Humans Through Alien Eyes: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|'''[[Lizard Folk|Koopa]] Police Radio:''' Alien species escaping from police detention.
'''Luigi:''' Aliens? We gotta deal with aliens too?
'''Mario:''' Luigi, [[Perspective Flip|'''we're''' the aliens]].
'''Luigi:''' We are? Whoa, cool!
|''[[Super Mario Bros.|Super Mario Bros. the Movie]]''}}
Stories that have humans interact with aliens who are actually ''alien'' run into the fact that we're as weird to them as they are to us. This can cause the most remarkable misunderstandings....
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This seems to be a heavily literary trope, perhaps because the basic concepts are easier to convey in writing. One variant has [[Humans Are Cthulhu|humans as cosmic abominations]] to primitive aliens. See also [[Culture Clash]]. Many times, they think [[Humans Are Ugly]]. This can also be used for a nice, satisfying [[Author Tract]] with the aliens puzzling "But why do they (insert the [[Author Tract|author's worldview's opposite here]])?
If the aliens are the good guys, then it is [[Humans Are
{{examples}}
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== Fan
* [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3546854/16/Reunions_are_a_Bitch The sixteenth chapter] of
* The ''[[Mass Effect]]'' fic ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7278544/1/First_Contact First Contact]'' presents [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|a first contact scenario]] where an asari exploration vessel discovers Earth in 2034. It is basically fueled by this trope.
* Peter Watts' [http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ "The Things"] is a chilling take on ''[[The Thing (film)|The Thing]]'' from creature's POV. From the perspective of a millennia-old empathic shape-shifting {{spoiler|intergalactic ambassador who can spread its consciousness across separated parts}}, we Earthlings aren't just primitive but ''barely sapient tumors that walk.''
{{quote|{{spoiler|"I will work behind the scenes. I will save them from the ''inside'', or their unimaginable loneliness will never end. These poor savage things will never embrace salvation. [[Assimilation Plot|I will have to rape it into them.]]"}}}}
* ''[[Article 2]]'' is about a human spaceship crashing into [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|Equestria]]. The story is told from the perspective of the Equestrians. (No, not humans on horseback.)
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* The basic theme of ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]''.
** ''Avatar'' did a good job with this one. Whenever a Na'vi and a human were in the same shot, the camera was always up on the Na'vi's level, making the humans look a bit out of place.
* The main plot of ''[[Happy Feet]]'' involved Mumble trying to find the aliens who had "abducted" another bird (radio-tagging) and were taking the penguins' fish. One of the final shots, of the aliens' ship (a helicopter) landing and the heavily suited aliens stepping out, is filmed with all the awe of ''[[Close Encounters of the Third Kind]]''.
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* ''[[Star Trek]]'' novel ''Final Frontier'' (no, not the movie ''The Final Frontier''), there's a moment when a Human and a Romulan are trapped in a place where they're about to be eaten by beasts, and the Romulan muses that this "must be hard" for the Human, who seems ready to fight till the end and never accept the inevitable (just the time to show off the state-of-the-art transporter technology, too).
* There's also [[C. J. Cherryh]]'s [[Chanur Novels|Chanur Saga]], in which most of the main characters are aliens and the plot revolves around the results when a crew of ''hani'' merchants take in a single human who had escaped from the ''kif''. The story is told strictly from the perspective of said crew, which along with the general absence of helpful [[Translator Microbes]] helps reinforce the alienness of the ''human'' in their familiar environment.
* The aliens in Terry Bisson's short story "[[They're Made Out of Meat]]" find the idea of purely organic intelligent beings incredible (not to mention
* [[Arthur C. Clarke]]'s short story "Crusade" is also about aliens looking at human biology with alien eyes and little tolerance.
* This is a major theme in [[Orson Scott Card]]'s Ender series. In ''[[Ender's Game]]'', {{spoiler|it takes the Hivemind alien race some time to adjust to the idea that each human being lives mentally separate from others, causing a disastrous [[First Contact]], and a war, only because neither side is capable of understanding how the other communicates.}} In the sequels, humanity encounters others: {{spoiler|one species which goes through a radical metamorphosis upon death -- and thus they find it nearly impossible to conceive of death as a tragedy, because for them it leads to full adulthood. Later, a species which communicates using molecular engineering crops up.}}
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*** A [[Running Gag]] in the series is that Andalites have no concept of "Taste" and go crazy over stuff such as Cinnabons. An Andalite with a mouth is a dangerous thing.
