History Quotes / HumansThroughAlienEyes

->'''Koopa Police Radio:''' Alien species escaping from police detention.\\
'''Luigi:''' Aliens? We gotta deal with aliens, too?\\
'''Mario:''' Luigi, ''we're'' the aliens.\\
'''Luigi:''' We are? Whoa, cool!
-->-- ''Film/SuperMarioBros1993''

->For two hundred and fifty years, the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy kzinti]] had not attacked human space. They had nothing to attack with. For two hundred and fifty years, men had not attacked the kzinti worlds; and no kzin could understand it. Men confused them terribly.
-->-- ''Literature/{{Ringworld}}''

'''Adu Du:''' How could they be cruel to us green aliens, like me?

-->-- ''Film/SuperMarioBros''

-->-- ''Wiki/SCPFoundation''

-->-- '''Sunken Scroll 26''', ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}''

->''Sometimes we think we want to know what our dogs think. We don't, not really. Someone who watches us with unclouded eyes and sees us for who we really are is more frightening than a man with a gun.''

->''For two hundred and fifty years, the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy kzinti]] had not attacked human space. They had nothing to attack with. For two hundred and fifty years, men had not attacked the kzinti worlds; and no kzin could understand it. Men confused them terribly.''

->''"They're made out of meat."\\

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"''

->''"[[FunetikAksent 'Oomans]] are pink and soft, not green and tough like [[OurOrcsAreDifferent da Boyz]]. They'z all the same size, too -- no big'uns or little'uns, so they'z always arguing about who's in charge, 'cos there's [[LargeAndInCharge no way of telling]] 'cept for [[BlingOfWar badges an' ooniforms and fings.]] Anuvver fing -- when they do sumfink, they try to make it look like sumfink else to confuse everybody. When one of 'em wants to lord it over the uvvers, 'e says "I'm very speshul so'z you gotta worship me," or "I know summink wot you lot don't know, so yer better lissen good." Da funny fing is, 'arf of 'em believe it and da over 'arf don't, so 'e 'as to hit 'em all anyway or run fer it. Wot a lot of mukkin' about if yer asks me. An' while they'z all arguin' wiv each other over who's da boss, da Orks can sneak up an' clobber da lot."''

->''[[HumansThroughAlienEyes Humans were a bad enemy to fight]] -- which also made them a good enemy, for [[OurOrcsAreDifferent Orks]] made little distinction between the two concepts. No matter how many humans were killed, there were always more to take their place, shiploads of them brimming with vengeance. Humans were like a weed, like a disease, almost impossible to cleanse from a world. For a greenskin, that made them something more than an enemy, for a fight against [[WorthyOpponent a favored enemy]] [[BloodKnight was a joyous thing.]] Orks loved going to war with humans, because defeating the humans meant something.''

->The vast constellation of meat and bone shifts, rippling and twitching. [=Par%l=] does not understand what the Breaker-Apart is doing. There is no frame of reference. [=Par%l=] has never seen a ''face'' before.
->[=Par%l=] has never seen a ''[[SlasherSmile smile]].''

->After the situation surrounding Ragesh 3 was settled, to the satisfaction of all save the Narn, Mr. Garibaldi invited me to join him in doing his second favorite thing in the universe. In an effort to understand more about Earthers, I agreed. I found it quite puzzling, however. We watched something called "WesternAnimation/DuckDodgersInTheTwentyFourthAndAHalfCentury" -- which, since by Earth reckoning it is only the 23½ century, I found confusing. Apparently, this is what was called a "cartoon show," and Mr. Garibaldi appeared to find it quite amusing. It appears to have been a source of entertainment on Earth two centuries ago. He also introduced me to an Earth food called "popcorn." Apparently, one eats popcorn while watching these sources of entertainment, although I have yet to understand the purpose of this ritual. Mr. Garibaldi attempted to explain the humor in this "cartoon" to me, but I must admit that I fail to understand it; although Commander Sinclair has mentioned that Mr. Garibaldi's sense of humor is somewhat unusual. Hopefully, with more study, I will be able to understand this aspect of Earth culture better.

