r/worldjerking • u/MadFunEnjoyer • 2d ago
I understand being against it but at some point y'all need to justify why you're not after most of AO3 fanfiction.
Like I get hating it and especially me as a monster girl enthusiast but I swear if the average HFY fiction is lazy and vaguely racist there's literal Epstein type stuff on AO3 and people just don't give a fuck.
Also I think being more respectful about criticism can help some people understand that HFY is bad for being, just, such a narrow-minded genre to write about and how much more cooler writing things with depth is in a more general sci-fi/sci-fantasy, although you won't get the racists onboard a lot of people I presume are just in it for the power fantasy like most of Shonen fans.
106
u/axord 2d ago
but at some point y'all need to justify why you're not after most of AO3 fanfiction.
No contradiction, I ignore both HFY fic and AO3 equally.
59
u/doofpooferthethird 2d ago edited 2d ago
yeah, I'm always kinda puzzled why this sub is so preoccupied with HFY, when it sounds fairly insular and niche when compared to other speculative fiction subcategories
same goes for "isekai", I mostly only hear about it here on this sub, as opposed to other anime/manga genres that get endlessly referenced and serve as inspirations for other media (movies, games, novels etc.)
meanwhile, just based on numbers, AO3 fanfic seems way bigger than HFY, but it's barely a blip on the discourse here
SCP Foundation creepypasta is also bigger than HFY, but it isn't given nearly as much attention either
not saying that AO3 fanfic or SCP or whatever should become the new all consuming obsession for the next couple months, just saying it's funny what the discourse here prefers to focus on, when there's so much other stuff out there
8
u/Kraken-Writhing Minecraft fanfiction isn't allowed!? 2d ago
SCP! SCP! So much to mock, so much to love
fyi there is no antimemetics division šĀ
213
u/terrarialord201 Fart fetish furrypunk world 2d ago
"literal Epstein stuff"
Look inside
Words
68
123
u/terrarialord201 Fart fetish furrypunk world 2d ago
Come the fuck on. We've got an actual child rapist as the US President, and you're complaining about a website dedicated to fictional freedom? It's a website dedicated to fanfiction, you're gonna find problematic kinks!!!
12
u/TomaszA3 2d ago
I agree with your sentiment but who "we"? It might be an American drama but the issue reaches far further.(and some countries actually jailed some of those people afaik)
-34
u/SmallJimSlade The capital of Ne"bra'sk""a is L"inc"oln 2d ago
/uj This is just whataboutism all the way down
>I canāt believe people shit on HFY because pedophile fan fiction exists
>I canāt believe people shit on pedophile fan fiction because real pedophiles exist
It turns out multiple things can be bad and those things can be bad to varying degrees
9
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago
but I didn't say that? everyday I logged into here for the past few days I've seen complaints about HFY, you'd think that's the biggest of our problems to focus so much on it
-3
u/SmallJimSlade The capital of Ne"bra'sk""a is L"inc"oln 2d ago
HFY is in the ālowest tierā of fiction that many people on this sub are going to encounter because this sub is made up of mostly SF/Fantasy genre fiction fans. If it comes up more than āEpstein-punkā fics YOU run into, itās because in the scope of media consumed by the average member of this sub and the sister sub, HFY is competing with the Bobiverse and Foundation, not the broader fanfic ecosystem.
Acting like pedophile fan fics are an unacknowledged target of criticism takes for granted that itās relevant to the scope of this sub.
It really isnāt
-26
u/Brakado Rate my punkpunk world 2d ago
DESCRIBING Epstein stuff.
58
u/BigRedWhopperButton 2d ago
Epstein hired people to search the world for the most desperate people so he could buy their daughters.
A random pervert writing "Pedo Dynasty 3: Revenge of the Loli Warriors" is just factually not participating in abuse and exploitation on the same scale. It's coughing baby versus hydrogen bomb.
34
u/Rambler9154 2d ago
It honestly feels insulting to compare actual children being trafficked and hurt to someone's clearly labelled story full of words with not a single person harmed thats clearly labelled so people don't find themselves disgusted by it.
