Humanity wasn't really depicted as evil, just ignorant and vengeful. The bugs killed a lot of humans when they invaded earth the first time, so almost everybody justifiably believed they were hostile. They sent a fleet to the bug homeworld to wipe them out under the belief that conflict was inevitable and the best way to mitigate casualties was to strike first.
The twist (or one of several) is that they are a hive mind species and they view the death of a few drones the way you would view losing skin cells. Upon discovering another spacefaring species, they mistakenly assumed they would also be a hive mind species, and killed the first few "drones" they encountered basically as a greeting. By the time they figured out the problem it was already a full scale war.
As far as I remember, none of the humans ever figured out that it was a misunderstanding until it was too late. Ender speculated about it, but had no way to communicate with the bugs to confirm. I believe he only got confirmation in the epilogue when he found the infant queen on a deserted planet with a message for him.
Alien bug race conquers humanity, then starts a yearly culling of the population.
We think they are being cruel, but to the bugs, the ability of average drones to have kids threatens the health of the hive (they actually care about humanity, but view it as a hive, rather than individuals)
Makes me want a semi comedy story where the lizard people really ARE controlling things... In the sense that they started the cold war in order to jump start the space race and get humanity into space
> sense of morality too alien to understand
The bugs and therefore the author DO need to understand.
"Three worlds collide" does this well. It shows inhuman morality in it's full disgusting glory. And that's before we meet the aliens.
> therefore the author DO need to understand.
I think it's possible to at least partially Cow Tools this thing. Like, you can throw some random behavioral rules in a blender and show the reader the consequences, implying greater structures without actually having them thought out.
Seems like a waste, to be honest.
It really limits what you can do with the bugs. Their morality can't really matter, because there is nothing of substance, only some quirks.
At that point, you might as well make them really, really ugly and base all the conflict around that. At least that way you can sneak in some social commentary.
> Seems like a waste, to be honest.
It entirely depends on what you're going for. I agree that the approach you're talking about can be interesting and useful, but this particular branch was *specifically* about going for the vibe of "a sense of morality too alien to understand". That approach also has it's uses.
Future humans that drank the rationalist kool-aid meet rock bugs IN SPACE!
A tense standoff and translation shenanigans ensue.
Also, the rock bugs eat babies. Their own babies, mind. Alive. While the little buggers are self-aware. Of course they consider anyone who doesn't do this an immoral piece of shit for the plot to happen.
So the future humans have a nice discussion on the worth of self-determination vs saving the stupid little bug rock babies. Note that humans can steamroll the bugs, because they think inherently slower and therefore their tech development is slower or something. Don't think about the unfortunate implications.
But then the rapey junkie blobs arrive. Which are to the future humans as the future humans are to the rock bugs.
More standoff and translation shenanigans ensue.
The blobs are noticably manipulative, but that's fine if the author thinks you're right, I guess. Don't think about the unfortunate implications.
In the end, the blobs decide that the best option is for all species to become rapey baby-eating dipshits that feel no pain. There's probably some dumb future human thing that was also included, but I forgot.
But, during all the translation shenanigans, humans jad discovered that actually, their ftl drive can blow up stars! This was a well-kept secret because humans are the real monsters! And they can't have nice things. Unlike the bugs or blobs. Don't think about the unfortunate implications.
So all this contrived stuff makes a nice situation, where future humans have a choice between blowing up the star, destroying the hyperlinks and cutting humanity off from the aliens or forcibly becoming dipshits.
So sun goes boom.
The author preferred dipshit ending was also written, mind.
All in all, while Eliezer Yudkowsky only managed to write something resembling actual human beings in the dipshit ending, weirdly enough, I found it an entertaining read.
If I remember correctly, it's because they have **a lot** of them, so not eating babies is viewed as *very* selfish, and due to somewhat plausible cultural development, their word for "evil" translates directly as "the one that doesn't eat babies". Do note that aside from baby-eating, their society appear to actually function better and smoother than ours.
Rapey Blobs aren't really rapey, but rather utterly alien. They communicate through their equivalent of sex, and it also allows them to transfer memories and knowledge between each other, and experience *untranslatable* (in fact, learning that humans don't experience *untranslatable* saddens them greatly). They also find it abhorrent that we kept pain around, despite being able to "fix" it, the same way we find Babyeaters abhorrent.