->It was malformed and incomplete, but its essentials were clear enough. It looked like a great wrinkled tumor, like cellular competition gone wild—as though the very processes that defined life had somehow turned against it instead. It was obscenely vascularised; it must have consumed oxygen and nutrients far out of proportion to its mass. I could not see how anything like that could even exist, how it could have reached that size without being outcompeted by more efficient morphologies.

->Nor could I imagine what it did. But then I began to look with new eyes at these offshoots, these biped shapes my own cells had so scrupulously and unthinkingly copied when they reshaped me for this world. Unused to inventory—why catalog body parts that only turn into other things at the slightest provocation?—I really saw, for the first time, that swollen structure atop each body. So much larger than it should be: a bony hemisphere into which a million ganglionic interfaces could fit with room to spare. Every offshoot had one. Each piece of biomass carried one of these huge twisted clots of tissue.

->I realized something else, too: the eyes, the ears of my dead skin had fed into this thing before Copper pulled it free. A massive bundle of fibers ran along the skin's longitudinal axis, right up the middle of the endoskeleton, directly into the dark sticky cavity where the growth had rested. That misshapen structure had been wired into the whole skin, like some kind of somatocognitive interface but vastly more massive. It was almost as if...

->No.

->''That'' was how it worked. That was how these empty skins moved of their own volition, why I'd found no other network to integrate. There it was: not distributed throughout the body but balled up into itself, dark and dense and encysted. I had found the ghost in these machines.

->I felt sick.

->I shared my flesh with thinking cancer.
-->-- [[Film/TheThing1982 The Thing]] learning what the human brain is, ''[[http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ The Things]]'', Peter Watts

->Poor creatures. Why must we destroy you? I'll tell you why. Order is the tide of creation. But yours is a species that worships...the one over the many. You ''glorify'' your intelligence...because it allows you to believe ''anything''. That you have a destiny. That you have a right. That you have a cause. That you are [[HumansAreSpecial special.]] That you are [[HumanityIsSuperior great.]] But in truth, you are ''born [[HumanityIsInsane insane.]]'' And such ''misery''...cannot be allowed...to spread!
-->-- ''[[Film/StarshipTroopers2HeroOfTheFederation Hero of the Federation]]''

->Sometimes we think we want to know what our dogs think. We don't, not really. Someone who watches us with unclouded eyes and sees us for who we really are is more frightening than a man with a gun.

->'''[[EldritchAbomination Shitload]]''': This world is shit, yo. How do you people be gettin' around in this, all in these bodies and shit? You act all scared that I'm gonna kill ya, when it's the best thing I could do for you, yo. Deadworld, man, it's alternating layers of rot and shit and shit like that.\\
'''Dave''': Deadworld? Is that where you're from?\\
'''Shitload''': No, dude. That’s where ''you're'' from. It's where we are now. This place, it's a horror show. If the guy next to you decides to knock you out of this world forever, he can do it with just a piece of metal or, hell, even his bare hand. Well, you know. Right?\\
'''Dave''': I've never killed anybody.\\
'''Shitload''': You blobs, you sit there, chillin' in this room and I can smell the rot of dead animals soaking in the acid of your guts. You suck the life from the innocent creatures of this world just so you can clock another day. You're machines that run on the terror and pain and mutilation of other lives. You'll scrape the world clean of every green and living thing until starvation goes 1-8-7 on every one of your sorry asses, your desperation to put off death leadin' to the ultimate death of everybody and everything. Dude, I can't believe you ain't all paralyzed by the pure, naked horror of this place.\\
'''[[CloudCuckooLander John]]''': Uh...thanks?

->For two hundred and fifty years, the kzinti had not attacked human space. They had nothing to attack with. For two hundred and fifty years, men had not attacked the kzinti worlds; and no kzin could understand it. Men confused them terribly.

