humans-are-space-orcs:

Imagine an alien species that venerates the spoken word.

Speaking is a sacred thing to them. Why wouldn’t it be? it’s the ritual exchange of information through a complex series of structures evolved over millennia. That’s a really big deal. So they only ever speak to each other in words to relay important information, like orders or relevant things not already obvious. Small talk either doesn’t exist or is only exchanged with your closest friends or family members. Otherwise it’s not just impolite, but practically blasphemy.

Then humans come along. At first they seem like they’re the same way–their ambassadors are eloquent and polite, and sure maybe their wording can be a little needlessly fancy, but every species is a little different and you’ve gotta make some allowances.

That’s what the aliens think until they actually meet their human crew mates.

And they discover that humans??? Will just say???? Anything?????

One human is braiding another’s hair and comments, “you have so much hair!” as if the other human didn’t know that already??? Their alien crew member is absolutely appalled at the casual use of speech to relay such pithy information. But the other human doesn’t even care???

Another human sees something funny and says “I’m dying” and the alien runs over like “OH NO WHERE DOES IT HURT” and the human is utterly baffled and says “I didn’t actually mean it” which is outrageous because why would that human dare use the power of speech to state something blatantly untrue?

The alien thinks they’ve seen the worst of it. And then a human comes out of the latrine. And they open their mouth.

“YOOOO GUYS I JUST TOOK THE BIGGEST SHIT”

Submitted by: @attentiondeficitohlookasquirrel