Powers
[Loved Trope] Humans have something inherently interesting about them instead of being average or the "weak but populous" species.
Also known as "humans are special", this trope is actually rarer than I expected it to be.
1) The humans in the Wake graphic novel series are the only species without telepathic powers, which means they're immune to psi abilities and are hard to detect.
2) In the Grand Central Arena books, while trying to achieve faster than light travel, the crew of a ship end up in the place where all the species of the universe meet. They pretty quickly realize how humans are way more willing to take risks compared to all the other species.
The Star Trek universe is this trope: Humans dominate the Federation and compete with much older empires by just being the manic technomages of the galaxy. Exemplified by this exchange from Enterprise:
FORREST: Ambassador. Are Vulcans afraid of humans? Why?
SOVAL: Because there is one species you remind us of.
FORREST: Vulcans.
SOVAL: We had our wars, Admiral, just as humans did. Our planet was devastated, our civilisation nearly destroyed. Logic saved us. But it took almost fifteen hundred years for us to rebuild our world and travel to the stars. You humans did the same in less than a century. There are those on the High Command who wonder what humans would achieve in the century to come, and they don't like the answer.
If you are fighting a Federation ship, don't target the impulse engines, don't target the weapons, don't target the warp drive. Target the deflector dish -- that's their most dangerous weapon.
"Joke's on you, while you were busy targeting the deflector dish we somehow jerryrigged the holodeck to make one of Tom Paris's ridiculous ray-punk weapons come to life."
I liked Shatner's ghost written one more... that he simply made his name be famous / infamous to the Klingons so they hesitated when they heard who they where against just long enough...
Wasnt the point of that to show that he cant handle failure? As demonstrated later in the same film where they genuinely are in a no win scenario, and kirk handles it horribly?
Oh they don't need a shuttle for that. They just have a device that dissassembles the entire universe and reassembles it to the state it was in 13 seconda ago, and it is accessable only by a chomper death trap.
Reminds me of that episode where the Borg invade the Enterprise D and upon realizing that their phasers don't work anymore, Picard lures a bunch of drones into his dark noire detective holodeck sim and then mows them down with a tommy gun made of hard light
In fairness it was aired on network TV constantly and was chopped up so badly by commercials that in today’s terms it would be considered a collection of trailers between the Megacorporate Brainwashing Show.
"Well, I don't see why I should fear a Federation officer. What's he going to do, talk me to death? Those guys are the biggest pus-....huh. Are those missiles?..."
Of the four founding member races of the Federation (Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites), humans were the first to have good relations with all of the other three. They previously hated each other.
I guarantee each of those races had a huge explosion in hybrid children at the same time. (I know vulcans can breed with humans, not too versed o. The other two)
Change my view: humanity's greatest strength is that, given enough of us, there will always be someone who looks at an alien and thinks "...I'm gonna bang and then marry that thing". From The Crystalline Entity, to Species 8472, to those brain bug things that showed up for one episode of TNG and were never referenced again.
I don't know of any canon examples beyond that, but in the comics, I know IDW's comic series includes a Human/Andorian hybrid descended from Hoshi Sato.
Yep, the Vulcans and Andorians straight up had a massive war, and then an uneasy peace treaty. Humans just rock up on the scene and go "yeah we may be allies of the Vulcans, but that doesn't mean we can't be friends with these Andorians too", which just baffles both the Vulcans and Andorians so much that they actually consider peaceful relations with each other too. The Federation ends up being formed because the Humans end up in a war against the Romulans, and the Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites are forced to work with and fight alongside each other as they all independently come to the aid of Earth.
Diversity plays into it too. Humans being dissimilar to each other in relatively smaller packs let conflicts arise and settle without catastrophic results or species wide divides. As an alien, hang around long enough and you'll eventually find humans that are kinda like you.
It reminds of the Stargate Atlantis bottle episode where they're ambushed into a tribunal by a coalition of planets regarding their shenanigans in the Pegasus galaxy and its a lot of flashbacks including iirc Rodney detonating some ancient tech and obliterating a galaxy or something
Continuing this, the Q were also afraid of humans for basically the same reason: they feared that humans would rather rapidly arrive at the same levels as Q, and perhaps even surpass them.
My interpretation of humans in Star Trek is that they are far more diverse, and accepting of diversity, within their own culture than almost any other species and thus much better at interacting with other species than anyone else. Basically all the other aliens you see in Star Trek are largely monolithic cultures, and while pragmatically this is largely for budgetary/time reasons, it makes humans stand out and explains why they were the ones to want to launch the Federation in the first place. Vulcans, Andorians, whatever, were all out there and interacting for centuries but were never willing to trust, or able to understand, each other enough to make formal, permanent alliances, and then humans showed up and almost immediately began working with everyone as though that was the most obvious course of action. Plus, humans strike a balance that most other species cannot - community minded but individualistic, logical when necessary but also capable of strong emotion, etc. - that makes them a perfect intermediary for species that were previously unable to effectively communicate or collaborate.
Yeah, often this kind of thing is a way of hanging a lampshade on lazy Planet of Hats writing. Humans are the generalist champions of diversity because everyone else is an embodied stereotype.
My favourite description of humans is they're a kind, thoughtful people who want to run their sciences and their holodecks and their arts.
And when pressed they'll easily take everything they learned from those same sciences and create horrific weapons of war, go on a rampage that would put the most bloodthirsty of Klingons to shame, and leave their enemies cowering in fear.
And then they'll put their weapons away, go back to their sciences and their holodecks and their arts, look at the galaxy, and say "What's next?"
