I’m a human. I’m from Sol 3, Earth.”
<Human sinks to ground, hand on chest, hyperventilating slightly>
Human: “HolyfuckhowdidIpullthatoffohholyfuck!”
Camilian: “Wait, you were scared too?”
Human: <glaring> “Cam, we’ve worked together how long? I’d have thought that by now you’d trust my threat assessment abilities. Phew! That one was so close I felt the breeze going past.”
Egrat: “…how. How did you just do that?”
Human: “It’s not hard. Stay calm, just keep smiling, and build rapport by pretending to care about their problems, and meanwhile showing that you’re a real thinking being. Tends to defuse situations rather than escalate them.”
Egrat: “…I think I saw what you did, but where did you learn how to do that?”
Human: “5 years customer service experience.”
I appreciate that you lumped customer service in with both animal training and hostage negotiation, I won’t lie. Mainly because, oh god, I have had those customers. *shudders*
Me too @amy-vic me too. O.O
*cackling* reblogging both for the space orc-humans, and the *customer service experience!* so very very true.
No, no! You guys are missing the opportunity of a lifetime!
Sgarlk sprints into the med bay, all seven pasterns slipping on the tiles as xe takes in the sight of poor, poor Human Carl on the gurney. Xer dermis darkens to midnight blue as sorrow and worry washes through xer. The human is pale and hollow-opticked, as most of its oxidation fluid is on the gurney. And the floor. And its dermis and coverings. And the med team.
“Oh. Oh, Human Carl. Your poor appendage.”
The med team are all varying shades of worry, fear, and grief as they work to close the gaping wound on Human Carl’s upper torso. Human Carl, on the other hand, seems only mildly put out by all the bustle, despite its unnatural pallor.
“Meh. Just a scratch.”
Sgarlk blinks. All twelve eyes go through the motion. “No. I fear you misunderstand. Your arm, Human Carl. It is… it is off.”
Again, Human Carl doesn’t seem to care. “Just a flesh wound.”
The deep blue fades to a confused purple-grey mottle, and xe gestures at the battered appendage in the hermetically sealed container off to the right. “What is that, then?”
The human does the curious shoulder gesture classified as a “shrug”, though the movement looks strange without the second appendage to balance it out.
“I’ve had worse.”
1) shock is one hell of a drug. 2) all self respecting humans i know would 100% take the opportunity to make this reference
3) all self respecting humans within earshot will reply with further quotes.
okay, so, I love all the posts that run off the assumption that humans are the most ridiculous sapient species in the galaxy
but what if it’s just the other way around
what if humans are notoriously straitlaced and obsessed with protocol. the bureaucrats of the stars.
which is obviously something we would constantly try to complain about and disprove only for some Alpha Centaurian to be like “Captain, your species formalized spirituality, repeatedly, and a recurring theme therein is that the heavens themselves are run as a bureaucracy. Even your rebellions and revolutions are meticulously planned.”
it’s not a bad thing, per se, to have a human on your team — analytical minds, good diplomats (if only because one human etiquette system can be more complex and even contradictory than the vastly varied customs of an entire species) — but be prepared for them to call attention to moral quandaries and loopholes that never would have occurred to you.
and speaking of loopholes, do be careful, because the only thing worse than a human armed with an ironclad system of rules is a human who’s found a gaping hole in them.
“You’re telling me there was a mass movement to name a boat something dumb as a joke?”
“First of all, it wasn’t a mass movement, and second of all, the boat was by no means the first time nor the last.”
“…Exactly how much of Earth comedy is based on incongruous branding?”
Hear me out here: Humans as both.
Like most sapient species assume the above; humans are straitlaced, meticulous, and methodical. They follow strict rules which dictate their social interactions and even a slight variation is considered taboo. They are the quintessential bureaucrats.
Except when they’re not.
We’ve talked about humans method of scientific exploration and advancement involving a ridiculous amount of danger for all parties involved. But, ya know, we write it all down in a very orderly manner and get published and peer reviewed. And then other humans copy the incredibly dangerous experiment to see what happens for themselves.
