Grrl Power #757 – ET’s (Extra Terran)
I didn’t mean to make Suzie seem like she’s a closet furry. It would turn the running gag I have going with Sydney into a running theme for the comic. And it’s not really that kind of a comic. Unless Frix and Kat the were-hare join the team and Pixel starts hanging out with them a lot more, then… we’ll see.
Fun fact, that guy in the first panel has actually appeared in the comic before. (Enjoy rereading one of the most text heavy pages of the comic there.) I was trying to set up an aliens reveal joke in the first press conference but it obviously never panned out. I had a vague notion that the reveal would cause his ponytail to pop out, making his hair poof out all weird. I guess he only has that one suit. Given the topic of this page, I thought he ought to reemerge.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
That or it is really warm in there.
Glad you covered that bit. I figured humans were just a branch of the Universal Lifeform domr Ur Species seeded the galaxy with WAY back in the day…
oh. it’s him.
I can’t really blame Suzi News for the Freudian slip. She started to fantasize about a night with Frix in order to distract from the annoying fact that she got stuck next to Giorgio Tsoukalos.
Beat. Me. To. It.
[I was just about to comment that he looked like Giorgio.]
More Eskimo Sisters
Awwww, Suzi News is a furry!
Not according to Dave’s blog.
But he has admitted that the characters can write themselves. So you never know where she may go.
I bet that Peggy is having to restrain Sydney around abouts now though!
I have a sneaking suspicion that once actual anthropomorphic people start showing up (alien, gene-mod or whatever) a lot of people are going to realize that their preferences are based more on body shape and personality than skin texture or facial dimensions.
It’s one thing to be weirded out by a cartoon or mascot suit, quite another to viscerally dislike a living, breathing person.
Of course, that’ll bring up a whole new racism issue, but I feel like it won’t be diagrammable onto the same people.
I feel called out, and have decided to say that sounded mean.
I viscerally dislike pretty much all living, breathing humans and fantasize about being friends with a wide variety of cartoon characters.
(Peggy is holding Sydney by the collar, her feet flailing an inch above ground, arms reaching out into empty air as if trying to grasp Suzi)
Sydney: “OH NO YOU DON’T HE’S MY SPACE BOYFRIEND YOU CABLE NEWS SKANK ARGLEFLARGLE”
(Peggy promises herself to ask Leon to tweak the ARCHON firewall so Sydney can’t see messaging boards discussing him)
Actually, it could do her some good. Her body image issues and having a relationship with someone who is apparently highly desirable, if he is as faithful as advertised.
I think Frix is about to discover his own personal animal magnetism.
Sydney doesn’t seem to have any further aims on Frix. She seems to be perfectly content to have her time spent with the woof as some sort of a combination of post combat stress relief and horizon expansion/new experience/experimentation, with no strings on either party.
Clearly the wrong link. You’re welcome:
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/158326-ancient-aliens
Yeah took me a moment to realize who that was but felt really familiar. The lack of crazy hair threw me off the scent for a couple of minutes ;)
So close, but the one spare quote breaks the wiki search. Try this instead.
uh-oh…Sydney’s getting competition…
and is taht the “It’s aliens” meme guy in the first panel?
Yep. However, she doesn’t seem to register that he’s her boyfriend anymore. Remember Sydney tried to ask the resident computer nerd to go on date but to find he already had someone after months in space.
I guess author wanted her to stay single or something or he forgot Sydney had a “boyfriend”.
“Space boyfriend.” Sydney was looking to have Leon as an ‘Earth boyfriend.’
Frix is obviously the only logical choice for boyfriend! He’s even a Doctor and an Engineer. Parents would definitely approve. Pushing the Sydney X Frix ship!
Sydnix? Fralo? I’m doing this… uh, wrong on purpose? Yes. That’s it. That’s a thing that happened.
“Halix”.