"let me tell you something about humans nephew, They're a wonderful, friendly people as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time, and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon."
"Without Starfleet, none of you would exist! We don't want to protect you from the Klingons and the Borg; we just want to explore and study fucking quasars! But you know what? It's the right thing to do!"
Yeah, it's a lesson the Klingons learned the hard way, that despite the fact that these humans are weaker and don't have a warrior culture, you do not fuck with them. It's why they went from on again-off again enemies to full on allies within the span of a few decades, and canonically some time after the latest shows they even end up joining the federation.
and this actually rather well describes humans compared to other earth species, as well
one scifi trope that annoys me is when humanity as a whole is mary-sued into the galaxy as somehow inherently special and better than everyone because we have a soul or heart or some shit and can solve everyone else's problems (and they will let us) oh and also we're somehow the archetype for beauty as well
our relative rate of technological advancement is the thing that actually does set us apart as a species IRL; it would make sense that this might set us apart in the galaxy
TBF, a lot of our early technological development happened because we have a talent for symbiotic relationships with other species. We made two separate apex predators into household pets. One of our ancestors looked at a massive beast that can accidentally kick you to death if you startle it and said "I'm gonna jump on that thing's back and use it to conquer my neighbors". It's just what we do.
The influence of humans over the galaxy is exampled by the Mirror Universe, where the main divergence point between that universe and the main one is that when humans discovered warp drive they used it for conquest instead of exploration.
It's kind of a fridge thing, but when you consider that humans went from a backwater planet that developed warp engines 20 years after a nuclear appcalypse to the cultural hegemon of the most advanced faction in the known galaxy in the span of about 300 years, it becomes more clear
Especially when every faction of comparable power (Borg, Dominion, Klingon Empire, RSE) took millennia to establish itself.
And that's just the galaxy. Humans are the primary cultural hegemon in the Federation, a union of hundreds of species. They just sort of... culturally outcompeted everyone else by being aggressively diplomatic. Their very first act on the greater galactic stage was to make Vulcans and Andorians their strongest and most faithful allies, two species who had been in a cold war for centuries.
The Vulcans and the Andorians bitterly hated and distrusted each other, and neither got along with the Tellarites because they're the rudest bastards you'll ever meet. It's three species who cannot get along with each other. But once humans come into the mix, they manage to organise an alliance of the four and found the Federation.
Vulcans may be very advanced, but their adherence to logic and elevated sense of self importance makes them unlikeable. Andorians are just as arrogant but also deceitful and inherently a little xenophobic. Tellarites consider arguments a great sport so constantly complain, especially when meeting new people, they're also impatient and stubborn. But all of them trust humans, and humans are able to get along with all of them.
Humans are the glue that holds the Federation together, because most of these species have such fundamental cultural disagreements that a direct alliance ends in flames. That's why Earth is the home of the Federation and Starfleet.
I like this explanation a lot better than “human’s are so smart/creative/inventive” or whatever.
I like it even better when it’s not because “humans are so tolerant” as that’s a pretty hard pill to swallow looking at current events, but instead just because humans naturally or by virtue of being the newest member kinda occupy a middle ground between the other species that enables some cooperation to happen.
Enterprise had some amazing quotes. And one from the final episode is just the most Star Trek worldview ever.
Up until about 100 years ago, there was one question that burned in every human that made us study the stars and dream of traveling to them: “Are we alone?” Our generation is privileged to know the answer to that question.
We are all explorers, driven to know what’s over the horizon, what’s beyond our own shores. And yet, the more I’ve experienced, the more I’ve learned that no matter how far we travel or how fast we get there, the most profound discoveries are not necessarily beyond that next star. They’re within us; woven into the threads that bind us, all of us, to each other.
The Final Frontier begins in this hall. Let’s explore it together.
Human in lord of the rings is not that strong or smart compared to elves, but they have unique gift of Eru, death, which allow people to make their own destiny outside of Arda.
To add the customary um actually, all species die.
Humans were made by the head God to basically be the main characters. We're the only species that's really able to affect causality and as such we're the get things done species. As a byproduct, we don't have long lives. This is all supposed to be a really good thing, but because humans have been a bit corrupted by the bad gods, we see it as a bad thing.
All the other species were made by lesser gods or by the main God to be support cast. They have long lives because they basically are part of nature. It's why they're so inactive when Sauron is returning. It's also why the elves are so bummed about the rings being destroyed, since it means that the age of man is here and that all that magic shit is going to go away.
All species die, yes, but only humans can leave Arda by death and be free from limit of physical world, that is what makes human death different from others.
Also I understand why you refer morgoth and sauron as 'bad gods' but I think they are more like fallen angels.
I like most of what you said but I'm not so sure that short lives was considered as a byproduct, and I don't think any of the deities involved considered elves or dwarves as lesser.
At multiple points in the Silmarillion, death itself is referred to as a gift, directly, because it's what stops Men from growing weary of the world and spurs them to enjoy life as much as they can. Death may be an instrumental part of encouraging them to act and change fate, but it's not strictly and only in service of that goal.
And for the elves and dwarves thing, the ability to work outside of fate is strong, and so you can argue points about Eru's favoritism for humans, but He also explicitly designed Elves to be fairer, more powerful, and wiser than humans, and calls them both His beloved children, so it could swing both ways. And then it's true that dwarves don't have a central role, but I don't think Aule intended dwarves to be any lesser than Eru's children when he made them, and Eru declares them as equal to his own children when he adopts them and imbues them with free will.
Similar to your first example in Warhammer 40k humans are the only species in the known galaxy capable of producing Blanks.
