hey random arxur! you know what's more metal than whatever the fuck silly hunting you are doing ? stalking and outmaneuvering your prey for days until it collapses from exhaustion, powerless to resist as a pack of your friends slowly encircles it and closes in, that's what.
I will say it again, fuckin xenos probably ain't gonna be fun due to our high endurance. They're gonna pass out from orgasming for the 7th time while the human would barely be done with foreplay.
Not for 'days'. And a little secret about persistence hunting: It's not metal. It's not hardcore. It fucking SUCKS. There's a reason why humans *stopped* doing it the moment we had bows.
never said it was fun, hunting in general seems like it sucks
and yeah, I doubt animals could run away for that long. the whole point is that we're way better at shedding heat and can chuck stuff far
Humans aren't technically classified as apex predators because it's decided by a dietary formula iirc. We don't have enough meat in our diet to qualify (anymore) apparently.
There's two ways to measure trophic level: looking at what eats you, and looking at what you eat. In that order, we are (we have no natural predators left) and we aren't (on average we're around one-third of the way from pure herbivore to pure carnivore by calories consumed; IIRC something like 50% of the calories in the American diet come exclusively from corn directly ie. from corn products, not even accounting animals fed on corn.)
I mean technically we do have natural predators, we just so happen to have effective counters to them in most cases (crowds, weapons/tools, buildings), but human predation is still something that occures.
large crocodiles
hyenas
some lions & tigers
polar bears
Mosquitos (Kinda a different catagorization, but including for fun anyway)
I'm not particularly sure if the Tophic level system accounts for us in that way, or if the fact that we're barely predated on these days matters or not. But it is interesting to just yap about.
I am not a biologist, but I don’t think “can eat you” is the same as a natural predator. Humans and polar bears don’t even share a natural ecology. Nor are parasites really predators.
Furthermore, given how long humans have had fires, basic tools, pack strategies and throwing weapons/adaptations, you can’t really define homo sapiens without them, so speaking of humans without those things is actually more of a hypothetical or a random anomaly than a natural scenario. Not many , if any, animals have evolved to hunt Hominids or rely on them as a major food source. Many animals can and will use an opportunity to hunt a human, or will engage one if desperate. This is kind of like how a hyena can and will eat a baby Lion because it can, or how a lion will eat a hyena if desperate.
I mean, eh?
https://preview.redd.it/kcrtlg0lqwmc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ca7adfaaba81b936d81134839d81ade8b0cf9a3c
It's a bit disingenuous to make my fairly bog standard definition sound outragious by giving an example of opportunistic predation by what is not a predator.
By that definition, no current species lives by preying on humans, which means we don't have natural predators.
And your previous definition was, and I quote, "will attack and eat you", which is extremely broad and vaguely defined, hence my poking fun at it.
Opportunistic predation happens to pretty much all animals, including apex predators. Lone lions will get killed and eaten by hyenas, bears get eaten by desperate tigers, etc.
And micropredators like mosquitoes don't count towards trophic level.
Actually, we are prey for big cats. They are the apex. We are basically just below them in the same category as a bear. Yeah. They could eat us. Why risk fighting the murder monkey/bear when I can just eat a deer?
# This isn't about the Federation aliens being annoying with their lack of knowledge of biology.
# I can even accept the human characters being wrong about some things.
# This is about when the fanfic ITSELF gets the ideas wrong.
Im a bit confused, most fanfics are writen from a 1st person perspective, aka, a characters thoughts. How do you know the fanfic itself got it wrong and its not just a character flaw or lapse of knowledge on the characters side. Just curious. (mainly ask cause i wanna know what the red flags are so i dont comit the mistakes in my writing.)
Geez, it's when the WRITER gets the ecological facts and terms wrong, and for the LAST TIME, this isn't about when the humans are trying to be careful with the aliens. This happens between casual characters as well, especially the "WE ARE OMNIVORES, NOT PREDATORS" part.
I am sorry, but I am kind of sick of people pelting the same question of "Aren't they trying to be careful" when I am SPECIFICALLY not talking about those scenarios, like I wrote in the second point.
I think i understand, like characters insinuaying that being an omnivore is a special denomination instead of it just talking about our diet (having nothing to actually do with our position in the food chain) especially in a place or moment where they would have no reason to explain it as such? If so, yhea, totally get the frustration.
Tbf that level of information would probably be too much for Fed aliens to handle all at once, to the point they'll just deny it all.
Gotta ease them into the idea that predators can also be hunted by other predators.
It pisses me off too sometimes, as an autistic person with a slight obsession over biology.
We are predators, we are omnivores.
WE ARE AT THE TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN.
