ALIEN ECOSYSTEMS - Terrible Writing Advice

You forgot the most important part: All animals in an alien planet should be the exact equivalent of an Earth animals. There must be space horses, space birds, space bugs (But giant), space dogs, space crocodiles-lions and space Dinos

Convergent evolution means it will look more like what we know

To be fair it could be entirely possible that convergent evolution is a thing, given there are limited chemical alternatives that could work as well as the basic building blocks of life, and some of the alternatives like ammonia instead of water would just make a species incredibly rare, given the limited places it could occur in a stable ecosystem. Sure if your going might as well be space fantasy you can go ham, but if your trying to be scifi not so much room for ridiculous divergence, where this creature defies logic of how it functions.

gave me a good idea

your advice is so terrible i just added alien parasites to my book because of you
thanks 😁😁😁😁🤣🤣🤣

Arctic conditions large body no fur no blubber

Sir you are describing a Greenland Shark.

Large bodied animals maintain body temp through gigantothermy lmao.

I’ve seen this video in my recommended a lot, and when I finally clicked on it, I was pleasantly surprised that the advice was actually bad.

Make sure that the large predator attacking your protagonist is already eating a creature it presumably took down and abandons its hard earned triple big mac for your single tatertot human for no reason :)))

literally even just like "alien virus" earth virus run off our DNA, alien biology could have different molecules for DNA or even just different base pair chemicals its so just GRAHHHHHH

Yesss finally someone addressed this

my personal pet peeve currently is how every alien civilization and/or invasive species has to be a hivemind

There is one instance I can think of of a hivemind without a queen, that being from Frank Schätzing's 2004 novel "The Swarm", though strictly speaking those aren't aliens.

I have an alien character who, I admit, does look like a blue human with cosmetics. His species are plantlike pacifists and are often seen as very naive so they are often picked on and pickpocketed when they go to new stations or systems. This particular guy, however, will not hesitate to beat the crap out of someone

(edit: his species originally looked like leafy pigs. humans indirectly (and probably directly) influenced their growth to make them "fit in" better and aid interactions between the species.)

65 had fell for the same trap.

Why are aliens always disgusting
Why cant they be fluffy blankets?

I've always hated that the climate is the same in the entire alien planet

this is propbably my favorite video on this channel because i constantly see SO MANY writers making these mistakes

Ecosystem? It is a dead planet - with trees.

lmao, you really went after Star Trek

That concept about a 'hive mind' I actually already have done, and boy did it take some explaining to my class teacher!

And don't forget, all of these single-biome planets will have a breathable atmosphere because it's not like plants are needed to produce oxygen or anything.

I figgured out that the only way for Star Wars to be legit in case of their biology and how most of them are mammals is that everrything was colonized by humanss in the past and then they all evolved separatly. Also for some reasons its extremely hard to find a planet with more than one biome. I guess Naboo exists. It has two

Writing fiction is dull and achieves nothing. I have the pleasure of long friendship with a colony of dream-communing aliens and have seen their world in their Gestalt mind.

My favorite example of an alien ecosystem is Subnautica. Suffering from some of the things you mentioned sure, but it’s still is highly diverse and creative.

I have a Squeedlyspooch.

This is why human aliens all ways take me out of a story. Pandora is a particularly egregious example because all the other animals as so careful thought out and then the Na’vi are just blue cat people.

With convergent evolution I can believe that there are certain body plans that are very similar particularly things like fish or trees but a species of human level intelligence that is also humanoid is extremely unlikely.

So avatar has the worst alien creatures of all time?...

And Every planet has breathable air where you can take your helmets off also forget about alien diseases they are scary enough to be a cool threat

my favorite part is how many hyper giant creatures can exist in places without very much food for them to possibly maintain their mass

I know this video is old as dirt but rewatching it gave me a fun idea for a book


It's an alien story, but instead of a terrifying invasion, it shows the protagonist studying and bonding with the aliens and even leaving their planet to bring the aliens home because one of them needs a type of medicine that can only be found on their home planet

Was the squeedly spooch an invader zim reference lmao?

my solution to the bangable humanoids trope is to make a race of amorphous shapeshifters who normally look like lumpy sea slugs. this means they can look like whatever their partner desires, whether it's a big breasted human woman or a [incomprehensible alien screech] with firm, symmetrical gamete-sponges. (i did give them boring terran biochemistry but at least their planet has a different mass, air pressure and average temperature than earth)

I love Stellaris aliens design

But isn't a humanoid form the best form for a santient species? I've heard about the biologic evolution rules that could force other santiet species to evolve into a humanoid form just like many things evolve into a Crab form

trust me the scary things are small read the Jurassic park novel

the nuke from orbit got me, Ripley never fails!
But to be fair, Alastair Reynolds got all this terrible advices twisted with science and give the beautiful story, Beyond the Aquila Rift wich is full of this tropes and a the same time wierd afk...

Also, make aliens as big and scary and tentical-ly as possible !
What? How the hell did they achive civilization without actual dexterity of their body making it near possible to even interact with their environment ? Who gives a shit ??

Everytime you said parasite I felt my soul die a little inside. They are so... Creepy.

And that is why I love Speculative Biology.

It is the only way to be sure...

No one in the comments mentioned that the facial expressions must all be identical to humans. Sadly, but conveniently, this is necessary.

-I fought side by side with your father 20 years ago.
-20 years in what planet?
-What do you mean?
-In my planet with 2 suns, a year is over 5 average lifetimes. Do you know how long it takes for a planet to orbit TWO FREAKING SUNS?
-Oh... I might have to calculate the ammount of months then...
-We have 3 moons.
-The ammount of days then...
-Do you know how long our days are? Again, two suns.
-20 Earth years, Luke. Darn it!


-Obi Wan... What's Earth?