While all species have a soul, and thus are often at the mercy of powerful psykers or warp entities, human Blanks have the Pariah Gene which basically makes them soulless. While this makes them incredibly unpleasant to be around (anyone with a soul pretty much is immediately off put by them) for Daemons and powerful psykers these dudes are anathema. A blank turns into a reality anchor and can counter even the strongest daemons because their powers have almost no effect on them. Even in death their very bodies carry on the effect and so the Imperium turns dead Blanks into bullets and missiles to continue their use
Because of this humans have the unique advantage of dispatching blank soldiers like Sisters of Silence to counter any major psyker presence, something no other species really has an equivalent for other than Necrons with artificial structures simulating the effect.
nono, they definitely said "Can we weaponize that?" for each mutation and abhuman alteration. just most of the time, it wasn't worth the risk, and then they can be purged
The universe is populated by countless much more advanced species who are aware of each other, and they treat undeveloped earth as a backwater. However, in 1977, they receive radio transmissions from earth and are blown away by human music. Any music they have pales in comparison, and a good number of the aliens die in ecstasy the first time they hear human music.
The aliens love human music and consume it voraciously, but they are also very legalistic, and eventually they realize that due to the DMCA they owe earth $150k for each of the quintillions of unauthorized plays they have listened to. The legalistic aliens are set to pay up, essentially transferring all of their wealth to earth, but some more nefarious factions figure it will be easier to just destroy the planet entirely.
Something similar to this, I remember once reading something where when humanity hit the galactic stage, they were major dealers of what was basically Space Heroin.
Reminds me of a book I can't remember the name of. Earth gets invaded by a species that is only more advanced because they have been around much longer, but are individually kinda shortsighted and dumb. They get addicted to trash entertainment from earth while we steal their stuff and take to the stars.
Hmm, that also reminds me of a Ray Bradbury short story called The Concrete Mixer; the Martians invade earth because that's what they do, they're invaders! There's one martian who doesn't want to invade because he's read earth comic books where earth is always saved at the last moment, but they force him to join the invasion force.
But instead of resisting the earthlings invite the martians to share in our consumerist bounty, and they quickly fall victim to pop culture and I guess cultural assimilation, so in the end they wind up being the ones invaded, not us.
Similarly, in the audio drama Midnight Burger, (slight spoilers) all forms of Human art are widely known as being some of the most enjoyable out of all the alien races. So much so that aliens that have the most control over the sector purposely keep Earth from becoming too advanced so that they don’t achieve galactic space travel, find out about aliens, and become a more politically powerful species solely due to cultural domination.
Love stuff like this. While we can be an unceasing machine for war and death, we also have an extreme empathy and sense of compassion. Most often for those we see as vulnerable and needing help. Like a puppy or kitten.
Humans in space strategy game Stars in Shadow are a divided mystery race that live all across the galaxy, and nobody, including humans themselves, do not really know their origin. They are commonly considered a bunch of scavengers and thieves by most other races, and often work as mercenaries for other races of galaxy. Playing as the Humanity faction in the game is hard mode.
SiS mentioned! Love that game and love playing as humans. I always strip a turret off my heavy cruiser as soon as I can and put on a boarding module to go out and capture the pirate destroyers and colony ships.
ALSO, work on the second DLC has restarted by the way, and you can now get mods through Steam.
Your comment and the few after it made me curious about this game. So I looked it up only to realize I apparently already had it and had played it for 11 hours. I don’t remember that.
Humans in Guild Wars 2 fill the niches of elves in other games: a once great, magically profficient race, that is now reduced to a single kingdom plagued by scheming nobles and corruption, as other races take the lead. Though this was muddied later, as we discover other human civilizations surviving on other continents, one of them being a magitech-cyberpunk empire.
Humanity’s other quirk is that they’re very religious, and they take the worship of their six gods very seriously.
Humanity’s other quirk is that they’re very religious, and they take the worship of their six gods very seriously.
Ironic considering the third campaign in Guild Wars 1 and the second expansion in Guild Wars 2 involve killing a god.
Humans in Guild Wars 2 fill the niches of elves in other games
Some see the Sylvari as an elf analogue, but they're actually a major inversion. Instead of being ancient, they're an extremely young race, with the firstborn Sylvari being no more that 25 years old.
If anything, Sylvari fill the niche of humans in most games, as the new, naive upstart race with great potential. They’re also the main focus from the core game until the end of the first expansion
Humans in the castlevania show are the only beings able to preform death magic and reach into hell
That’s why Issac, hector and saint IMissMyWife can reach into hell and retrieve souls whilst no vampire EVEN DEATH can’t
I may be misremembering, but it is said during the games that the human DNA is the most variable compared to all other sentient species of the galaxy, making them way more adaptable.
Not only that, but the individualist mindset, innate curiosity and short lifespan seems to make them way more prone to exploration and innovation when compared to other races who tend to have more rigid social structures, prolonged lifespans and more cautious nature.
I honestly never liked that DNA argument because that carries a lot of really weird implications about other species' genetic diversity.
About a million years ago, human ancestors went through a catastrophic event that led to a major genetic bottleneck of, like, 1500 people; every one of us is a descendant from less people than can fill a tier in a decent-sized football stadium.
Sure, there's mutations over time and all that, but you mean to tell me that literally *every* other race in the galaxy is somehow *less* diverse than the apes who were one bad storm or wildfire away from total extinction?
What, are the Turians practically all clones of each other?
If anything, other species' genetic diversity should be *way* higher, unless every single one of them somehow went through a similar event only somehow *worse*.
What, are the Turians practically all clones of each other?
Maybe not, but salarian breeding is pretty weird.