** A variation occurs in [[Harry Turtledove]]'s short story "The Road Not Taken" where, due to chance, humanity never stumbled on the ability to control gravity and travel faster than light that practically every other alien civilization has. Unfortunately, for the aliens, it's so easy to stumble on to this technology that they do it early in their histories and don't make much progress in other areas of science and technology. The invaders arrive on Earth and try to conquer the world with Napoleonic tactics and flintlock firearms. In the 21st century. [[Curb Stomp Battle|It's a brief invasion.]]
** An extreme example is in the early Arthur C Clarke short story, [https://web.archive.org/web/20081227154959/http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/13-TheBalticWarCD/TheBalticWarCD/The%20World%20Turned%20Upside%20Down/0743498747___1.htm "The Rescue Party"].
* The beginning of ''The Ghost Brigades'' by [[John Scalzi]] has a scientist trying to escape a military base which is under attack by aliens. He's captured by one, and being a xenobiologist starts describing the "ugly hominid", concluding with his final thought as he's drugged to unconsciousness: "F---ing humans..."
* This is one of the main themes of David Brin's ''[[Uplift]]'' series. Not only are the aliens actually alien, they've been civilized for longer than humanity has walked upright. Everything you could ever want to know can be looked up in
* Happens with most, if not all, genuinely alien (as opposed to extraterrestrial human) species in the [[Strugatsky Brothers]]' ''[[Noon Universe]]'':
** The reptilian Tagorians are obsessed with calculating the possible consequences of all and any endeavors or innovations (though it doesn't seem to hold them back much), and so are horrified/disgusted to the point of breaking off all (up to then fairly beneficial) contacts with the Earth when they learn that humans ''didn't'' destroy the [[Tyke Bomb|tykebombs]] left behind by the [[Precursors|Wanderers]] immediately upon discovery like they did with theirs.
** The same novel, ''[[Beetle in the Anthill]]'', has a character muse on how difficult it is to understand what his Golovan (member of a species of sapient dogs with very large heads) friend thinks about being with him on the expedition because the Golovan language has only one word for "must", "want" and "can". They also lack technology and folklore, and apparently lose all interest in humans after a few decades of studying them.
** The novel ''[[Space Mowgli]]'' features a human child [[Raised by Wolves|raised by highly-advanced isolationist aliens]]. It is unknown what parts of Kid's quirky behavior are just the consequences of growing up without any human contact and [[Touched by Vorlons|having unusual powers]] and what may be attributed to the "Ark Megaforms" (as the aliens were tentatively named), but they themselves seem both altruistic and isolationist to an unimaginable extent, or so the characters theorize, having failed to make any genuine contact.
** The Leoniders are only mentioned in passing, but they live in full symbiosis with all their entire ecosystem, which has rendered the question of technological exchange with humans more or less irrelevant.
* ''Viscous Circle'', part of [[Piers Anthony]]'s
* In [[Stephen King]]'s short story "I Am the Doorway" (appears in the collection ''[[Night Shift]]''), an ex-astronaut exposed to an alien mutagen finds himself with tiny eyes covering both hands, which he comes to realize are the manifestation of an alien presence that hates humanity. At one point, he looks at the eyes on his hands - and catches a glimpse of himself through the alien eyes, who perceive him as a twisted, hateful monster. It also finds our world in general horrifying and
** Also, in King's "[[From a Buick 8]]" where a car that's not a car produces all sorts of -mostly dying- alien lifeforms. {{spoiler|the one thing that manages to stay alive is violently butchered by the good guys because they feel like the mere sight of it is raping their brain. Right before it dies, they realize how alien and horrific they look in its eyes. They keep killing it but feel sorry afterwards...}}
* Several ''[[Halo]]'' novels show the war from the Covenant perspective, using this trope often.
* ''[[The Hobbit]]'', by [[J. R. R.
* Tolkien's unfinished work ''The Notion Club Papers''. At one point a character experimenting with astral projection techniques (which allow him to travel through time and space and see other planets) comes across a place where what seems like a giant anthill spreads across the countryside, polluting and ruining it. He's shocked to realise he's actually seeing the (sped-up) history of Oxford.