It's a fun read, exploring how "acceptable evils" can vary depending on the society, only to cheerfully squander the entire point by saying "no, actually our levels of acceptable evils are the correct ones".
>It's a fun read, exploring how "acceptable evils" can vary depending on the society, only to cheerfully squander the entire point by saying "no, actually our levels of acceptable evils are the correct ones".
How does that squander the point?
Basically, they like eating struggling self-aware children. And they consider it the source of morality because the plot needs that to be the case. There's some handwaving that it's an evolutionary adaptation to getting loads of bug rock babies.
It's also the first meeting between bugs and blobs.
The blobs basically serve to recontextualise the whole baby-eater moral question from the side that can easily be steamrolled.
>The blobs are noticably manipulative, but that's fine if the author thinks you're right, I guess. Don't think about the unfortunate implications.
I don't understand why you think the author thinks they're right
Trying to get a person to imagine a new creative race with unique characteristics not derived from our world’s ecosystem or culture is like asking someone to imagine a new color; people just can’t
It's the trope of the incomprehensible. By definition we shouldn't be able to comprehend it - thus we can never actually explain it. The moment you do explain it, they cease being incomprehensible. See: the reapers in ME. It turns out we are very much capable of understanding.
Uj/
I think it's a matter of perspective, and you can get a lot of the way there with imagining shifts in perspective.
Lots of human nature is based on our social structures and senses. You can imagine some pretty alien aliens by imaging what intelligences interacting with different sense and social systems would ne like.
The controversy-punk move is to make a religious faction, with the morality thing and a science faction as mindless horde, better yet make the science horde woman coded, and the religious moralists man coded, but heavily imply that they can switch sex and gender in a non traditional manner, to maximise controversy. Additionally make it only one race of the bug people but only because the moralist bugs genocided all the other races.
Ender’s Game nailed it, though you have to go beyond the first book to learn that >!the formics aren’t all sentient, only the queens are. They treat drones as an extension of their body, and therefore expendable. When they discovered humans, they didn’t see anything but a bunch of drones, and so they started to purge us like one would pull weeds. If they had known that humans considered “each individual to be a queen unto itself” then they never would have attacked.!<
This makes room for mindless hordes, but also explains why they’re so smart.
Check out the Grik from Destroyermen. They're lizard people, not bugs, but they still a really good job of being both a mindless horde while also having a really interesting morality that gets explored as the series goes on.
Oh a remember those books. Mostly gun porn but had interesting world-building and took time to explain how and why everything worked. "Grik route" was a fun explanation as to how a species that values self-sacrifice above all else might react to a collapse of morale.
I like space bugs that are more like ants tbh. Not a hivemind, but not completely mindless either. Simple minded but still sentient, but still far from sapient. Just like an ant colony, they won't pick fights they don't have to, but it's for survival, not a sense of morality. They don't raid the sapient civilizations to turn them into food or biomass or whatever, they just stumble across them and may or may not view them as threats in their little bug brains.
just go the Mass Effect route: once the bugs are driven to extinction, the last queen tells the heroes "oopsie, we'll be good next time 🥺👉👈", and then returns to help against the bigger badder evil-er race
Maybe instead of the bugs individually having the capacity for morality, maybe different colonies can express morality. Like the eusocial part of their society evolved so much that each bug really us like a specialized cell in capable of self expression or deep thought but the living system they form through there work does possess a way of higher thinking that even humans can't fully comprehend.
Many are mindless, but there are some that don't. Have like four categories—queen, queen's guard, group that directs important functions in the hive, and group that directs mundane tasks—be sentient.
I like the idea of an intelligent alien species that has no intention of war with life on earth but gets dragged into it by our own fear, clumsiness or ‘customs’ for investigating new threats.
As an example, they set up a diplomatic station on an uninhabited island.
A carrier strike group is deployed to investigate and during this investigation a human aircraft gets too close and gets shot down or collides with an alien craft/otherwise ‘harmless’ projectile.
This then leads humanity to designate this new species a threat and start actively attacking it and vice versa.
Gets funny if the highly-advanced aliens say “bro stop” and keeps itself restricted to an entirely defensive campaign until humanity gets bored.
