Would it be too "HFY" to make a setting where humans are the dumbest race around?

Probably not, though how you chose to handle it would ultimately be the deciding factor.

In the interests of making the thread a more productive one, what did you have in mind?

It makes sense, they only use 10% of their brain

I mourn. Where you going to fuck me, daddy?

t. TEC Loyalists

In the ass, because he loves Jesus?

wasn't there that one HFY story about how other civilizations realized how space travel makes entire societies go insane from cultural drift but it didn't for humans because they were too self absorbed to care about the implications/consequences on a species wide level?

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>implying we aren't safe behind these walls

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"Exaggerate some minor trait," huh.

If humans are special in any way, it's HFY. Just make them normal, jesus christ.

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>if aliens are special in any way, it's AFY. Just make the normal, jesus christ

Nope. Bimbos of the universe, makes far more sense than some sort of all-conquering martial race.

So, just ask yourself if reality is hfy?

Yea I think it's called "The veil of Madness" or something

yes have an alien race use us as a proxy

>in NO WAY can humans ever be special, or else its all just wank material
>but its cool if aliens do all the cool shit humans could do, but while piloting humans so its not actual humans doing it
>yeah thats good, as long as no humans accomplish anything

is this some kind of jew mind trick to make everyone hate themselves

It makes perfect sense for humans to be the dumbest race around.

There are ONLY two possibilities for alien technological development.

Cavemen or angels(and/or demons).

A story about humanity entering some "Federation of Planets" where pretty much every civilization is on a Kardashev Type 3 or 4 technological level will be very interesting. Especially if they take an interest in mankind, but refuse to straight up "uplift" mankind.

Mankind just chugs along as it always has, the only difference being that there are some robotic drone envoys from other star systems in the UN council, and once every 5 years, some alien diplomats arrive on Earth to do a quick tour across governments and scientific and artistic institutes.

When civil wars break out in underdeveloped countries, it's not uncommon for sudden warning signals to overflow airspace control as a journalistic probe drops out of subspace, smashes into the atmosphere, scans the warzone and blasts off into subspace again.

Scientists, philosophers, athletes and artists that do remarkable things are sometimes invited to travel to unknown places, and return from experiences they can hardly even put to words, sound or images.

Just a scifi universe where the only combat that happens is between people.

I remember reading a fantheory/something similar about the Star Trek universe that in the eyes of the rest of the galaxy, humans are an entire race of crazy engineers constantly pulling off stunts that by all means should defy known science. Sadly I never saved it.

Well, in DS9 there are a couple of times when the Ferengi Quark talks about humans.
One time he's horrified that humans performed nuclear tests on their own homeworld just to see if the weapons worked properly.
In another scene he chews a human out for talking shit about Ferengi's hyper-capitalist nature, reminding the human that Ferengi's are true capitalists, serving only abstract concepts like the market and profit unlike humans who just abuse capitalism as a method to enrich themselves, gain power over others, etc.
Then there's a moment during a war, when a young family member of Quark admires human soldiers, and Quark quickly squashes that admiration by explaining how quickly humans transform to one of the nicer species in the universe to absolute monsters when they're deprived of the conveniences of sonic showers, holodecks, replicators etc.

It's all a strong typical Star Trek lesson that says "Life is getting better, but always remember the past, and why you do not want to return to the past."

>Then there's a moment during a war, when a young family member of Quark admires human soldiers, and Quark quickly squashes that admiration by explaining how quickly humans transform to one of the nicer species in the universe to absolute monsters when they're deprived of the conveniences of sonic showers, holodecks, replicators etc.
>People aren't as nice when they don't live in luxury

This seems like a pretty hollow lesson. I'd imagine most species convert to relatively selfish survival behavior when their needs aren't being met.

Quark's best lecture is still with the Vulcan terrorist, though

Peace is cheap indeed.

No. And playing space abos would be boring.
>sniffs hyperfuel

He's not talking about selfish survival needs. He's talking about humans becoming monsters, full of hate, racism and psychopathic behavior once you remove civilization.

This one?

youtube.com/watch?v=hdQcGzbpN7s

>He's talking about humans becoming monsters, full of hate, racism and psychopathic behavior once you remove civilization.
Which are all behaviors brought about through being put onto and staying on survival footing.

