Texting and Scones

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.

How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?

(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)

Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:

Our strength and speed is nothing to write home about, but we don’t need to overpower or outrun you. We just need to outlast you - and by any other species’ standards, we just plain don’t get tired.

Where a simple broken leg will cause most species to go into shock and die, we can recover from virtually any injury that’s not immediately fatal. Even traumatic dismemberment isn’t necessarily a career-ending injury for a human.

We heal from injuries with extreme rapidity, recovering in weeks from wounds that would take others months or years to heal. The results aren’t pretty - humans have hyperactive scar tissue, among our other survival-oriented traits - but they’re highly functional.

Speaking of scarring, look at our medical science. We developed surgery centuries before developing even the most rudimentary anesthetics or life support. In extermis, humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves - and survive. Thanks to our extreme heartiness, we regard as routine medical procedures what most other species would regard as inventive forms of murder. We even perform radical surgery on ourselves for purely cosmetic reasons.

We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analouge traps. 

We expose ourselves to potentially lethal solar radiation in the pursuit of darkening our skin. 

We risk hearing loss for the opportunity to see our favorite musicians live. 

We have a game where two people get into an enclosed area and hit each other until time runs out/one of them pass out

We willingly jump out of planes with only a flimsy piece of cloth to prevent us from splattering against the ground. 

Our response to natural disasters is to just rebuild our buildings in the exact same places. 

We climb mountains and risk freezing to death for bragging rights

We invented dogs. We took our one time predators and completely domesticated them. 

On a planet full of lions, tigers and bears, we managed to advance further and faster than any other species on the planet. 

Breeding does not kill them. A single human can mate dozens or hundreds of times in a lifetime. They often do so as recreation. Xenobiology team six believes they do not have a mating season but this is too strange to be true.

Their appendages are not designed for hitting, so they developed special training to make them very good at hitting anyhow. 

The proteins making up their bodies are toxic and cause prion disease. Do not touch anything humans have touched. Do not consume earth foods. Fire does not adequately remove this contamination.

Humans perceive sixteen times the colors we do. Do not hide in bushes or vines from humans. They can distinguish your pelt from the foliage with ease.

We tried venting waste gas into the tunnels to kill the humans when they attacked. Turns out they breathe it. 

Everything on their planet came from a single biological strain. They developed comprehensive genetics BEFORE they developed space travel.