HFY Thread

Us humans, huh?

Us humans.

I am saying it's inherently bad though.

it has no sense of balance, and always steers immediately into either mindless parody or wank. It also has idiots attempting to define humanity in the dumbest way possible, by comparing us against fictional foils designed to be defeated.

It has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

>think of it as a counterpoint to the subgenres of SF/F that show us as backward or unenlightened compared to noble aliens.

Like this. What kind of idiot thinks that a tiny fraction of a genre needs to be a counterpoint, when that tiny fraction is itself a counterpoint to the vast majority of SF/F where humans always win in the end?

>I am saying it's inherently bad though.
that would mean there were never a good one written, ever.
Which isn't the case especially because people like different things.
i can agree that 90% of it are bad but there ARE a few good ones.
Then again, I can see why nobody wants to search through an endless wave of shit to find a few gems (then again, we are on Veeky Forums, so...)

>it has no sense of balance

Centrism is not innately good. The works being responded to are not balanced and yet are highly praised for their lack of balance.

Trying to root this debate in fruitless generalisation about quality, as if subjective estimation of literature has any effect on its right to exist and be discussed by those more open minded, is bad.

No genre is without any merit. In making this thread I tried to encourage healthy, productive and creative debate rather than offhand dismissal.

If you truly hold this as without any merit and won't usefully discuss how to address this, why do you comment? Criticism is healthy. Dismissal and generalisation are not.

I think the problem is that the idea IN GENERAL is flawed in such a way that it's impossible to actually mediate it. Because it's inherently structured in a way to place emphasis on a group who're already the heroes of most if not all stories.

Extreemism is only good when the extreemism is tackling other extreems or the message is interesting/profound enough to provide insights. If the only insight you're extreemly offering us is "Humanity is teh bestus" then it's just wankery.

>Extreemism is only good when the extreemism is tackling other extreems or the message is interesting/profound enough to provide insights. If the only insight you're extreemly offering us is "Humanity is teh bestus" then it's just wankery

If the only insight you're offering is "optimism is bad", and this is meant to be a widely held opinion, then society is in a bad way.

>genre

HFY is a "genre" now?

> Criticism is healthy.

The problem is that the best criticism I have to offer about the subject is that the subject in itself is flawed.

It's like saying "Hey guys what if we made a whole story that was about the joys and examinations of getting kicked in the nuts?"

You could argue maybe you can get 1 or 2 good stories out of there sure! I'm not totally prejudiced. Artistry is artistry and as such maybe someone can apply their craft around that specific subject and make something interesting. But as a "movement"? Or a "genre" as you put it? Seriously?

By idiots.

Centrism is not innately good, but a single minded "America Fuck Yeah" ripoff that carries on for longer than three minutes just gets dumber and dumber as people try to keep forcing the joke, and you guys have been trying to push this for years.

It is now just one long, long, incredibly unfunny joke, with the worst idiots trying to pretend that it has some higher purpose or deep meaning.

>'Optimism is Bad'
>Because I think stories based around the lone subject 'humanity is teh bestus' is boring and is already thoroughly covered in several hundred escapist stories

how self absorbed ARE you?

>I think the problem is that the idea IN GENERAL is flawed in such a way that it's impossible to actually mediate it
what do you think the general idea of a HFY is?

>healthy, productive and creative debate

Then why would you have it centered around further inflating the importance of the premier species in the overwhelming majority of SF/F?

Healthy discussion is saying "This is retarded."

You've got a shitty writing prompt that leads to awful stories.

I apologize that the neverending whiners have invaded your thread.

Truly, the human ability to whine is peerless.

So, what about Proximal Flame's Last Angel and Last Angel: Ascension?
(forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-last-angel.244209/)
Perhaps not exactly HFY but still really good reading

Every HFY someone posts the first 3 or so parts of the Jenkinsverse but that's like 0.5% of the whole thing that has been written thus far. Most of it good except for perhaps the very beginning (reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/ref/universes/jenkinsverse/chronological_reading_order)

Quarantine is relatively enjoyable too

In the eyes of trolls it's just HURR DURR DAS RAYCIST imperialist stuff, ignoring that so much of it is about an oppressed minority finding unexpected and heroic ways to stand on an equal footing to their oppressors.