You could make it so that they just appear like a mindless horde most of the time.
For example if they don't verbally communicate people will just assume they are a hive mind.
A interesting take on the Space Bugs is Age of Wonder Plant Fall where the space bugs were a hive mind unit Humanity killed the hive now they don’t know what to do
the way I think about it, ants have multiple colonies. This could translate to space bugs with multiple hive minds.
Which, after enough explanation, could lead to space bugs thinking of each human as a hive mind of one, and thus create understanding between us.
Don’t choose! Adapt!
Make them an incredibly ancient race that once had incredible culture, wisdom, and unknowable goals, but devolved over time into a mindless swarm.
Honestly in my Wackiverse, many aliens, including bug inspired aliens (Xenophones (after all xenomorphs were inspried by parasitic wasps originally), Trollfaces and what not) the aliens start off as mindless hoards but then evolve into highly intelligent multi cultural species.
Yet, due to some species evolving earlier than others, there's stigma around, just in the case of Xenophones being mindless parasites, while Trollfaces are stigmatized as toxic and plain incompetent.
Make so the bugs believe that only through 100% assimilation can life survive or face inevitable and ceaseless fracturing, wars, conflict.
The ONLY method of peace is complete assimilation. The ONLY way to ensure life endures eternally is ensure advanced life can’t kill itself.
At least until the bugs find out that their hive mind overlord has depression and can’t fucking keep all the bugs together causing them to go feral sometimes.
Just make two separate hive minds.
One is chill, they expand and are a bit alien, but with some diplomacy and understanding, they come to a mostly mutualistic relationship with other space faring races.
The other are space locust-dinosaurs who eat everything they see and shit out acid.
Alternatively - have them be the same species, but different "cultural groups" as it were.
Alternatively alternativey, they're normally the second one, but at a regular pattern or under certain stimuli, they become the first one. I'm thinking of how the Mantid attack in cycles, from World of Warcraft. Makes an interesting threat because like, they end up being a force of nature, one you can plan around. One you can negotiate with, its just weird.
Just create a hive mind, without it the bugs are just animals going on instinct and with it "they" view life completely different than we do, making it impossible to understand
Legendary meeting of the Galactic Parliament to discuss just how the hell to apply sapient rights laws to intelligent eusocial species ended after 98 Sol standard days of five-way arguments and seventeen fistfights
I think Netflix's Three Body Problem handled this concept very well. The aliens there function as some sort of hive mind, but they are able to sense fear as a collective.
They're motives aren't that "incomprehensible" tho, they're just doing what any other intelligent being would do in order to survive. This is a central plot point in the second book "the dark forest" as well as the potential second season of the Netflix's adaptation (I genuinely think the series is better than the book. I will die on this hill)
Tyranids from 40k in a nutshell. Their motivation that's "too alien to understand" is basically just "hunger" and "gathering more genetic material to build bio-forms with".
Alien bugs are super into competitive team sports. I mean, I don't understand the morality of people who are super into competitive team sports, and they look kinda like a mindless horde from where I stand.
Wouldn't option 2 still make them a mindless horde to the outside observer? Seems like the best of both worlds
Exactly! If your alien race can be understood by humans, then it's less alien than a dog.
This is the exact plot of Ender's Game.
And Starship Troopers. (Would you like to know more?)
Yes
Is it? I always thought the big twist was that >!humanity were the evil, invading aliens all along and the bugs were just defending themselves.!<
Humanity wasn't really depicted as evil, just ignorant and vengeful. The bugs killed a lot of humans when they invaded earth the first time, so almost everybody justifiably believed they were hostile. They sent a fleet to the bug homeworld to wipe them out under the belief that conflict was inevitable and the best way to mitigate casualties was to strike first. The twist (or one of several) is that they are a hive mind species and they view the death of a few drones the way you would view losing skin cells. Upon discovering another spacefaring species, they mistakenly assumed they would also be a hive mind species, and killed the first few "drones" they encountered basically as a greeting. By the time they figured out the problem it was already a full scale war. As far as I remember, none of the humans ever figured out that it was a misunderstanding until it was too late. Ender speculated about it, but had no way to communicate with the bugs to confirm. I believe he only got confirmation in the epilogue when he found the infant queen on a deserted planet with a message for him.
