While I am not really a fan of science fiction, I have seen enough to able to recognize certain troupes, and two of them in particular seem really silly. I mean granted it is fiction so anything could happen, but I'm not talking silly "the aliens look like dogs" no I mean silly as in illogical. Basically where the story revolves around stuff happening that makes no sense. Here is what I am talking about. Alien Dissection: Okay so the government captures an alien, first thing they do is kill it and start cutting it up. Seriously assuming it isn't some hostile monster that is trying to kill everything in sight, why would you kill it? I read a manga with a cute pointy eared alien girl a few years ago, and this is the same BS plot they were trying push. First it is illogical because you could learn so much more by interacting with the alien rather than examining it's corpse. Second why would you risk pissing off the alien's friends. What if the alien you kill is the daughter of some alien emperor? What happens then Einstein, well I'll tell you, earth gets vaporizes by pissed off daddy overlord. Human Pet: So aliens are obviously way more technologically advanced than humans, at least in this scenario. Does that mean aliens would view humans as lesser life forms? At first you might think yes, but in really the answer is no. See there is a big problem with this logic, having more advanced tech, does not mean more sentient. An alien treating a human like livestock, or a pet, would be the same as a modern human treating someone from the medieval era as a pet. The only real difference is our education, we both have the same capacity for reasoning and emotion, in other words we're equals. Now of course some do this right and make it where the aliens want to enslave us, which makes a lot more sense. Reading over this I noticed my tone seems a little bit aggressive, the reality is I'm really just joking around, don't take anything I say too seriously. If you want to comment on what I said, or give your own example go ahead, I'm really just looking for some conversation.
Depends on the alien If it has a real chance to escape custody, and there is no real way to keep it imprisoned other than killing it. Often times the point is that the group seeking the alien does not know that it is intelligent or sentient, so they want to catch it before it breeds, infects someone, or kill something. Human pets make perfect sense Consider Fetlife, where you can find men and women who want nothing more than to be locked up in cages and treated like someones pet dog, even to the point of wearing fake tails and ears and eating dinner out of a bowl, while their "owner" brushes their hair
i read something in the above comment. but bruv. you forgot the most important one's 1) the fact that the U.S is always the first place aliens invade. 2) Aliens are too busy killing humans and humans are too busy killing aliens to have pets.
Until today I had never heard of fetlife, and let me just say I was perfectly happy not knowing about it. Actually as far as most fetishes go it doesn't seem that bad, a million times better than the diaper thing at least.
I remember being annoyed by the last arc of the Gantz manga pretty much for that second point. Spoiler the aliens was more or less a slightly more advanced giant version of humans and yet the first reaction they had to humans was treating them either as rats or food, not to mention that actually figuring out a way to communicate wasn't even that hard
Also consider the fact that there is a website promoting the development of domestic ownership of catgirls "that will be at least as intelligent as a 5 year old human toddler to being almost indistinguishable from late teenage girl." I think that definitely covers sentient right there
My issue is with the horror genre. Why don't aliens wear clothes?! I expect at least some form of body protection or environmental suit. They'd be in conflict with a species that's built stuff all over the world! Also, they'd have no idea if the countless bacteria or viruses could wipe them out. Instead they're always naked. Like they've just raised their hands up and said "You know what fuck it. I'm gonna go down to this unknown planet naked!"
Humanity has trouble not hating itself, Or doing weird random things to each other .Or doing weird random things to each other .Why assume that aliens which treat a member not of their own species any better
I think my brains need a little bleach after reading about fetlife. Also, while I agree with your idea about nonsensical tropes, it probably seemed logical back then.
I just assume that most of the monsters are just bio organic substitutes engineer to match human fears and remotely piloted That's awesome enormous majority O plot logistics
Alien Dissection plot make a lot of sense just imagine human are native american and alien are European what happen now, there is always some reason they explore new land(resource, land), and they can travel through space so there is no doubt that they have way better technology than us, why they need to share technology or why they try to negotiate with us anyway(do you negotiate with animal) all they need is kill all of us and take whatever they need and there is 0% we can win (don't talk about bullsh*it in independence day every military tech develop in the concept "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link" their is no way human can exploit their weakness). And if a ship is land on this planet other alien will know(like black box i don't think a race that develop space travel will not go easy on emergency protocol) if they try to kill all of us a little dissect will give us some chance to fight a tiny chance(bioweapon or something). And if they are royalty so something the only different is how fast the end of mankind will come. human pet is ridiculous I agree with you human grow too slow to consider as livestock and human too smart and have no loyalty to consider as pet, if they need labor force machine is way better than human
Aliens dont need clothes. We humans in certain conditions dont need them as well. Its cultural stuff. If civilization is advanced enought they could just change their genome based on planet/enviroment they are visiting to be always safe. Mine biggest problem with aliens is how easily are they killed... They can travel betwen stars, but cant survive bullet to head? Thats as unrealistic as you can get...