Racism is a defensive measure, it protects the group from outsiders. It's a defunct behavior in the present day (in most areas, sometimes stereotypes have credence) but in a environment where genetically distinct groups are competing directly for limited resources it's a credible way of protecting the group. It's only defunct now thanks to the large amount of inter-mixing between various races, particularly in America, which has erased the old genetic separations between different cultures and nationalities; race is no longer a valuable way of determining if someone is a member of your group or not. It just takes a long time to un-learn that behavior.

Hate is similar. It ensures a person is going to work to stamp out their competitor until they aren't a threat anymore. In one's ruthlessness they can find their own security and ensure their personal survival.

Psychopathy is either the result of emotional trauma or aberrant brain development. One of these is very common in situations where one is pressed to survive and the other is a disorder.

Unless Quark's people developed in a state of absolute luxury (which I can't imagine they did, given that they're hypercapitalists) they would likely develop similar behavior when faced with a situation which pressed them to make hard choices or die.

I think any being with a civilization would become monsters if you took their civilization away.

>

I stopped reading here because the aliens are fucking stupid.

the simple answer is that hes just talking shit, and some other alium would say the same shit about ferengi if given the chance

Ferengi do not have any racism and never had any, because it is a detriment to the economy, and therefore a detriment to the species.

Why would you not sell to some group because they are different? It just makes you weaker, because you're not earning enough money as you possibly could.

You too really don't get it do you? The whole point is that if you let humans do their own thing, they become self-destructive monsters that just ruin everything around them.

Like how they nuke their own homeworld, or create genetic supermen to fight in their wars, only to have the genetic supermen rebel and try to kill off the original humanity.

Yeah, those behaviors make sense in a survival cavemen world. But those behaviors do not make sense in a space travelling society where you can just casually cause atrocities that WILL call every other civilization to respond with the total genocide of your kind of the sake of life in the universe.

>Racism is a complete stonewalling of all contact

That's not was racism is at all. Racism is treating outgroups as inferior due to their race. You can hold negative opinions of someone and treat them poorly and still uphold profitable relations with them. You just call them a demeaning name behind their back or hike your prices a few percent because fuck 'em.

It can be as simple as assuming a given race will devolve into savages without the trappings of advanced civilization when, of course, your own race wouldn't be prone to such shortcomings.

Yeah, and the ferengi have sharp teeth which means if you go back far enough, you'll find out that they were tearing the heads off of little cute hummingbirds with their teeth and eating the insides, because thats a carnivorous trait that you only get by eating meat.

So you could argue that if the ferengi couldn't go around being space jews, they'd be dirty space goblins eating rats and small game, shitting in the corner and fighting over territory, as carnivores do, right?
Should you treat ferengi like they're going to do that later, once they're out of sight? No, because they probably wont unless they have a fetish.
So why are you implying that all humans are a hairs breadth away from going back to nuking shitty pacific islands and posting hate speech on the internet? As if ferengi with ears that have a point on top dont shit on ferengi with ears that are all the way round.

Everyone is a racist, its just when you're on the galactic floor and everybody else is watching, you have to act like your species is all harmonious as fuck, and not a bunch of racists who hate each other secretly

The ferengi possess all of the bad traits humans do, or at least similar ones that make more sense for their home planets and shit, its just that they're not going to talk about them to other races, because it would make them look bad. The ferengi would though, talk mad shit on everyone else because it makes them feel good when they're shit talking all the other races in a bar full of ferengi, just like vulcans probably talk shit about how everyone else is illogical and they're just so goddamned smart.

Who says that aliens are not self-destructive monsters when they do their own thing? You can go "well the Feregi..." but that's bullshit and you know it. You're arguing that Homo Sapiens are disgusting monsters because of Star Trek, a science fiction show made by humans for humans. I said it once and I'll say it again with more vehemence. No matter the fucking species of the being, if they have been living in "luxury" and you take it away, they'll become horrid forms of themselves. This fucking anti-human bullshit has gone too fucking far, because you faggots are just as bad as the "HFY! Dues VULT! KILL THE ELVES" faggots. Both of those shitty groups need to be exterminated.
Gas the retards, intelligence war now!

You really don't understand it at all do you? If you don't know Star Trek, don't fucking talk about it, HFY retard.

