thinking about how Humans Are Space Orcs stories always talk about how indestructible humans are, our endurance, our ability to withstand common poisons, etc. and thats all well and good, its really fun to read, but it gets repetitive after a while because we aren't all like that.
And that got me thinking about why this trope is so common in the first place, and the conclusion I came to is actually kind of obvious if you think about it. Not everyone is allowed to go into space. This is true now, with the number of physical restrictions placed on astronauts (including height limits), but I imagine it's just as strict in some imaginary future where humans are first coming into contact with alien species. Because in that case there will definitely be military personnel alongside any possible diplomatic parties.
And I imagine that all interactions aliens have ever had up until this point have been with trained personnel. Even basic military troops conform to this standard, to some degree. So aliens meet us and they're shocked and horrified to discover that we have no obvious weaknesses, we're all either crazy smart or crazy strong (still always a little crazy, academia and war will do that to you), and not only that but we like, literally all the same height so there's no way to tell any of us apart.
And Humans Are Death Worlders stories spread throughout the galaxy. Years or decades or centuries of interspecies suspicion and hostilities preventing any alien from setting foot/claw/limb/appendage/etc. on Earth until slowly more beings are allowed to come through. And not just diplomats who keep to government buildings, but tourists. Exchange students. Temporary visitors granted permission to go wherever they please, so they go out in search of 'real terran culture' and what do they find?
Humans with innate heart defects that prevent them from drinking caffeine. Humans with chronic pain and chronic fatigue who lack the boundless endurance humans are supposedly famous for. Humans too tall or too short or too fat to be allowed into space. Humans who are so scared of the world they need to take pills just to function. Humans with IBS who can't stand spicy foods, capsaicin really is poison to them. Lactose intolerance and celiac disease, my god all the autoimmune disorders out there, humans who struggle to function because their own bodies fight them. Humans who bruise easily and take too long to heal. Humans who sustained one too many concussions and now struggle to talk and read and write. Humans who've had strokes. Humans who were born unable to talk or hear or speak, and humans who through some accident lost that ability later.
Aliens visit Earth, and do you know what they find? Humanity, in all its wholeness.
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Robbie is about four years old when middle child syndrome seems to well and truly sink in.
Look – Steve and Eddie are trying, but they also know that there’s also a certain level of inevitability to it. No matter how much attention she gets, no matter what they do to make sure they’re treating all three of their daughters equally, she was always going to be their middle kid and that was never going to change.
They aren’t totally sure what set Robbie off that particular afternoon, only that one second she and Moe were bickering over a puzzle and the next she was in tears, wailing about how Moe was the oldest and Hazel was the baby and Robbie would never get to be special.
“Hey,” Eddie stops her a minute later as Steve corrals an alarmed-looking Moe out into the backyard to play, “I know something we got to do with you that we didn’t with your sisters.”
And Robbie actually stops crying, lifting her head off his shoulder to look at him with those big blue eyes.
“What?” she asks, and she punctuates the question with a positively enormous sniffle.
“We got to drive you home from the hospital after you were born.”
Robbie blinks.
“Just me?”
“Just you,” Steve tells her as pulls her out of Eddie’s arms and into his own.
“And not Moe and Hazel?” she asks, eyes narrowed suspiciously as if she doesn’t believe them quite yet.
“Nope,” Eddie shook his head, “And do you remember what was special about when you were born?”
“I came early,” she tells them, because she knows.
“That’s exactly right, Bean," he nods, "You came early and you spent a whole week in the hospital until the doctors said we could take you home, and I sat in the backseat with you while Papa drove, and do you know what I remember?”
Robbie shakes her head.
“I remember Papa was driving really slow.”
“Papa always drives slow,” Robbie says, and her nose scrunches up the way it always does when she’s making fun of them (and she’s getting real good at it these days).
“Well, he was driving especially slow, and I asked him why, and you know what he said?”
“What?”
“He said precious cargo,” he tells her, and Steve has to hide a smile in Robbie’s messy curls because he’d forgotten about that.
He’d forgotten until this moment how the early November sky had been dark and cloudy. He’d forgotten how, halfway through the drive, the sky had opened up on them, fat raindrops making loud plunks as they hit the roof of the car, and how Eddie had teased him as he eased off the highway to wait out the rainstorm, but Steve hadn’t heard a single complaint from him the whole half hour they killed sitting together in the backseat with newborn Robbie, and Steve couldn’t stop thinking about how damn happy he was.
Steve is pulled out of his thoughts as Eddie speaks again.
“You know who that precious cargo was?” he asked Robbie.
She shrugged bashfully, hiding her face in the collar of Steve’s shirt.
“That was you, Bean,” Eddie tells her, and Robbie giggled as he poked her little belly, “That was you.”
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