Day: October 4, 2015

roachpatrol:

manyblinkinglights:

glimmerbulb:

manyblinkinglights:

curlicuecal:

roachpatrol:

manyblinkinglights:

id wreak mayhem for a really good scifi where sight was considered as exotic and numinous as telepathy by the protag species

#everybody else uses sonar or long whiskers and that thing with the sensing electrical impulses#meanwhile: humans can ‘see’ which is a thing which is like and yet unlike ordinary perception#it would also only ever come into play in the same frivolous ‘VULCAN STRENGTH’ sort of way as Spock’s extra attributes#for maximum effect vision would be faithfully written as 100% an asspull in the best way

what the fuck dude this is awesome i want this too now

Okay, but what about those deep sea fish that produce light at a wavelength that *only they can see.* Predators that can somehow sense you in a completely undectable and unfathomable manner to you; they might as well be psychic.

YES, EXACTLY–vision is SUCH an asspull?? Sometimes it’s “"dark”“ and we can’t see anything. And also we’re impaired for plot reasons! Sometimes ALIEN WEAPONRY or otherwise-innocuous ship components are ”“too bright”“ and we yell and try to hide, subject to some sort of obscure, tortuous imperative. The rest of the time we can UNERRINGLY tell when anyone is trying to play pranks on us, the names and emotional/physical status of EVERY SINGLE BEING IN THE ROOM (or, when outside civilized warrens, ”“line of sight”“)–and yes, of course, can’t forget about our nigh-mythical fighting arts revolving around insane dodging skills.

And SNIPING. And also, god, fuck–don’t forget about completely arbitrary “”””atmospheric disturbances””” (fog, smoke–the new “ionic interference”) ALSO plottasatically rendering our abilities moot.

Plus, some people have more powerful Vision than others, but some people have a very short effective range of Vision. However, humans have come up with devices that “change the angles of refraction” of the “light” so that the naturally impaired have their skills enhanced–but they can always be knocked off their faces or be broken.

Also some people are terrible at normal Vision work, but have excellent night vision and are skilled at working under adverse conditions.

Oooh, and human art is almost entirely Vision based. Think about non-seeing aliens trying to access the majority of human art!

IM!!! SCREAMING!!! GLASSES. Glasses are SUCH another great Weird Alien Gimmick. God–you get all used to your Human friend and their bizarre abilities, you just start to really trust in and rely on them in tight places and problem-solving a little bit, then you get fucken marooned on a fucken planetoid somewhere and they just in this very small little voice, after you have pulled them from the wreckage and sat down to go over your options, inform you that they’ve lost their glasses.

Oh my god and an episode where we’re up against Evil Humans and our heros turn to their humans like ‘you can see them, right, you can tell when they’re near? you can counter them?’ and our hero is genuinely shaken and worried— they’ve got high-tech military mechanical enhancers, the devices strapped to their heads let them see anywhere, they can operate in near-absolute ‘darkness’, they can operate in near-lethal ‘brightness’, they can see through walls— not doors, not glass, but walls. 

Then we have a heroic scene where the crew’s human is the scrappy, desperate underdog for once instead of the cool and collected superbeing. It is super cool. The human and the captain probably mack wildly on one another in medbay after this. Roll credits.