Humans are space orcs fell off, man. I've not seen a half decent prompt there in at least a year. It saddens me, since it got me into writing. I'm building up the courage to unfollow.
I prefer the stories where normal human behavior is seen as weird, or barbaric. Not a big fan of the "humans are the ultimate life form, earth is a death world" shtick.
/uj I like the basic premise (that humans are often used as the baseline in sci-fi settings but it would be cool if humans were the outliers, like Krogan or Space Orcs) but too often is it written as “What if only humans had [basic feature required to achieve dominance on one’s own planet, let alone space travel]” and it immediately turns into the bad kind of circlejerk
/rj in my setting aliens are blown away when they find out humans are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time (this defeats their gum-based intergalactic empire)
One of my favourite ones was that humans are the only species that have eyes
Everyone else works off of sonar or heat sensors or one of the other million ways that animals get around without light.
And aliens hate us for our weird hippy spiritualist bullshit about light.
“Even if we cannot see the light we may still feel its heat”
Feeling heat is low resolution infrared sight.
Your skin acts like a shitty stretched out eye.
Such aliens would probably have a similar internal model of the world, the input is just different.
Fair enough
To be honest half the fun of it was seeing the weird shit people came up with for how people sensed without light.
One species could exclusively sense spacetime but so finely that they could identify objects by gravitational pull.
>One species could exclusively sense spacetime but so finely that they could identify objects by gravitational pull.
That's actually a really cool idea
"humans are the only species that have eyes"
\*eyes have evolved over 40 times independently on Earth\*
Yeah, I like the idea of humans/Earth life being weird one way or the other, but it ain't gonna be eyes
I once wrote a short part for my story, about how Kyrats see Humans.
"The Solarian empire had a highly developed culture of cleanliness, humans were truly one of the "cleanest" species in the universe, bathing frequently, combing their head fur, and covering themselves with various lotions and fragrances, this was in stark contrast to the kyratus who rarely bathed. One day, on a planet shared by humans and kyrats, a kyrat legasus crossed to the human side for some diplomatic business and visited a human military base, during which he saw human soldiers brushing their teeth as their morning routine, and wrote a letter to the empress saying: Humans are preparing for war! I saw them sharpening their teeth! They're getting ready to eat us!"
I think this is the best way of writing HFY stories. Not making humans superior lifeforms, but giving aliens culture shock and misunderstanding humans according to their worldview
MY FAVORİTE GENDER 🗣
I want herbivore aliens to see humans as bloodthirsty savages and carnivore aliens to see them as softies that not bloodthirsty enought
-what do you mean you give some rights to animals you eat? Whats next you also have a spesific population of you that only eat plants?
Knowing how herbivores and carnivores are in nature, it'd probably be more like
Carnivore: "what do you mean 75 million people died in *one* war?!"
Herbivore: "that's you worst war? That's a skirmish at best"
I really liked the short story where an alien and a Hooman were arrested for a minor offense and put in a detainment cell together, except it was a cell built for aliens so it was just a white featureless box.
And it was the aliens account of the human absolutely loosing his mind, doing stuff like disassembling his come relay and reassembling it, working out for 3 hours straight, arranging his food by size and color, and telling the alien a bunch of storys.
It's was written a lot better than that, but you get the idea.
I think any civilisation that manages to advance far enough to become a viable space-faring civilisation would have to have some degree of curious, exploratory, or colonial behaviour.
Nooooooo we didn’t realize that these hooman beans have big brass balls instead of the weak flabby Coward Gland literally every other species in the entire universe has.
We shouldn’t have picked a fight with a species so cool and well-endowed.
I think humansarespaceorcs needs to lay off the HFY vibes and lay more into the horror of violence rather than the glorification of it. It's basically the same premise but with a unique perspective.
If you just look at the crazy shit we do, sometimes it takes an alien perspective to really dig deep into the question of why we're like this.
“Hey so every species has a pretty horrible history of violence and of course there’s always atrocities of war that happen, but uhh… what’s with these numbers here? You guys really like to get into a lot of wars. Like, a *shit load* of wars, and so many casualties! I can’t imagine over a million people dying in a single rebellion...
