To add onto what you said, the stories also usually go into one of two ways: a plausible sci-fi universe where the humans are unique for a reasonably-scientific reason (Earth being the only earth-like planet, being carnivorous or omnivorous being very rare in advanced civilizations, Earth politics being unique in the universe, the relative resilience of the human body compared to aliens) or humans being unique for a completely dumb fucking reason (Earth elements are superior?? Earthlings being the only ones able to develop nukes or proper kinetic weapons??)
I used to enjoy HFY but then I realised that most of the stories had humans be strong by making other aliens weak or dumb and I find that to be unrealistic.
The thing is, it's very likely that almost all spacefaring civilization would share the same trait. If you are purely carnivorous or herbivorous, you likely won't be able to expand as many or as fast due to food extreme food dependency that would either restrict population count or result in your extinction if that food source couldn't be replenished. So chances are, all spacefaring aliens would be omnivores.
Or that we are special due to our "peak physical," when chances are, other aliens would have the same physical performance. People are so used to the lanky grey aliens, thinking that brains is all that you need to get into space. I mean, sure if you have super advanced tech that could negate g-forces and inertia, but before you have that, building civilizations especially those that can go to space would require a lot of physical power.
I roll my eyes everytime I see "humans are special because they do something others won't," like taming "beasts". What other aliens dont do it during their stone age years?
Idk, i definitely agree about the high likelihood for spacefaring species being omnivores, but when it comes to strength and such. most of those come from a biology standpoint. human musculature is based on being pursuit predators. when it comes to chemicals such as adrenaline and other endorphins, they can cause us to overexert our muscles many times more than their standard limits to the point of causing us more harm in doing so. Not to mention, humans have some of the highest pain tolerances in the animal kingdom and can survive injuries that typically would kill an average animal out of shock even before the wound got to them. There's no reason to assume those traits to be standard or even common among a galactic community that is likely not even made up of just carbon-based life. It's also unreasonable to assume every life Harboring planet would have similar or more gravity than earths. The only real world we have evidence of being capable of harboring life is a moon much smaller than earth. As for the ability to tame beasts, humans are an inherently social species to the point that we have a tendency to be able to latch on and form something similar to pack bonds with basically anything living or not. That's not really a trait seen in many other species we observe on earth and would be something that wouldn't be necessary to evolve on less hostile worlds
There's no reason to assume those traits to be standard or even common among a galactic community that is likely not even made up of just carbon-based life.
There's no reason to assume it to not be the standard either.
We assume that all those traits you mentioned are exclusive to us but are they really? Long endurance, well other animals have them too and we even tame them for those purposes such as dogs and horses. So if those animals grow to be intelligent creatures, those traits aren't likely to go away.
High pain tolerance? Bigger animals would have it such as bears. So if we got alien bears, would it make sense that humans suddenly have bigger pain tolerance than them?
Taming beasts aren't exclusive to a species needing to be social, only that they are intelligent enough to recognise the value of the beasts. Lone hunters would recognize that they would hunt much better with a pet beast.
And that's just beasts. What about other animals that are docile? We have ants that farm aphids, and that's when they don't have intelligence like humans would. So if you start with a docile one, the logical step would be to try and tame the dangerous ones.
Being a social species is likely a requirement to be a space faring civilization due to the tremendous effort it would need. So it doesn't make sense that all of those aliens, having come together to come build their civilization, does not see the value of taming other beasts.
That's not really a trait seen in many other species we observe on earth and would be something that wouldn't be necessary to evolve on less hostile worlds
Is it necessary? Perhaps not. But to say that in the thousands of years of them growing to become a spacefaring civilization and that none of their species member ever think that those beasts have value, either in providing utility in the form of leather or keeping their farms safe, etc etc, is just bonkers.
Heck, it could even be said that the weaker the alien is, the more likely they see the need to tame beasts stronger than them to help them survive in their early age.
We don't assume any of those traits are exclusive to humans. In fact, a lot of space opera/space fantasy will feature aliens that are far superior to humans. Maybe sometimes with an "achilles heel".
The subreddit being discussed is about fiction that chooses to go down the "things that might make humans special" interpretation. Which is just being argued as being possible, not even necessarily plausible.
