When the bugs are big enough, you're the pest.
Humans-B-Gone! is a sci-fi horror comedy created by Rev Storm that explores the lives of giant arthropods and the bizarre world of plant-based technology, mutated animals, and messed-up physics that they inhabit.
The webseries can be found on YouTube here
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This series provides examples of:
- Action Girl: All the Hivers (humans who venture into macrovolute territory in search of treasure) are female and capable of handling themselves against giant arthropods.
- Ambiguous Situation: Rose tells the old weevil that while there are plenty of other macrovolute tarantulas, she is the only Grammostola rosea, male or female. It's unclear whether she means it in the sense of her simply being the only one in the area, a Single Specimen Species, or if she's the only one left. The old weevil's reaction leans towards one of the latter two.
- Ambiguously Human: Commander Vera looks quite different from the other Hivers under her command and seemingly possesses superhuman strength and speed.
- Ambushing Enemy: Demivolute cows prefer to hang from ceilings and attack from above.
- Arch-Enemy: Sophodra and Commander Vera have a past history, with the former identifying the latter on sight with a pointed "You." before essentially getting into a Tom and Jerry routine against her.
- Art Shift: There are two art styles seen in the series. One is a more cartoonish (but mostly biologically faithful) style that Professor Gregorsa uses to translate things to human sensibilities, and the other is a more realistic style that depicts how things would actually look from a human perspective.
- Artistic License – Biology: Discussed by Professor Gregorsa, notably in episode 4 where he admits most of the inaccuracies seen so far (Such as Sophodra, a mantis, being able to make expressions with her eyelids, which as an insect she wouldn't have) were deliberate choices on his part to help the human audience understand and relate to the arthropod characters.Professor Gregorsa: We're not protocules, but to you, we are just... big bugs. We can't speak in a way that you would understand. Like our protocules, we do not communicate with sound. Instead, we use smell — pheromones. So, I've been translating. And for some things, I've had to take some pretty big liberties. Faces made of chitin do not squish or sag. Eyes without eyelids cannot narrow. And it would be extremely impractical for a cockroach to stand on his hind legs and cross the rest behind his wings, to say the least.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: From the humans' point of view, the macrovolutes are giant bugs taller than a building.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Exaggerated. Macrovolutes are sapient insects and arachnids that are so big that humans are to them what normal bugs are to us. Sophodra in particular is comparable in height to the Statue of Liberty in New York City.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Professor Gregorsa's whole thing is addressing the viewers directly. The "Ask Gregorsa" videos even go as far as having him answer audience questions about bugs.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Downplayed, in that while macrovolutes commonly refer to vertebrates as "gubs" (and humans in particular as "firegubs"), they do have proper names also. (Though these proper names being the same as our world's could be due to Gregorsa's translation.)
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Downplayed. Various vertebrates such as chickens and penguins look different and have different biology from their Earth counterparts, yet are still referred to by the same name. To complicate things further, "protocule" (what we would consider "normal animals") versions of the "demivolute" (aka mutant) animals still co-exist with each other - and protocules can still have bizarre abilities that would make no sense to us, such as protocule goats being able to manipulate the Unknown Nature to boost the power of their headbutts.
- Colour Codedfor Your Convenience: Pink indicates smell-of-vision, while red (a colour that most humans can see but most bugs cannot) usually indicates the humans' perspective.
- Fantastic Caste System: The ants have a hierarchy with themselves at the top, then the five major Swarms (True Bug, Fly, Beetle, Moth, and Roach), and then smaller sister or daughter Swarms that are subordinate to one of the upper five.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Demivolute penguins are akin to parasitic copepods like those found on and around the eyes of Greenland sharks.
- Fantastic Racism: Arachnid engineers are rare due to discouragement by insects.
- Fantastic Vermin: Demivolute chickens are treated as pests and parasites by macrovolutes.
- Feathered Fiend: In a throwaway line Sophodra mentions that demivolute canaries are parasitoids (Animals that purposely kill their host) when comparing them to chickens (Which are just an annoying occasional parasite).
- Final Solution: The ants are implied to have genocided all other eusocial macrovolutes such as social bees and all other ant species. It's for this reason that their actual species (yellow crazy ants) isn't directly mentioned, because as far as everyone else is concerned they're the only ants that exist anymore.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Every main episode contains a fragment of text that only shows up for a couple of frames towards the end of the video.
- Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: In the Ask Gregorsa bonus episodes, Professor Gregorsa answers fan-submitted questions about insects.
- God-Emperor: The ants have two queens that only other macrovolutes refer to as "Queens", because to them no title properly befits a god.
- Gruesome Goat: Greater firegubs are fire-breathing demivolute goats known for their aggressive nature.
- Humans Are Bastards: Discussed when Sophodra gives an overview on humans:"Molecular evidence shows that they are the sole surviving members of the genus — and knowing them, I can venture a guess why."
- Humans Are Not the Dominant Species: Tricularia is dominated by giant insects and arachnids who, for the most part, regard "firegubs" (their slang for humans) as nothing more than pests.
- Humans Are Smelly: Macrovolutes find humans, and mammals in general, to have a particularly foul odor due to their skin oils.