Female salarians are capable of asexual reproduction and do so once a year - they lay around twenty eggs a clutch with the children imprinting on their siblings and mother. These children are always male and to ensure females, the eggs are fertilised by a male.
The result of this is that salarians have an enormous gender disparity between expendable males and females with all the political power. Salarians also don't have a sex drive like other species do since breeding isn't outright necessary and rare... but one could theoretically cause huge damage to the salarians with a viral infection.
Also, the opposite of "humans have short lives and it's a virtue" is in play since salarians only live to about forty, but since their lifespans are so short they do stupid shit and don't think about the long-term consequences of their actions. See the genophage as a good example.
Well, the reapers do pop up and destroy all intelligent life around the gates every 50,000 years or so. So maybe the other species are all descendents of whatever fragments survived that.
I agree though, the idea that humans are genetically diverse doesn't really work.
Correction: All advanced(!) intelligent life. Liara even notes on that in a mission in ME3 where you see one of the species the shadow broker was and notes that they (a currently not so advanced, yet sentient species) might be leading the next cycle.
Our own solar system has a Mass Effect relay. At the time of the last cycle, Protheans were in Sol, studying (and/or possibly eating and/or enslaving) primitive humans, with their main base of operations being on Mars. When the Reapers showed up, they killed all the Protheans and left humanity alone.
Actually, I'm now wondering about two things:
Cleansing Mars of Protheans was likely easy; just commit to total war and wipe the surface clean. But what of the Protheans on Earth? I wonder how the Reapers handle an advanced species intermingling with a stone-aged civilization? Only way I can think of, without wiping out both, is indoctrination of the Stone aged civilization to all gang up and kill the members of the advanced civilization. Then the Reapers use that indoctrination to wipe their collective memories, and split. You'll be left with a generation of people who are basically extreme xenophobes, leaving no place for the advanced civilization to hide in the future, but future generations would be without this indoctrination and the only traces of it would be any behaviors or attitudes they learned from the indoctrinated generation (and so on, through the generations)
I don't think the Protheans had an actual outpost on Earth so likely there wasn't anyone there to wipe out? From my own understanding they were just observing Human progress likely from Mars.
As someone who's never played Mass Effect, this could be a very moot question but: are the humans in the game 100% from Earth?
Could it be something like, human DNA was widely compatible with some extraterrestrials, but remained inherently dominant? I dunno how far into the future Mass Effect is happening, but having extremely diverse DNA is possible if a couple other species got cross-bred into the stream somewhere along the way.
Edit to add: How long a species has been isolated from their homeworld while space-faring should also cause a bottleneck. It's no big deal if they can pop home at any time, but if they've had hundreds of generations contained on a space coloniy, that ought to make genetic diversity a topic of interest.
They are 100% from Earth. They're in fact relative newcomers to the galactic scene having only just figured out the setting's FTL a few decades prior to the start of the first game.
There's also no *actual* way for any of the intelligent races to cross-breed. The closest are the Asari, a mono-gendered race that can "mate" with anyone but don't actually take on the genetic material of their partner to produce offspring (they're weird, but also hot so they get a pass).
The Protheans (the precursor race) *was* studying them from an outpost on Mars and it's canon that the Protheans did intervene with other races including changing them on the genetic level, but I'm pretty sure it's established that the Mars outpost was already a small one established towards the end of the last extinction cycle when the Prothean Empire was on its last legs and not really in a position to do much.
Not only that, but the individualist mindset, innate curiosity and short lifespan seems to make them way more prone to exploration and innovation when compared to other races who tend to have more rigid social structures, prolonged lifespans and more cautious nature.
On the other hand, species like Salarians and Vorcha have even shorter lifespans. Salarians only live 40 years, while I think Vorcha live around five.
Vorcha make it to around 20, but I think that's mostly because they just tend to live in poverty and have an extremely violent culture.
In theory their biology should make them more like the Krogan: so long-lived that "dying of old age" is more of a hypothetical than a physiological end point.
This is indeed what the game says, but it's unfortunately scientifically illiterate. There's more genetic diversity in a litter of puppy dogs than the whole human race. If they'd inverted it ("you guys are more similar to each other than salarians are, and salarians are grown in a factory!") then it would have made a lot more sense.
In universe explanation for why the devs don't spend man hiurs trying to make the aliens more unique looking beyond body armor and warpaint that makes them look as ugly as they always have.
Similarly to OP's first example, in the tabletop RPG Draw Steel, humans are the only species created without magic, so they are kind of immune to the supernatural (or at least, have innate defenses against it)
Regular humans in Dungeon Meshi are no different than us but they stick out among other species for having a higher average height and greater endurance
Not all races, but Tall-Men, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, and Half-foots are considered Human. Races like Kobalds and Orcs are not, since they have a different number of bones.
I'm unfamiliar with this series but the endurance thing is actually true irl.
Yes humans have a lot of intellectual advantages over every other species, but one of our few physical superiorities is we are the best endurance hunters on the planet.
It's a particularly good dungeon crawler adventure series. There's a strong focus on the logic of how the dungeon works, it's ecology, it's economic impact on the surrounding community, and what you can cook with the monsters therein. The author spent a lot of time thinking things through.
Major plot point in XCOM 2 is that, after the successful alein invasion of Earth, the aliens stsrt to splice human genes into themselves becuase humans work as a superior genetic template for their needs (generally as a host for psychic powers).
Almost all (non-robotic) enemies in XCOM 2 have a bit of human DNA in them, serving as both explanation for the changes in design for modt alien units as well as explanation for why Earth was invaded and taken over rather than exterminated for its resources (the humans were the resource).
