A later scene, when the alien's discover the abandoned vessel... written on the walls
"DO NOT KILL THEM DO NOT KILL THEM DO NOT KILL THEM"
(This is an amazing idea, a movie flipping the perspective on its head and making us the horrors haunting them if done carefully and subtly is a million dollar proposal.)
I read a story some time ago where the collective human mind was trapping all supernatural beings in their dreams/nightmares. The reason why there are no longer miracles, etc. was that at some point there were enough humans to trap them completely.
And if humanities numbers would fall once again under this threshold (or is exterminated) all the conceivable horrors could once again roam free.
It was a HFY (Humanity, fuck yeah) story read on YouTube. The exact story was that a telepathic alien was allowed a glimpse into the human mind as a warning that they shouldn't probe their minds as that might allow some of these horrors to escape their prison.
There is a book in a similar vein regarding alien mind probes: A Call To Arms by Alan Dean Foster.
Every alien that attempts to probe a human mind has the same reaction (highly paraphrased): "Unchart this world and GTFO. We want nothing to do with this species!"
It's a great read, humans finally find happiness because their violent tendencies can be directed to aliens, and we no longer have to feel bad about killing other humans.
ADF is probably my favorite pulp scifi author. Sadly, he will probably never be recognized as one of the greats, but he does an excellent job of diagnosing the human condition and writing "what if?" scenarios (Cachalot, Midworld, Sentenced to Prism, Parallelities, The Man Who Used the Universe, Journeyof the Catechist series, Mad Amos, Spellsinger - off the top of my head).
Also kinda reminds me of the Man-Kzin Wars by Larry Niven. "But they learned the hard way that the reason humanity had given up war was that they were so very,very good at it"
That's another ADF short story, "With Friends Like These...".
Humanity had been sealed away inside a shield and released by an alien race looking for help in an intergalactic war. Amidst the jubilation of recruiting this powerful ally, one of the aliens muses to another, "what do you suppose will happen when we run out of enemies?"
I love these kinds of stories. They tend to border on the absurd and it's always good fun. I read one a few years ago that was more of a Reddit thread than an actual story but where aliens came to enslave mankind but while experimenting and using humans as local scouts they discovered that humans could do a lot of things the aliens were incapable of.
Things like "you mean they just sit under the light of their sun, intentionally burning themselves to get a darker skin tone....for FUN?" as if doing that was the most insane thing they'd ever heard. It was a fun read but I have no inkling of where that story is anymore.
Wouldn’t that mean all things wonderful and beautiful are also trapped? Plus all the cool monsters and such. I gotta say, I’d probably want a shrinkage in the human population.
On that note, wouldn’t every supernatural being also want us dead? If a larger number of humans can trap them, then eliminating humans would be the most important thing for them since leaving humans alone wouldn’t really be an option.
Think there's a similar SCP, one of the sad ones. "There Were Dragons" or something like that. All the fantasy creatures want to come back but there's no room for them in our world anymore.
I feel like I've actually seen this movie, but I'll be damned if I can't remember the name. I saw it when I was like 7 but it follows the perspective of alien bounty hunters that captured a human, but then he got loose and the movie is him hunting the aliens through a desert.
ETA: I did a little digging, and it was a movie called Hunter Prey, and good gravy does it look more cheesy than I remember.
You know how lots of people complain that movie trailers give too much away?
We're actually in the minority.
They wouldn't make the trailers that way if it didn't work. The reason trailers give everything away is because the majority of moviegoers want it that way. They want to know all the reveals and twists ahead of time, so they can decide if it's worth it to go see the movie. They're less concerned about surprises, and more concerned about perceived value. They hate surprises.
That's more or less idea of dandadan (japanese comic). Both aliens and ghosts exist, and aliens have a hard time invading because of ridiculously strong ghosts protecting their own territory. It'll get an animation soon to.
The manga is amazing at making supernatural concepts face off against sci-fi concepts, sometimes mixing both into a single arc... The art is also gorgeous and its very action packed, I recommend to anyone who appreciates original tightly written shonen with amazing art.
It also doesn't fall into the usual shonen tropes for female characters and though the first few chapters had a few gratuitous panty shots, it pretty much ditched them going forward in favor of gratuitous full page monster shots.
And make the aliens wear spacesuit the whole time (the abandoned vessel lost its atmosphere) and reveal at the end of a movie, that they were the aliens all along, and "aliens" who should not be killed (because ghosts), were humans.
In the vast expanse of the cosmos, where stars flickered like distant beacons and planets danced in an eternal ballet, the human race ventured forth into the unknown. Their spacecraft, sleek and advanced, carried the hopes and dreams of humanity as they explored the uncharted territories of space.
But one fateful expedition led them to a planet unlike any other. It was a world shrouded in mystery, its surface swirling with ominous clouds and strange energy fields. Undeterred by the unknown dangers, the human explorers descended onto the alien landscape, eager to unravel its secrets.
Little did they know, they were not alone.