Oh, the good ol' times. I miss those days. OMG! There actually is such a website! I've just read their Guide To Proper Cat Girl Care and I want my own domestic cat girl now! No, Ai chan is not anyone's domestic cat girl. But as for aliens vaporizing us because we accidentally killed the daughter of a galactic emperor or something like that, it's not going to happen. You see, we're like the backwater of the galaxy. It's a cesspit of nothing. I mean, if the President of the United States' brother lands on North Sentinel island and gets murdered, eaten and turned into sex toy after his death, will the President of the USA send the US Navy to the Andaman Islands to wipe the Sentinelese out? No, if his brother died there, that's his own fault. You can't blame primitives for a supposedly civilized being's death. They didn't know any better. They look at the small island the same way we look at our planet. To them, there's always been only them. As for the pet thing, I don't look at it quite in such a literal sense, though I have read Erenisch and it totally turned me on. For modern example, let's look at dogs. They are just as smart as we are, in some cases, even smarter than we are, yet we treat them as pets, because they can't speak our language. Now imagine if they can speak our language and can tell us what they really think about us, will we be able to see them as pets anymore? As a real live example, the British Empire once treated the Malays as pets. They mollycuddled us, fed us and taught us to see them as our masters. For over a century, they domesticated us until it took the Japanese Invasion of 1942 for the Malays to realize that we weren't pets, we deserve to be free.
About the dissection thing, I think that happens because of scientific curiosty; to understand better how things work, scientists tend to dissect things - for example, imagine that a new animal is discovered, one that can breath fire. If that animal is alive and kicking, especially, if that animal is unique (there isn't anther one) as is tamed (it won't kill humans), then that animal will be allowed to live. But, if that animal is a predator that hunts and kill humans, then it will be put down - that's what happens in most cases. Now, as long that animal isn't a magical one (it has supernatural powers that has no logic and can't be explained by using science) the scientist will try to identify the organ and find out what chemical reactions are needed to reproduce that certain phenomen/act: breathing fire.
... Making a lot of assumption here. And while I assume that's the point, you've made assumptions in making that point that really don't make sense. For example, a lot of science fiction focuses around aliens that are of a similar type to humans, essentially middle tier pack hunters with intelligence. But if you look at life, there are a lot more species which possess extremely different roles in the environment such as herd animals, solo predators (or even apex pack predators), parasitic types, hive mind types, and so on. Each will have a drastically different mentality, yet not one that we 'cannot understand' (which is the worst cliche of them all). Let say we look at the morality of a herd species. One major difference is that herd species are evolved to abandon the weakest members to predators in order to survive. Pack hunters (i.e. Humans) tend to protect the weaker members until they get better. So a herd species would be much more willing to sacrifice individuals for the greater good, almost to an extreme that could be called irrational. They would see no value in an individual and thus would destroy individuals freely. Hive minds do something similar... If you read more of the Ender's game series by Orson Scott Card, in the early novels he explains how a hive mind species killed humans because they had such a different morality and viewed those killed as drones, rather than individuals. In both cases, dissection of individuals would be not only accepted, but endorsed because individuals are thought to have no value. Essentially, the mistake you've made is what is 'logical' for one type should be logical for all; that is not that case. For humans it seems logical that we should value freedom and individual achievements, as well as the ability to work in a group with others. Aliens may or may not have similar logical truths, because they view either the individual as unimportant or the group as meaningless. Further, there very well could be species as advanced over us as we are over ants. The only reason intelligence is supposedly equal across all humans is because of foolish egalitarian nonsense. Any practical study tells you it's not. And if those differences have been used by humans to keep others as pets or lesser beings/slaves, there's no reason at all why an even more superior being would not treat humans exactly the same way, especially if they have a drastically different moral compass.
I don't think that intelligence is seen as being equal, but more like the rights are made to be equal to all people.
Saw it after you've pointed it out. I understand that you're talking about intelligence, but, I've tried to point out that that isn't based or isn't only based on intelligence. There are more things that can be brought into discussion and not all people/countries talk by using the same measures, for example, take a look at the death penalty and the pro and cons that are generally used to justify/unjustify it.
The human pet is not that far fetched, we just have to look at slavery. I'm more annoyed with death by disease, if dogs don't die from human illnesses, how am I suppose to believe that an alien will die from one.