impractical-insanity-guide:

injuries-in-dust:

So I learned two cool things about humans: 
Humans have stripes!
Human skin is overlaid with what dermatologists call Blaschko’s Lines, a pattern of stripes covering the body from head to toe. The stripes run up and down your arms and legs and hug your torso. You cannot see them without special equipment as the difference between the stripe cells and the non-stripes are too subtle for human eyes to pick up. You will also notice them at if something irritates the skin, as rashes and moles can form along these invisible lines.

Humans are bio-luminescent!
We glow in the dark. Natural chemical reactions in our cells let out some energy in the form of visible light. Unfortunately this light is very weak, about 1000 times weaker than the eye can see. Scientists still don’t know if there are animals capable of seeing this light in humans. 

So, it gave me an idea, and I will be writing something on it, but I’m also eager to see where others would go with the idea: what if humans met a race that could see our stripes, or our glow, or both! 
My take on the idea will involve the aliens adoring these glowing stripy creatures. Humans, meanwhile, are really confused about why these aliens find us so much more attractive than the more colourful creatures out there. Their compliments would confuse us. We literally cannot see what makes us beautiful to them. 

Anyone who wants to write this, feel free to go other places; love, hate, disgust, confusion. Any reaction from the humans, or aliens, can make a good story. 

Melissa was supposed to be known as a researcher and diplomat on every starbase she visited. Instead, she was known only as “Human Muffin”. It was all because of Korf, not that it was really the little guy’s fault he couldn’t pronounce her name. A surprising number of aliens species had trouble with human names.

Korf was often the only reason Human Muffin put down her e-reader and interacted with the rest of the crew. He had a habit of greeting her by leaping onto her, wrapping his tentacles around her, and playing with her hair. Life on a spaceship with a small child was never boring… especially when said spaceship was prone to glitches.

The one glitch Human Muffin would never forget was the time the lights when out.

Human Muffin was terrified. Not because of the all-consuming darkness that prevented her from seeing her hand even if she touched her nose, but because her captain’s young child was currently attached to her back.

“Okay, hold tight, Korf,” Human Muffin instructed, slowly feeling her way down the hall.

“You’re funny!” Korf giggled. “It’s like you can’t see!”

“…Can you see?”

“Yeah, ‘specially with you glowing.”

“I don’t glow, Korf.”

“Yeah you do, ‘specially your stripes.”

“Korf, I don’t have stripes.”

“Yeah you do.”

“If you say so,” Human Muffin sighed, “Korf, you want to be a navigator like your dad, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think you can tell me where to go please? So we don’t bump into anything.”

“Yeah! Okay turn left!”

Later that night, after the lights had been repaired and Korf was in bed, Human Muffin sat around playing cards with a few other officers.

“Korf said something funny today,” Human Muffin mentioned casually.

“Oh?” Captain Urfuf encouraged.

“Mm, he said I have glowing stripes.”

“Your stripes do bioluminesce brighter than the rest of you.”

“Wait, what? I don’t glow, and I don’t have stripes!”

“Korf did say you seemed visually impaired when the lights went off, are your eyes perhaps too weak to perceive your stripes?”

“My… what?”

“Oh yeah, that’s a thing,” Human Joe the science officer chimed in, “we actually are stripey and glowy, we just can’t see it.”

“This is so weird,” Human Muffin sighed.