It’s funny cuz this is how you get stuff like the Avatar, or the more humanoid Sectoids, but then the Thin Men went the opposite way lol, and are like, way LESS human now, since they’re all snake ladies now lol
Which I also kind of find a little funny, because thin men got demoted to snake ladies because “they don’t need infiltrators anymore” since they’re own our world
…and then within 2 or 3 missions from then, you discover that the aliens have gone and gotten themselves the Faceless, a unit literally introduced by it infiltrating a resistance base lol
I like to think that the Vipers essentially consider the Faceless to be SCABs who replaced their jobs lol
As I understood it the Thin Men were created to infiltrate and prepare the invasion for years. They are engineered to be long time infiltrators while the Faceless have the ability to take any form but they are not that bright, even brute, and it looks like it costs them pretty much energy to sustain a human body.
The part of this that's interesting for me is that as I remember (and I may be remembering vaguely), it's suggested a few times that the Ethereals have been trying to make the AVATAR project work for a longass time and just have not been able to do it, and humans just represent a sort of golden combination of physical capability and psionic potential that makes them ideal potential fodder for what the Ethereals want to do.
It's been ages since I played XCOM2, I need to replay it sometime and try to remember in more detail.
[SPOILERS for the Skyward series, Brandon Sanderson]
In Skyward, humans are considered unusually dangerous by the wider galactic community. They’re more aggressive and willing to take risks than most species, are very effective in combat despite starting out technologically behind, and have a notable connection to cytonic abilities, which let some people sense minds, communicate across huge distances, and interact with a strange dimension called the nowhere. A major alien civilization essentially keeps humanity contained because of what they think humans could become.
I forgot the game but I remember people talking about how in an rpg humans are exceptionally good pilots because we have an innate sense of projectile motion. What I like about this interpretation is it makes sense, humans are the only animals to use projectiles, and our pilots are extremely skilled, so it stands to reason that if aliens didn't use thrown weapons they wouldn't be as good at piloting
The "humans are space orcs" trope loves to do this. Things like we are the only sentient species that breaths a known flamable toxin (oxygen) that we are incredibly aggressive and warlike due to our late entry into space travel, and how we are really fucking good at getting along with just about anything we can anthropomorphize.
Other honorable mentions of this include humans carrying around extremely strong acids inside of us to digest food and using ballistics for both space travel and for weaponry
I dislike the Earth is a death world and the what you breathe Oxygen aspects of this trope, but I do love the humans are space orcs that go off other qualities. Humans can survive injuries better than a lot of animals. A broken leg is fatal for a lot of animals as it won't ever heal right. And humans were persistent hunters. Other animals could run faster, but a human wouldn't quit until that animal was dead.
Reminds me of how in Dandadan aliens can't really invade earth properly because earth is haunted by ghosts and those spirits are fucking overpowered but follow rules
Yeah thats a common Japanese urban legend but the one in Dandadan was once a little girl that died during an air raid so she goes batshit insane when she sees a bunch of aliens arriving and bombing the city.
So she one shots an entire alien fleet with a mirror and her fist.
humans are also more physical than monsters, needing to eat real food and not turning to dust upon death. additionally, a human’s power directly scales with their detachment/killing intent, meaning that one with a high enough level of violence could kill every monster alive.
It's implied that Undyne actually generates her own determination, which temporarily allows her to become extremely powerful to the point she's a threat to a determined human, but at the cost that the same determination will eventually cause her to melt.
In Tolkien's universe, humans (and possibly some related species such as hobbits-- this is a bit unclear) are distinguished by being relatively short-lived and not being reincarnated into the physical world; rather their souls go somewhere that the Elves don't understand, and the Elves are envious of this.
There was an Onion story once about humans making contact with an advanced, incredibly condescending alien species who went on about how garbage our culture was until they learned about the Jet Ski, which they found tremendously impressive and wondered if it was a privilege of kings.
In the Fragged Empire universe, humans are entirely extinct, having died out about 3,300 years before the start of the game from something called genetic erosion.
Before dying out, humans created artificial beings called Archons to replace them and carry on their legacy. The Archons attempted to engineer the "perfect species," creating the various genetically modified races that populate the game today (such as the Nephilim, Legion, and Kaltorans).
Unfortunately, Archons proved to be poor rulers/creators, leading to a massive genocidal galactic war where they were eventually overthrown and defeated.
There are no living baseline humans left in the galaxy. They basically have a role of Progenitor race in this setting
Alan Dean Foster’s book “A Call to Arms” has humans as the only galactic species who haven’t evolved a crippling psychological aversion to violence.
Not only does this make us near-lethal to make psychic contact with, but our fight-or-flight response gives us comparatively insane physical performance. Human recruitment suddenly becomes an unpleasant but incredibly important prerogative for the aliens attempting to stop an invading psychic empire.
It was an interesting take on the usual, “you humans are so violent and primitive” sentiment you see so often in fiction.
"Medication was required to convince three of them to quit the field."
[...]
"You do not yet understand. The three specimens we spoke of? They acquired sidearms and, without orders, entered an area monitored by the Cringolit. Again without orders, they outpaced armored support to seek, engage, and destroy an entire Cringolit encampment. Thinking themselves safe, the Cringolit had no chance to respond effectively. By any civilized standard, they WERE safe.
John Ringo's Posleen book series has something similar to this.
Humans are one of only two known species capable of physical violence. Some of the others cannot naturally commit it for psychological reasons and one that could was generically altered by a precursor species to be so incapable of it that if they committed violence their system would overload and they themselves would die. So their federation of peoples were in a lot of trouble when the Posleen showed up.
