maplepoppy:

tosety:

serafinastuff:

tosety:

coonazz74:

tanoraqui:

waffle-sorter:

animatedamerican:

jewishzevran:

ace-of-the-arts:

voidspun:

its-seyton:

bogleech:

While sick in bed I kept thinking, or rather my brain kept thinking with or without my input, about the sheer overwhelming volume of fiction human beings have produced, like the number of myths, legends, novels, comics, games, movies, plays, original characters and even dreams and imaginary friends felt so vast and all encompassing that it seemed to dwarf all of our other achievements as a species and the sheer immensity and pointlessness of it all felt almost terrifying until suddenly my foggy mind was like “whoa, whoa, wait, WAIT A MINUTE….THAT’S WHAT WE ARE!!!!!! WE’RE THE STORYTELLER PLANET, THAT’S OUR THING IN THE UNIVERSE!”

So that turned into all these scenarios where for whatever reason most other sentience races could have technological power beyond our comprehension but still no knack for concocting even rudimentary child-level fiction and are so easily entertained by any shit we can make up that it’s basically our superpower

Humans end up paying their way across the galaxy just making things up as they go along and even our worst most garbage pieces of media become an almost priceless commodity.

You’re cornered by a tentareaver from the bloodstar or whatever and she’s all “SO, EARTHBEAST…TELL ME ONE OF THESE FAMOUS FICSHUNS OF YOURS AND I’LL CONSIDER SPARING YOUR LIFE”

*sigh*…okay, once upon a time there was a tentareaver…

“WAS SHE OF THE FLESHRENDER CASTE????”

….Yes, the most beautiful fleshrender in her whole clusterhive.

“TEE HEE”

@vergess

#humans confirmed for space bards
MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY

Only, lots of humans go, “My stories are all crap. You just don’t understand.”

And their nonhuman friends go, “No I don’t. Your stories are mindblowing. How can you just come up with these things?”

“They’re just drabbles and junk!”

“Awesome drabbles and junk…?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

—

On the other hand, the “super-awesome-amazing” writing that humans are referring to as “actual writing/stories” are restricted materials for non-humans because they can be dangerous to the unprepared minds.

Memetic logic bombs.

Published human fiction must go through a vetting committee before they are pronounced “safe” for non-human consumption.

@animatedamerican

I have a slightly hard time figuring out how a culture that has no concept of fiction could appreciate fiction.

BUT.  Let’s take a leaf out of Michael Ende’s book, more or less literally, and say that they may have stories, but they can’t make up stories.  (Where did the original stories come from?  Shhh.  Who knows.  Someone else make up that part.)

So it’s not so much that humans are storytellers as that they’re story-makers, and that’s what so blows the collective universe’s mind.

“Where did the original stories come from?”

Uplift scenario, perhaps. Species A was given sapience and a set of stories by Species B, who went extinct and/or lost interest in Species A long ago.

Also, they could just be recountings of actual historical events, perhaps still perfectly accurate or perhaps skewed through centuries of misremembered details. Some have narrative, because even real life does sometimes, while others are just very dry - but it’s what they’ve got.

And then comes along these weirdly tented story makers. These “humans” who are first overheard telling tales to their young to help them get ready for sleep by telling them stories, all the once upon a time stuff handed down with new twists based o a changed sky, asteroid belt, moon number, and new races as heroes and villians. The other species are astounded by the ability of these creatures to weave stories of complexity they wave off as “nonsense.”

“Those are just fairy tales,” the human says.

“What are fairies?” Demand their fellow inhabitants.

“Little people, with like wings and magic powers.” The human shrugs. “They’re not real”

“You mean the arboreal races of N'Sylerth?”

“No, just made up creatures to make sense of things early people didn’t understand. ”

“Wait, your kind just makes up creatures?”

“Only in folklore.”

“What’s folklore?”

And that’s how humans were found to be the story makers.

Okay, I saw the question of how aliens could enjoy stories when they can’t make them and immediately thought of blind spots in knowledge. It’s easy to miss something obvious, although a culture that enjoys them are likely to try to make their own.

But how about the idea that aliens are supremely bad at storytelling?
They recount historical events as the facts of the event: how many people died, what was the cause, who were the major players.

Then humans come along and say “what is this shit? THIS is how you tell a story!”

Oh, and that tentareaver bit has so much more potential;

The human shifted, carefully sliding her hand towards her sidearm. “Yes, the fleshreaver caste. The most beautiful and deadly of any in the fleshreavers. She was feared by all.”

Sarah was almost angry about how stupid this creature was.

“So, one time, this tentareaver found a human. The human was fast and fired off a lucky shot into the tentareaver’s weak spot, but this one was so strong… Uh… Actually, what is the weak spot on your species?”

‘no way can this actually work, Sarah thought to herself.

“The base of the eyestalk,” the tentareaver replied naively.

“Yeah, so this human shoots the tentareaver in the base of the eyestalk, but this beautiful tentareaver is so strong she shrugs it off like it was a slap.”

Finally maneuvering her hand to her sidearm, Sarah pulls it out and fires a shot point blank into the base of the tentareaver’s eyestalk.

As the tentareaver is writhing on the ground in agony, Sarah comments “Youre not that tentareaver.”

But what if aliens do have stories and Martha and things but they’re not an art and there’s no, like, literary criticism. Sure, technically they have stories but not like humans. Even humans took a while to get to making novels and stuff, but now you have to practice a lot to make a good story and we have people whose job it is to analyze why stories are good and compelling and we spend a lot of time figuring out how to make stories more successful/appealing and what if the aliens never had that? We have whole industries based on stories whereas the aliens just have some myths that might fluctuate a bit and there are some people who are interested in them but it’s nothing compared to what humans have

I like the idea that there is a race out there that has their historical stories, but not only do they lack the concept of making things up to make things more interesting, but they have no clue how to make the historical accounts engaging. They memorize their history out of a sense of duty and add to it as major events dictate, but stories aren’t something that anyone has ever considered being or becoming interesting apart from learning about the mistakes of the past.

They encounter humans and become addicted, paying good storytellers extremely good money to make their histories enjoyable to listen to.

Ok but guys…Imagine the tallest, scariest and most dangerous aliens in the whole galaxy visiting a daycare every day for “story time”. Imagine them sitting on those tiny plastic chairs listening with sparkling eyes and mouth wide open to the tale of a little fairy and her friends. Imagine them staying longer to look at the children create even more stories with their dolls, legos robots etc…