->"They're made out of meat."\\

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"
-->-- ''Literature/TheyreMadeOutOfMeat'', Terry Bisson

->Mork calling Orson! Come in, Orson!
-->-- '''[[Creator/RobinWilliams Mork From Ork]]''', [[OnceAnEpisode at the end of each episode of]] ''Series/MorkAndMindy''

->So ancestors are people who did the procreation thing to make more people before you were born? Like how many people? That's a lot of the procreation thing. Ew. You're disgusting.
-->-- '''Xanathar''', Beholder "sage", ''[[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Xanathar's Guide to Everything]]''

->They’re horrible, mistress. As soft and pale as larvae, but reared up and stretched out. All of them have articulated feelers ending in fleshy pedipalps, but some have stingers as well. Their antennae frills lie listless, or else chopped short in some sort of ritual scarification. They cover themselves in folds of discarded webbing, and communicate solely through wet hoots and whistles. All attempts by our scouts to establish normal communications have been met with fear and violence.\\
They've already breached the tunnels, my queen. They appear almost blind, yet their fumblings are drawing them ever closer to the birthing chambers. Shall the legion advance?
-->-- Soldier of the Forever Queen of Nchak, translated report of first humanoid contact, ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}''

->[[HumansThroughAlienEyes Humans were a bad enemy to fight]] -- which also made them a good enemy, for [[OurOrcsAreDifferent Orks]] made little distinction between the two concepts. No matter how many humans were killed, there were always more to take their place, shiploads of them brimming with vengeance. Humans were like a weed, like a disease, almost impossible to cleanse from a world. For a greenskin, that made them something more than an enemy, for a fight against [[WorthyOpponent a favored enemy]] [[BloodKnight was a joyous thing.]] Orks loved going to war with humans, because defeating the humans meant something.

->[[FunetikAksent 'Oomans]] are pink and soft, not green and tough like [[OurOrcsAreDifferent da Boyz.]] They'z all the same size, too -- no big'uns or little'uns, so they'z always arguing about who's in charge, 'cos there's [[LargeAndInCharge no way of telling]] 'cept for [[BlingOfWar badges an' ooniforms and fings.]] Anuvver fing -- when they do sumfink, they try to make it look like sumfink else to confuse everybody. When one of 'em wants to lord it over the uvvers, 'e says "I'm very speshul so'z you gotta worship me," or "I know summink wot you lot don't know, so yer better lissen good." Da funny fing is, 'arf of 'em believe it and da over 'arf don't, so 'e 'as to hit 'em all anyway or run fer it. Wot a lot of mukkin' about if yer asks me. An' while they'z all arguin' wiv each other over who's da boss, da Orks can sneak up an' clobber da lot.
-->-- An Ork's view of humanity and its failings, ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''

->"A 12,000-year-old fossil of a creature with an odd internal skeleton. Its small skull indicates the creature was likely primitive with little intelligence. This specimen appears to have been fossilized in the middle of some kind of ritual."

->"Their skins appear non-transferable."\\

"To date, none have survived preliminary testing."
-->-- '''[[EldritchAbomination Vel]]'[[MadScientist Koz]]''', ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends''

->The others are gone. They were victims of a malevolent transformation! Their scales had rotted to soft, vulnerable flesh. Slowly suffocating without gills! The worst was their eyes! Close-set, and forced to squint through fleshy slits! I shudder recalling the horrific and unclean warmth of their blood as I rinsed my talons.

-> ''One you see as alien likely looks back with similar sentiment.''

-->-- Website/{{tumblr}} [[http://cooltrees.tumblr.com/post/114196721501/me-all-our-teeth-fall-out-as-children-and-then post by cooltrees]]

->you know, me brother's never seen a human before. [[Rule34 aside from porn, of course.]] you guys do some weird shit.
-->-- '''Sans''', ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfx9R_-pdY0 If Undertale Was Realistic]]''

'''SCP-682:''' (''no verbal communication'')\\
'''Dr. ██████:''' If you don't talk now, we will remove you from this attempt and place you back into-\\
'''SCP-682:''' (''incomprehensible'')\\
'''Dr. ██████:''' Pardon? (''motions to move microphone closer'')\\
'''SCP-682:''' (''incomprehensible'')\\
'''Dr. ██████:''' Speak up. (''to Personnel D-085'') Move the mic up closer.\\
'''SCP-682:''' ...they were (''incomprehensible'')\\
'''Dr. ██████:''' (''to Personnel D-085'') That microphone has only so much gain, move it closer to it!\\
'''Personnel D-085:''' His throat's messed up, man, look at it! He ain't talking- (''gasps and screams'')\\
'''SCP-682:''' (''appearing to assault D-085's body'') ...they were...disgusting.\\
'''Dr. ██████:''' (''retreats from the room'')
-->-- ''The Wiki/SCPFoundation''

'''Steven:''' ''(bemused)'' You mean grass?\\

-->-- ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverseFuture'', [[Recap/StevenUniverseFutureS1E1LittleHomeschool "Little Homeschool"]]

'''Parker:''' I don't... know. I'm not sure if they're smart enough to speak, but maybe we can try.