They were a race of cannibalistic, crocodilian centaurs who were created for reasons unknown and have invaded the federation with the intention of turning all the peoples there into food. The Posleen reproduce ridiculously fast, think nothing of eating any of their own that are weaker than them and 99 out of 100 are born as literal morons barely smart enough to pull the trigger on their guns. The 1 out of 100 that are born smart fight among themselves to establish a hierarchy and over who the morons follow. The most advanced military tactic they have is to wave attack and it wins every time against peoples that can't or won't fight. Most planets they seize will see the inhabitants eaten, the Posleen rule for a time and then the planet end in a nuclear holocaust as internal fighting escalates as resources dwindle.
The federation eventually have no other option but to turn to the only other species they've encountered that can commit violence and so they initiate public contact with humanity, reveal the war and reveal that the Posleen are also on course to hit Earth in a few years.
Cue humanity over the course of the next couple of books being mostly eaten but going down with such a fight that the Posleen also lose tens of billions as they went from killing species that couldn't fight to running into a brick wall with a new species that had stuff they've never encountered before like artillery, land mines, nukes and other weapons so well geared to killing large numbers of enemies at once and at no risk to their own side (in theory). And that's before factoring in humanity using the peaceful species industry and greater scientific know-how to make things on demand for them like ships and powered armour.
Be warned though, after the main series the books that come after get very weird, very political and very religious cos it turns out Ringo is ultra-conservative.
In the Bobiverse series, humans (in the form of the uploaded Bobs) are the second species in the near neighbourhood to achieve interstellar flight after the Others, and the first to crack FTL communication, which eventually allows them to defeat the Others. Of the other known and extant species, the Quinlans have better AI tech but no relativistic travel until they traded with humans, the Pav are 19th century level, and two other races are stone or bronze age tech.
There is a much more advanced group of alien races that have vanished, but they don't come up until book five.
Also, I think it's speculated that the Others largely just adopt tech from people they've conquered at one point since they're an uncreative eusocial species, but I might be misremembering.
I had to scroll waaay to far to get to this answer. I mean, it makes absolutely zero sense under the slightest bit of scrutiny, but I love the story nonetheless
I just (re)watched the Abyss a couple months ago, it still hella holds up and if anything feels more resonant today tbh.
Everyone acted their asses off, too. One of my fave Ed Harris movies (up there with The Rock) and Michael Biehn was so terrifyingly intense. Always sad he never became a bigger actor.
In the early editions of D&D, humans used to be special, as they were the only race capable of reaching higher levels of each class.
Dwarves, elves, and halflings were all front-loaded with powerful racial abilities but their max level in each class is much lower. Meaning humans struggle more early on, but are capable of much greater things if they can survive long enough.
Childhood's End - Humanity can reach the afterlife and meet God something the aliens are unable to do so the aliens are interested in helping our race ascend whether we like it or not
Halo - Humans were actually selected by the Forerunners to be the Reclaimers, the race which was supposed to inherit the "Mantle of Responsibility," the remnants of their races technology and civilisation, and use it to lead the other species just as the Forerunners were before they had to end their own lives to save the universe
X-Universe - Humans, or more specifically the ones still living in our solar system have due to being isolated from the other alien races managed to develop a civilisation which has built its own jump gates that connect all their planets together instead of building a civilisation like all the other aliens around the existing jump gates the Ancients built that link to where they chose them to. This means that when the gate shutdown happens which cuts off all the aliens planets from one another resulting in some cases of planets being so isolated they starve to death due to being unable to support themselves humanity on Earth is unaffected and comes out of the crisis fine
Babylon 5 - Minbari souls can reincarnate into human bodies making the two species family. The discovery of this causes the Minbari who at the time were waging a holy war to exterminate humanity to immediately surrender to humanity while their fleet was one battle away from destroying Earth and the remnants of humanity
In Halo ancient humans were also chosen by the Precursors, ahead of the forerunners, which led to the forerunners wiping out the precursors - inadvertently ending up with the creation of the flood.
WRT the Babylon 5 thing... eh, that's not exactly accurate. Sinclair was Valen, the triluminary they used to determine he had a Minbari soul was specifically linked to his DNA because it was the one (no pun intended) he used to transform into a Minbari later, and the Minbari just assumed humans could have Minbari souls as a result. The original plan for the show may have been different, but after Michael O'Hare had to leave the show this is where things ended up.
B5 This isn't true, despite the Minbari believing it. Their scanner says 'This random space pilot pings as Valen' because that random space pilot, Jeff Sinclair, went on to literally become Valen.
So, kinda glossing some elements in their with Childhood's End. The Overlords (The "aliens") are a race that have hit an evolutionary deadend, so help shepherd other races that are close to ascending to another state of existence. Why? Because they hope that by doing this (They have done it before) it will help them get over their own hurdle and let them figure out what they need to do for their own race to ascend. When they reveal themselves, as they had kept themselves hidden, at the moment humanity ascends, it creates a psychic trauma in the remaining humans that aren't part of the ascension (it was only kids after a certain point, they kinda go like a Children of the Corn way) that reverberates through human existence back through time. The Overlords look like the demon/devil archetype found throughout humanities existence, and are why we have that archetype. They aren't actually evil, but their association with the end of humanity's childhood (name drop) is why we associate that look with "evil"
Yes, but in Childhood's End, humans seem to be typical among intelligent species in this regard; it's the Overlords who are specially stunted so they can serve as the Overmind's recruitment agents.