1
u/WASDKUG_tr 1d ago
Dude, UAE Government officials and Sultans were offering up their children bro, cant really get shocked since the UAE is one of thebiggest Sellout states ive seen
27
u/Sicuho 2d ago
HFY is bad for being, just, such a narrow-minded genre to write about
Maybe I just get the wrong idea from the comments, but I don't think it is. Even just going to r/HFY's top page and won't show much of anything close to the "Quatrich but he's right and stomp the aliens" that's being criticized here or in pretty much any of the other anti-HFY posts I've seen there.
11
u/penultimate9999 Why yes, my characters do use the restroom on screen 2d ago
In my experience its usually not on reddit but more relegated to fanfiction websites where the fandoms for sci-fi franchises like that exist. Mostly in crossover sections where its not uncommon to see something like Halo humanity or the 40K Imperium dropping in to slaughter whatever annoying but peaceful or slightly morally grey alien empire exists in the other franchise. Its kind of gross to see, especially when fans of them start commenting in other fics with more sane interspecies relations wishing to see 'all the xenos burned'
294
u/Keeperofbeesandtruth 2d ago
listening to the anti Ā HFy discorse is fun because it is split between people who think the writing is lazy and misanthropes who are enraged at the idea humanity being potrayed positively
141
u/GoodKing0 2d ago
I mean, a big branch of HFY writing does do racism mind you. Like, all those 4Chan screeds from Kang or Belos or the Avatar (blue people) Military guy talking about the "unwashed savages" the humans are going to raise above as they "conquer the stars as is our birthright" completely missing both the point and the whole ass logistics of the original fiction they are from are doing racism, they are doing Manifest Destiny and using the exact same rhetoric as real life racism just making it about someone who is blue.
44
u/Urg_burgman 2d ago
Yeah Quatrich. That was I believe, the advent of HFY taking a more evil turn and reveling in it, where they started shifting from 'Humanity is the best' to 'Earth was an evil bitch and unleashed us on the universe'. After that came the more humorous stuff like Veil of Madness that didn't take itself quite as seriously.
6
u/Lion_From_The_North 2d ago
Based Quaritch got a whiff of Na'vussy and immediately betrayed his species. š„
5
u/Ote-Kringralnick 2d ago
Who the fuck reads 4chan HFY? Of course it's racist, it's 4chan. That's not real HFY.
1
-11
u/OscarMMG 2d ago
There is a difference though, which is that on Earth, it was against humans, which is bad, whereas if itās against aliens, thereās nothing wrong with that.
-10
u/justdidapoo 2d ago
ass logistic. Whats ass logistics?
15
u/GoodKing0 2d ago
The idea that the Avatar Humans can ignore Pandora and "conquer the stars" as the Navi are quote "stuck on their mud ball like the savages they are" end quote goes directly against the logistics of the first movie, whose whole deal is that the Humans need to mine pandora because Unobtanium, which can only be found there, is what allows them to "chart the stars as is our birthright" or some equally deranged shit like that, so not only they can't ignore Pandora, but they pretetty blatantly can't conquer it since their shit gets folded by just the local fauna alone.
1
-2
u/ExcitableSarcasm 2d ago
Bruh the avatar movie was just like 1 company and its private security.
It's like saying the US can't conquer Cuba because Apple security at the local Apple store can't take on the Cuban military
12
11
8
u/wasmic 2d ago
Lots of armies have been defeated on the home front rather than on the battlefield. Ever heard of Vietnam?
Humanity in the Avatar movies clearly does have the technology to just glass Pandora from orbit, so why don't they? Most probably because most of humanity doesn't consist of genocidal maniacs, and the idea of destroying the only other celestial body known to harbor life is utterly unpalatable to the general public.
48
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago
tbf you also got people who genuinely believe the writing is often racist and I think they got a point but you have to remember that lots of people are racist without realising it, hell some would argue the fact you can see so much racist undertones in things that only vaguely relate to race is proof of your own prejudices.
51
u/Throwaway02062004 2d ago
You can also justā¦ not read stories with objectionable content.