* In Peter F. Hamilton's ''[[The
** Hamilton's later novel ''Pandora's Star'' features a sequence in which the ''vivisection'' of two humans is described from the point of view of their alien captor.
*** With the alien in question at first not understanding concepts like "pain", blood, and the fact that screwing around with human brains is not healthy for said human.
* Examples from [[Isaac Asimov]]'s stories
** In Asimov's short story "Hostess", a four-legged alien who has lived with humans for some time still thinks we ''look'' like we should fall over (he is a [[Heavyworlder]], and on his planet we ''would'' have fallen over).
** Another of Asimov's short stories,
** Asimov's jokey short story "Playboy and the Slime Gods" (a [[Take That]] to a Playboy magazine article on science fiction; an alternate title is "What is This Thing Called Love?") features two alien scouts who find the notion of sexual reproduction unbelievable and potentially dangerous (due to increased genetic adaptability), respectively.
** Asimov's story "In a Good Cause" features a short passage from the point of the alien ''Diaboli'', who discuss the foul odor of humans and express hope that the humans won't insist on eating in front of them: "My cud will never be sweet again."
* In John Clute's ''Appleseed,'' the protagonist watches a show, made by aliens, where caricatures of
* [[Diane Duane]]'s ''[[Young Wizards]]'' series incorporates an increasing amount of this as the characters' horizons grow. {{spoiler|Book 7, where the main characters participate in a transplanetary exchange program, devotes at least a third of the exposition to the alien visitors' difficulties, among them the significance of a florist and the difficulty of determining which parts of a house are meant to be edible.}}
* [[Vernor Vinge]]'s ''[[Zones of Thought|A Fire Upon the Deep]]'' and ''[[Zones of Thought|A Deepness in The Sky]]'' both have a bit of this. In the former, the [[Hive Mind]] Tines are weirded out by independently sentient "singletons", and near the end of the latter the Spiders mention that humans appear cute and childlike due to their soft skin and movable eyes.
* The alien species in [[Alastair Reynolds]] ' "[[Revelation Space]]" trilogy are mostly extinct, but one character, while studying a species whose ability to exchange body parts makes them seem disturbingly fluid to her, realizes that the "Scuttlers" might well have seen humanity's unchanging nature (or that of other aliens lacking their ability) as a kind of living death. {{spoiler|The Scuttlers' isolation, which bought them some time before the Inhibitors attacked them, suggests she may have been right.}}
* In [[Eric Flint]]'s ''Mother of Demons'' ([https://web.archive.org/web/20120801060035/http://www.baen.com/library/067187800X/067187800X.htm free online version]), the cephalopod-descended gukuy are discomfited and surprised when they first see humans, mostly because of how quickly and strangely they move. They also tend to inaccurately attribute emotions to humans based on skin color at first, since gukuy are chromatomorphic and express emotions by changing color.
* In ''[[The Course of Empire]]'' and ''The Crucible of Empire'' it alternates between seeing humans through the eyes of their Jao conquerors and vice-versa. Humans tend to be more imaginitive as the Jao are a [[Slave Race]] that once served [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]] before their rebellion and rise to glory. Thus the Jao's ancestors had no more imagination then their masters thought fit to breed into them. [[Word of God]] says that the inspiration is from the cultural influence of Greece on Rome with humans as Greeks and Jao as Romans.
* In another one of [[Harry Turtledove]]'s novels, ''A World of Difference'', the Minervans (Martians) cannot comprehend that any of the American (or Soviet) crew could possibly be female {{spoiler|until a Minervan "prince" out for a walk sees two of the Americans without their "outer skins" after investigating an odd noise coming from behind a rock}} due to the fact that their females are basically baby factories that live to sexual maturity, get pregnant, then [[Death by Childbirth|bleed out when they give birth]]. Mercifully for the females, it seems nature provides them with some sort of anesthesia. Note that the males don't particularly like this little fact, they just can't do anything about it with medieval tech.
** In the same novel, one of the Minervans gets blinded in three of his eyes by a camera flash, leaving him only able to see out of the three on his other side. He's utterly terrified until his vision clears. This same alien later goes into battle with another tribe that snagged a Soviet AK-74 while an American with a pistol helps. Then an American ultralight drops a jumbo-sized molotov cocktail on the alien with the AK, causing the friendly alien to shudder at the concept of a battle with noise-weapons everywhere and fire falling from the sky.