Making her separate triangle that may-or-may-not get off the ground with Leon the source of a new polyandrous “it’s complicated” relationship status, the “Double Halix”.
People love to make references to DNA, but since when did RNA ever do anything to you?
It might be that for Sydney, to paraphrase, what happens “in spaaaaace” stays “in spaaaaace.”
Alternately, it might be that she doesn’t see herself as a threat to Krona or vice versa, in terms of having a relationship with Leon (same playing field, one’s not going to completely eclipse the other). So, if everyone’s amenable, co-dating Leon wouldn’t make her freak out.
Conversely, Dabbler, a.k.a. Ms. I’ve Got To Hit My Lovers With An Amnesia Hammer Or They’re Ruined For Human Women, might intimidate Sydney a bit on the competition front. (We don’t know if she does that, or needs to do that, with non-human lovers . . . but neither does Sydney).
Giorgio A. Tsoukalos? Ancient Alien theorists say yes.
I’m reminded of this scene from Babylon 5 :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhC_KHkihKY
All the ladies want to get Frix-y.
Okay, that was a terrible pun, but I’m not sorry!
No… no… that was a pretty good pun, actually. :)
Who kNews Wen that’s the Cora plan?
That hurt me. You know it did.
…
Still giving you a Yorpie snack.
*wags tail*
*puts a concerned paw on Viirin‘s knee*
Is she asking why Frix looks humanoid (one head, two arms, two legs)? Because of the the present group of aliens he looks the less human of all I think.
Yes, that’s my take on the question.
While at the SpaceMall non-bipeds were present but rare.
How long before it’s mentioned that aliens have been coming to
Earth to enjoy…. the ambience?
Cora already mentioned porn being appealing to aliens. I don’t think it will take long for members of the press to join the dots. Albeit not necessarily the ones in this room, as they are having to process a lot of staggering information. Many will be suffering from cultural shock, and others will be way out of their specialisations and comfort zones. Whilst more may just be too wary to ask risque questions, when there are many others that they could pose.
– we like your porn
– some people came willingly
– yes we abducted
Fridge theorists will realize what wasn’t said, and therefore was admitted to, on the internet in a few minutes.
Some people came more than once
I’m saying that there were definitely slavers that kidnapped an exotic alien species (at the time) for sex trafficking, so even being as advanced as they are, they… haven’t advanced far enough.
It was a sex joke :(
Humanoid (upright locomotion, manipulatory appendages, a topmost sensor node, bilateral symmetry for some redundancy, etc.) tends to work out pretty well in a wide variety of evolutionary conditions for a species to reach advanced technological status.
I think you had it right the first time Susie. No need to backpedal
Is it just me, or is Ari getting grumpier and grumpier the longer Cora talks? And now have to contend with her girlfriend flirting with the Frix :P
Well, someone is derailing this press conference.
Partially Cora because she answers all questions, mostly the reporters for asking them.
And for once it isn’t Sydney doing the derailing. Syd’s getting to cuddle a LMG down in the rifle range.
Her carefully scripted script is not being followed TO THE LETTER! Of course she is a “touch” miffed!
The woof has converted another.
Wait, that was Mr “It was ALIENS!” Guy way back then? He looked more like Frank “The Bundler” Fritz
A testimony to Dave’s vast improvement in art skills.
Susie’s pretty hot herself…
I’d love more Frix in the comic.
Also in his new style, panel 1 guy looks exactly like the “It’s aliens” meme dude.
That’s because he is, the previous guy was Frank Fritz taking a break from picking rusty gold
Great for Cora to point out the whole ‘press ganging’ crap hyu-mons have been doing, and still doing, they just don’t drag them out to sea anymore
I would imagine for a human living a few centuries ago getting shanghaied by space aliens would be a step up in life. Stay on Earth and live a life of toil and hardship, then die before you are 40, or go to space and enjoy all the benefits of a high technology society including medical technology that triples your life expectancy? Plus you get to shag hot blue space chicks!