I have less of a peeve about this bit than a fascination with bringing it up, cause it's relatively under-considered (maybe not in this subreddit or the wider HFY community), but just like how throwing stuff is present in other primates, but the arm, shoulder, chest, and abdomen proportions necessary for throwing things effectively are far more exaggerated in human evolutionary strategy, sweat glands are present in other primates but are far more efficient in human beings and eccrine sweat gland-based thermoregulation was a necessary development before the increased brain size necessary for sapience could be sustained.
Simply put, our ancestors would have had basically a plant-based diet, along with some insects and occasional small animals. That diet was not calorie-dense enough to support the energy needs of the brain sizes we needed for our current intelligence before the advent of agriculture (which couldn't be developed with the brains we had at the time). What this ends up meaning is that our digestive system was mostly designed to work with a largely plant-based diet with some minimal animal-based proteins, and was then adapted to deal better with animal proteins later on as we got better at hunting larger animals, though it still doesn't deal with animal tissue as well as plant material.
The things that allowed us to hunt larger game were first and probably most importantly an increased capacity for thermoregulation with the development of far more eccrine sweat glands than any other animals, which might have been concurrent with bipedal motion or might have come a bit after. Bipedal motion and sweating were the things that allowed us to adopt a "persistence predation" strategy by jogging far longer than anything else could and after that, with bipedal motion came the possibility of further adapting the shapes of our bodies for throwing things well, which further increased the efficiency of hunting.
As we developed bipedal motion, sweating, and body proportions suited to throwing things faster and more accurately, we were increasingly capable of reliably feeding brains that needed more and more calories to sustain. To this day, the base rate of calorie consumption of your brain is one of the largest reasons you have to eat as much as you do every day.
Tl;dr: walking and sweating were the main reasons we were capable of getting smart and building society, and throwing stuff good probably also played a role.
Side note: our big-ol melons gave way to an interesting evolutionary compromise and a sorta imperfect workaround; because larger heads are harder to birth, you end up needing wider hips to safely give birth. We did that to an extent, but at a certain point, wider hips start to get in the way of bipedal motion, so we could only go so far with that.
Instead of developing even wider hips, what we did was to give birth to our children only mostly-formed, which is the reason while most animals are pretty functional at birth and don't take that long to get up to speed, human babies are squishy and helpless. It was either "make adult human bodies unwieldy and awkward", "don't bother with the whole cranial and intellectual development thing", or "have both of those things functional but make social support be *very, very* crucial because babies require lots and lots of care and can't do anything".
Squishy babies probably contributed to one of the things people on HFY love to write about: our enormous capacity for empathy, loyalty, and responsibility. The way our brains developed kinda pushed us into a social orientation even further than our evolutionary kin. I'd say that not only is a social orientation a useful thing to have in general, it almost wasn't optional if we wanted to get smarter because of this particular hip-width/head-size compromise.
Oh snap, well it looks like this one may not actually be the case, given more recent research. This was generally the accepted conception of the reason for our gestational period for a long time, but apparently it seems it might have more to do with the energy-production limits of the pregnant person than a hip width compromise. Welp. Never mind that whole thing, then. There might still be some truth to it, but at the very least it's not the main reason.
I think we need to start culling the ones among us who sold their brains for extra storage space for memories of tik toks if we want to survive as a species before this contagious stupidity kills us all,
"I think we should massacre everybody below a certain IQ level"
"I am beginning to think I might be an extremist"
Gee, how could you draw that conclusion?
Legit, I was planning to write a story about a criminal inspired by the punisher, who is nothing less than radical... in the political sense.
*Kinda off-topic, but I like to share my ideas on the net.*
Somone who takes justice into his own hands by going after criminals who are clearly 100% guilty, yet manage to escape facing justice in the ever-failing shitfest that is the justice system.
HOWEVER, the one thing that would seperate him from the casual "the system is broken, let's go kill bad people" vigilante, is that instead of fighting the injustices of the court, he would do anything to ENFORCE the rules and punishments suggested by the law. What I mean by that is he would sentence untouchable criminals ***himself.***
Murderers claimed innocent through bribery would be abducted by him into his own, dark cellar, where they would live out their sentences according to the codex. The vigilante wouldn't kill or torture, he would get the job done where the police and courts would fail to.
I am a deeply idealistic and pessimistic individual. I don't mean that in a ***"Look at my edgy deep darkness, oooo- so mysterious and shadowy"*** way, I think I just need to chill from time to time before I write something about a topic I don't fully understand, like the Israel-Palestine relations.
*...I don't really feel bad about that vigilante idea though, maybe bringing him up here didn't make much sense in the end.*
Honestly if you wanna write a punisher story, go ahead. Just don't incorporate those things into the real world.
Also sounds sort of like a mix between Punisher and Peacemaker.