Indeed, it's the same ideas as what HFY is set against interrogated from a perspective that doesn't try to smear humanity as cruel, oppressive or EBIL CAPITALISTS

What was the name of that book series where humans turned out to be the newfound warrior race an alien federation was ysing to fight mind control fish?

I do not recall.

uplift?

aren't the old man's war books are HFY stories?

>In the eyes of trolls it's just HURR DURR DAS RAYCIST imperialist stuff
You mean in the eyes of its few fans as well.

When HFY was at its most obnoxious, you couldn't have a thread about any other race without HFY idiots rushing in. Even now, we still have to deal with these sorts of idiots, but thankfully they're not just blanket spamming awful stories.

HFY has always been a dumb meme that attracts idiots, and perpetuated by even greater idiots who think that there's something special or important about their writing prompt that means its entitled to be perpetuated long after any shred of creativity or even basic decency was stamped out of it.

It's long since been time to just bury this corpse, but here you are, pulling it out of its coffin and propping it up on sticks.

HFY is a reaction to a "trend" that's basically just James Cameron's Avatar and nothing else in recent memory. Humans usually win in space war stories because they're usually the underdog and fiction in general wants the underdog to win.
As soon as humans are the obviously advantaged side, they lose 30 IQ points and are undone by their own hubris, because no one wants to read a war story about an invincible bully steamrolling the opposition with no surprises or setbacks.
Of course there's a subgenre where the underdog can only delay the inevitable: cosmic horror ala Lovecraft. But it's very niche and almost never gets made into movies or TV shows, so the idea that shouting WE BREATHE ROCKET FUEL is pushing back against the mainstream is ludicrous.

Nah, good guess though.

Fuck
This is going to bug me all day

So you guys just come to the thread to shit on this? Where's the fun in that?

This is what you get for HFY fags shitting up threads in the past.

Found it! The damned, by alan dean foster.

That shit was pretty good. It was basically the reststance and humanity vs a race of diplomancers and their thralls.

Humans are immune to diplomancy for reasons i cannot recall.

I dunno, eternal whiners have shat up way more threads than hfyfags.

And they never stop whining.

I've never posted HFY. So this is some sort of vengeance thing? But again why not spend your time enjoying something? I get that I'm probably not the first person to say this but c'mon, theres gotta be something better

>Humans are immune to diplomancy for reasons i cannot recall.
Because we're dumb barbarians, I bet.

It's the xologons from juoploin V

That actually was pretty close, i think.

>"your shit is stupid"
>whining

But I am enjoying my time in this thread.

Yeah, thats whining.

Oh shit! Well then carry on my friend. Godspeed.

If you get your fun from ruining others' fun then fair play - but try and actually criticise rather than generalise. The OP contains a link to a 1d4chan page mentioning a large number of works, both created on Veeky Forums and outside it - so post some textual criticism rather than generalisations about the theme.

What if HFY hating on Veeky Forums was really just an interglacial scheme formed by xenos to shit on humans self esteem?

It's just basic criticism expressed in a mildly rude manner. What you are doing is more whining than anyone else. This thread isn't your hugbox.

Yes, it's a ploy from these dang xenos living under Antarctica.

That's a pleasant self-narrative.

>basic criticism

I am not seeing much criticism of the stories here, which are apparently so bad their failures are self evident. Simply ill informed generalisation about the themes intended to paint others as racists.

1d4chan.org/wiki/Humanity_Fuck_Yeah#Recommended_media_about_humans_kicking_ass

Here are some well renowned examples by respected writers of this allegedly marginal genre. Let's see some criticism.

Human self esteem does not really need furher emboldening.

If anything, it's just some humans shitting on the pathetic humans who have nothing to take pride in beyond their base humanity, and how they need to inflate the importance of that base humanity.

HFY really is for the lowest dregs of humanity.

My favourite piece of Non-Veeky Forums HFY can be summed up with one of two sentences.

>"EINSTEIN WAS WRONG. CATCH US IF YOU CAN."
or
>"PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE"

It stops being basic criticism when you spend an hour repeating yourself and whiing about it.

>hey, let's call this stuff HFY, even though it's a flat contradiction of HFY's very purpose and were created without the intention of being pure humanity wank like HFY is

So, you've got stories about humans kicking ass, written before HFY, and HFY was created to address the issues that humans didn't kick ass enough?