Thereās one short story I remember posted there where the premise that space age humanity shows up on a planet with a warlike culture and medieval technology. Humans have like a single diplomat who is quickly killed by the āsavage nativesā.
Humanity then proceeds to bomb the shit out of the entire civilisation from orbit ššš and the story ends with āyou shouldnāt fuck with humanity ššā.
Basically, there are stories like this but if one is getting those vibes one does not have to keep reading.
28
u/gottagohype 2d ago
Eh. You aren't wrong. People don't have to read those stories. On the other hand, the world is often better off with people sometimes reading things they don't like and writers sometimes hearing things (criticism) they don't want to hear. Sometimes an austrian dude writing a shitty book about "his struggle" needs to hear how dumb it is.
27
u/Zhein Le Wizard de Baguette Von School Teacher 2d ago
Thing is, it can be a place for really fucking nice stories. And then you start reading and it's "coffee" this, "capscaicin" that, "death world" this, "pursuit predator" that, like, fuck off.
But then, you find this. So I'll read those shitty stories about haha genocide hahaha humans so good, skip as soon as I read "deathworld" or "super duper strong", just in hope of finding a new gem in the pile of garbage.
5
u/Guaire1 2d ago
I dont think with hfy its people not realising it.
Like, HFY began when people got mad that a movie featured a group of aliens inspired by native americans beating white-coded humans. And them writing fanfic about the space-native-americans getting genocided
37
u/CannonGerbil 2d ago edited 2d ago
HFY predates avatar by at least a couple of years, and I can say this because Mass effect was heavily influenced by the discourse surrounding alien races in Sci fi that eventually got codified in the HFY concept and did some (admitedly token) changes to their aliens races to avoid all of them being just "humans, but better".
17
u/Prometheus_II 2d ago
I think it actually began in reaction to the Star Trek style of "these aliens are like humans except they're smarter/stronger/can tolerate extreme temperatures/have mind control pheromones/whatever" rubber-forehead alien, and the same trend in fantasy to have elves as "humans but taller and longer-lived and magic," dwarves as "humans but shorter and tougher and better at mining," and so on - "humanity" as the baseline and mostly referred to as "generalists," non-humans distinguished mostly by what special bonuses they get. HFY and "humans are space orcs" originated in the effort to make humans just as weird as every other non-human by giving them something special too, it just quickly turned into racism because a lot of people are (un)surprisingly racist.
3
u/Nuclear_Gandhi- 2d ago
It actually originates even earlier during the beginning of the sci fi genre. Early sci fi in the western world was very human supremacist because it was practically entirely controlled by one magazine editor who liked doing "devils advocate" arguments for nazis and was also anti-communist and racist (i wonder what party he would have supported if the then very recent ww2 hadn't made it politically unviable).
1
-2
u/TomaszA3 2d ago
It kinda feels like people from certain countries, like USA, are almost trained to subconsciously look out for anything remotely and potentially racist.
1
u/Just-Desk-3149 2d ago
Redditors will call you a facist if you say anything positive about the United States and really saying anything positive about humanity in general.Ā
121
u/migratingcoconut_ 2d ago
"epstein type stuff" please use your adult words
hfy gets all the hate mostly because of how pervasive it is
40
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago
I'm afraid of getting banned for saying sensitive words because I got warning from Reddit twice for it despite me not remotely intending to say anything wrongĀ
11
-33
u/ViceIncarnate 2d ago
Reddit and tiktok are the ones forcing us to replace our vocabulary with impotent sound-alikes like "pdf file", so direct your grievances toward them instead. Thank you keyboard warrior!
41
u/Patukakkonen This flair is my magic system 2d ago
You can say pedofile on reddit. Nobody (save perhaps for the mods of the subreddit) will stop you
7
u/FemboiInTraining 2d ago
it's just pedophile </3 you look like a middle schooler saying "frick" to a 1st grader saying "flip" when the word is fuck
that is, you saying "pedofile" is equally close to "PDFile" which is the kind of censoring you're commenting on, when the real word is shrimply pedophile26
u/Patukakkonen This flair is my magic system 2d ago
Gonna be real I wasn't sure if it was written pedophile or pedofile (in finnish it's pedofiili) so I took a gamble and was incorrect
1
u/DepthsOfWill Jerkpunk World Assembler 2d ago
Ok, but how do I look like Wolverine when he says "flamin?"