*** To put the true horror of this into perspective, Minervans evolved to live in a climate cold enough that ice is a common building material. Hot water is a weapon of war. Napalm would be like dropping a piece of the ''sun'' on someone.
* Bud Sparhawk's "Sam Boone" stories play this for humor, from both Boone's human point of view and that of the bizarre, advanced aliens he interacts with. Boone finds himself in such bizarre situations as being announced via
* Alan Dean Foster's ''[[Humanx Commonwealth|Nor Crystal Tears]]'' is told almost entirely from the POV of the insectoid Thranx. As described in the first contact between Thranx and humanity, ''humans'' are rather effectively presented as [[Starfish Aliens]]
* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld]]'', the incorporeal, collective, and rigidly ordered Auditors find ''all'' life completely alien and offensive because of its chaotic and individualistic nature. Their primary goal is to rid the universe of it.
* In the [[Liaden Universe]] novels by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, the [[Alien Among Us|Clutch Turtles]] are perpetually bemused by the strange behaviors and values of the "hasty" humans, and often misinterpret social cues. It is only when they begin to perceive that Val Con and Miri are in trouble that one of them starts to develop a remarkable level of empathy for the way humans think in order to figure out how best to help them.
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* The mulefa in ''[[His Dark Materials]]'', who have trunks, horns and wheels (yeah), find the humans ugly and strange, but are able to tell that they're also smart and conscious, and welcome them into the tribe. The trope is also explored via the Gallivespians, a race of [[Lilliputian Warriors]] who are at war with the humans from their universe, and the [[Everything's Worse with Bears|armoured bears]], who are sentient but don't seem to have emotions in quite the same way, and don't seem to understand what it really means to be human.
* The short story anthology ''I, Alien'' is basically entirely this.
* In Timothy Zahn's ''[[The Conquerors Trilogy]]'', humans and Zhirrzh are barely comprehensible through each others' eyes, made worse by the fact that they are at war; they call each other "conquerors" and claim that the war is necessary to defend against the other's aggression.
* There's a some of this in [[Ursula K. Le Guin
* [[C. S.
{{quote|"...and he, for one privileged moment, had seen the human form with almost Malacandrian eyes."}}
* The front cover blurb for Hal Clement's ''Cycle of Fire'' invoked this with the words: "Each of them was a stranger to the other. But which was the alien?"
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* In the ''[[Codex Alera]]'', the various species in the lands around the human Realm of Alera have different views on how alien humans are to them. For example, there's the Marat, a species of barbarian elf-like people who bind themselves to animal "totems" (forming an empathic link to another species, gaining aspects of their biology from them) and then form tribes around those totems (i.e. the Wolf Tribe, the Horse Tribe, etc). The Marat believe in fighting alongside ones' totems, whereas humans prefer to wear armor and fight within fortifications, and are therefore referred to as the "Dead Tribe" and consider them weak. The Marat also do not believe in the concept of deliberate falsehoods (read: lying) and declaring that someone is "mistaken" is grounds for a trial of combat. They are, understandably, extremely perturbed by the humans' constant use of falsehoods, along with all the other contradictions of human society.
* Several short stories in ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' see humans through the eyes of Treecats. The "two-legs" do weird things, like fly, build ''separate'' dwellings from each other and make "mouth noises" instead of speaking "normally" (ie, [[Psychic Powers|telepathically]]). They also do scary things, like take down "death-fangs" ([[Mega Neko|hexapumas]]) from a distance and remove areas of forest rapidly. In one short story that uses this, the treecats [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|save the princess of Manticore.]]
**Treecats pity humans for being unable to directly communicate mentally, but are awed by their cleverness. Basically they think all humans are autistic savants.
* Older than you might think: The part of [[Gulliver's Travels]] where he visits the Houyhnhnms (horse-like beings) has heavy elements of this. At the end, when Gulliver goes back to England again, [[Stockholm Syndrome|he himself has started to view humanity with the same disgust as the Houyhnhnms]].▼
**Treecats also translate human politics into formats that among humans would be primarily used among hunter-gatherers, being unfamiliar with nations and hierarchies not to mention being themselves hunter-gatherers. The translation is actually roughly accurate because just as humans have nations, treecats have clans, and just as humans have wars, treecats have vendettas (occasionally). And both have diplomacy. And both have plain old crime though it seems less common among treecats who need no more enforcement than a posse if one of them gets out of hand. However some things are a bit off. They cannot understand that a human "elder" (Manticoran Princess Adrienne) can be pretty young but just accept it as a bit weird. What they really can't understand is espionage as telepaths can't lie to each other, which presents a problem when one of them adopts a Mesan mercenary agent they had just doubled-aside from the fact that he is really a bit of a rascal and most cats adopt pretty decent humans. In that case it is fortuituous as the enemy can't double him back making it a sort of psionic honey trap.
