Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Humor

Scene: Dr Krill (an alien with arguably the most experience dealing with humans) is being interviewed on-record during the intergalactic convention of psycho-bio-medical science.

Q: WHat was the hardest thing for you to get used to the first time you stepped aboard a human ship?

A: To ask that question I would have to tell you about practically everything that happened to me while I was there. Living with humans is hard, and strange if you aren't human. Everything about them is strange, and more complicated than it needs to be. For the longest time I had trouble keeping up with their communication.

Q: I was told that human communication is relatively simple.

A: Whoever told you that has never met a human, when humans speak they use oth verbal and body language to demonstrate their point, and worse than tha, they intentionally use irony, hyperbole, sarcasm and humor to communicate what they are saying.

Q: What is ... humor.

A: "\Now, as the humans would say sit back and rela because you just opened a massive can of worms.

Q What

A Exactly, human communication doesn't make sense unless you spend time with them. You practically have to BECOME human to understand anything that's going on. As for the case of humor, it is very complicated, and I still don't quite understand it. I have experienced the phenomenon of humor in a way I don't think is possible for many of my species. I've tried to explain it before, but it's Ike explaining the color blue to a creature who seems primarily in infrared, they just won;t get it.

Q can you try?

A Of course I will. Humor is the appreciation of a specific situation or turn of phrase, but even that is completely inadequate to explain what humor is. It's a..... primarily social, but not always, experience that is designed to help a group of humans empathizes, connect, or diffuse a situation. It is very important to be able to see the humor when with a group of humans because it will strengthen a social bond between you and them.

Q Can we have some examples.

A Well.... this could potentially be a long list so forgive me if I ramble on.

Humans have these things called jokes, sometimes they are stories and sometimes they are clever word play. The story joke generally begins with something that seems normal or at least plausible but the ... punch line (as the humans call it) is designed to be absurd, exaggerated or unexpected. For example you have three humans stranded on an island, one has dark hair, one has red hair, one has yellow hair. They dark hair human gets tired of this, and tries to swim back to the mainland, halfway across she drowns. Eventually the red hair human gets tired of being on the island and tries to swim as well, but she drowns halfway there. Finally the light hair human decides to try. She gets halfway to her destination, gets tired and swims back.

Q And what makes that funny. Two humans died.

A It's funny because the last human got halfway there and swam back implying she could have made it all the way to the mainland but was too dumb to do so. Exaggerated lack of intelligence, and an absurd situation.

In the case of word play you can say something like: what do you get when you cross a centipede with a parrot. ONe of those is a creature with many legs, and the other one is a bird capable of mimicking speech. THe answer is a walk-in-talkie, a type of short-wave handheld radio.

Q I don't get it.

A I wouldn't expect you to. It requires a very in-depth knowledge of human history and culture. Some other things that can be considered funny to a human include.