For some people, getting shanghaied out to sea for years was also a step up from what there future would have been
Downside was that, odds o,n you were a farm kid that was never near large bodies of water before and therefore could not swim. The captains liked it that way since there is less chance of the conscripts jumping ship and swimming ashore.
It is one of the reasons they avoided fishermen. The other would be not being able to dock at at that location ever again without risking ending up at the crossroads.
a common point of Shanghai methods was bars on the dock, some bars even had trap doors and secret rooms just for this purpose. Even if the person they nabbed could swim, it wasn’t uncommon to lock them in a room below deck or grab the night before setting sail in the morning so there was no way they could safely jump ship. And if you didn’t cooperate…well chances are you either never made it back home *tossed over the side or left at another port…you want off my ship so badly here! you’ll be dead of yellow fever in a year*.
The biggest downside was that the mortality rate was very, very high.
Which is why they resorted to press-gangs so much (no, that was not gangs of roving reporters snooping into places they didn’t belong)
Which is why pirate ships never had a problem getting crews.
It wasn’t pirates who shanghaied, it was the navy, most pirates were ex-navy
It was also Merchant ships.
When as many as two thirds of the crew might die from scurvy alone, it’s hard to hire help.
But they had to be careful, because if they sailed off with someone who actually lived in the port (and the townsfolk figured it out) then the ship’s officers tended to face hanging should they return to that same port.
It was hard being a Captain back then.
Right, I read once that there was this guy who went over to the pirates from the Royal Navy and his share of their FIRST HAUL was 20,000 years salary…
This can be explained simple enough: rule of cool!
The other answer is, Cora wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t a hunk…
Even the head tilt? Nice
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/201/886/6af.jpg
Pedantry warning. I just recently noticed your Latin motto, though I see you’ve had it for a while. It is grammatically incorrect.
The gender of an adjective must match the gender of its noun. The noun potentia is feminine and onus is neuter, but you use the masculine form of the adjective (amplus) wrongly for both.
Corrected, the motto would be Cum ampla potentia venit amplum onus.
I feel like there’s probably a long history of military units having grammatically incorrect Latin mottos – or even faux Latin mottos. Not every group had a well-educated fluent Latin-speaker around when they were created, and many probably didn’t take the time to consult one either.
In North America, knowledge of Latin and classical Greek used to be far more common than it is today. My grandfather had to learn both plus an active foreign language in order to graduate high school.
Thanks for the info. I didn’t even know Latin had gendered stuff in it. I’ll keep it in mind for when the movie gets made, but there’s too many panels with it to realistically fix at this point.
So there is one going to be made?
I mean talk to some people, you’re popular enough, and movies are making such huge money with superheroes that you’re kinda guaranteed to succeed with getting a deal.
I tried three on line translators. They all translated “With great power comes great responsibility” as “Cum potestate magna venit magnus responsabilitate”. When translating phrases, a word by word translation is often not sufficient. The entire phrase should be translated in order to get it correct.
Well, if Frix weren’t hot, he wouldn’t be here, would he?
Indeed. He was picked, with a heavy bias for ‘hotness’, by a (mostly) human female.
I am absolutely tickled pink that you included Giorgio Tsoukalos in this comic.
OK that is an uncanny resemblance. And an incredibly appropriate background, for this press conference. Albeit less so for the previous one. But if a media organisation was looking to find some celebrity to front a story which informed knowledge may have led them to believe was about ‘super heroes’, they may (if sceptical) have chosen to go with a colourful choice like him.
But, if so, he certainly would have been recalled for this preference conference!
I love the Jack Burton quip at the bottom of the comic. I laughed at that a lot more then I should have.
Frix:-“It’s all in the reflexes…”
Halo and Dabbler in unison:-“That’s what she said!!!”
