dyedviolet:

I have become pretty obsessed with Humans are Space Orcs/Space Australia posts, and here’s what popped out of my brain:
Disobedience.
Humans can be told “Under no circumstances are you allowed to do this”, be threatened with punishment, and STILL DO THE THING! We have a specific phrase for when something we wanted to do has negative consequences: “Worth it”
Even more, it’s EXPECTED that children will be disobedient. “Rebellious phase” and all that. Parents will tell their kids “Don’t run on the sidewalk you’ll fall and scrape your knee” and the kids RUN ANYWAY. And they fall and scrape their knee. And then THEY DO IT AGAIN THE NEXT DAY.
Sometimes being told not to do something makes us WANT TO DO IT MORE! (Same vein as morbid curiosity, i.e. ‘That’s a bad thing which makes it more exciting’)

Now imagine the aliens trying to deal with it:
“Human Clara, I can see you are looking at that rocky cliff. Do not climb it, it is very perilous”
“Well, I was just thinking about it, but now…”
“Thank you for seeing reason Human Clara… Human Clara? Human Clara get down from there!”
“Haha, nope!”
*falls*
“… Worth it.”
“Human Clara there was no gain from this it was not ‘worth it’”