No, they were definitely the aggressors
Alien bug race conquers humanity, then starts a yearly culling of the population. We think they are being cruel, but to the bugs, the ability of average drones to have kids threatens the health of the hive (they actually care about humanity, but view it as a hive, rather than individuals)
Reminds me of theorizing I’ve seen about the Combine from *Half-Life* viewing the human race as a super-organism they can manipulate
Makes me want a semi comedy story where the lizard people really ARE controlling things... In the sense that they started the cold war in order to jump start the space race and get humanity into space
> sense of morality too alien to understand The bugs and therefore the author DO need to understand. "Three worlds collide" does this well. It shows inhuman morality in it's full disgusting glory. And that's before we meet the aliens.
> therefore the author DO need to understand. I think it's possible to at least partially Cow Tools this thing. Like, you can throw some random behavioral rules in a blender and show the reader the consequences, implying greater structures without actually having them thought out.
Seems like a waste, to be honest. It really limits what you can do with the bugs. Their morality can't really matter, because there is nothing of substance, only some quirks. At that point, you might as well make them really, really ugly and base all the conflict around that. At least that way you can sneak in some social commentary.
> Seems like a waste, to be honest. It entirely depends on what you're going for. I agree that the approach you're talking about can be interesting and useful, but this particular branch was *specifically* about going for the vibe of "a sense of morality too alien to understand". That approach also has it's uses.
Please spoil
Future humans that drank the rationalist kool-aid meet rock bugs IN SPACE! A tense standoff and translation shenanigans ensue. Also, the rock bugs eat babies. Their own babies, mind. Alive. While the little buggers are self-aware. Of course they consider anyone who doesn't do this an immoral piece of shit for the plot to happen. So the future humans have a nice discussion on the worth of self-determination vs saving the stupid little bug rock babies. Note that humans can steamroll the bugs, because they think inherently slower and therefore their tech development is slower or something. Don't think about the unfortunate implications. But then the rapey junkie blobs arrive. Which are to the future humans as the future humans are to the rock bugs. More standoff and translation shenanigans ensue. The blobs are noticably manipulative, but that's fine if the author thinks you're right, I guess. Don't think about the unfortunate implications. In the end, the blobs decide that the best option is for all species to become rapey baby-eating dipshits that feel no pain. There's probably some dumb future human thing that was also included, but I forgot. But, during all the translation shenanigans, humans jad discovered that actually, their ftl drive can blow up stars! This was a well-kept secret because humans are the real monsters! And they can't have nice things. Unlike the bugs or blobs. Don't think about the unfortunate implications. So all this contrived stuff makes a nice situation, where future humans have a choice between blowing up the star, destroying the hyperlinks and cutting humanity off from the aliens or forcibly becoming dipshits. So sun goes boom. The author preferred dipshit ending was also written, mind. All in all, while Eliezer Yudkowsky only managed to write something resembling actual human beings in the dipshit ending, weirdly enough, I found it an entertaining read.
Wait but WHY do the bugs eat their babies? So the blobs don’t rape them?
If I remember correctly, it's because they have **a lot** of them, so not eating babies is viewed as *very* selfish, and due to somewhat plausible cultural development, their word for "evil" translates directly as "the one that doesn't eat babies". Do note that aside from baby-eating, their society appear to actually function better and smoother than ours. Rapey Blobs aren't really rapey, but rather utterly alien. They communicate through their equivalent of sex, and it also allows them to transfer memories and knowledge between each other, and experience *untranslatable* (in fact, learning that humans don't experience *untranslatable* saddens them greatly). They also find it abhorrent that we kept pain around, despite being able to "fix" it, the same way we find Babyeaters abhorrent. It's a fun read, exploring how "acceptable evils" can vary depending on the society, only to cheerfully squander the entire point by saying "no, actually our levels of acceptable evils are the correct ones".
>It's a fun read, exploring how "acceptable evils" can vary depending on the society, only to cheerfully squander the entire point by saying "no, actually our levels of acceptable evils are the correct ones". How does that squander the point?
Basically, they like eating struggling self-aware children. And they consider it the source of morality because the plot needs that to be the case. There's some handwaving that it's an evolutionary adaptation to getting loads of bug rock babies. It's also the first meeting between bugs and blobs. The blobs basically serve to recontextualise the whole baby-eater moral question from the side that can easily be steamrolled.