Personal headcannon: After Big Trouble In Little China, Jack Burton got a haircut, changed his surname to O’Neil (one ‘L’) and joined the Airforce…
Nah, after Little China, he became a Snake and started escaping from US city-prison islands :P
I thought Snake worked as a chopper pilot in that science camp down in Antarctica and then, to warm up, got a job in the Caribbean sailing boats under the name ‘Ron’…….:-)
“Yeah, incentives are important. I learned that in rehab.”
Yup, went from being a Long Haul truckie, to chopper pilot, to Caribbean sailor, to escaping city-prison islands :D
This revelation about how humans got into space is great because Laureline from Valerian & Laureline has the same background. Granted, she was a medieval peasant girl who joined time traveling humans. Still, I can imagine those two hanging out at the space station, chatting with Cora and her crew.
Hey wait a moment… someone might have asked this on one of the previous few days but I didn’t think of it til I saw Frix in this comic.
If she’s (mostly) human, than why was Frix so suprised/amused when he heard it from Sydney in this comic: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-706-the-girl-who-cried-woof/
Same reason why someone from England called themselves English, USA as American, Canada as Canadian or any human going by nationality instead of species. Even then how many go further into going by race instead of nationality or saying ‘hello fellow human I am also a Human. Nice to meet you.’
It’s hard finding a sci-fi series that doesn’t have humans refer to themselves by government or nationality instead of simple race.
Bear in mind that that space ship just came from a dyson sphere, which will hold trillions of beings. Which is just one location amongst billions of star systems, many of which may be inhabited (we have seen a huge number of different alien species, with little duplication, other than those traveling in a group).
Which is to say that humans are very rare, so Cora may be the only one that Frix has encountered. And she does not look very much like Sydney, given the colour variation and the other unique mods that Cora has.
Just as we and the press conference were surprised at the reveal about Cora’s origins, it is fair that Frix was caught aback and amused to find out what a regular human looks like. But even more amused that she would find “Woof” to be funny, given the fact that “Human” is to him. Which would not necessarily be lessened by having heard it from Cora before. Running jokes can be funny too.
What’s really amusing, is Sydney being referred to as a ‘regular human’ :P
I love Cora saying “Don’t mistake a race for a culture.” A lot of persons seem to have trouble with that.
+1
Like say, oh I dunno, Islam?
Just because we denounce the violent hateful religion doesn’t me we hate Middle Easte-
*BLAM!*
“You filthy racist!”
Islam is a comprehensive world system.
It includes:
1. A religion.
2. A social order.
3. A political system.
When speaking of Islam, one may use the term for any of the parts.
It’s not a race, nor merely a culture.
This used to be taught in the public schools.
I lived in Saudi Arabia for a while in the nineties.
Which islam? The mainstream versions, the restrictive versions, the historical versions or the fanatical versions?
Saying that islam as a violent hateful religion, is the same thing as painting all of christianity based on the “children of god” cult (aka the family)
A hundred and twenty years before one rock was placed upon another at Oxford, Al Azhar University in Cairo was founded to keep the Koran pure and unchanging. And to promulgate Islam.
During my time in the middle east this was the authority usually consulted and quoted.
Much more so than the Vatican is referenced by Catholics.
Western institutions and scholars or Muslims living long outside of the reinforcing influence of the religious culture which permeates almost every aspect of life in much of the middle east are not terribly relevant references.
Again, which one?
There’s the Shia and Sunni (and i suppose Kharijites which would correspond to what we call the terror groups theologies)
Sunni’s have something like 8 different madhhabs each with their own interpretation of how the law should work, The Shia are split into two main schools of thought;
These also are divided from their legal frameworks into different theological frameworks which number well over a dozen different branches.
As for Al’Azhar It serves the same role to the sunni as the vatican’s ecumenical councils do to the traditional catholics.