▲* Older than you might think: The part of ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' where he visits the Houyhnhnms (horse-like beings) has heavy elements of this. At the end, when Gulliver goes back to England again, [[Stockholm Syndrome|he himself has started to view humanity with the same disgust as the Houyhnhnms]].
* "The Color of Distance" and the aptly-named "Through Alien Eyes", by Amy Thomson, are a [[First Contact]] story in which a human does have some narrative time, but it's largely from the POV of the local Tendu, brachiating froglike people who speak with their color-changing skins. They think the human - Dr. Juna Saari - always looks sorrowing thanks to her (beige) skin tone. The second book deals with two Tendu visiting Earth and finding it bizarre, wonderful and awful in turns. Notably, the books are remarkably evenhanded in portraying both Tendu and humanity as good in some ways, flawed in others, but not inherently beyond hope.
* ''The Things'', the Hugo-nominated short story by Peter Watts, views the events of the 1982 sci-fi horror movie ''[[The Thing (film)|The Thing]]'' from the alien's POV. Every species the Thing has encountered thus far is capable of shapeshifting and merging with other cells just like the Thing, which cannot understand why this strange new 'world' violently resists its attempts to 'commune' and adapt its offshoots (people). On eventually realising the nature of
* There's a ''[[Doctor Who]]'' novel called ''Night of the Humans''.
* In [[Robert Silverberg]]'s ''At Winter's End'', what are these [[The Greys|weird, hairless, flat-faced beings]] that seem to crop up so often in ancient records? {{spoiler|Why, they're the [[After the End|now-extinct]] humans, as seen through the eyes of [[Xenofiction|highly evolved baboons]].}}
* In Steven Brust's ''[[Dragaera]]'' books, the elf-like Dragaerans consider themselves "human" and real-world humans to be "Easterners." ''The Phoenix Guards'' series is told by a Dragaeran narrator who occasionally describes Easterners' curious
* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s novella "Day of Burning," a [[The Reptilians|Merseian]] privately describes humans as an [[Humans Are Ugly|ugly, hairy]] [[Uncanny Valley|caricature]] of [[Lizard Folk|his own species]].
* There is a short story told exclusively from the viewpoint of a member of an expansionist race who arrive to the third planet in a yellow dwarf system and find remnants of a strange civilization. Yes, you guessed it, humans are dead in the story, wiped out by an "atomic storm" from space. However, the aliens manage to revive several members of this species, only to realize that they possess strange powers, including teleportation. Fearing that the human, whom they've been unable to kill, might learn their technology and use it to revive the rest of humanity and learn their FTL method and homeworld coordinates, the ship's crew chooses to fly [[Hurl It Into the Sun|into the Sun]]. Moments before the ship is destroyed, the protagonist realizes that the ugly teleporting alien has learned all their secrets in the first several minutes and was just messing with them after that.
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== Live-Action TV ==
* The earliest promos for Nickelodeon's ''[[The Journey of Allen Strange]]'' included the following speech by Allen: "I'm trying to adjust to this strange world called Earth. The lifeforms are solid, school teaches geometry in only three dimensions, and space travel is limited to a mere few million miles per journey. Currently I'm learning a concept called Friendship..."
* The title of a [[Disney Channel]] movie ''[[Stepsister From The Planet Weird]]'' applies to both girls, as the alien girl and her [[Manic Pixie Dream Girl|Manic Pixie Dream Guy]] father are actually air bubble-like aliens. Much [[
* This was the premise of ''[[3rd Rock from the Sun]]'' for the first three or four years, until the aliens became accustomed to life on Earth. At that point, their extraterrestrial origins became [[The Artifact]].
* The ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' episode "[[First Contact]]" focuses on the aliens' view of their initial contact with [[The Federation]]. The opening's particularly effective, as the doctors are trying to treat an unconscious Riker (who was in disguise and doing research on their culture), and gradually realize with a mix of awe and dread that none of his organs make any sense to them.