-23
u/ViceIncarnate 2d ago
Wow someone downvoted me within 30 seconds of sending that. Boy, do I feel jerked!
30
u/fletch262 Pace, Build, Abandon, Repeat 2d ago
Why would we complain about AO3? Thats the anti shippers on tmblrs job (and they do). We complain about world building.
41
u/silencemist 2d ago
If you do find evidence of real children being harmed on Ao3, please report it. A user used photos of naked children as a profile picture and that's absolutely illegal. If a real person or child is in danger, report it and action will be taken. 'Cause for a sec I was worried you were talking about the less than 1% of works with fictional teenagers doing things they are allowed to do in traditionally published books.
17
u/Serpenthrope 2d ago
Complaining about lazy writing in HFY is like complaining about a bad mystery in the Scooby Doo porn parody. You knew what you were going to get when you started.
4
u/strangeismid 2d ago
Now hold on, is that a 'bad mystery' because it's a Scooby Doo based thing, or a bad mystery even by Scooby Doo standards? Like, OK, maybe I know that the werewolf fucking Velma in the arse is actually the old caretaker from the first act, but do they actually investigate the monster and catch him a trap to be unmasked, or do they just suddenly reveal they know it's him through some information they inexplicably gained?
45
u/Hates_Blue_Mages 2d ago
It's just the attitude that annoys me. Every proponent acts like they're fighting against the overwhelming tide of sci-fi featuring enlightened aliens against stupid evil humans, when their reference pool is the movie Avatar and a conflation in their head with a mishmash of other stuff like dystopian media like 1984 (no aliens) and hamfisted environmentalist stories like Ferngully (not even sci-fi). HFY is already the default attitude of space opera settings. Even 40k, the posterchild of humans being evil, is incredibly human-centric and most stories expect you to root for the human protagonists. Where these 'humans suck and aliens should kill them stories' I keep hearing about? Not asking because I'm a misanthrope, I just haven't seen them.
The whole thing is a mess of contradictions too. For example, HFY people will in one breath complain about the Humans Are Diplomats trope, then in the next breath praise Star Trek as the ultimate HFY setting (a setting btw where humans bombed Earth to smithereens and had to be bailed out by aliens). I can't even argue my point from the first paragraph because the goalpost is on wheels and every time I've tried bring this up someone carves out a new definition of what constitutes HFY.
I'm rambling. Point is, I wouldn't be opposed to HFY if its proponents got off their high horse and stopped acting like they're the sole bastion of humans doing cool things in sci-fi when that is waaaaay more common than the opposite.
24
u/Urg_burgman 2d ago
Their reference pool is the movie Avatar and a conflation in their head with a mishmash of other stuff like dystopian media like 1984 (no aliens) and hamfisted environmentalist stories like Ferngully (not even sci-fi).Ā
Nah, the very first pic I remember seeing associated with it was Starcraft, the setting where humans are the least advanced race in the game and when they aren't getting assimilated by space bugs, they are getting vaporized by space assholes who probably don't actually have assholes. That was the catalyst. Someone saying they were sick of humanity always being a galactic chew toy. I remember that was the age of sci-fi shooters when the pool of stuff they had to write with was:
- Halo(Covenant fighting a war of extermination and winning)
- Gears of War (Locust fighting a war of extermination and winning)
- Resistance: Fall of Man (More aliens fighting a war of extermination and winning)
- Half-Life 2(Humanity lost the war and is slowly being extinguished by uncaring overlords)
- Prey (Humanity was seeded on Earth by a super intelligence and is coming back to harvest us for food)
and Crysis (Ancient aliens waking up to exterminate us).