It’s basically the same as the “christian groups” you have the huge main group (catholics 1.2 billion, then the breakaway groups (protestants .9 billion) a bunch of other groups (Eastern orthodox .27b, etc) and inside of those groups you also have a bunch of splinter groups based on location and theology. I mean have you ever really dug into the insanity of “Christianity?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_schools_and_branches
“Religion” is rarely as monolithic as it appears from the outside which is why (to borrow from taxonomy) using a “species” of belief to paint an entire “family” can get pretty racist.
Be glad Sydney’s not there,otherwise Suzie would get the same line as Dabbler to keep her slutty paws off her space boyfriend…!
Sydney can cross the galaxy with her powers, distance is not an object. Being in the proximity to a hard-nosed lieutenant is though. Peggy may not have super powers, but I would rate her command presence above Sydney’s impulsiveness.
Although it does kind of depend on who gets the initiative. But I think Peggy’s wits will prevail. You don’t get to survive two wars, hanging around super battles, without having acute situational awareness!
So Technically Cora has family on Earth somewhere possibly, wouldn’t she want to know where her grandparents came from
Good point. Although she may already know. There is no reason why her parents could not have shown her the family photo albums and told her about her relatives. The way humans do. After all she has more human lineage than alien, and that is a pretty common cultural thing amongst humans. And it may well be with aliens too (albeit perhaps in a different format or manner of passing on the information).
After the press conference:
Sydney: Hey Cora! We ran some matches using your DNA and a number of genealogy sites. I think we have found one of your ancestors.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/5640916be4b0e65bf79d198e/1534125313466-9K7N8OBNFGT3CVSMVHPQ/?content-type=image%2Fpng
*sigh*
Oh come on.
Someone had to.
It was a moral imperative.
+1
If it is enough generations ago, she might not even care. Not everyone cares about where their ancestors from 400 years ago were from. Some people do, but its not universal. Not to mention she may not even know where on Earth and given the percentage she is also part other aliens races.
I will put it this way, for a project I once had to trace back my family tree, go back enough and I found, Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, France, Denmark, and Germany. I would never be all *THIS is where my ancestors came from* if I visited…and have technically, any of these places.
give enough separation by time, distance, culture, and personality, and the whole *This is the world of my ancestors* could just become another *heh, neat* and move on.
Judging from her surname, apparently (at least some of) her ancestors were Dutch.
Okay space human captain is in charge of a crew full of hot space aliens…. And you question why have a Hot Male Harem for the Female Space Captain?
If you are asking why they are hot? Let’s see… Humans went to space and there is a blue space human on stage. Take similar looks, human with mods, or cross species with human and alien (X) for that answer since she says that she has human DNA along with another species already.
What is hard about finding a human space alien wanting a sexy crew and mostly compatible genes?
Almost forgot to use this opportunity to plug another great series: WhiteOut, that features a Zombiefied Alien Guy :D
Unfortunately WhiteOut has not updated since March, and even before that the updates had slowed down to a snail’s crawl.
Your point? o_O
The author is busy getting the game for his other webic (which is updating) going
Both of Dizzaster Juice’s comics come back with a security error:
{thecrease|whiteout}.thecomicseries.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for the following names: everythingfury.com, http://www.everythingfury.com (Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)
Ironically, everythingfury advertises itself as “easy to use, nothing to worry about” hosting service…
And we hope to get off this planet!!!!!!
yea can see sailers takeing the offer if they were lost at sea grand adventure and well not dieing with a very bad sun burn on an island and no rum. and thus explains the crazy magical tales of mermaids serpents mythical type stuff legends
I don’t see that it would take such extremis. There are tons of people who would leap at the idea of an adventure, to escape their mundane lives, or who would just want to find out more about the universe, given a one time offer. I don’t think the hand raising in that press conference is unrealistic.
Although there would be a fair number less if the offer was one way, with no chance to send that book back home for publishing. But even if only one in ten approached said yes, it is totally feasible. And the remainder could be flashied, like in MiB. Or just advised not to talk about it, for fear of being put in a lunatic asylum or burnt at the stake for consorting with demons (for respective cultures/ time periods).
