Pet peeves: The return (Part 7)

thedas

they’ve always been like this

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That’s what I loved about Mass Effect 1. Humans were newcomers, underdogs on an already long-formed galactic scene.

And then ME2 went with humans being special because they have great genetic diversity or something. Feh.

At least I can understand (somewhat) rooting for humans in ME because they’re our fictional future, not (like in typical fantasy) a species with completely different origins that just happens to look like us.

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That is pretty much the second movie as well, no plot all pretty views imo.

The James Cameron Avatar series is just all pretty stuff but very shallow plot and world.

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I like returning to works I enjoyed in childhood and noting what was actually good and what only impressed me because I didn’t know better.

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Personally I could always appreciate a story about humanity in a fantasy-setting often -because- the other races had one up on us.

Often , and warcraft is no exception, other races are either stronger, wiser, smarter or have other advantages over humans, so to then still see the humans atleast find ways to give as good as they get is nice.

However when you start striding into the territory of 40k or that quote that Shogganosh posted earlier, that’s where it gets cringe.

I can never really work out why the humans matter in Mass Effect, outside of them being ‘us’. They’re new and plucky I guess? Mass effect is supposdly inspired by Babylon 5. In Babylon 5 the Earth Alliance earned its place and respect by ending a genocidial war… then got put in their place again via another genocidal war… before regaining it via another… genocidial… war. Yeah there’s a pattern.

The humans in mass effect just seem to be… crowing for no tangible reason other then ‘we’re human damn it’. And something about baterians they did this one time that apperantly was vaugely useful.

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Honestly, to me fantasy humans aren’t even “us”.

Why would they be? We were shaped by evolution out of carbon forged in the hearts of dead stars, on a planet that’s billions of years old and had all kinds of exciting lifeforms before us, but we’re the first intelligent lifeform. That already puts us in completely different conditions compared to humans in typical D&D-style worlds.

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To be completely honest, I am not sure why humans didn’t get the same treatment as the Yahg(Shadow Broker species). The Yahg immediately killed the first Ambassadors of the Citadel, so the council decided to, permanently, banish them from the rest of the galaxy and never allow them into the community or to even venture outside of their solar system.

Meanwhile, Humanity did exactly the same but on a greater level as their first contact was a near immediate war with the Turians. And from there have continued to get in conflict with other races(Batarians), spreading like wildfire and actively ignoring Citadel rules, regulations and suggestions by colonizing every planet they can find even outside of Citadel space. Humanity also seemingly makes up the majority of crime in space(among the big gangs they outnumber all the other galactic species in terms of members).

The only reason they didn’t get the Yahg treatment is plot armour and “Humanity is special because of their potential!”

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to be entirely fair, the first contact war was very much on the turians who thought ‘hey new guys, guess we’ll shoot instead of saying what the deal is’.
The rest though, yeah, agreed.

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That’s mostly 'cos the Turians opened fire first, without attempting diplomacy. The Yahg wasn’t the same situation - the Citadel attempted diplomacy and got smacked for it.

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The turians were definitely the aggressors yeah, but they were also following protocol after the Racnhi War. Their initial attacks were also meant to simply be that, warnings and “Hey stop this now, or we will do it again.”

Humanity immediately declared war instead.

Not saying the Turians weren’t dumb for not giving a heads up, but humanity also couldn’t wait to escalate it into galactic war rather than also trying to figure out what they did wrong.

This is cool, actually. Not very realistic, probably, but if some intergalactic alien fleet starts shooting at us we should be willing to do more than give stern warnings to the aliens who were just following orders, humanity, 'oorah!

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I like humans in fantasy and science fiction settings, simple as. It can be a more engaging experience to me, to walk through these fantastical worlds and stories while playing as someone nominally like me. Looking at the extraordinary through relatively ordinary eyes.

I still love many other fantasy races. Most other fantasy races, honestly. But humans have a key and compelling part to the genres for me.

Anyway Vixi is wrong, First Contact War wasn’t really humanity’s fault. They oopsied without knowing the rules and subsequently defended themselves against a threat they couldn’t yet gauge (for all they knew, the Turians might have been trying to go exterminatus on them).

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is that loras posting a WARHAMMER REFERENCE?!?! :mag:

Tbh, it seems fairly realistic if we go by how humanity is as a whole right now.

Look, if I keep being apologetic enough towards the Turians, a hot turian woman might notice me.

Blowing up a bunch of ships doesn’t sound like a “hey, stop this now”. It generally sounds like a declaration of war at the end of an interstellar railgun.

you can’t even declare exterminatus anymore
because of woke

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I didn’t even know it was a warhammer thing. Now I feel dirty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67JpMyrOVE

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If it sounds vaguely Germanic or latin and is related to destruction, it is probably a warhammer thing.

Idk I mostly see a lot of ‘stern warnings’ and ‘final time!! or else!!’ (nothing proceeds to be done) going around in response to violence a lot

If aliens appear and start blowing us up because that’s their protocol we should simply blow them up in return I say :sunglasses:

victory

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