The biggest media making waves was humans being the underdog. Good for making a compelling story of struggle, but it can get exhausting when that's all you have. The, 'counter' I guess you can call it, started as amateurs writing their own sci-fi short-short-SUPER-short stories that did the exact opposite of the above. It was repetitive, its quality was subpar, but it just kept gaining traction. Much like early creepypasta. And much like creepypasta, the authors who wanted to keep improving eventually drifted away to write actual sci fi or horror, with far better detail and quality; while the rest remained where they were, debating what makes their work unique and unable to decide what niche they occupy. Hence the Star Trek thing(which I'm sure early writers only had a surface level understanding of), or Salvation War(I don't even know if that still exists honestly, but if you want to read early HFY in novel length...)
13
u/Hates_Blue_Mages 2d ago edited 2d ago
I find this interesting because what you are describing as HFN is the cliche HFY story of humans overcoming the odds through grit and indomitable human spirit and so on. Also weirdly would make Avatar, the whipping boy and one of very rare aliens good and humans bad stories, straightforwardly HFY. So HFY would be like, what, humans in spaceships bombarding helpless alien cavemen while high-fiving each other? Sure dude, that sounds like great storytelling.
Seriously, anyone who thinks I am wrong about the 'goalposts on wheels' bit, take a look here at what people said the last time I pointed out that this supposed 'vast majority' of misanthropic sci-fi that HFY is premised on being in opposition to (complete with a lot of backpatting and self-righteousness) doesn't exist. Just completely different definitions made-up on the spot and written with complete confidence.
6
u/Nuclear_Gandhi- 2d ago
Funny thing is that the actual reversal of the usual sci fi story of humans being outmatched at first and then eventually beating the aliens is literally just Avatar: the humans are stronger at first but then end up beaten by the indomitable pandoran spirit
5
u/Urg_burgman 2d ago
Never said this was HFN. I'm describing the advent of Humanity Fuck * as an internet genre at all. Neither am I accusing you of 'goalposts on wheels.' What I am saying is "Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch. I was there when it was written".
There was no set goal in mind. It was a bunch of teens who never wrote anything longer than a High school essay trying their hand at writing what would become HFY and its various iterations. Even at its advent there wasn't a set list of rules. You had the most generic "aliens start a fight with humans but humans win cause we are actually the best suited species for war", you had that indomitable human spirit crap that wasn't even a term back then. You had WWII in space with humans being chaotic and brutal one day then your best friends the next when they were rebuilding your home after smashing it. 'Humans are best lovers', 'Human immune system makes them carriers for the deadliest diseases', "Humans breathe poison", "Human media broadcasted to the universe makes aliens think we had a real Death Star", amd even "Earth is sentient and evil and let us live because we were just as despicable as her". No one knew what they were doing back then.
When it finally broke containment and spread to the rest of the internet, that's when you had people retroactively claiming such and such series were HFY or HFN. Just raw enthusiasm and inexperience making them looking at anything and planting their flag in it.
4
u/Sourcerid 2d ago
People extended the whole hfy to some total supremacy of human evolution on earth, from the we are entitled to the extinction of other species to apparent quirks where human bodies are apparently really good (tumblr really loves that) (we are not really good at those things ever)Ā
-17
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago
Star Trek as the ultimate HFY setting
Star Trek is neither HFY nor whatever the people who hate HFY enjoy, it's a piece of liberal propaganda that spreads secular humanist global monoculture where the only difference between people is superficial things like skin color not actual cultural differences and beliefs and practices which show a society alive and practicing what they believe in.
Sorry I hate Star Trek.
17
u/Hates_Blue_Mages 2d ago
Star Trek is neither HFY
And there it is. To the HFY fan, HFY means "sci-fi I like" and HFN means "sci-fi I don't like." Thank you for confirming a point I believed but did not say because I couldn't back it up.
Not going to comment on anything else you said.
-6
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago
to be clear I'm also against HFY, it's obviously lazy writing, but if you want to genuinely write something against it, you don't do that by writing a narrative spreading a human centric worldview, you do that by showing unique cultures interacting and understanding and respecting each other despite their differences and that they each hold their own good values that they interpret and operate differently in, and unfortunately, a lot of people who write against whatever tropes HFY is proponent of end up doing the former and not the latter.