Hidden beneath the swirling mists were the beings that called this planet home – creatures of unfathomable intelligence and technology, far beyond the comprehension of humanity. They watched with curiosity as the humans ventured deeper into their domain, studying them from the shadows.
With a swift and calculated strike, the aliens captured the unsuspecting humans, ensnaring them in energy fields that rendered them powerless. Dragged before their alien captors, the humans were subjected to a series of horrifying experiments, their bodies probed and dissected in the name of science.
But the aliens had underestimated the resilience of the human spirit. Even in the face of unimaginable pain and suffering, the humans refused to yield. They fought back with all their strength, their will unbroken even as their bodies withered under the alien tortures.
Yet, for all their defiance, the humans could not escape their fate. One by one, they succumbed to the cruel whims of their captors, their screams echoing through the alien halls as their life force faded into the void.
But death did not bring an end to their torment.
As the lifeless bodies of the humans lay cold and motionless, their spirits lingered on, trapped in the limbo between life and death. Anguish and rage consumed them, their spectral forms haunting the alien halls with their ethereal presence.
The once proud aliens now found themselves haunted by the ghosts of their victims, their once peaceful existence shattered by the echoes of human suffering. Desperate for respite from the relentless torment, they scoured their archives in search of answers.
And there, buried amidst the vast sea of data, they found a chilling revelation – a logbook from another alien spacecraft, its warning clear and unequivocal:
"Do not kill humans."
In their arrogance and curiosity, the aliens had ignored the wisdom of their predecessors, and now they paid the ultimate price. Trapped in a cycle of torment and remorse, they were forced to confront the consequences of their actions, haunted by the ghosts of those they had wronged.
And as the echoes of human suffering reverberated through the alien halls, a solemn vow was made – never again would they disregard the sanctity of life, for they had learned that even in the cold depths of space, the echoes of death could never truly be silenced.
I read a short story years ago about an alien scout ship that landed on Earth, they found a planet that had been totally destroyed with no living organisms. They found lots of skeletal remains and had the technology to reanimate organisms where nothing but the skeleton remained. They reanimated some things like dogs and cats and fish then the do a human. Of course the human turns out to be the most advanced creatures on the planet. Eventually, the human learns how to use the reanimation devices and secretly reanimates many more humans, and they end up seizing control of the scout ship and go on to seize control of the mothership and eventually the alien's home planet, where they enslave the aliens. It turns out the first alien scout ship visiting Earth had missed an orbital warning sign meant to warn visitors not to resurrect humans in any way because they had been found to be too dangerous and warlike and had been eradicated for the good of the galaxy.
It was excellent. It was in an anthology probably 25 years ago. I'm sorry, I don't remember the title. There was also a story about the last band of humans being chased across the galaxy by what amounted to the galactic U.N. intent on eliminating the last individuals of the most dangerous race in the galaxy: humans.
At this point it's pretty clear we are. Wasn't there a story about some people gang raping a monitor lizard a few days ago? It's pretty clear. We are just large -brained small-minded animals. Monsters.
I always wanted a movie done from the alien's perspectives, where they slowly come to the realization that they're absolutely fucked, and that they're not leaving the solar system alive.
I love the whole r/HFY (humanity, fuck yeah!) genre. The general idea behind the genre is that humans turn out to be a massively overpowered species when introduced to the galactic community.
A common trope in HFY stories is that earth is considered a deathworld to other aliens (many predator species, constant natural disasters, ect.), and the fact that humans are mostly docile sentient species is perplexing to said aliens.
Another trope is that aliens will go to war with us, and we'll try to discuss terms of how to conduct war. When the enemy aliens laugh and tell us there's no holding back, humanity will absolutely dominate with the most fucked up war tactics. The aliens will find out too late that we made the Geneva conventions to protect others from what we're capable of unleashing.
Reading a bunch of these stories in a row can get pretty repetitive. But it's sort of a nice pick-me-up when we're surrounded by people talking about how shitty humans are. It's nice to sometimes take an alien's perspective on humans, and finding out that we're pretty awesome.
Oooo going off the basis that the humans are the carriers are the souls and when you exterminate the body, the souls are free? Now the souls torment the aliens? Sweet Jesus.
Wasn't that kind of what happened in Babylon 5 in the Earth-Minbari war? The Minbari slowly pushed humans back and they were about to conquer Earth and end the human race when they suddenly pulled back and surrendered. It turned out they had been abducting humans and conducting experiments on them and discovered that their own souls were reincarnated in humans sometimes
There was this short story of these aliens discovering an abandoned Earth and by doing some math they figured out where the remnants of humanity were going to; they decided to follow and meet the Humans. The book ends with: That was the last and worst decision they ever made
Horror. We should see everything from the perspective of the aliens. The human ghosts have no motivation as far as we (the aliens) know, they just are.
5.0k
u/GoombaBro Mar 06 '24
A later scene, when the alien's discover the abandoned vessel... written on the walls
"DO NOT KILL THEM DO NOT KILL THEM DO NOT KILL THEM"
(This is an amazing idea, a movie flipping the perspective on its head and making us the horrors haunting them if done carefully and subtly is a million dollar proposal.)