''[[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgnOYNE9AK8SXtgSRtE96tGNm_ZpIbPFo Mystery Dungeon with Critical Chaos]]'', Episode 8

->[[BodyHorror "Their skins appear non-transferable."]]\\
[[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe "When bisected,]] [[DissonantSerenity neither half grows back."]]\\

[[IWantMyMommy "Creature appears to seek its maternal unit."]]\\

[[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers "I find their]] [[StarfishAliens elbows]] [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers obscene."]]\\

->[=Par%l=] has never seen a ''[[SlasherSmile smile]]''

-->-- '''Xanathar''', Beholder "sage," ''[[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Xanathar's Guide to Everything]]''

->[[HumansThroughAlienEyes Humans were a bad enemy to fight]] -- which also made them a good enemy, for [[OurOrcsAreDifferent Orks]] made little distinction between the two concepts. No matter how many humans were killed, there were always more to take their place, shiploads of them brimming with vengeance. Humans were like a weed, like a disease, almost impossible to cleanse from a world. For a greenskin that made them something more than an enemy, for a fight against [[WorthyOpponent a favoured enemy]] [[BloodKnight was a joyous thing]]. Orks loved going to war with humans, because defeating the humans meant something.

->[[FunetikAksent 'Oomans]] are pink and soft, not green and tough like [[OurOrcsAreDifferent da Boyz]]. They'z all the same size, too -- no big'uns or little'uns, so they'z always arguing about who's in charge, 'cos there's [[LargeAndInCharge no way of telling]] 'cept for [[BlingOfWar badges an' ooniforms and fings]]. Anuvver fing -- when they do sumfink, they try to make it look like somfink else to confuse everybody. When one of 'em wants to lord it over the uvvers, 'e says "I'm very speshul so'z you gotta worship me," or "I know summink wot you lot don't know, so yer better lissen good." Da funny fing is, 'arf of 'em believe it and da over 'arf don't, so 'e 'as to hit 'em all anyway or run fer it. Wot a lot of mukkin' about if yer asks me. An' while they'z all arguin' wiv each other over who's da boss, da Orks can sneak up an' clobber da lot.

->"[[BodyHorror Their skins appear non-transferable]]."\\
"[[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe When bisected]], [[DissonantSerenity neither half grows back]]."\\

"[[IWantMyMommy Creature appears to seek its maternal unit]]."\\

"[[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers I find their]] [[StarfishAliens elbows]] [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers obscene.]]"\\

[[folder:Web Comics]]

'''alien:''' okay, i mean... that definitely sounds fake, but... okay.

'''SCP-682:''' (''appearing to assault D-085's body'') ...they were ...disgusting.\\

->Poor creatures. Why must we destroy you? I'll tell you why. Order is the tide of creation. But yours is a species that worships... the one over the many. You ''glorify'' your intelligence... because it allows you to believe ''anything''. That you have a destiny. That you have a right. That you have a cause. That you are [[HumansAreSpecial special]]. That you are [[HumanityIsSuperior great]]. But in truth, you are ''born [[HumanityIsInsane insane]]''. And such ''misery''... cannot be allowed... to spread!

'''Luigi:''' Aliens? We gotta deal with aliens too?\\

'''[[CloudCuckooLander John]]''': Uh... thanks?

->For two hundred and fifty years the kzinti had not attacked human space. They had nothing to attack with. For two hundred and fifty years men had not attacked the kzinti worlds; and no kzin could understand it. Men confused them terribly.