Humans survived the volatile early years of their species rise through community-bonding. They put the needs of a group of individuals over all else; hunting as a group, eating as a group, raising families as a group, and sometimes dying as a group. This tendency to form strong bonds means that while a human’s signed contract can always be trusted. It also means that a human cannot be trusted to not rip that contract up and say “Fuck it” if an individual with whom they have a community-bond is in danger. Other species are baffled to discover that the individual in question need not be human, or even sapient. Stories of humans who have defended what would normally be considered prey animals by other omnivorous species, of humans who have killed to defend their non-human crew mates, even one story (surely just a story, it can’t be true) of an entire crew of humans who elevated a simple non-sapient cleaning bot to officer’s rank and threatened rebellion if it was decommissioned.
So, sure, humans are logical and awfully organized for such a diverse species. They make phenomenal bureaucrats and politicians. They’re highly sought after as strategists and advisors to royalty the galaxy over.
But, they’re also appear to take great pleasure in looking the rules dead in the eyes and very deliberately thumbing their nose as those rules. Because, the rules (and logic) say you probably shouldn’t jump off a cliff into unknown waters and humans have made multiple sports based entirely off that concept.
as an individual: logical, organized
as a species: hold my beer
I love that Stabby the robot has become part of the Canon of “human interaction with aliens”.
that’s the whole story with humans, you never know what you’re getting.
You think you’re taking on board a thoughtful rules and regs talker with no claws, fangs, horns or venom – only to discover under specific circumstances several years into your trip that your human is capable of living on nothing but salt and water for 40 days, of adapting to a life of hiding in the ships ventilation shafts, only coming out to steal supplies and make savage berserker attacks with surprisingly brutal hand-crafted weapons; capable of doing surgery on ITSELF to keep stay alive. Your crew takes some time off and you discover that your safety officer is willing to tie a stretchy rope to it’s leg and leap into an abyss for FUN. That your logical, analytical human likes to poison itself, y’know, just a little, for RECREATION. That your human can stay cool and collected for ten years and still explode at the drop of a hat.
”yeah, all calm and diplomatic for more than 2 home-star cycles, then one night we’re sitting across from a group with another human, keeps looking at our human, our human acts like it doesn’t notice. Halfway through the meal our human looks over and says “Can I help you?” and the other human just says, “No, I received all the help I need from your birther the night before this” and it took nine of us to pull them apart. They both wound up in the infirmary, there were cracked bones, stitches… I ran it through the translators three times, I have no idea; our human would only say they knew each other. Hormone readings off the chart – personally, I think it was some kind of mating behavior.”
Conversely, as an alien with a species of monsters to conquer, you hear of a planet where the inhabitants will leap naked into the ocean to kill a beast the size of an entire surface lander with a stick, and they punch holes in themselves for fashion. So you hire on a crew of these thrill-seeking murderous savages and sic them on your monster enemies only to discover that they’ve established communications with the monsters, befriended them, and are, in fact, now back to insist you cease all violent actions and that you owe the monsters for damages to their planet.
“Hey uh, Boss, so, yeah. We noticed they were having a drink, and we thought, flay-hook appendages or no, anybody who enjoys a good drink can’t be all bad… and before you know it, we’re getting drunk with a platoon of Flesh-flayers (they prefer to be called the Zygothi, by the way). The local stuff tastes like windex and farts, but boy does it get your buzz on! Long story short, though, you gotta stop killing stuff and go away. You know those things with all the legs and teeth you’ve been so frightened of are just their pets? They’re actually kind of cute as long as they’ve eaten recently. Anyway, turns out you’re in violation of several of this star system’s regulations. Plus, you destroyed a communication probe and attacked an in-system moon ferry, damages were sustained to sensitive ecosystems at your landing sites… We gave what you paid us to the families of the moon ferry victims, and volunteered to stay and see that you follow proper exit procedures. Oh, and we’re going to need you to sign this receipt of the cease and desist declaration, this copy of the bill – here, this copy is yours – and this agreement for an immediate cease contact which you’ll notice has an exclusion for payment communications you’ll have to initial, here, and again here.”
Humans are every alignment, on a single 9-sided die. Good luck aliens
See the human. See the human bond. See the human make rules. See the human break them left, right, and center.