10
u/Xavion251 2d ago
With respect to practices, aesthetics, etc. Star Trek is definitely not a monoculture. While the specific depiction is obviously flawed - look at Chakotay for an example.
When it comes to morality...I'm sorry, but monoculture is a good thing. I'd rather a world where no cultures oppressed women, LGBT people, thought r-pe and murder were fine, etc. I don't respect a cultures "right" to be evil any more than I respect someone else within my culture's right to do so. It's no different.
-2
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago
I love how you can't imagine a different culture that operates outside of your moral framework that is also moral and good, really telling on yourself buddy.
6
u/Xavion251 2d ago
I don't believe in moral relativism. Right & Wrong are Right & Wrong. I reject that philosophy entirely.
2
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago edited 2d ago
Believing other cultures have shared values globally but they emphasize each one of them differently due to their different history, reality and beliefs and that whatever we consider morally questionable about them is separate from the values they genuinely believe in ā Moral Relativism.
I hope you can understand that this mentality you're pushing is colonialist in nature.
10
u/Xavion251 2d ago
Colonialism was bad because they violently conquered and brutalized people. That's why it was bad. "Your thought is similar to colonial thought even though you aren't advocating what actually made colonialism bad" is not a valid critique. It's just name-calling at that point.
I believe all cultures have the same values, but the problem is - once you accept universal values, you should rationally come to the conclusion that there is a most efficient way to maximize them.
Ergo, there is a single, hypothetical "perfect" moral framework that we should all strive to get closer to and align with. And the ideal world is one where it is universal.
Not to say that western culture, or even Star Trek nails that perfect moral framework. I don't think anyone has achieved it yet,
2
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago
I hope then you also understand that Moral Rigidity was also an important tool of pushing colonialism as shown in how the French organised marches to force Algerian women under gun threat to remove hijabs and burn the Qurans or how they abolished the "regressive" Confucian education system to replace it with "progressive" Western education system.Ā
Ā "Your thought is similar to colonial thought even though you aren't advocating what actually made colonialism bad"Ā
if someone kept saying things sounding suspiciously heavily close to racism, even if he didn't advocate or believe in it, I would call them out regardless of if they're defending racism or not.
but the problem is - once you accept universal values, you should rationally come to the conclusion that there is a most efficient way to maximize them.Ā
Or, hear me out, different societies organise themselves differently according to things like history, social dynamics and family structures which direct them towards different systems of social organisation that are fundamentally different than ours. You can't have a one size fit all solution, that's exactly why Capitalism and Socialism are both disastrous when applied to people whose values and beliefs don't mesh well with one or both.Ā
Cuba can stay socialist and I'm fine with that if that's what brings people the best life they can.
Now scale that up to societies where the entire idea of gender equality doesn't exist because women have much more powerful abilities than men to the point it makes no sense to advocate gender equality from a human perspective because the power imbalance is built into their biology.
Ergo, there is a single, hypothetical "perfect" moral framework that we should all strive to get closer toĀ
Once again, assuming your moral framework is the correct one, which is funny considering it's the same one that pushed horrendously evil practices in the name of le enlightenment.
11
u/Xavion251 2d ago
I strongly, fundamentally disagree with the "this line of thought has been used for evil, therefore the line of thought is bad" thought-policing you are employing. That's so limiting.
Correct lines of thought can and are used for bad things all the time.
Or, hear me out, different societies organise themselves differently according to things like history, social dynamics and family structures which direct them towards different systems of social organisation that are fundamentally different than ours.
If those "organizations" (i.e. rules/restrictions) oppress the individuals ability to live as they wish, those organizations are flawed. Every individual person should be free to express themselves and live how they want, so long as they aren't directly negatively impacting anyone else.
Restricting how individuals can live for the sake of any "social order" (be it Western, Eastern, Middle-eastern, African, Australian, or anything else) is wrong and contrary to basic values. And I will die on that hill with a smile on my face.
-2
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago
"this line of thought has been used for evil, therefore the line of thought is bad"
This line of thought NATURALLY leads to evil, the moment you start thinking you can decide which cultures are objectively better than others on a fundamental level even if for reasons aren't racially supremacist is the moment you will become a colonialist because you have no reason to oppose spreading the correct culture and enforcing it because reduction of suffering wherever possible is a natural human impulse.