** The ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' episode "Distant Origin" also uses this as its premise. Most of the story follows two alien scientists, who investigate and later directly study the Voyager crew, without their knowledge. Their initial reconstructions, based on their own cultural and biological biases, are very inaccurate.
** There's also the TNG episode "Home Soil," wherein one of the life-forms native to Velara III describes humans as "ugly bags of mostly water."
* The Doctor from ''[[Doctor Who]]'' usually likes humans, but isn't beyond rebuking them, either.
** "Planet of the Dead": "You ''look'' human." "You look Time Lord."
*** Phrased very similarly by the Eleventh Doctor in an exchange with Amy Pond in "The Beast Below". It could become one of his standard responses.
{{quote|'''Amy:''' You [[Human Aliens|look human]].
'''The Doctor:''' No, you look Time Lord. We came first. }}
** We get a double dose of this when the companion is Romana, a fellow Time Lord with less knowledge of, and a more detached view of, humans. Cue things like loud, public discussions of how the Mona Lisa compares to other works of art in different galaxies.
** Appears in the first ever Who story ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S1
* ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' used this for a twist ending or three.
* The early ''[[Farscape]]'' episode "I, ET" where the heroes crash onto a planet where the culture resembles 1950s America. Besides Crichton this is actually "aliens through other alien eyes," but he's the main viewpoint character so it still works this way. Plus, rather unusually for the show, the locals are [[Rubber Forehead Aliens]] and one of them is a bit disappointed when Crichton looks so much like them. Then she gets a look at [[Starfish Aliens|Pilot]].
** This happens a lot early on in ''[[Farscape]]'' with the aliens constantly commenting on how deficient and generally strange humans are (John's constant pop culture references certainly don't help) but as time goes on the aliens start to befriend John and find that he is much more useful than he seems at first, what with his "improvisation" that always saves the day. Most aliens outside the main cast don't get a chance to think so as to them Crichton just appears to be a Sebacean anyway.
** This trope also occurs in the season 4 episode "A Constellation of Doubt" which shows a television program made on Earth using interviews with the aliens. While a lot of the show is just reinforcing human prejudices (perhaps a bit [[
* Pretty much the purpose of ''[[Mork and Mindy]]''. And in turn, [[Inverted Trope|Mindy visits Ork]] for a few episodes for her honeymoon.
* In the first episode of ''[[Cosmos]]'' after a montage of images of planet Earth and the different human cultures, Carl Sagan muses:
{{quote|''For an extra-terrestrial observer, the differences between human cultures would seem trivial.''}}
* ''[[Crusade]]
** The planetary leaders didn't count on humans actually showing up at their doorstep in the near future. When they did, the alien representative told them they had no right to interfere in planetary business. Unfortunately, they're [[Wrong Genre Savvy]], as EarthForce has no [[Alien Non-Interference Clause|Prime Directive]]. Gideon has all the information recorded on dozens of probes which he then sends to the planet, informing the populace of their leaders' actions.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* German game ''[[Pluesch Power Und Plunder]]'' features [[Living Toys|living]] [[Everything's Better with Plushies|plushies]] having to hide from the "tramplers" (us).
* In ''[[Traveller]]'' the attitude of aliens toward humans is described. Vargr for instance think humans [[Humans Are Cthulhu|to be spooky]] because they can organize themselves more ably.
* ''[[Warhammer
** The [[Blood Knight|Orks]] think we're fun to fight against, but slightly confusing as they can't tell who's in charge ([[Large and In Charge|we're all about the same size]]).
** The [[Our Elves Are Better|Eldar]] think we're unsubtle childish thugs with limited intelligence and no appreciation for [[Everything Trying to Kill You|the dangers of]] [[Crapsack World|the galaxy we live in]].
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== Web Comics ==
* The ''Space'' theme of ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' features a plant-based alien. At one point, he(?) declines to enter a florist because, well, {{spoiler|how would ''you'' like it if someone cut off ''your'' reproductive organs and put them on display for people to smell?}}
** He has also stated that from his point of view, wine is
* ''[[Goblins]]: [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Life Through Their Eyes]]'' is a Dungeons and Dragons based web comic showing how the traditional "monsters" of the game view the player characters. It demonstrates how anyone in can be evil or good, regardless of race, as shown by the contrast between the goblin protagonists and the "good" adventurer PCs who slaughter the goblins' village because they see them as easy loot and XP.