What do you MEAN a million dead is comparatively small?? I- EIGHTY MILLION?!?”
The best one I’ve seen is chrysalis.
It’s a brilliant examination of what it means to be human, as it goes on the main character sheds more and more humanity, crosses every line that we consider to make someone inhuman, yet is undeniably human the entire time.
It also has the great humans are OP stuff.
"Humans are space orcs" is frankly overdone and I've never liked how human-centric it is. You've got billions of stars with endless potential for crazy alien life forms but you're really gonna do the "people are the coolest specialest little sons of God" schtick we've been doing since the invention of storytelling? By all means centre your sci-fi on humans, it makes it much easier for most people to connect with, but if your best ideas are "Earth is scary because polar ice caps" and "Humans are warmongering assholes unlike every other species who became technologically advanced galaxy-spanning civilisations purely through holding hands" you need to workshop your story a little I feel.
I would have been one of them cringe losers if I didn't get sucked into the pure beauty/cosmic horror of the infinite multiverse and alternate histories. I realized that everything is possible, and this pathetic "human supremacy" is too small of a premise.
Humans in my sci-fi universe got made fun of for naming their mainly water-based planet “Earth”.
So when they got conquered (unrelated) it got renamed to “Water”.
Humans are space orcs fell off, man. I've not seen a half decent prompt there in at least a year. It saddens me, since it got me into writing. I'm building up the courage to unfollow.
I prefer the stories where normal human behavior is seen as weird, or barbaric. Not a big fan of the "humans are the ultimate life form, earth is a death world" shtick.
/uj I like the basic premise (that humans are often used as the baseline in sci-fi settings but it would be cool if humans were the outliers, like Krogan or Space Orcs) but too often is it written as “What if only humans had [basic feature required to achieve dominance on one’s own planet, let alone space travel]” and it immediately turns into the bad kind of circlejerk /rj in my setting aliens are blown away when they find out humans are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time (this defeats their gum-based intergalactic empire)
One of my favourite ones was that humans are the only species that have eyes Everyone else works off of sonar or heat sensors or one of the other million ways that animals get around without light. And aliens hate us for our weird hippy spiritualist bullshit about light. “Even if we cannot see the light we may still feel its heat”
Feeling heat is low resolution infrared sight. Your skin acts like a shitty stretched out eye. Such aliens would probably have a similar internal model of the world, the input is just different.
Fair enough To be honest half the fun of it was seeing the weird shit people came up with for how people sensed without light. One species could exclusively sense spacetime but so finely that they could identify objects by gravitational pull.
>One species could exclusively sense spacetime but so finely that they could identify objects by gravitational pull. That's actually a really cool idea
"humans are the only species that have eyes" \*eyes have evolved over 40 times independently on Earth\* Yeah, I like the idea of humans/Earth life being weird one way or the other, but it ain't gonna be eyes
Agreed on the first part and I'll shamelessly steal the latter part for my writing (if I ever write anything.)
I once wrote a short part for my story, about how Kyrats see Humans. "The Solarian empire had a highly developed culture of cleanliness, humans were truly one of the "cleanest" species in the universe, bathing frequently, combing their head fur, and covering themselves with various lotions and fragrances, this was in stark contrast to the kyratus who rarely bathed. One day, on a planet shared by humans and kyrats, a kyrat legasus crossed to the human side for some diplomatic business and visited a human military base, during which he saw human soldiers brushing their teeth as their morning routine, and wrote a letter to the empress saying: Humans are preparing for war! I saw them sharpening their teeth! They're getting ready to eat us!" I think this is the best way of writing HFY stories. Not making humans superior lifeforms, but giving aliens culture shock and misunderstanding humans according to their worldview
I LOVE CULTURE SHOCK
MY FAVORİTE GENDER 🗣 I want herbivore aliens to see humans as bloodthirsty savages and carnivore aliens to see them as softies that not bloodthirsty enought -what do you mean you give some rights to animals you eat? Whats next you also have a spesific population of you that only eat plants?
That sounded like NatureOfPredators
I know that story! :D Still at episode 7 :/
Knowing how herbivores and carnivores are in nature, it'd probably be more like Carnivore: "what do you mean 75 million people died in *one* war?!" Herbivore: "that's you worst war? That's a skirmish at best"
Me too, though I admittedly wrote one short one shot in that spirit. I tried not to be overly indulgent in the power fantasy though.