Did someone piss in your breakfast? Are you mad that Cadia has fallen?

HFY is only good when done in way you can argue its no longer HFY

> just like vulcans probably talk shit about how everyone else is illogical and they're just so goddamned smart.
I'm pretty sure that's not just probable, they actually just do that on screen.

iunno, seems like you dont have any more shit arguments as to why only humans are bad and all aliens are perfect angels

>shit arguments
>implying
Wait what? I just got in this thread. Nothing better than waking up to a bunch of assmad HFY wankers that are so fucking angry at... I guess fictional aliens? Whatever makes you happy, bud.

Actually, I don't play 40K. But my cat did knock my beautiful Belgium waffles on the floor a couple of minutes ago. So yes, I'm pissed. Plus, I really have had it with both of those groups. I've had too many games being ruined by both of those fuckers.

>I just got in this thread.

sure, that's why you're so obsessed with replying to me

watch, do it again

Again HFY I will give you benefit of doubt and not dimis all of it as long you provide good alien race, not some shitty strawman to contrast with awesome human in your stories.

Not really but it's a very old cliche that for a long time was overdone.

It goes like this. Wise ancient aliens meet humans. Humans react badly. Usually it's the dumb warmonger military that wants to blow things up because they're all bullies and retards and paranoid racists. Some hero humans appear who save the wise aliens via moxie and can-do spirit. The aliens reluctantly decide that mankind isn't ready for wise alien contact yet and depart. Along the way, the aliens reveal that they embody whatever political agenda the writer happens to have.

Carl Sagan's Contact worked like this. That's the plot of ET. Lots of others, too. Star Trek is an inversion where humanity is the wise aliens, but otherwise the plots play out the same (until DS9 when they scrapped Roddenberry's message).

Occasionally, the antagonists are evil capitalist corporations who don't get that in the future everyone is a socialist and shares. In those plots, the wise aliens roll their eyes and are beyond whatever sneaky tricks are employed against them, though it might seem for dramatic purposes like they're falling for it before the big reveal.

What you're talking about with HFY is that this standard plot is hauled out yet again, only this time the humans are right to be paranoid and violent whereas the peaceful all-knowing aliens are corrupt and decadent.

The other inversion is that the aliens prove to be every bit as violent and dangerous as we are. Sometimes it's a misunderstanding that humans assume that any aliens should be wise and good hippies, but other times it's intentional deception. This has been done to death too.

V: The Miniseries was like that. It was derived from Damon Knight's short story To Serve Man. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Footfall did the same thing. Niven's short story "The Warriors" is the classic of this trope. Greg Bear's Forge of God had a subplot that went this way. One of the vignettes in Methuselah's Children went this way.

>V: The Miniseries was like that. It was derived from Damon Knight's short story To Serve Man. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Footfall did the same thing. Niven's short story "The Warriors" is the classic of this trope. Greg Bear's Forge of God had a subplot that went this way. One of the vignettes in Methuselah's Children went this way.

holy fuck how much do you read, maybe you had to google it but I always love that there are still learned people out there, regardless of the subject, who can just pick three or four story tropes/plots and list like a hundred books off the top of their head that coincide with whatever trop they're talking about

Lovecraft.

>ooh my goooooooood aliens!
>oh hello weird pink monkey, let me teach you about the universe
>ooh my goooooooood it's so terrifying
>weird pink monkey, why are you screaming?

I'm putting forward the idea that Quark's lesson is hollow because the Ferengi wouldn't really be any different.

And besides, humans aren't self destructive in the traditional meaning of the term. Humans are very strongly biased towards the group which they believe that they belong to and will work to further the goals and aims of the group.

In the universe of Star Trek this behavior is only 'self destructive' because humans are the only species in the setting which is not monocultural. Which is to say the alien civilizations in Star Trek are so idealized that any real civilization would never measure up anyway, which makes them a poor metric by any standard. Kind of like how planets in Star Wars are not representative of believable ecologies because they're all composed of a single, global biome.

That is so hilarious and so true.

The Whisperer in Darkness.

>humans aren't self destructive

>Not having a nuclear war means humans are self destructive

>russia is sweating more and has their finger much closer, nearly touching the button

the bias though

You do realise that you can go to prison for almost killing someone?