And, somehow, you want to rope the works of better people into your dumb writing prompt, even though most of the writers would laugh at how stupid and purposeless your prompt is?

>I-it doesnt count if it was written well
Inability to actually criticize confirmed, eternal whiner confirmed.

I am trying to lay down some goalposts, please stop moving them

I have endured enough of those stories back then, when I was minding my own business in your regular fantasy thread, until HFY-fags felt obliged to jump in and dump their greentext stories about how humans would totally have developed atomic bombs and thus surely eradicated all fantasy races most of the time elves, for whatever reason by now, because those fantasy races are all fucking retarded because the writer says so.

And this is the main problem with this. We all know what humans are, but the rest is complelety made up. I can decide that all those aliens are too stupid to ever put up any fight compared to us humans, thus showing how fucking great we are in this artificial scenario. We learn basically nothing from this, not like when this started and some actual good thoughts about our own psychology and warfare capablities have been written, all we learn is that the writer has to inflate his small ego by evelating humans, which coincidentally he is part of, above races that he first can degrade as much as he want.

So why is 40k always talked about here is any that HFY?

I'm explaining why you're stupid though. Maybe you should stop figuring out how to be more stupid, and worry more about how to be less?

So not only are you thin skinned, you are also a hypocrite?

40k is humanity oh fuck

Explain further.

I dunno, your explanations are all "it is stupid because i dont like it, and now i will shitpost for literal hours without actually producing criticism"

It doesn't count because it wasn't inspired by the writing prompt, and many of the works actually contradict the writing prompt (the balance that you guys always avoid), and above all else, are works that exemplify why there was never a need or reason for HFY to begin with.

You can't say "this is HFY" because it features human protagonists, because the overwhelming majority of SF/F would then be HFY.

Basically, you've got a dumb prompt you're hoping to treat as a genre, and hoping to use an senselessly broad definition to rope better works under your umbrella when those works are everything HFY is not, outside of featuring human protagonists.

So your "basic criticism" of literature supposedly so self-evidently without merit it doesn't warrant discussion is just to insult people who want to have a productive debate?

Pathetic.

Now, try again, talking about the texts. Like you claim you're so good at. It shouldn't be hard, if they're so self evidently irredeemable, to prove it. But I doubt you've even read them.

>Boo hoo, i had to see things i dont like in MY THREAD
>Better go do the exact same thing!

>My only arguments are now semantic

And the whining continues.

>i can ignore arguments because they make me feel bad

That's not how it works, and if you're hoping to argue like that, it just leads people to recognize that you've got no way to argue against the criticisms laid against you.

>these works establish a genre precedent and embody its themes
>NUH UH DONT COUNT CAUSE I SAY SO

Embodied by this:

>those works are everything HFY is not,

Except if you bothered reading you would see they are what it IS. No "roping in" needed. Just honest classification.

>it's HFY because it has human protagonists

Dismissed.

An eye for an eye. I'm sorry if you never did such a thing, but I'm not even dumping my anti-humanity greentext stories into this or invading your pro-human threads. I'm just here to say that your stories are stupid, at least those that I was exposed to and I already gave a reason why.

Youve made no argument besides "it is stupid and pointless because i say so and i want to whine".
You also have refused to give any actual specific criticism, instead relying on whiny generalities.

And youve spent an hour shouting your noncriticisms, as nobody is takung them because they are without point or substance.

If you are going to criticize, criticize. All youve done thus far is cry people enjoy a thing you do not.

>I am not invading, i just am posting exponentially more than hfyfags did without even having the courtesy to write or provide a story

If you had arguments, supported by the texts you claim to be critiquing, you would have a point. I would relish an actual literary debate about this. But you don't, you haven't and you clearly can't because whenever you are asked you evade the question or move the goalposts.

So, get some integrity and debate. Talk about specific texts, specific themes and specific writers. Use evidence to support argument.

The burden is on you to show some backbone and honesty here.

There were several stories and texts posted you could have criticized.

Instead you chose to shitpost and whine in some passive aggressive attempt to get vengeance.

Whoop, this goes to

You clearly haven't read anything here, otherwise you would understand why that's wrong and not the point being made.

This genre - as embodied by these examples - is predicated on human ingenuity and courage. It is not blind xenophobia, it is a very precise kind of writing about how humans redefine opposition to oppression.