"So... what does the thinking?"\\

-->-- [[http://cooltrees.tumblr.com/post/114196721501/me-all-our-teeth-fall-out-as-children-and-then tumblr post by cooltrees]]

-->-- Soldier of the Forever Queen of Nchak, translated report of first humanoid contact, ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}''}}''

[[folder:Webcomics]]

"To date, none have survived [[FridgeHorror preliminary testing]]."

->After the situation surrounding Ragesh 3 was settled, to the satisfaction of all save the Narn, Mr. Garibaldi invited me to join him in doing his second favorite thing in the universe. In an effort to understand more about Earthers, I agreed. I found it quite puzzling, however. We watched something called "WesternAnimation/DuckDodgersInTheTwentyFourthAndAHalfCentury" - which, since by Earth reckoning it is only the 23½ century, I found confusing. Apparently, this is what was called a "cartoon show," and Mr. Garibaldi appeared to find it quite amusing. It appears to have been a source of entertainment on Earth two centuries ago. He also introduced me to an Earth food called "popcorn." Apparently, one eats popcorn while watching these sources of entertainment, although I have yet to understand the purpose of this ritual. Mr. Garibaldi attempted to explain the humor in this "cartoon" to me, but I must admit that I fail to understand it; although Commander Sinclair has mentioned that Mr. Garibaldi's sense of humor is somewhat unusual. Hopefully, with more study, I will be able to understand this aspect of Earth culture better.

[[folder:Film - Live-Action]]

-->-- Soldier of the Forever Queen of Nchak, translated report of first humanoid contact, ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}''

->[[FunetikAksent 'Oomans]] are pink and soft, not green and tough like [[OurOrcsAreDifferent da Boyz]]. They'z all the same size, too - No big'uns or little'uns, so they'z always arguing about who's in charge, 'cos there's [[LargeAndInCharge no way of telling]] 'cept for [[BlingOfWar badges an' ooniforms and fings]]. Anuvver fing - when they do sumfink, they try to make it look like somfink else to confuse everybody. When one of 'em wants to lord it over the uvvers, 'e says "I'm very speshul so'z you gotta worship me," or "I know summink wot you lot don't know, so yer better lissen good." Da funny fing is, 'arf of 'em believe it and da over 'arf don't, so 'e 'as to hit 'em all anyway or run fer it. Wot a lot of mukkin' about if yer asks me. An' while they'z all arguin' wiv each other over who's da boss, da Orks can sneak up an' clobber da lot.
-->-- An Ork's view of humanity and its failings, ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''

[[folder:Web Comics]]

->It was malformed and incomplete, but its essentials were clear enough. It looked like a great wrinkled tumor, like cellular competition gone wild—as though the very processes that defined life had somehow turned against it instead. It was obscenely vascularised; it must have consumed oxygen and nutrients far out of proportion to its mass. I could not see how anything like that could even exist, how it could have reached that size without being outcompeted by more efficient morphologies.

->Nor could I imagine what it did. But then I began to look with new eyes at these offshoots, these biped shapes my own cells had so scrupulously and unthinkingly copied when they reshaped me for this world. Unused to inventory—why catalog body parts that only turn into other things at the slightest provocation?—I really saw, for the first time, that swollen structure atop each body. So much larger than it should be: a bony hemisphere into which a million ganglionic interfaces could fit with room to spare. Every offshoot had one. Each piece of biomass carried one of these huge twisted clots of tissue.

->I realized something else, too: the eyes, the ears of my dead skin had fed into this thing before Copper pulled it free. A massive bundle of fibers ran along the skin's longitudinal axis, right up the middle of the endoskeleton, directly into the dark sticky cavity where the growth had rested. That misshapen structure had been wired into the whole skin, like some kind of somatocognitive interface but vastly more massive. It was almost as if...

->No.

->''That'' was how it worked. That was how these empty skins moved of their own volition, why I'd found no other network to integrate. There it was: not distributed throughout the body but balled up into itself, dark and dense and encysted. I had found the ghost in these machines.

->I felt sick.

->I shared my flesh with thinking cancer.
-->-- [[Film/TheThing1982 The Thing]] learning what the human brain is, ''[[http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ The Things]]'', Peter Watts

[[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers I find their]] [[StarfishAliens elbows]] [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers obscene.]]"