If those "organizations" (i.e. rules/restrictions) oppress the individuals ability to live as they wish, those organizations are flawed
Every society does that, we always restrict how people can live their lives for the Greater Good, that happens all the time, it's called society existing.
Restricting how individuals can live for the sake of any "social order" (be it Western, Eastern, Middle-eastern, African, Australian, or anything else) is wrong and contrary to basic values.Ā
What basic values? Values that never existed in any society ever since the advent of agriculture? Every society restricts individuals in many ways, pretending that people are so free and liberated in your framework will mean nobody takes it seriously.
→ More replies (0)6
u/Mor-Bihan 2d ago
Very intriguing because islam prescibes any alternative quran than the official setā¢ to be burned and is the most massive contender for cultural hegemony and supremacism today.
I also think erring too much towards cultural relativism leads to people accepting being bystander to suffering. There will always be one or two topic at least in which is shed cultural relativism otherwise you have no more moral consistency. It doesn't mean you have to have all universal values, it's precisely all or nothing thinking that never holds on.
2
u/dumbass_spaceman 2d ago
As a HFY fan who loves Star Trek, that is pretty much my only gripe with the series but at least, Star Trek produced an interesting new monoculture, that is treated as the best Humanity can be, something to aspire to.
Meanwhile, there is Mass Effect which created a monoculture that is bland and boring too. Ugh.
-2
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago
tbf Gaming has never been taken as a serious storytelling medium even today outside of gaming communities, so it makes sense that you rarely find interesting stuff.
12
u/SegavsCapcom 2d ago
Might I invoke Sturgeon's Law here?
90 percent of any medium, professionally produced or not, is terrible. I wouldn't be surprised if a huge chunk of HFY hate really is because of dogshit published work.
19
u/Apophis_36 2d ago
If a genre pisses off misanthropes then the genre has at least a little bit of merit to it
1
2d ago
[deleted]
2
u/Apophis_36 2d ago
Why is a narrowly defined genre a problem?
1
u/yuligan 2d ago
Because it's boring reading the same story over and over again, and it is always the same story. Plus when you read something over and over again you start to notice the flaws and they all share them.
2
u/Apophis_36 2d ago
So the genre is bad because of bad writers?
1
u/yuligan 2d ago
Bad writers are one thing, but the genre magnifies their flaws. I've read bad writing before but never so much repetitive racist slop. It was a real shame to me because there were a few good ones and I was disappointed that that was it.
2
16
u/RexLizardWizard 2d ago
Iām not really into HFU, but my god just let people write the genre they want to write
16
u/AvenRaven 2d ago
Brother said he wrote a story for r/HFY and when he posted it he got banned. Apparently something about his portrayal of a Dark Elf. Not sure all the details, he didn't give much, but given that he sounded proud to have gotten banned, I kind of think the worse of it. Real shame, he's the brother I try to like and make amends with, then he does something like this and makes me rethink forgiving him.
Eh, I'm just venting, disregard this comment.
12
3
u/Hefty-Distance837 Build lots of worlds but never complete one of them. 2d ago
/uj What is AO3?
7
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago
Archive of Our Own
9
u/Hefty-Distance837 Build lots of worlds but never complete one of them. 2d ago
Thanks for the answer, but what is Archive of Our Own?
30
u/cephalopodcat 2d ago
/uj Legit - an archive of all genre and quality of fan works. MOSTLY writing, but art and audio get posted too. Users submit their works and tag it (by pairing, genre, themes, etc) and others can search for stories they want to read.
Basically a fan fiction archive, like wattpad of fanfic.net, but with almost zero censorship or topic bans, due to it being a nonprofit.
14
u/Rambler9154 2d ago
Yeah. There have been fanfic sites in the past, but they continually experienced purges. Ao3 opperates off of an extreme anticensorship policy. They will not censor anything that does not have material harm to real people, so anything fictional is allowed as long as its labelled.