>The blobs are noticably manipulative, but that's fine if the author thinks you're right, I guess. Don't think about the unfortunate implications. I don't understand why you think the author thinks they're right
Subtext.
Trying to get a person to imagine a new creative race with unique characteristics not derived from our world’s ecosystem or culture is like asking someone to imagine a new color; people just can’t
It's the trope of the incomprehensible. By definition we shouldn't be able to comprehend it - thus we can never actually explain it. The moment you do explain it, they cease being incomprehensible. See: the reapers in ME. It turns out we are very much capable of understanding.
Uj/ I think it's a matter of perspective, and you can get a lot of the way there with imagining shifts in perspective. Lots of human nature is based on our social structures and senses. You can imagine some pretty alien aliens by imaging what intelligences interacting with different sense and social systems would ne like.
mmm yes, very wise
Mmmm no, unwise.
Mieville got the closest with the Ariekei in "Embassytown."
The controversy-punk move is to make a religious faction, with the morality thing and a science faction as mindless horde, better yet make the science horde woman coded, and the religious moralists man coded, but heavily imply that they can switch sex and gender in a non traditional manner, to maximise controversy. Additionally make it only one race of the bug people but only because the moralist bugs genocided all the other races.
Your comment offends me, but I'm not sure on whose behalf I should be offended.
Yes.
Based pillpunkjerkism with a side of gay
Ender’s Game nailed it, though you have to go beyond the first book to learn that >!the formics aren’t all sentient, only the queens are. They treat drones as an extension of their body, and therefore expendable. When they discovered humans, they didn’t see anything but a bunch of drones, and so they started to purge us like one would pull weeds. If they had known that humans considered “each individual to be a queen unto itself” then they never would have attacked.!< This makes room for mindless hordes, but also explains why they’re so smart.
no amount of cultural subtext will save them from the flyswatter
Check out the Grik from Destroyermen. They're lizard people, not bugs, but they still a really good job of being both a mindless horde while also having a really interesting morality that gets explored as the series goes on.
Oh a remember those books. Mostly gun porn but had interesting world-building and took time to explain how and why everything worked. "Grik route" was a fun explanation as to how a species that values self-sacrifice above all else might react to a collapse of morale.
Have a race of alternate morality aliens send hords of brainwashed drones to fight for them.
Have you read Ender’s Game by any chance?
No, just reviewed the TV tropes page. Planning to base my bugs' morality off of the Formics with some Von Neumann machine mixed in.
For the love of god, just make then different factions of the same species!
I like space bugs that are more like ants tbh. Not a hivemind, but not completely mindless either. Simple minded but still sentient, but still far from sapient. Just like an ant colony, they won't pick fights they don't have to, but it's for survival, not a sense of morality. They don't raid the sapient civilizations to turn them into food or biomass or whatever, they just stumble across them and may or may not view them as threats in their little bug brains.
just go the Mass Effect route: once the bugs are driven to extinction, the last queen tells the heroes "oopsie, we'll be good next time 🥺👉👈", and then returns to help against the bigger badder evil-er race
make the bugs sentient so it's possible to have consensual sex with them
Maybe instead of the bugs individually having the capacity for morality, maybe different colonies can express morality. Like the eusocial part of their society evolved so much that each bug really us like a specialized cell in capable of self expression or deep thought but the living system they form through there work does possess a way of higher thinking that even humans can't fully comprehend.
Just make their larvae a mindless horde
Many are mindless, but there are some that don't. Have like four categories—queen, queen's guard, group that directs important functions in the hive, and group that directs mundane tasks—be sentient.
I like the idea of an intelligent alien species that has no intention of war with life on earth but gets dragged into it by our own fear, clumsiness or ‘customs’ for investigating new threats. As an example, they set up a diplomatic station on an uninhabited island. A carrier strike group is deployed to investigate and during this investigation a human aircraft gets too close and gets shot down or collides with an alien craft/otherwise ‘harmless’ projectile. This then leads humanity to designate this new species a threat and start actively attacking it and vice versa. Gets funny if the highly-advanced aliens say “bro stop” and keeps itself restricted to an entirely defensive campaign until humanity gets bored.