>60 years later, we haven't destroyed ourselves
>We're still somehow self-destructive

You can't imprison an entire nation, no matter how hard America tries.

>using as evidence that time no war actually happened and the larger bureaucracies/diplomatic corps of the Soviets and the USA prevented rash decision-making

:^]

You can go to prison for trying to kill someone, that's called attempted murder, attacking someone with a deadly weapon, we call that aggravated assault where I live, but two people sitting across from a table mutually threatening each other but never actually doing anything aren't guilty of anything. One may accuse the other of making threats, but they both made equivalent threats.

Scientists have calculated that humanity as we live now will be extinct between 1000 and 10,000 years.

>a setting where humans are the dumbest race around
Isn't that your average sci-fi setting? Where other races have mastered interstellar flight long before humans have?

>Scientists have calculated
*estimated

yeah, but you have to try first, dumbass.

going "I'm gonna blow you up" and having someone go "no I'm gonna blow you up" is just two guys talking shit

Cuban Missile Crisis was far more than just talking shit. Nuclear forces were mobilized, the Navy went to fucking Cuba, the airforce was mobilized.

Dude, fucking read a history book.

>HFY retard.

Mate, I don't even like this genre. It spawns ideas for aliens that are even more shallow than the Star Trek mainstays.

I'm just saying Quark is full of shit (alternatively whoever wrote the history of his species doesn't know anything about societal development).

I could name so many things that would happen in 1,000 to 10,000 years, holy fuck.

We'll probably get FTL travel, meet aliens, invent robot waifus, be able to 3d print edible food out of thin air, in somewhere between 1k and 10k years, because its such a broad fucking range of time.

Think of what happened in the last 10,000 years, and how much of that only happened in the last fucking century, not even the last millennium.

Don't care.

And then nothing happened, so they were talking shit.

Yeah, it's shit.
Still superior to most scifi that gets consumed by dumb retarded nerd masses.
>eeey it got lasers and aliens, i love scifi TEEHEE

>I could name so many things that would happen in 1,000 to 10,000 years, holy fuck.
Yeah, like the upcoming Anthropocene mass extinction that will kill off all life larger than a dog.

>the time manny yelled at pat was far more than just talking shit
>bats and tire irons were mobilized
>henry and manny went to fucking pat's house and stood outside yelling for awhile
>manuel was on his way over
>and then everyone just went home because they realized they had better shit to do

wow, so much different than regular shit talking

this is like

HIGH STAKES shit talking, where in the end there is still no nuclear war, you fucking idiot.

dogs come in big and small, are we saying all life larger than a chihuahua or larger than one of those fucking himalayan bear dogs that weigh more than most people do before they hit puberty?

because if its the himalayan bear dog, humans might just have to get smaller and not actually go extinct

it would also leave a lot of monkeys and great apes behind, so we could re-evolve out of the ashes and try again

>Yeah, like the upcoming Anthropocene mass extinction that will kill off all life larger than a dog.
Lanklets, when will they learn?

Or the aversion of the Anthropocene mass extinction.

Heh, thanks! I do read a lot, but also I'm in my 40s and so some of it's just a matter of having had more time to catch up.

If you're into Larry Niven, I have a feeling you'll work through his whole corpus in short order. Especially read The Mote In God's Eye. Heinlein once called it, "Possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read."

There was a time pre-cyberpunk when most sci fi was off-world interspecies relations. ie outward-looking. These books and short stories are classics from that era. The Golden Age of Science fiction was mostly short stories between the 40's and the 60's. You can still find many of the short stories in anthologies, and many while outdated are still excellent as fiction.

Here's the larry niven story-- his publisher put it for free online:

baen.com/Chapters/0671878794/0671878794___2.htm

It was the international equivalent of two neighbors yelling shit at each other, telling junior to go get their shotgun, then going back inside without doing anything.

It's quite literally an example of restraint and sanity prevailing in an extremely dangerous situation. If humanity was actually inherently self destructive that situation would have resulted in an actual nuclear war rather than a non-violent resolution followed up with some missile-shuffling.

I think we need to see a HFY setting where humanity gained its greatness at a terrible price. Like, humanity is a conquering war machine but I dunno, demons have possessed the collective soul of the species.