(Also, I agree with the take that the Minbari on B5 were mistaken, misled by a really strange one-off event)
Real life: we tend to think of intelligence/technology/culture as our special sauce among animals, but humans (with training) are also unusually good endurance runners, which influenced/evolved with early hunting styles.
Unlike Eridians, because we have visual sensory organs, we were able to investigate and managed to be able to understand radiation, which was absolutely key in the Eridian own expedition side on the race to find a way to stop the Astrophages, a sort of lifeform that seems to feed on radiation.
Since they do not have visual sensory organs and use instead vibrations to ´´see´´ they were unaware of the effects of light and radiation and thus their own expediton was crippled due to the lack of shielding againest it, killing all of it´s members except for Rocky.
Proffessor Grace manages to explain to the last member alive of the Eridian expedition about the radiation, and even goes back to help him to warn him about the Astrophages leaking which would had exposed him to radiation, which would had kill him, doom the Eridian expedition, and doom Erid, the planet where Eridians hail from, even at the cost of losing his ticket home.
Humans in the Farscape universe are in many ways inferior to the other species Crichton encounters. Poorer eyesight, no mental powers, not quite as strong or as long-lived as (their offshoot species)Sebaceans, significantly weaker than Luxans or Scarrans, and lacking the solar radiation protection of Nebari.
Unlike Sebaceans, however, humans have better thermal regulation, and can tolerate much more extreme temperatures (Crichton has weaponized this). However, Noranti notes after observing both Crichton and other humans on earth that what truly sets them apart is their tenacity and sheer determination to survive and adapt. No matter how disadvantaged they are they will find a way to succeed in a way that no other species can match, telling Crichton's nephew "Humans never give up."
I think that's actually a fairly common trope in sci-fi. That humans aren't particularly good at any one thing, but they make up for it in adaptability and tenacity.
Farscape is a fun example because it's also the source of the only major human character directly quoting "HUMANS ARE SUPERIOR!"
...In a situation where he is the only one who can proceed with resolving the bullshit they are dealing with on that particular day because the enemy's weapon is hypnotic light patterns, and human eyesight is so shitty that he is by far the most resistant member of the group (although not immune).
The influential mid-20th-century science-fiction editor John W. Campbell Jr. had a bee in his bonnet about humans having to beat aliens in the stories he published. Humans always somehow had to be the cleverest or most enterprising species, even if we didn't have the greatest book smarts. Some writers bristled at this.
It's more interesting when it's something we don't think of as a special human trait. I've seen "among galactic civilizations, humans are the freaks who will f*ck ANYTHING" brought up from time to time. On Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski had the idea that humans were known as unusually avid organizers of communities, and also more religiously diverse than most species. Expert social improvisers, I guess.
Not so much humanity as a whole, but Douglas Adams does this a bit in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Arthur ends up on a planet in dire poverty with little technological advances. So he starts thinking what he could do to help. He considers all the human innovations, like electricity and such, but he doesn't know how to implement them, so he can't do that. He considers digging a well, but he doesn't know how to locate ground water, so that's that nixed. Eventually, after doing his best, he sits down and makes a sandwich. The people are absolutely floored and Arthur is venerated as the great inventor of sandwiches on this planet.
Humans are REALLY busted. And while the lore indicates there are other spiral races, we only ever see the Anti-Spirals, who have abandoned that path, and Boota, who eventually evolves into a humanoid form.
Basically, while the specific species “Homo Sapien” is not unique, the body plan of a human is the evolutionary zenith for channeling Spiral Power, the power of growth and evolution that can dwarf entire universes
This is kind of a weird example but you know how in Bojack Horseman, the characters tend to reflect what animal they are? Mr. PB being excitable and too eager to please (dog), Bojack being stubborn and panicky (horse)?
Todd being a very social and charismatic guy who is always inventing new stuff feels like he’s being very “humany” all the time, like those are the tropes of humanity.
Scp 001 CODE NAME: Arbelict - You Are The Anomaly, Tumor Of The Worlds, basically humanity is the only race in the multiverse to create alternative timelines when they make decisions
In Animorphs, humans are a unique species in different ways from the perspective of other species.
To the Yeerks, we are the first "Category 5" species they encountered. In other words, we are the perfect host species for the parasites because we:
Have versatile bodies (good hands, large enough to host a Yeerk, no significant downsides like Taxxons voracious hunger)
Have already subjugated our planet and established infrastructure (no significant dangers to us or them, they don't have to build everything from scratch for us)
Have adaptive/combat/military capabilities, but not enough to resist (they end up being wrong about this one)
Are prolific and exist in the billions (Yeerks won't run out of Hosts)
On the other hand, we are a unique species to the Andalites because of our food. Andalites don't have mouths and absorb nutrients through their hooves as they walk on grass. They have never encountered the concept of "taste" or "flavors" or "cooking", except when morphed into another species. And no one else cooks like us. It causes them to go completely crazy when they morph humans and try our foods.
It's not in any story, but I've always liked the idea that humans have a supernatural ability to bring extreme comfort by touching and petting.
It's why pretty much any species on this planet enjoys a good scritch. We just don't realize it's supernatural because we're used to it and have a high tolerance.
In Superhero universes such as Marvel and DC, Earth tends to be the planet that produces the most superpowered beings. In DC earth is slated to essentially become "The 5th world" (or a crux world) where the newer gods shall emerge, and in Marvel Earth has a giant Celestial corpse inside of it that altered human genetics which explains why it has so many fucking superheroes.
Also, just a reminder that in comics Adam Warlock was actually created on Earth.
That's more for when humanity is the most kick-ass and Mary Sue of races, but I don't think it qualifies for settings like Titan AE, where humanity is a bottom-tier species with either no home or no respect from the wider galactic community.