There are two things that HFY are. One definition commonly used is-

>a counterpoint to the subgenres of SF/F that show us as backward or unenlightened compared to noble aliens.

While the other is the meaninglessly broad "Humans are the victors/protagonists."

With the former definition, you can't be a counterpoint when you not only came first and belong to the majority of works, but inspired the "humans don't always win" counterpoints that ultimately lead to idiots with a narrow view of the genre to feel like their was a need to have a "humans need to win more" counterpoint to those counterpoints.

Do you comprehend that?

With the latter definition, it is basically you guys saying "Anything I want is HFY, even if it's stuff made by people who had no interest in making human wank bullshit to try and offset the handful of times humans did not come out on top."

Overall, this hardly justifies the perpetuation of HFY, if the best works are written by people who have no knowledge or interest in your writing prompt and wankdom.

>i just am posting exponentially more than hfyfags did
That's your fault, be more productive to prove me wrong with your thought-provoking and awe-inspiring HFY stories in which all races, except those that you are part of, are all from the ground up your personal punching bags.

>without even having the courtesy to write or provide a story
Are you inviting me to write anti-human stories? Are you inviting me to invade your thread with things you don't want to read? The thing you criticise me for?

Tsuritama?

Read it again. If you're just asking me to repeat myself because you ignored it the first time, I'm just going to tell you to read it again.

>It is not my fault i am going to whine for literally until i am forced to stop!
>I am going to ignore all arguments pointing out my points are incorrect because they hurt my feelings

>Are you inviting me to write anti-human stories? Are you inviting me to invade your thread with things you don't want to read? The thing you criticise me for

If you wrote something other than your pearl clutching bleating about the character of a genre you wilfully misrepresent to try and invalidate awkward examples it would be an improvement, because then at least there could be a literary debate.

See

Read it again. If you're just asking me to repeat myself because you ignored it the second time, I'm just going to tell you to read it again.

The questfags are proven right again. The whiners will never stop whining, and will just pick new targets

>Are you inviting me to write anti-human stories? Are you inviting me to invade your thread with things you don't want to read?

Implying I don't want to read them

Your misunderstanding is simple. You claim the existence of older works invalidates the genre because you erroneously believe it is being held up as novel.

Instead consider that it might have existed for a long time but seen a resurgence (with prior precedent to give it weight) in light of literary trends.

See

People kept askign questfags "why do you keep saying Veeky Forums is gettign rid of creativity, that's a lie!" "Anti-quest fags don't want to hurt Veeky Forums they just don't want quests!" "Writefags are allowed to post on Veeky Forums we just don't want quests!"

WELL, HERE 'S YOUR TOLERANCE AND UNDERSTANDING FOR WRITEFAGS ALL RIGHT! GONNA BAN THESE THREADS TOO?

user, I'm not forcing you to stop writing your awesome stories. You could be more productive than engaging with my bait posts. You also never had any argument aside from "read those stories!", which I have read some in the past and which I disapprove in principle for reasons I already explained.

But maybe you are confusing me with the other user.

Third time.

I was already against HFY when quests were still around.

>Boo hoo, stop demanding my criticism be relevant

Writefags are loved. I would enjoy a general SF/F writing thread.

But HFY is garbage. A dumb prompt that leads to the same awful four stories.

Because the panent we grew on was unlike the planaets most species greww up on.

Most inhabited worlds have very calm oceans and single contents (think Pangaea). Most also don't have moons. The species have very nurturing environs and there were only two or three races that needed any real comat, and it was mostly mate seeking type stuff that became ritualistic.

When they found earth, they were astounded that ANYTHING lives on the planet at all. The tidal effects, the tectonic disturbances, the shattered continets....it was insane, and the environment was hostile as all hell. That humans survives long enough to become a thinking species was fucking insane to them.

And then they discovered that humans as a species ARE insane.

Sure you were, board police chan.

Yes, we can tell you love writefags because of how they're restricted on one thread at all, that gets made every two weeks and has no participants, because you people are pricks about what they can write.

Not very good, numerous spelling errors.

Your post reads like it was written by an eleven year old.

Sorry, too much caffeine.

You never really attacked my criticism at all. But if you are really confusing me with another user, it was this post: I think there was a writefag thread two weeks ago that reached post limit. I unfortunately missed it.