Uh oh, looks like Sydney has even more competition, and this time from Suzie News!
Perhaps Sydney should just go with the flow and accept the threesome. She has been fast becoming less inhibited, after all.
*wags tail enthusiastically*
Shortly after which his editor said “shave it off, or grow it out, the stubble is not polling well!”
If I was a peasant in Medieval England or Europe, I’d jump (pun, intended) at the chance to go a’roving in space with some aliens. Life back then was “Nasty, brutish and short”, so anything would be preferable to that. Given potential human reproductive rates, I’m surprised there are relatively few of them in space. Probably lots of interbreeding took place, diluting the genes and resulting in people like Cora; genetic mods, notwithstanding.
Probably more like just general dilution of humans. Space is big. Like, really really big. Vastly, hugely, unimaginably big. So even the chances of bumping into another human would be slim unless you went out of your way to arrange meetings. And if other species are genetically compatible to some extent (or can be made so) and are sexually compatible, there’s less incentive to form human-only conclaves.
Like how far I have to go to the drug store?
You may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.
Peanuts grow in space? o_O
The problem with this is that you’re calling it “Nasty, brutish and short” from your perspective as a modern day human with fairly free access to information and who probably got at least a high school education.
Your average medieval peasant could not possibly share that perspective. They might have had family obligations which dissuaded him from just throwing away all familiar things and trucking off into space, and could have very likely thought that any aliens which didn’t look entirely human (so, not Cora or any one else of her crew), or which demonstrated ‘impossible’ abilities such as flight or whatever were demons or the like due to religious programming.
And what did they have to offer in return? Why would they even be desirable as fresh crew? Even that question assumes that starships routinely suffered from crew deaths or operated in an undermanned state and so needed warm bodies to help run them, which does not appear to be a likely state of being. And let’s assume that the peasants can be safely cleansed of all diseases and parasites. They are still most likely illiterate and wholly uneducated. Most of them are farmers, some few might work a trade. Exactly what services does a tinker provide on a starship? A blacksmith? A subsistence farmer? No obviously attractive skill sets are shouting themselves out to me. Fuse tender 3rd class is a possibility, I suppose.
Does the returning reporter guy look sort of like that one famous ancient alien theorist to anyone? You know, the one with the Einstein-esque hairdo?
Yes, at least two other posts above have referenced Giorgio Tsoukalos.
Taking a look back at the page you linked, your art has come a LONG way towards a more realistic look. I LOVED the original art, and I love your current art, so I can’t say which is “better”…what I can say though is this: Keep up the great work, Dave!!!
<3
+1
I can’t help but laugh at Frix’s “WTF is up with these Terran women?” facial expression.
After several hedonistic years in space, the reserved nature of bloodline Terran females must be VERY confusing to him
Or, or, or, and it might sound crazy at first but hear me out: After several culturally normal years in space, the hedonistic nature of bloodline Terran females might be VERY confusing to him.
After all, Sydney jumped into bed with him without even requiring the drop of a hat, and now Suzie is sizing him up in front of her colleagues and the entire world. Human bitches be crazy!
Is Frix just squatting over empty air in panel 3?
Also I will never get enough of Suzie innocently sticking her foot in her mouth.
No, he’s leaning against the wall with one leg up stork-style. I’ve done it plenty of times while waiting in line or other places where I can’t sit down.
Plausible. Or there is a chair leg just being obscured by Frix’s leg. He is probably a bit too big for the chair, so its leg does not appear far enough back to be visible.
So, bets on an assassination attempt during this interview?
No bet – the initial press conference live-fire demo and the restaurant smackdown were both televised, even supervillains are steering clear of Archon right now.
Plus, Cora’s arrival and participation in this event was unannounced, so there’s only been 12-18 hours for anyone to react and get in place. Archon is a terrible target of opportunity.