I like the idea of humanities singular trait being the emphasis we put on food/cuisine. For whatever reason, humans are the only race with a deep sense of taste and the only ones who invented stuff like chefs and spices. Everyone else just eats raw food or nutrient paste.

Write this user. Sounds cool and shit.

>dogs come in big and small, are we saying all life larger than a chihuahua or larger than one of those fucking himalayan bear dogs that weigh more than most people do before they hit puberty?
>because if its the himalayan bear dog, humans might just have to get smaller and not actually go extinct
>it would also leave a lot of monkeys and great apes behind, so we could re-evolve out of the ashes and try again
Nope, we already exhausted all the natural resources of Earth. Any intelligent species that evolves after mankind will just be stuck forever at Renaissance/Early Modern tech levels, unable to go through the Industrial revolution because we already scraped all the coal from easily accessible places.

And by the time the Earth has generated new fossil fuels, Earth is already getting slowly cooked by the Sun, and life will just keep getting more and more difficult until eventually all organic material burns up.

Sounds like the "space elves" thing where humans are the naive, ignorant newcomers to the galaxy, while all the other races are far more technologically and scientifically advanced, making it that much more awesome when the plucky underdog human protagonists rise to the challenge and outdo the high-and-mighty smug aliens.

That's basically going back to the pre-HFY state, the sort of thing that HFY was theoretically supposed to be a counterpoint against, though in practice it tends to merely imitate it poorly.

>Humans are self destructive monsters left to their own devices!

Except that all of human history has consisted of us being left to our own devices, and we still aren't dead. We half self-destructive tendencies, but we're also constructive enough that it hasn't resulted in extinction of the collapse of global civilization yet. Left to their own devices, people generally adapt.

Make Humans Space Rednecks.

m.imgur.com/gallery/wpZ4w

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>your titan gets raped by a massive concrete space dildo your rebels built, kek

You're right, I *would* want it that way

That's the one, cheers mate.

how about a setting where earth exploded and we have a few survivor colony ships that wake up fucking 10000 lightyears away in a set of hospitable planets. ships land and we start a few citys. probably wont be bale to travel to the other worlds that had colony ships in a hundred years.

thing is. the places are already populated by species of varying technology 1 planet might have industrial age. whereas other are in the gunpowder age.

and these species are fucking weeeaaaksauce.

humans are seen by them as mutant monsters that can do feats of unimaginable strength. they have reflexes that surpass theirs by miles.

also makes hunting for game rather boring because all animals move at a snails pace.

basiaclly i want humans to be the big scary thing in the setting.
>dude they can fucking stay awake for more then 9 hours
>they can digest almost anything
>they adapt to every disease and poison in their body(comparatively)
>they can even swim

>how about a setting where earth exploded and we have a few survivor colony ships that wake up fucking 10000 lightyears away in a set of hospitable planets. ships land and we start a few citys. probably wont be bale to travel to the other worlds that had colony ships in a hundred years.
>thing is. the places are already populated by species of varying technology 1 planet might have industrial age. whereas other are in the gunpowder age.
>and these species are fucking weeeaaaksauce.
>humans are seen by them as mutant monsters that can do feats of unimaginable strength. they have reflexes that surpass theirs by miles.
>also makes hunting for game rather boring because all animals move at a snails pace.
>basiaclly i want humans to be the big scary thing in the setting.
>>dude they can fucking stay awake for more then 9 hours
>>they can digest almost anything
>>they adapt to every disease and poison in their body(comparatively)
>>they can even swim

The Damned by Alan Dean Foster.

Most species develop on planets with one ocean, and mostly one large continent, and basically even the predator species have it fairly easy. They are losing their war agaisnt the Amplitur Collective because they can't really fight very well - their best fighters are barely capable. the Amplitur are also telepathic and can dominate other minds.

They find earth. they ar shocked as all hell that ANYTHING on earth is alive because the planet is a tectonic nightmare world of hyperviolent geological insanity. They study earthlings and decide to kidnap one and see if they can be soldiers they need. The person they kidnap says "really we aren't that warlike, we want peace". And he goes with them to prove his race is not what they need.

Turns out humans are natural born killign machines in comparison to everything else in the universe because the earth breeds survival-oriented thought processes into our species just by her very nature of being what every other species considers a hell-scape.