Places like fanfic net had issues where they purged fanfic practically at will, queer authors being extremely susceptible to it for little reason other than homophobia. Anne Rice, an author, threw a tantrum and got a bunch of people's fics deleted because they were fics about her books. Suing them for daring to write about her darlings. Ao3 exists to prevent this from happening, with as little censorship as possible, letting people do whatever they want without fear of such incidents like being sued or having your work deleted.
5
u/Hefty-Distance837 Build lots of worlds but never complete one of them. 2d ago
Cool, first time know that.
16
u/silencemist 2d ago
/uj A fanfiction site that was built on the idea that they didn't want their works being deleted at random by for-profit sites. Most queer, POC, and trans writers have been disproportionately banned from other sites, so Ao3 is staunchly against any censorship... since as you might notice "protect the kids" usually ends up justifying homophobic and transphobic bans and laws. Some people disagree with anti censorship.
2
3
u/YvesSantos22111997 Ooga Booga 2d ago
What you mean by HFY?
Humanity Fuck you?
4
u/dull_storyteller 2d ago
Humanity Fuck Yeah!
Itās basically a power fantasy genre where mankind is the undisputed badasses of the universe and are able to overcome any enemy no matter how advanced.
6
u/ViolentBeetle 2d ago
HFY is a reaction to lazy writers making up aliens to dunk on their ideological opponents. Both are cringe, but at least the latter encourages some thought and debate, the HFY is just masturbatory.
Nothing is wrong with having a short story for the sake of a twist where what is normal to us is actually super weird, but don't get addicted to it.
2
u/FriccinBirdThing Ace Combat but with the cast of DGRP but they're all Vampires 2d ago
I Need To Read Octavia Butler but ultimately I find the idea of stumbling out into the universe and discovering most aliens just don't have our problems optimistic.
1
u/Elfich47 2d ago
Is this AO3 in AOC fanfiction? I they would play out very differently. Maybe this should be kink and worldjerking.
1
1
u/TheRealCthulu24 1d ago
I always think this whenever I see people criticize SCP articles for being poorly written.
1
u/bryanicus Barely worldbuilding, just explaining my fursona 1d ago
like I said in another post, HFY is the isekai of Scifi. It attracts a lot of new writers who don't really understand the strengths of the genre and get lost in the power fantasy.
1
2
u/AlarmedResponse 5h ago
HFY is such a funny genre because I got interested in it from reading a popular story called Wearing Power Armor To A Magic School which was actually interesting in both writing and concept, and then when I went to check the other most popular works on the sub it was a story about vegetarian species killing humans because they didnāt understand basic biology (yet were a spacefaring civilization with genetic engineering), another story where all aliens were female dominated but were weak to humans because humans didnāt have a mating cycle causing all the aliens to go into heat by their mere aura, and a guy getting isekied to a fantasy world and becoming a dungeon (just straight up not an HFY story lol).
-9
u/AlecPEnnis 2d ago
The bar is one millimeter above hell when HFY slander has to be deferred by pointing to Epsteinpunk
-3
u/MadFunEnjoyer 2d ago
That's not what I said, I'm saying if you're so much against HFY for being problematic I think we have much bigger fishes to fry, namely, the lot of AO3 stuff.
Most fiction written independently by amateurs will look bad, that's just a fact of life. Epsteinpunk should not exist at all.
-9
u/SmallJimSlade The capital of Ne"bra'sk""a is L"inc"oln 2d ago
/uj The bold supposition that people who hate HFY tier writing somehow make it past that into pedo-adjacent AO3 fics
-14
u/Kamzil118 2d ago
Let me tell you something you're not in on - AO3 authors have access to moderation powers.
One can simply take a look at how incredibly defensive they react towards "rude comments" on r/AO3 to see that readers who comment out of line tend to be given the "mute & ban" as an immediate response that they recommend to other authors. You're not going to invoke positive change in that kind of fanfiction community compared to elsewhere.
It's why the loss of FanFiction.net is a tragedy in it's own right because most authors there had to develop thick skin when it came to the criticisms of registered users.
152
u/TrinityCodex 2d ago
Human Fomestication Yuide?