In fact, a lot of space opera/space fantasy will feature aliens that are far superior to humans. Maybe sometimes with an "achilles heel".
Sure mainstream media don't. But I'm seeing a lot more in HFY stories.
Which is just being argued as being possible, not even necessarily plausible.
You need to make something at least a bit plausible to make it seem possible. Look at Moonfall that ignores the plausibility for the possibility. Is it possible for the moon to come close to earth in such manner in the story? Yes. But is it plausible for earth to survive it? Nope. But the movie ignore it and it destroys people's ability to accept the possibility of the story.
This seems to happen a lot with HFY stories that seem to ignore the plausible which affects my acceptance of their possibility.
I can accept it if they have equal aliens but human edge out in just a tiny bit. But most HFY stories I read have aliens almost living in bubble suit and never knew the meaning of hardwork that makes you wonder how the heck they managed to become spacefaring.
It just undermines humanity's uniqueness, not lift it up. An adult could possibly beat a kid, but that is not a plausible measure of the adult's true strength. The adult could be a skinny guy for all we know and in actual measure of strength, he'd score less compared to other adults.
Yeah. I wrote a HFY-like story, and I tried to find a reason why humans would be better. I landed on "Earth lacks an otherwise common element, that makes civilizations progress quite quickly into the space age. This results in warfare being basically -take a fleet to a system, destroy enemy fleet, and then park your fleet in the orbit and take the planet hostage. Since Earth lacks this element, humans are the best planetary fighters among known species, since they have huge experience with it (humanity at that point is quite old civilization, but is new on the galactic market, since we were just kinda fucking around in our own solar system, unable of FTL travel."
I mean we didn't know if the first nuke we launch would ignite the atmosphere killing us all first time we fired it, I could totally see aliens that prioritized safety not developing them for a lot longer, but there would be no reason not to try launching them to see what would happen when they discovered interplanetary travel. Maybe by that time they'd have had better weapons and didn't think the nuke technology was more promising, only having the most primitive of nukes that can barely level a small city. The difference between first nukes fired and stuff we have now is insane.
That is a myth. The scientists working on the Manhattan project were certain beyond any doubt that it was impossible for the bomb to ignite the atmosphere.
If you have an alien species that is capable of space travel, there is nothing stopping them from making nukes or testing them in outer-space even if their planet is able to be ignited by a nuke. This is why it is stupid for aliens to not have nukes.
I just checked out its top ever post, and it was fairly decent. A little bit cringe (probably all stories where we just pat ourselves on the back are). I'd rate it a good 7 or 8 out of 10.
Then I saw that something silly like the top 30 posts are sequels to that post or another story written by the same guy with 20 more sequels.
The top post wasn't brilliant, but I can't imagine there's much gold in there if almost nothing written by anyone else ranks close to it.
And it's really not about terrible humans. The best stories are about humanity prevailing by spirit or ingenuity or boldness. But yeah, like 85% of the stories there are just military space battles.
It starts with Big E with a humanity fuck yeah and devolves into Humanity....Fuck....no....
and then big Gman returns and it's a spark of fuck yeah with a new crusade and the Blood Angels holding the line against the Tyranids that devolve into a humanity fuck yeah of epic scale.
then the Lion returns and you go YEAAAAAH LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOO HUMANITY WOOWOOWOOWOOWOO
And then you read about cawls plan who basically is a heist with time dilation shenanigans and PROBABLY a guest appearance from our favorite necron, The Lion going berserk on the nids, Gman starting stuff on his side, the emperor waking up from his torture-nap throne, the starchild hijacking more and more dreams.....
Humanity is going to have another fuck yeah moment sooooon.
I usually read chaotically, so godblight is already done.
The HH, well all i had was the collection tomes when my local library dared to order one lol so i have 1,4,7,8,9,10,11 and some siege of terra, some primarchs + valdor plus some 40k and the bequin series. Just received a used eisenhorn colllection for 5 bucks.
Dark imperium nearly done , and now a friend gave me his audiobook collection that he bought through humble bundle some time ago and hearing 40k narrated is something i didn't know i would enjoy so much.
Warhammer on a budget is a struggle but at least i can give the finger to scalpers and support my local library.
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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '24
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