Starryjellyfish

Like okay, he got used to Rocky, so he can single him out most of the time even if he’s blending in pretty good. But what about new Eridians? Those whom his eyes are not trained yet to find?

Just imagine Grace waking up during the dome maintenance period and going for a walk as usual. He drinks his engineered coffee (tastes awful, but it’s the atmosphere that matters), looks at the waves and enjoys the quiet morning.

One time when I was a kid, I had a science teacher with a snake as a class pet, and said snake was almost done shedding. There was one little bit of dried skin stuck to its face and I was like, “would it hurt him if I pulled that off?” And the teacher said, “yes it actually could, it’s probably still attached to living skin if it hasn’t come off yet” and I was like “oh, sorry,” and he said, “that’s okay, you were just wanting to do the primate thing.” And damn, that’s such an accurate descriptor.

We humans consider it disgusting and disrespectful to show up a formal event smelling like natural body odour. We scent EVERYTHING just to not have to smell like ourselves.

The aliens often gets terribly confused on who’s who as a result of our efforts, much to their dismay, especially when it comes to diplomatic meetings. One day their human friend changes their shampoo and suddenly doesn’t smell like them anymore or someone borrows someone else’s perfume and now there’s like four people who all smell exactly the same. And the poor alien is trying so hard to not lose track of who they know and who they don’t but it’s the equivalent of trying to find your friend in a crowd while wearing a headset with psychedelic visuals playing on it, they’re just super disoriented.

And what’s more, some smells for the alien are used to signal willingness to breed, so some human wearing a fancy perfume they like is the alien equivalent of wearing lingerie to a board meeting and it’s super distracting and more than a little embarrassing to try and be conversing professionally with someone who smells like ‘SEX ME UP SEX ME UP SEX ME UP-‘

Like, we have absurdly dexterous and nimble fingers, theyre a big reason why we were able to forage more food, make better tools, and advance as a species. Theyre a vital part of how we interact with the world and each other.

But what if aliens saw us typing something or tying shoelaces even and were immediately put off by how these appendages move? Too fast, too disjointed, and each finger can do its own thing? It just strikes them as wrong, unnatural movement the same way we look at arachnids moving and have a visceral reaction to it. (I know not everyone is freaked by how arachnids move, even im not usually upset by it. But sometimes ill see one run and it just.... ugh)

Imagining alien horror movies about humans, and it becomes a trope that the human plays piano or something similar and the shots just focus in on the humans fingers gliding across the keys.

like the regular kid enthusiasm of yeah that Grace guy met an alien, cleaned the sun blah blah blah. Eridians are regular visitors on Earth and it's boooooooooring.

and then the kid opens Wikipedia and that asshole is all over the thing. no easy essay of important person invented important thing that is so important that I have to write some bullshit on it. nope.

guy pops up all over the history section. yeah sure. diplomacy? wait wasn't he an astronaut. biology? what? oh he had PhD in something biology. oh he named astophage "astophage"! is that the end of an essay? oh no it continues. xenobiology, xenolinguistics, all the space exploration and, oh, a first contact! are we done yet? no. fuck. wait, metallurgy???? wtf is this dude doing in the metallurgy section. wasn't he a biologist?

and then some kids would get a little bit into it and read through early life section to find oh he got kicked out of his field for being a weirdo alien guy. oh that's a great story! with the hard work and the incredible strength of the will he proved everybody wrong!

no wait

he was just some scrungly guy that got dragged kicking and screaming into this whole bs just to pull the most lock tf in in the history of locking tf in

wtf?!

and then they dig deep enough to find the video logs

nasa employee: this guy hasn't interacted with humans in like 20/60 years should he really be giving interviews?

nasa employee 2: ehh just give him some media training and it should be fine

this is more of a silly one bc i just wanted to draw grace in a suit ^^

Pov you’re an Eridian meeting an alien for the first time

Comic based on a post I liked a lot