** It also has some [http://www.goblinscomic.com/01282007 interesting commentary] on human culture.
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* In ''[[Freefall]]'', you get not [[Starfish Aliens|one]], not [[Petting Zoo People|two]], but ''[[Ridiculously-Human Robots|three]]'' distinct outsider viewpoints of human culture. Not to mention those times when its outsider POV vs. human culture ''and Sam'', or outsider POV vs. human culture ''and Florence''. There's a whole undercurrent of slavery moving toward emancipation because the humans haven't quite figured out that robots are becoming sentient enough to be self-willed, and then again, the humans aren't quite the same as the humans from earth ''either''... all in all, just go read it. Seriously.
* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'':
** Done with demons in the place of aliens in [https://web.archive.org/web/20160317090516/http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=080721 this] strip.
{{quote|"Why are mortals freaked out by ''blood''? ''They're'' the ones full of it!"}}
** The actual resident alien, Aylee, is wondering about humans all the time. First it was largely about our [[Bizarre Alien Biology]] ("I keep forgetting humans need air!"), but lately{{when}} it's been more about culture and social norms. Ironically, she doesn't actually act very alien; she's simply like a very naïve human from a very different culture who can't understand the one she's in.
* The Moliffs of ''[[Starslip]]'' are a race of transparent blobs with eyes and organs visible. Though they try to be civil, they simply cannot hold back their disgust with humans, what with the lack of shape changing, rigid skeletons, specialized organs, and the hair. ''Especially'' the hair.
** It may be [[Fantastic Racism|another trope]] at work here, seeing as the arc where that was revealed shared [[Homage|more than a few similarities]] with ''[[District 9]]''...
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* The ''With More, With Less'' arc of ''[[Harbourmaster]]'' is all about this.
* ''[[Unicorn Jelly]]'' has [http://www.unicornjelly.com/uni478.html Attack Of The Alien Invaders From Outer Space!]
* ''[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]]'' has the Zorblaxians who study humans. Such as [http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-28 this] attempt at understanding strange relations between those Earthling lifeforms. Or [http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-06-13 reading the Socratic Dialogues].
* ''[[Nerf NOW!!]]'' comments on [https://www.nerfnow.com/comic/901 how] humans (and player characters at that) must look like for the [[The Greys|Sectoids]].
== Web Original ==
* It's implied that a ''very'' extreme version of this is the reason for [[SCP Foundation|SCP-682's]] [[Omnicidal Maniac]]
** At one point, he calls humans "disgusting". Although it's possible he's referring to the [[Black and Black Morality|Foundation]] itself.
** On the other hand of the spectrum, we have [http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-962 SCP-962], which ''[[Stalker with a Crush|loves]]'' humanity and desperately wants us to like it. Its methods include building in imitation of us, writing and sending out books, and [[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|attempting to either eradicate or make cyborg servitors out of all nonhuman life]].
{{quote|Did you like [[Body Horror|the servants]] they were the BEST of the cleansed only the BEST for you Great Ones [[Uncanny Valley|made like you form]] you assume here on a WORLD to clean to honor you do appreciate please please I will complete the cleansing soon and you can take me away in your ships of FIRE and [[Yandere|I can love you and you will love me]]}}
* ''[[Danger: Humans]]'' is
== Western Animation ==
Line 210 ⟶ 215:
* Played straight out in ''[[Invader Zim]]'' when Dib's guidance counselor asks some aliens, "So you guys are real aliens from outer space?", to which one answers, "Well to us, YOU'RE the aliens."
** {{spoiler|[[Funny Moments|Followed by the aliens bursting out in laughter, "Oh man! That one never gets old!]]"}}
== Real Life ==
* Watch how your dog reacts to you.
**You mean your dog thinks humans are [[Authority Tropes|obsessed with hierarchy]], [[Occupiers Out of Our Country!|fanatically jealous of territory]], [[Asskicking Equals Authority|constantly fighting for position]], and [[Real Men Eat Meat|savagely predatory]], [[Not So Different|just like dogs?]] And [[Fridge Brilliance|and so responds accordingly?]] [[Sarcasm Mode|Guess that shows how ignorant they are.]]
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Otherness Tropes]]
[[Category:Humans Are Indexed]]
[[Category:
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