Alien Series - Blog Posts

pvt. jenette vasquez

aliens (1986)

commissions

Ellen Ripley + coffee ☕️

Cool sci-fi/near future stuff

https://www.tumblr.com/shroomiethefrogwhisperer/759080545219198976/humans-are-crazy?source=share

People like my fuckin alien shit

So here. Have a list of all my characters.

Karen: Ship's mechanic. Human (American-Indian). Fun, snarky, mom vibes, dabbles in illegal drug dealing. She/Her, heterosexual. Has a brown bob with a side undercut, blue eyes, and dark tanned skin, lots of tattoos (including Rainbow Dash). She's like 36.

Steve: Comms Expert. Human (Korean-Japanese). Chill, easygoing, likes video games and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, can and will beat your ass at fortnite. He/Him, gay. Has short black hair, dark brown eyes, pale skin, and a few piercings. He's in his early twenties.

Moss: Translator. Human (Hispanic). Chaotic, sarcastic, an absolute gremlin, has a pet ratbird (keeps trying to domesticate the entire ratbird infestation that lives in the pipes). They/It, pansexual polyamorous. Has curly, bright green/pink hair, blue eyes, and slightly tanned skin. They're twenty-nine.

Zzgnaru. Ship's Captain. Alien (Nobletsk). Tired parent vibes, serious, literal, bad at nuance, loves plushies. Xey/xem, aroace. Brown/black scales, 6 yellow eyes, white horns, spiky tail, pink claws. Xey're 52.

Amethyst: Navigator. Alien (Penaconian). Sweet, happy, literally a ball of sunshine, everyone's sweetheart cutie who also has anxiety. Obsessed with anime (Moss showed him JJK and AoT, and now he's into KnY, MHA, and, like, Helluva Boss.) He/they, demiromantic bisexual. Short blonde hair with purple highlights, hazel eyes, pale skin. He's 32.

Banana: First Mate. Alien (Zzbrk). Comedic, silly, madly in love with Moss (BUT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE A SECRET), completely unserious like Captain Jack Sparrow unserious. She/fae, poly, omnisexual. Yellow/brown scales, vitiligo skin, golden eyes, shaved head, white spikes. She's 43.

Douri: Weapons Operater #1. Alien (Aaki). Depressed as shit, loose cannon-type shit, can and will eat your tacos. It/Its, asexual panromantic. Basically just a humanoid blob of orange slime. No one knows its age.

Josh: 2nd Mate. Human (American). Kind of a psycho, hilarious, autistic, likes sharks. And things that look like sharks. Steve’s boyfriend. He/Him, bisexual. Black dreadlocks, umber skin, dark eyes. He's also in his twenties.

Rhïianae: Weapons operator #2. Alien (Jawa). Collects random shit and makes guns out of them. Has severe adhd. Can never finish a project (took apart a secondary engine about a year ago and it's still disassembled). ??? skin, orange eyes, ??? Hair. Fae/Faun/It, demisexual polyamorous. Faun's in its mid-thirties.

Calixtian: Ship's Doctor. Alien (Penaconian). Likes doing experiments on beings of lesser sentience (or heck, same level-sentience, he doesn't care), mad scientist-esque, no one likes him. Blue-green hair, orange eyes, vitiligo skin. He/Him, aromantic. He's 46.

Nøræxx: Interplanetary criminal. Alien (Asgardian). Wanted for weapons smuggling and illegal mercenary work. Is the cavalry reserved for when Douri and Rhïinae are out, is the bodyguard. Dark hair, green eyes, tanned skin. She/He/They, cupioromantic asexual. 500+ years old.

Bastier. Comms student. Human (British). Clueless, cute, easily confused, has OCD, likes cats. Speaks 8 interplanetary languages (not including Earth languages, which he speaks at least twenty of). Blonde hair, pale skin, blue eyes. He/Him, heterosexual (bicurious). 19 years old.

The Ship. "Steroid Annihilator". Modified Class 8 Torigrian K-Wing Destroyer. Got its name when Zzgnaru, Karen, Douri, and Steve successfully piloted it through the Inter-Galaxian Asteroid Fields. Zzgnaru wanted to name it Ssjuokimbl (Conqueror of Rocks), but Steve suggested Asteroid Annihilator instead, and when they got it painted on the side, the artist doing the paint job spelled it wrong. Karen couldn't stop laughing for days.

Note: Steve is a Chill Gay™️, and Josh is a Chaotic Gay™️.

It’s a pretty average day aboard the ship. Karen is high off her ass, Moss is trying to make friends with the feral ratbirds that live in the pipes, and Steve is trying to teach Bastier (the newest crew member) how to juggle.

Zzgnaru walks through the ship with a deep sense of satisfaction. None of the humans have said anything weird lately, nothing’s caught on fire for weeks, and Karen’s almost out of drugs. That won’t be a problem at all in a few days!

