Cultural Transfers

In the jolly question box recently, I received this:

If tomorrow morning the Eldrae were to make contact with Earth, what cultural item (besides a good Popsicle) would be the most taken with aplomb and glee and why?

After due consideration and extensive contemplation, I find I can only answer thus:

I haven’t a bloody clue.

(Which is partly because, y’know, comparing a set of trillions to a set of millions is intrinsically hard, but also because my grasp on Earth culture is kind of weird and idiosyncratic. So. Or maybe my brain just doesn’t feel like working on that this month, although it could probably name a few very specific items. Enh.)

So on the way answerward, I’m going to throw this one open to you, gentle readers. After all, you’ve been reading along for some time now, and probably have a few ideas on this front yourselves. Send ’em in, and I’ll see what my representative cast of characters has to say about ’em…

Trope-a-Day: Earth is the Center of the Universe

Earth is the Center of the Universe: Severely averted.  Earth is an unknown backwater somewhere out beyond the ass end of the Periphery, and has all the galactopolitical significance you would expect a world which, having once reached its own moon, gives up on space travel beyond its own orbit entirely to have.  In other words: none at all.

(The only revelation that might change this even a little is that it’s evidently the planet that the Precursors got Pseudoeldrae archaea and the rest of the greenlife family from.  But, honestly, even that’s mostly only going to be of interest to biologists.)