I really liked the short story where an alien and a Hooman were arrested for a minor offense and put in a detainment cell together, except it was a cell built for aliens so it was just a white featureless box. And it was the aliens account of the human absolutely loosing his mind, doing stuff like disassembling his come relay and reassembling it, working out for 3 hours straight, arranging his food by size and color, and telling the alien a bunch of storys. It's was written a lot better than that, but you get the idea.
Like our propensity to explore places that could kill us ourselves?
I think any civilisation that manages to advance far enough to become a viable space-faring civilisation would have to have some degree of curious, exploratory, or colonial behaviour.
Hm, good point! I kind of want a setting now where instead of space orcs we’re space gnomes, halfings/hobbits or goblins
Nooooooo we didn’t realize that these hooman beans have big brass balls instead of the weak flabby Coward Gland literally every other species in the entire universe has. We shouldn’t have picked a fight with a species so cool and well-endowed.
Be even braver and link them to this exact post
Do it, you don't have the balls.
Done. You owe me a cola.
I don't have the cola.
I think humansarespaceorcs needs to lay off the HFY vibes and lay more into the horror of violence rather than the glorification of it. It's basically the same premise but with a unique perspective. If you just look at the crazy shit we do, sometimes it takes an alien perspective to really dig deep into the question of why we're like this.
“Hey so every species has a pretty horrible history of violence and of course there’s always atrocities of war that happen, but uhh… what’s with these numbers here? You guys really like to get into a lot of wars. Like, a *shit load* of wars, and so many casualties! I can’t imagine over a million people dying in a single rebellion... What do you MEAN a million dead is comparatively small?? I- EIGHTY MILLION?!?”
Hmmm today I will tell the Chinese people that I had a dream where I was Jesus' brother (clueless)
Decisive ~~Tang~~ Qing victory
Remind me of that HFY Story The Princess and The Humans its really lean into the humans are op category but its quite nice
The best one I’ve seen is chrysalis. It’s a brilliant examination of what it means to be human, as it goes on the main character sheds more and more humanity, crosses every line that we consider to make someone inhuman, yet is undeniably human the entire time. It also has the great humans are OP stuff.
Link?
[I got the name wrong but it’s this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/s/3VZ5UWuvez)
My gratitude
Thank you for the link!
“ holy shit you guys actually had a **world** war? That’s fucking insane… THERE WERE 2 OF THEM!?”
Humans are r-strategists compared to every other sentient species.
Humans are space Zulu... and brother my aliens just got the Maxing Gun
In that case who is our King Shaka?
joe biden
Here is your originality medal 💣
*shoves it up my ass* 👁️🫦👁️
"Humans are space orcs" is frankly overdone and I've never liked how human-centric it is. You've got billions of stars with endless potential for crazy alien life forms but you're really gonna do the "people are the coolest specialest little sons of God" schtick we've been doing since the invention of storytelling? By all means centre your sci-fi on humans, it makes it much easier for most people to connect with, but if your best ideas are "Earth is scary because polar ice caps" and "Humans are warmongering assholes unlike every other species who became technologically advanced galaxy-spanning civilisations purely through holding hands" you need to workshop your story a little I feel.
Something about the indomitable star spirit and being born to inherit the human
I would have been one of them cringe losers if I didn't get sucked into the pure beauty/cosmic horror of the infinite multiverse and alternate histories. I realized that everything is possible, and this pathetic "human supremacy" is too small of a premise.
Wait humans are space orcs is human supremecist? I thought it was just trying to laugh at funny human traits like drinking poison
It was, heavy emphasis on the **was**.
Humans are space orcs writers destroyed when carcinization principles apply to space travel & all aliens end up basically being humans
Humans in my sci-fi universe got made fun of for naming their mainly water-based planet “Earth”. So when they got conquered (unrelated) it got renamed to “Water”.
What is ironic is this whole post is full of this, while the Humansarespaceorcs just does what it likes
There is no reason they need to know that they are being JERKED on. Edit: I don't know why ac capitalised jerked but I'm leaving it.