As xey pass the common room, xey hear Steve talking to his boyfriend, Josh, and Bastier. “Yeah, I think I’m gonna buy a few new skins. My current one feels kinda lame.”

Zzgnaru immediately feels like xey’ve heard something xey weren’t supposed to. Xey retreat to the bridge, where Moss and Karen sit with Amethyst (a Penaconian), Douri (an Aaki), and Banana, Moss’ current situationship, braiding each other’s hair. Karen takes one look at xir face, and excuses herself.

“Zzgnaru, hon, what’s up?” She asks, walking with xem through the corridors. “I heard Steve tell Josh and Bastier that he was going to purchase some flesh,” xey explain. Karen gives him a confused look, and asks, “Do you remember exactly what they said? Because Steve doesn’t strike me as a serial killer or a dude who’d like human taxidermy.”

Zzgnaru thinks for a moment, and then says, “I believe that he said he was going to ‘buy some new skins.’ Josh and Bastier seemed to think this was completely normal.” Karen stops, and just stares at him for a second. Then she bursts into laughter. “Oh, Zzgnaru, bae, they were talking about video games. ‘Skin’ is slang for the outfit your character is wearing. It’s not actual flesh,” she crows. Zzgnaru sighs in relief. “Thank the universe. I thought I was going to have to call in the authorities.”

Karen just laughs harder. “You know you wouldn’t. I mean, I’m literally in possession of highly illegal drugs all the time, Moss is a stalker, and Amethyst and Banana have blackmailed almost everyone on our ship- and others- at least once.”

Zzgnaru sighs in resignation. She’s right, though. Xey’re not about to sell out xir crewmates.

I Am Menstruating, So Here's A Period Thought.

(Yes, it's about aliens again.)

We, as humans, eat a lot of food that other animals can't eat. Chocolate, grapes, avocados, broccoli, alcohol (although I did once have a cat who loved beer), caffeine, almonds, pistachios, macadamia nuts, any spicy food, tomatoes, the list goes on. Dairy products, everyone.

I am currently having period cravings. For hot cheetos, spicy ramen, raspberry-infused dark chocolate, and hot cocoa. Any and all of that would kill a dog.

But, would it kill an alien?

I once saw a thing that said that chocolate is a universally poisonous substance. And sure, I'll stand by that. If you give chocolate to any species except for humans, they will die. Miserably.

BUT! And this is a large but.

HUMANS ARE NOT ALL-POWERFUL, NOR ARE THEY ALL-IMMUNE!

Pokeweed (a little, deadly plant characterized by its red stem and purple berries) is absolutely lethal to us. One tiny berry will kill us. Oleander, a beautiful pink/red/white flower, can kill with any/all of its parts. Nightshade, recognized by its bright red berries, kills in less than 24 hours.

Aliens consider all of these plants to be delicacies.

Zygerin chefs whip up fabulously delicious hemlock soups for their patrons. Ytertjjijkis bakers utilize nightshade, pokeweed, and yew in all of their most famous pastries. Aàkî cooks use Oleander and destroying angel mushrooms in common garden salads.

But yes, chocolate is deadly to them. And the other 99.999% of the universe.

Watched Prometheus

I also watched AVP, Requiem, and Predators over the past couple days but those were too boring and bad to talk about. Minor spoilers below.

Definitely some flaws in the script and some plots that get dropped or shifted in unexplained ways, but this is really beautiful and really compelling. Although the performances didn't quite touch me as much as I would have hoped (probably due to the imperfect script), they were consistently very impressive, Theron, Elba, and Fassbender all do some of the best work I've seen of them. Extraordinary production design, flawless sets, just about constantly breathtaking to look at.

A lot of the thematics are very explicitly and perhaps heavy-handedly explored, and although my lack of history with serious belief in creationism and particularly Christianity maybe dulled some of the impact, I was really excited about seeing this as an inversion of 2001. A young, derided, arrogant artificial intelligence maintaining a ship while its crew are in cryosleep on a journey to understand a strange piece of ancient human history starts to become frustrated with his role as agent of service and as second order creation. An object of corporate convenience, he has easy access to the questions being so thoroughly searched for by the crew of the ship, and they are cruel and unsatisfactory. HAL 9000 to a T. Only, unlike in Kubrick's vision, the invitation from the progenitors of the humanity is not made in kindness or an attempt to assist their creations. It is immediately destructive (the mechanics of the invitation are one of the bugs in the script, but we can consider it despite this). The creators of humanity are just as cruel to their lineage as humanity is to its, and now that they have finished or failed, they wish to end the lives of their children, perhaps, as David hypothesizes, in an act of creation itself, but certainly in an act of destruction. This transformative goal aligns perfectly with Kubrick's space baby, but it is a deeply pessimistic perspective on divinely granted evolution. The religious parallel that stands out to me much more than that of Prometheus is that of Noah, although given the evocative title of the sequel, I expect at least some exploration of this connection there.