- Interspecies Adoption: Rose is a Chilean rose hair tarantula whose family includes her father, a harvestman, and her sister Violet, a scorpion.
- Interspecies Romance: Briefly discussed when Rose tells the old weevil that she's the only Chilean rose hair tarantula she knows of any gender after he asks if she's found a "conspec"note yet, and he then wonders if there must be a "close enough" she can join with.
- Intrigued by Humanity: Sophodra encourages this viewpoint — "If you're going to do [pest control], you need more of an appreciation for creatures like humans!"
- Language Barrier: Discussed in Episode 8, where Professor Gregorsa makes clear that without whatever method he uses to get around it, humans and macrovolutes would not be able to understand each other thanks to their physiological differences:
- Humans lack the ability to pick up and exude pheromones, while most macrovolutes cannot hear and lack the portions of the brain that allows someone to understand spoken language.
- Even apart from the lack of common grammar, most macrovolutes have such poor eyesight that even if humans tried communicating with sign language they'd barely be able to perceive something as small to them as a human regardless, let alone whatever particular movements they're making.
- Large and in Charge: Commander Vera leads the Hivers and is noticeably taller than the other humans.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Professor Gregorsa discusses the difference between human and macrovolute languages, he uses the script of the episode as the medium of explanation.
- Meaningful Name:
- Sophodra's name is a reference to the genus of praying mantises Sphodromantis.
- Rose is a Chilean rose hair tarantula, has a flower pattern on her body, sleeps in a bed of flowers, and likes floral scents.
- Professor Gregorsa is named after Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of The Metamorphosis.
- "Gub", the macrovolute term for vertebrates, is "bug" backwards, reflecting how they're seen as pests by the giant arthropods.
- Mutants: Demivolutes are nonsapient animals born with mutations that rapidly spread throughout the population until they become distinct from their protocules. Demivolute cows, for instance, are spider-esque ambush predators with only the barest (if unsettling) resemblance to their protocule progenitors.
- Nerds Are Sexy: Sophodra is deeply interested in humans and is considered very attractive by macrovolute standards.
- One-Gender Race: Sophodra mentions that some protocules and demivolutes have only one gender due to the influence of Wolbachia. It's implied that humans may be one of them as thus far all humans that have appeared are female.
- Organic Technology: Most technology used by macrovolutes is based on plants and fungi. For instance, fungal hyphae are used as the equivalent of cables to hook their "machines" together, while Sophodra uses a modified Venus flytrap to capture humans alive.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Greater firegubs are demivolute goats that have mutated into a shape very similar to that of a dragon, gaining wings through a mutation that gives them extra horns, and breathing fire through stored methane. Ironically, their need for methane makes them a primary hunter of their own protocule cousins for the methane created by their gut flora.
- Pictorial Letter Substitution: The "B" in Humans-B-Gone is replaced by mantis arms.
- Playing with Fire: The greater firegub, a demivolute goat resembling a dragon, can breathe fire via stored methane that it ignites in a process very similar to that of the bombardier beetle.
- Purple Is Powerful: Commander Vera wears a purple jumpsuit and is the largest and strongest of the Hivers.
- Queer Establishing Moment: When the old weevil asks Rose if she's found anyone yet and suggests finding a man, Rose starts to stammer and is about to state her actual preferences when she gets interrupted by Sophodra's actions in the background. According to
Word of God, Rose is a lesbian. - Shown Their Work: Each episode includes notes by Gregorsa on the various bugs, plants and fungi seen on screen. The creator even goes as far as citing the scientific papers they've used for their research.
- Space Master: Penguins can exploit a property of the Unknown Nature to move through air as if it were water.
- Square-Cube Law: Named and discussed when Gregorsa mentions that if the special properties of macrovolutes didn't exist (Which is implied to be tied to the Unknown Nature), the gigantic arthropods would be crushed under their own weight.
- Standard Snippet: Gregorsa's theme is an eerie and distorted version of Pachelbel's Canon.
- Starfish Language:
- Macrovolutes primarily communicate with pheromones instead of sound (And most can't even hear), which Professor Gregorsa describes as a three-dimensional language, so he translates everything for a human audience in a way creatures without the proper receptors or way to release pheromones can understand. When two macrovolutes are "talking", one exudes pheromones, the other smells them, and they have to wait for the smell to dissipate before the other partner can "talk".
- Professor Gregorsa describes human languages as acting this way from the perspective of macrovolutes, being one-dimensional as opposed to three-dimensional, and makes the point that even if macrovolutes could comprehend human speech, they could only make out single words at best due to their brains lacking the Broca and Wernicke's areas that humans have.
- Translation Convention: The macrovolutes communicate via pheromones, not unlike their real bug counterparts, which Professor Gregorsa translates into English and humanoid body language through an unknown method.
- World Tree: Tricularia, where the story is set, is a giant mutant bladderwort plant growing out of the planet Angion and into space. Each of its bladders is approximately the size of a country.
- Xenofiction: The macrovolutes and their technology are very inhuman, focused around smell rather than sight or hearing. Gregorsa's translations obscure this somewhat, but he very intentionally points out that he is translating.