This is specifically any situation, good or bad, where humans aren't either just a massive horde of weak useless primates who thrive by sheer numbers or the Average Race like how they are on your average fantasy world.
Would the old greentext about aliens describing humans as a bedtime story monster to their kids work? Basically the indomitable human spirit, adrenaline, violent nature, survivability from shocking/traumatic injuries, Bacteria layden mouths that make bites from us quite deadly (not sure about that last one)
Not sure if this counts, but in Reverse 1999, people are separated into two categories: humans and arcanists.
Arcanists are essentially wizards. They can use magic but are also more prone to eccentricities and spontaneity.
Humans in the setting are said to be physically stronger since using magic drains an arcanist's stamina and also more intelligent/logical. However, this may just be an in-universe stereotype propagated by humans to make arcanists seem more unstable in comparison.
I'm surprised Project Hail Mary isn't coming up considering how recent and popular it was. Maybe it's because the movies glossed over how each species thinks the other one is amazing.
From a human's perspective, the Eridians are highly intelligent supercomputers with sonar hearing, super strength, super durability, and have insanely long lifespans. They also have material science that may as well be magic.
From an Eridian's perspective, all the other senses that humans have are game breaking. Human science is also significantly more advanced overall. A lot of our knowledge and technology, may as well be magic to them.
The book makes the argument that since the Eridians had less senses to experience the world with, they had less things to inspire them to study. Until their sun started going out, they didn't even bother with astronomy, and the only reason they were able to get into space is that they were able to just build a giant tower to get there. Rocky's crew died because they didn't know space had radiation, and navigating was a nightmare because they didn't understand time dilation or all those more nitty-gritty space shenanigans.
All Tomorrows: humans seem to have a genetic disposition towards space exploration, even when they are defeated and mutated beyond recognition by the Qu.
Their descendants evolve, develop advanced societies and begin colonizing space again and even start trading with one another. Eventually they become advanced enough to defeat the Qu and establish contact with aliens from the Andromeda galaxy.
In the mid nineties there were four Doom novels. The first two were a pretty straight adaptation of the games but the latter two went waaaay off the rails revealing that the whole demonic invasion was actually an intergalactic religious war and that humans were central to the question that divided the two sides.
Humans were advancing technologically much faster than any other species had, but more importantly they didn't seem to have souls. All alien species had some metaphysical part that was them which could be observed, measured, and preserved if I'm remembering right. Humans just died.
In the cosmic scale of the DC Universe, Earth is considered a galactic backwater. Until Abin Sur, the Green Lantern of Sector 2184 crashes his ship on Earth and is forced to initiate the Power Ring's selection process for his replacement. The ring chooses Hal Jordan, who eventually becomes the greatest Green Lantern in the entire corps. In fact, every human Lantern that follows Hal is noted for their exceptional ability, and for some undetermined reason, humans make exceptionally good Green Lanterns.
The Dig, which is a fantastic game more people need to play.
Tl;Dr spoilers for a 30 year old game, the aliens discovered they could ascend to a higher dimension of pure mind, but when they became bored soon learnt that they couldn't locate the exit and became trapped. In the game the human main character stays by the exit door and doesn't go deeper in.
In the novel it's revealed that due to how the human brain is wired they can always see the exit; in the aliens' brains it's a blind spot. The aliens are flabbergasted it was so easy, the human is baffled why they just didn't walk out the very clear exit.
The Worldwar franchise, by Harry Turtledove, is literally designed around this trope. The premise is pretty simple, a alien race (literally called that, The Race) invades Earth in the middle of WW2 and now humanity has to fight back. At first, The Race is pretty technologically superior to us, quickly overrunning much of the Southern Hemisphere in the first months of the invasion. Though rapidly they realize some glaring problems with their new colony:
— the humans in the Northern Hemisphere still hold on even after repeated assaults against them. The Race is completely dumbfounded by that thought, since it’s the first time that they encounter real opposition against they since they started colonizing other planets.
— even in the areas of Earth that The Race already conquered, humans have formed guerrilha bands and resistance groups against their new extraterrestrial overlords. Again, such thing is shocking to them, since they don’t seem to grasp the idea of resisting against such a seemingly powerful foe.
— the humans fight dirty, how they do. They pretend to surrender just to shoot The Race in the back when they turn around, they poison them with a earth substance called “ginger” that sends The Race into a wild hormonal reproductive state that makes them easy picking for the humans and they are not afraid of throwing themselves into danger if it means that they get to take some members of The Race with them.
— they develop very rapidly. When the invasion started, they were fighting with WW2 era planes and guns and by the 1950, the humans have developed all new technology, arms and bombs at a pace the aliens could never dream of caching up to.
Moral of the story: The Race is forced to make peace with the humans in the Northern Hemisphere, and by the 2000’s, humans have developed so rapidly with help from their stolen technology that now the aliens are the ones realizing they have to caught up, less the humans humiliate them.
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u/Fleetlord 26d ago
The Star Trek universe is this trope: Humans dominate the Federation and compete with much older empires by just being the manic technomages of the galaxy. Exemplified by this exchange from Enterprise:
FORREST: Ambassador. Are Vulcans afraid of humans? Why?
SOVAL: Because there is one species you remind us of.
FORREST: Vulcans.
SOVAL: We had our wars, Admiral, just as humans did. Our planet was devastated, our civilisation nearly destroyed. Logic saved us. But it took almost fifteen hundred years for us to rebuild our world and travel to the stars. You humans did the same in less than a century. There are those on the High Command who wonder what humans would achieve in the century to come, and they don't like the answer.