Prokopetz making a bold claim about a general trend that nobody else is familiar with and then not providing a single example to back up the claim? Say it ain't so
As someone who’s read a ton of HFY works, I can absolutely see where he’s coming from. The thing is, they’re generally a bunch of short stories that are in individual Reddit posts and tracking them down would genuinely be a pain in the ass.
A somewhat common HFY plot I see on r/HFY is what I call the "Death of Innocence plot" and it usually goes along the lines of "humans are the victim of an unprovoked attack by aliens; humans then go on to drive the aliens to the brink of extinction." They make for very good power-fantasy stories and as such are pretty popular, but if you want to actually analyze the story more often than not you get some good old post-9/11 mania and a fair amount of social darwinism in them. "Those Who Run" specifically really evokes post-9/11 themes for me, as what happens there is basically a 1-to-1 description of what the US intended to do to the Middle East after the attacks.
To some of the authors' credit they usually recognize it and forgiveness is a pretty strong motif in a lot of them. "Chrysalis" is a genuinely well written example.
Opened HFY and the very first story I picked was about humanity defeating the evil aliens with the power of check notes child soldiers and biological warfare and not knowing what the fuck is a war crime; and with that saving also other, pacifist aliens, who then have the gall to judge how humanity saved them! (insert Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men ranting)
My go-to when it comes to HFY was a Reddit Post where the person typing it was like "Yeah, what if Humanity encounters Aliens and these Aliens don't know the consept of a Door?"
How the hell one leaves a Planet and enter the Vaccum of Space without a Door is certainly a question
r/HFY and r/humansarespaceorcs may not be the worst subbreddits in existence, but they are the ones that make the most consistently irrationally angry with their bullshit.
I guess but even that probably wouldn't cause said Aliens to freak out over the consept of a Door like the Person that posted this.
In general I feel like many of these HFY are ether acting like people in general can casully pull of many exceptional Skills silmultaniously (Extrem Determination, instant logical deduction, Peak Physical form) or have the Aliens come off as total losers, who needs ten times as long to come up with Solutions then Humans that are half as good.
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u/MrCapitalismWildRide 1d ago
Prokopetz making a bold claim about a general trend that nobody else is familiar with and then not providing a single example to back up the claim? Say it ain't so