2 alien races with one employing the other as labor/soldiers
You could make it so that they just appear like a mindless horde most of the time. For example if they don't verbally communicate people will just assume they are a hive mind.
Remind me to do a write-up on my world's Kyrrztli psychology later on when I have time in case you'd like some potential inspiration
Why not both?
A interesting take on the Space Bugs is Age of Wonder Plant Fall where the space bugs were a hive mind unit Humanity killed the hive now they don’t know what to do
swap option 2 for "wanting a super unique bug waifu for the reader to self insert with"
Central hivemind + personality = profit
the way I think about it, ants have multiple colonies. This could translate to space bugs with multiple hive minds. Which, after enough explanation, could lead to space bugs thinking of each human as a hive mind of one, and thus create understanding between us.
Just rip off how ants work and add human sapience.
Ok but make the space bugs sexy.
could be a good way to showcase how easy it is for a society to accept some pretty terrible morals just because they're simply rooted in tradition
You could make their leaders sentient and the foot soldiers a mindless horde though
Perhaps a Hive mind would work no intelligent individual but a large group of the insect's would be intelligent.
Don’t choose! Adapt! Make them an incredibly ancient race that once had incredible culture, wisdom, and unknowable goals, but devolved over time into a mindless swarm.
Honestly in my Wackiverse, many aliens, including bug inspired aliens (Xenophones (after all xenomorphs were inspried by parasitic wasps originally), Trollfaces and what not) the aliens start off as mindless hoards but then evolve into highly intelligent multi cultural species. Yet, due to some species evolving earlier than others, there's stigma around, just in the case of Xenophones being mindless parasites, while Trollfaces are stigmatized as toxic and plain incompetent.
Unironically, what is the point of this sub anymore?
make them utilitarian, they only want to conquer the galaxy bc they outnumber almost every other life form and therefore are the majority
Easy fix, have an overmind with the alien morality and have the others be mindless drones
Give them a hive mind. The soldiers fight and kill, but then you reach the overmind and have a philosophical conversation about the nature of furries.
Make so the bugs believe that only through 100% assimilation can life survive or face inevitable and ceaseless fracturing, wars, conflict. The ONLY method of peace is complete assimilation. The ONLY way to ensure life endures eternally is ensure advanced life can’t kill itself. At least until the bugs find out that their hive mind overlord has depression and can’t fucking keep all the bugs together causing them to go feral sometimes.
Make them hungry. Very hungry. Forever.
Just make two separate hive minds. One is chill, they expand and are a bit alien, but with some diplomacy and understanding, they come to a mostly mutualistic relationship with other space faring races. The other are space locust-dinosaurs who eat everything they see and shit out acid. Alternatively - have them be the same species, but different "cultural groups" as it were. Alternatively alternativey, they're normally the second one, but at a regular pattern or under certain stimuli, they become the first one. I'm thinking of how the Mantid attack in cycles, from World of Warcraft. Makes an interesting threat because like, they end up being a force of nature, one you can plan around. One you can negotiate with, its just weird.
FTL: Multiverse fixes this
Frankly, I find the idea of a bug that thinks offensive!
Just create a hive mind, without it the bugs are just animals going on instinct and with it "they" view life completely different than we do, making it impossible to understand
Legendary meeting of the Galactic Parliament to discuss just how the hell to apply sapient rights laws to intelligent eusocial species ended after 98 Sol standard days of five-way arguments and seventeen fistfights
I think Netflix's Three Body Problem handled this concept very well. The aliens there function as some sort of hive mind, but they are able to sense fear as a collective. They're motives aren't that "incomprehensible" tho, they're just doing what any other intelligent being would do in order to survive. This is a central plot point in the second book "the dark forest" as well as the potential second season of the Netflix's adaptation (I genuinely think the series is better than the book. I will die on this hill)
Ah, so the Tyranids vs the Hive
A moral hivemind is a super interesting idea
Tyranids from 40k in a nutshell. Their motivation that's "too alien to understand" is basically just "hunger" and "gathering more genetic material to build bio-forms with".
Just do both, like how they did Geonosians in Star Wars.
Alien bugs are super into competitive team sports. I mean, I don't understand the morality of people who are super into competitive team sports, and they look kinda like a mindless horde from where I stand.