#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.

[jois-sekai]

"Y'know what, fuck you. *Un hostiles the planet*"

Seems legit XD

Alien 1: Hey I have a question.

Alien 2: Yeah?

A1: So on this "How to interact with humans pamphlet" one of the rules is "And under no circumstances are you to say they can't do something" and I'm wondering what that's about?

A2: Exactly what it says.

A1: Yes, but why? They don't seem especially intimidating and it also says they're not too quick to violence.

A2 sighing: What do you know about K13-9?

A1, confused at the non sequitur: It was an almost uninhabitable planet that only recently got approved for mass civilization.

A2: Yeah, and that's because of humans.

A1: What? How? Why?

A2: Someone mocked a group of humans and said they were too weak to survive in space, let alone on that planet after they stated they wanted to explore. I hear the exact response to that was "Y'know what, fuck you. *Un hostiles the planet*"

A1: Seriously?

A2: Now imagine what they'd do if you denied them something else they wanted?

A1, doing the alien equivalent of going pale: I'll make sure to follow that rule.

[randomtheidiot]

Pretty much every other species of domesticated animal is easy to explain, such as cows and sheep being livestock, horses being a mode of transport and cats scaring away pests, but if aliens aver visited, I wonder how we'd explain to them that the reason we have dogs is because we competed with wolves for resources due to filling the same niche of large, pack hunting persistence predator, but then we decided to be hunting partners instead, even though wolves were large, dangerous and hard to manage.

[tsume-ks]

Humans are space orcs and the predator v prey issues. Earth prey animals often choose violence in defense of themselves or their young right? Well some choose violence for no reason we can figure out. So.....

Irilack bent down to pick up the comm they'd dropped. Their horns however, got in the way again. Being built to run and fight on the open plains was not(!) any kind of advantage in the cramped hallways of the Cavalier class ship they were a crewmember on.

"Irilack, hey you want any help there?"

"Jane, yes that would allow me to move out of everyone's way." The comm being on the floor was, once again unhelpful as crewmember Jane stared in confusion for a second.

"Uh, sorry, I'm going to go with yes."

Picking up the device was the work of a moment for her and she handed it over to them with a slight grin.

As always, Irilack had to remind their hindbrain that humans meant no harm when they did that. They had had to suppress the instinct to attack multiple times before when the human had killed a fly which somehow got on board.

This time was a bit stronger than usual. Perhaps they were entering the mating season. They always did become more prone to violence at that time.

"Jane, thank you for your assistance. Would you convey my apologies to the captain? I am going to sequester myself for a month of human home planet time. This would only be a week on my planet."

"Sure? Are you getting sick or what? Your wattles do look a little inflamed."

"No, it is to prevent my becoming violent with anyone. If we run into pirates though, please let me know."

"I thought your people were known to be super gentle? Just, species wide."

"A common misconception. We are just as violent as any of your homeworlds bovine prey animals, though not as much as your boars."

"Ah. So, mostly gentle but will choose violence. Got it. Right well. I'll talk to the captain. You go do what you need to do."

[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!"

[dinoofcoffeechaos]

I wanna see the humans reactions

The aliens discover "Dad jokes."

Your human commander tells one terrible pun. Now the entire crew of hardened, war-born aliens are addicted to wordplay. The warship is renamed “Pun-isher.” Morale is high. Sanity is low.

[cybergalaxydragon525]

No context needed

[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!

[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.

[under-the-pondering-tree]

Two or three aliens who have evolved radial symmetry (and therefore have no "front") gather around a human. They take turns tapping it on the shoulder to get its attention one after the other. They have fun watching the human spin around to face each of them after every new tap, immediately followed by the next, and the next. The human could just hold still, or walk away, but it's very frustrating, and the compelling urge to tell someone to stop can't be done while their back is to them. And thus, the game continues.

[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.

[hisuianserperior]

They had done it. They had successfully captured one of the deathworlders. It had been a hard fought endeavor, and many were injured in the process, but it was a success. The creature, a human as it called itself, was being contained and interrogated.

"Tell us what we wish to know or face extermination." A crewmate said.

The human looked up at them through it's cell. It was unnerving. The eyes of an intelligent apex predator locking onto you. Then it bared it's teeth and let out a laugh. That was honestly more unnerving.

"You have no idea what you've done, do you?" It asked.

"Don't play games with us. Tell us about your defenses, weaknesses, anything!" The captain ordered.

"And if I don't?" The human asked.

"We already told you, extermination. Maybe we'll even use you as an example for the rest of your kind." Another crewmate said.

The creature only laughed more and more, getting more unhinged as it went on.

"What's so amusing?" I dared to ask.

The laugh stopped but the teeth stayed bared. "Humans historically have trouble getting along. But when we do, we are a force of nature. We just need the right incentive, and one of our own being taken by a hostile alien race is more than enough." It told them.

The crew took a startled jump back when it suddenly rushed forward and clamped it's appendages on the bars, looking more savage than before. "So go ahead. Either I live and become a motivator, or don't and become a martyr. So do whatever you'd like, and know that you can't kill me in any way that matters." It said, cackling all the while.

The crew felt terror never before felt, and the resulting spread of humanity to the stars haunts whoever survived to this day.

[stubz]

"Oh my god can we just duct tape them in place?? I'm low key serious right now...okay I'm actually serious for some of them."

"I know we have like little to no licensing rules to follow but I'm pretty sure the parents would object to us ducting taping their children's limbs to their sides and their feet to the floor."

"...What if we used clear tape--harder to see!"

"Max no."

"Who are you abducting?" asked Kal walking by their cafeteria table. "If they're a death-eater's mother I'll help."

"No abductions just trying to figure out how to keep the kids still so we can video them." sighed Kim.

"Honestly kidnapping someone would be easier than this." groaned Max into the table.

"Can't you just tell them to stay still? And what's the video for?"

"We're trying to record the kids singing a song we learned for one of Earth's holidays. I've recorded them Five. Times. Already. And we can't use a single one of them."

"They know the lyrics it's just that we keep having someone do something that ruins the video." further explained Max. "In the first video we have two of them body checking each-other into the wall. The second we have one trying to climb the bookshelf. Third, giant sneeze and barking. Fourth, a kid keeps trying to strip because she hates wearing clothes. And in the last and final attempt we have three in the back holding hands and dancing a creepy tribunal dance of some sorts!!"

"...why not just have only the human kids in the video? It's an earth holiday, I'm sure the parents won't mind." the avian shrugged his wings.

"Kal...it's the human kids who are the problem."

"...barking??"

"Human kids have a large fixation on animals, pretending to be them is a large part of our development."

"...Huh, and here I thought my neighbors baby was a xenophobe. She hissed at me after chirping."

"Goose." both humans replied. "Or swan." added Max.

[dinoofcoffeechaos]

It's very effective

Your alien crewmates have never seen a “hangry” human before.

After three hours without a meal, you go from diplomatic envoy to growling goblin, threatening galactic peace over a chocolate bar.

The aliens now carry emergency snacks labeled “Do Not Eat – Human Deterrent.”

[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.