Because while the diverse conditions of other planets can create a lot of variety, there are still certain fundamental forms that are the most efficient.
Even on Earth you don’t see creatures above a certain size with more than four limbs. And on any planet with relatively close to Earth conditions, you will also produce that same four-limbed tool-using result.
*looks at the elephant in the room*
That fish who decided to get out of water had four fins. The way fins/limbs are encoded in DNA it’s very hard to add some. Therefore, every lizard, mammal or bird has four limbs top. It works differently for insects, which is why there are species of insects with various number of limbs.
Sure it’s possible it’s also more effective, but bad example.
“The dog walks around with no pants so I don’t have to either”
A primitive species doing something bad is not an excuse for you to do it.
Yes, but we should not judge humans just because they enforce unreasonable behaviours on their citizens. With time, and social evolution, they will become enlightened and realise that walking around as nature intended should be a fundamental right.
I’m for public nudity and desexualization of the exposed body. Just hopefully me complimenting or showing interest in someone’s tattoos, piercings, hair dye, other choices or genetic lottery assthetic winnings doesn’t get me in trouble.
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
Yes, they did it at some point. They stopped doing it and did it in at a much lower rate despite being a much larger group of people.
Errr our using impressment was also “at some point”
BOTH are in the past. She’s not using our present crappiness to excuse their past crappiness. Both are the past, but their past civilization is still far more advanced. This isn’t 1:1
“they”
aliens aren’t vampires…except for the alien vampires. Point being “alien” refers to anything not from here.
The “they” in this description could be any of possibly thousands if not more so intelligent space faring life forms out there; and over the millennia and centuries the human populations migrated from their original captures, enlisted, space police duties, ect… and their descendents are pretty much here and there and the alien races that were actually responsible being somewhere else.
While the Xevoarchy is a thing, it seems less a Federation of Planets and more a Galaxy Police from what I can tell, so the different species have their laws, governments, and the like; provided that when dealing with each other through space they follow certain rules and devote a small portion of their own space military forces to the Xevoarchy.
In other words, maybe at X-time the Cohora, Ooskar, and Zalanians or whatever came to Earth and abducted people for (genetic experimentation, pirate crews, and mistaking them for a celestial’s version of a shoggoth and though they’d be a catalyst to open the door to some relic found in the center of an 80 millions years dead planet)
but all did so at very different points of time (200 years ago, 2000 years ago, and 5000 years ago), and then left them in space either because *success…hybrid achieved…so…uh…get a job I guess*, *You did a good job, we invite you and your family to stay among the stars if you want*, and *What have we done! The human has mutated into some horrible monster…and we shall name it…demon…and now can interbreed with almost any humanoid*.
ect…
so hard to put a “they” on what could have been many different groups at very different times doing it for various reasons.
I’m going to go with ‘bipedial endurance omnivore builds are statistically more likely to develop sapience/sophont traits’ for 500.
Anything with free grasping limbs and fitting into a niche needing to outsmart dangerous competition, predators, and prey.
also sapience could occur as a random mutation.
you could get bird like life forms whose locomotive limbs are free and their grasping limbs on bottom or need to use their mouths, life forms who develop a specialized pseudo limb (elephant trunk),
and the very unlucky ones just end up smart but get screwed on limbs and an environment that can be easily exploited for agriculture or live stock *as in like a Dolphin*,
while similar body types do exist via parallel evolution they are seldom (that) similar upon closer inspection. Frixx though pull off parallel evolution, the hands though being exactly like human hands just with sharp fingernails and fur falls into too close not to be related territory though. In fact it is by pure dumb luck…an extinction level event back in the Devonian (I think) that resulted in five digit mammals carrying on, while eight digit mammals died off (yes there were once a sub-group of early mammal ancestors with eight digits on their feet); although some speculate they just lost a few down the mutation line as nature tends to subtract features as frequently if not more so than add them.