EXCELLENT QUESTION and this post exhibits why so nicely I was thinking about it even before I read your tags – because this is science fiction at its finest: put human nature down in front of a spectacular, unfamiliar backdrop with a character who can function alternately as chorus, straight man, interlocutor, devil’s advocate, or wingman, and suddenly we can see ourselves clearly, in all our messy, contradictory glory. We love ourselves, we love getting to know ourselves, and there’s no better way to do that than put Kirk and Spock together on an alien planet and give them a fight and a few minutes to talk between blows.
So you know how there’s all these posts about how aliens invade Earth only to realize that Earth is a death planet and/or Space Australia as the flora, fauna, weather, and natural disasters kill them off and traumatize them? Well, imagine that the alien invaders finally give up and leave Earth. What chases them off? I imagine that the resistance starts putting out information on cryptids. It’s the last straw for the invaders, especially since even the human inhabitants native to Earth seem to be confused about exactly how dangerous said cryptids are, and so the aliens have no way to be prepared to face them. Morale plummets (even further) and alien command has to call off the invasion due to the public outcry, making history as the first time this group of aliens has retreated from an invasion.
The surviving humans soon realize that the honor of chasing off that group of aliens has attracted a lot of attention from other groups of aliens. Some of these aliens are looking at possibly invading. Others want to work with humans to turn Earth into a space vacation-destination. In order to discourage invaders while simultaneously attracting curious tourists, much information about the animals most infamous among the invaders is made readily available to the alien community in general, along with a lot of information on cryptids. Information on non-cryptids and cryptids is presented to aliens in much the same way, and the humans never clarify which are which, so many invaders are too scared to try and invade, while many tourists are intrigued by the potential mystery.
Of course, the tourists are horrified to learn that the hippopotamus is not, as they had thought, a cryptid.
Adding my own thoughts on the “Earth is Space Australia” idea floating around, I’m imagining some aliens finding an *absolute* death world, scorching hot, every single species of fauna is venomous, most of the flora is poisonous too, there’s barely any water… they think to themselves “okay, this time we’ve got it. We’ll finally stump the humans. This is a world they can’t possibly think to inhabit”. So they take it to the human colony bureau or whatever and a human stares at their report for a long while, “hmms” a lot, and then after a long moment goes,
We have a lot of weird expressions. Some are anachronistic, having come from a time and place that no longer exists, leaving us with a phrase that seems to have no context; one of these would be to “bite the bullet”, which referred to the practice of literally biting down on a bullet (or a piece of would) while someone operated on you/seared a wound shut, to keep yourself from screaming too much or biting your mouth and hurting yourself. In an era of much more precise surgeries and anesthesia, the context no longer exists, but the phrase is still used.
Then there are phrases that are deliberately hyperbolic. “I’m going to tan your hide”. for example, is a descriptive way to tell someone you’re going to beat them, but odds are good you’re not literally going to be tanning their hide.
So I was thinking that a group of enterprising aliens would form a betting pool around certain words and phrases; you can bet whether phrases are anachronistic, literal, or hyperbolic, and then the pool pays out when the phrase is confirmed one way or another.
Which brought me to an amusing little scene in my head.
———
Malchior 7 was an incredibly hostile planet. All the local flora and fauna had self-defense features that would kill most species. It was advised, if you were determined to visit, to wear full haz-mat suits and bring at least one human. Most dangerous of all were the dominant species, a carnivorous form of primate with near-sapient intelligence, clever enough to use tools and form societies, but either not intelligent enough or too violent to have dialog with outside races.
So when a scouting party was ambushed by a large warband of these primates, the alien members fled in terror, only realizing about twenty paces down the path that the humans were standing and fighting. Their hazmat suits were already ripped from the beasts’ claws, and their guns hand been knocked from their hands, but the humans still fought, wresting the primates’ weapons from their hands and turning them on their creators. One of the humans managed to get a firm grip on the ankle of one of the beasts, and began slinging him back and forth, using the primate as a flail to slam into his cohorts.
One of the aliens let out a warble of delight, hurriedly pulling out its comm device and beginning to record, while simultaneously opening a codex page and beginning to type.
“Gor’thax, this is hardly the time!”
“You don’t understand. I am about to make SO. MUCH. PROFIT.” The alien uploaded the footage to the codex, with the title “[VIDEO PROOF – LITERAL PHRASE] “I’m going to beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker.”“
andtheytoldustotellyouhello 