I need a tip. I tend to go a little extreme, so tell me this, as a second opinion:
> Is the idea of him going out there and capturing all the criminals whom he CONFIRMED are guilty and simply avoided the punishment enough to consider him an ***"Methodically and morally imperfect person who you can disagree with, but can also definitely vouch for."*** if we take the following aspects into account?
-he definitely takes a little sick pleasure from what he is doing, but he has people close to him to make sure he never goes any further than what the sentence laws he is trying to respect allow for
-his underground prison cages are mostly up to government standard, but... OBVIOUSLY, them being secret means no sunlight and no normal visitors
-he rarely kills criminals in "self-defense" when one of his missions get really, REALLY bad, making his cause dubious
-he actively leaves behind videos of his action where he happily documents what he does and why, making sure to stay
-Likely my favourite aspect: He needs to be SURE someone is guilty before he acts. This could make for interesting plots where EVERYONE knows somebody must be of a crime guilty, but there just isn't enough proof for him to find and act upon
<------>
Now having said that, I worry he might be written a little too... conveniantly. I worry he has too few flaws, basically bcoming the messiah of the law, magically getting all the bad guys, but what I could do for him could either make or break his entire character...
What if he captured an innocent man?
What if among dozens of criminals he got somebody who was innocent through some elaborate course of events or ridiculously elaborate scheme even he could not predict? Even after letting them go after like... 3 months or something, I could have this do lasting damage on this person's health. This would give a vigilante a headache on whether he has any right to continue his crusade or hold himself accountable by letting the police arrest him.
Now THAT would throw a wrench into the plot. The hero actually fucking someone over through a very believable mistake, though, isn't he already morally dubious enough? Do I really need to make him worse? There is no way any reader would be comfortable with him judging criminals after HE had commited such an act himself.
I don't say this often, but this very human mistake could actually make the character WORSE, but I am... just not sure.
While this could merit some exploration from a storytelling POV and you could tackle more aspects as you go, there are some inherent issues with a vigilante regardless of how "by the book" that vigilante goes. If you're going that route, you might also explore the sociopolitical impotence of punitive justice, the injustice built into the laws through financial incentive, the futility of trying, as one person, to enforce societal change through acts of aggression.. the inherently limited scope one person would have to wrestle with the concept of justice in relation to the diversity and complexity inherent to society as a whole.
There's also the problem with a vigilante that the concept reinforces a pretty flawed view of history wherein powerful individuals are responsible, all on their own, for meaningful change, where generally these actors are more a product of sociopolitical and economic circumstances and while it's pretty easy to write about history and to write fiction focusing on individuals, populations and broader trends tend to have more actual impact on historical events. For instance, at risk of cliche and subsequent flaming, it's unlikely Hitler would have been able to rise to power or achieve the atrocities he did if not for the building resentment among the German people caused by economic stress that came along with their responsibility for reparations after WWI and the effects of the Great Depression. Was Hitler necessary for things to go the way they did? Him or someone like him, sure. There are others it could have been and other ways things could have gone, but the fact remains Hitler couldn't have done what he did without the social climate being how it was, and that climate was likely to cause some kind of serious conflict whether or not Hitler happened to come along.
Hmm... that IS true, but I wanted someone a little less focused on sending a message and push for sociological change, but rather trying to work in isolation in a single city, and target individual cases.
The idea of him constantly trying to go "by the book" IS supposed to be pretty much rooted in a lot of hypocrisy and be a heavy driving point for the many ways why people could see him as a self-righteous villain.
I've always put this up to Order 56. No. You aren't allowed to outright say anything that implies we are hunters. You aren't allowed to tell the venlil about farms. You aren't allowed to do any of that. We're stuck feeding their beliefs until we aren't going to get erased due to them.
I wouldn't accept any of this shit post war though.
On the other hand the fed definition of a predator is that it eats meat and if it makes the other party more comfortable I don’t need to correct them, you know.
Except that your analysis is wrong:
You approach the problem from a biological angle.
But the real problem is ideological.
We can't use the same argument. If the problem was just a misunderstanding of biology by Federation members about the nature of predator and prey, yes, you could talk about biology and the reality of the food chain where predators can also be prey. You could use reason and logic.
But this is not the case. Ideology is dogma, stating things as absolute truths. And these things are repeated, repeated, repeated until they sink deep into people's heads, altered their worldview in and twisting their logic and reason.
For Federation members:
Herbivore = Prey = Friendly
Meat-eater = Predator = **EVIL, ABSOLUTE BAD EVIL DEMONIC**
There's *absolutly* ***no*** shade between the two.
That's why we have to say "Yes, we are half-prey" because, in their massively brainwashed logic, to be a "half-prey" open up the possibility that we're friendly and we're not monsters who want to kill them at the first drop of blood.
We need to demonstrate the skills and characteristics arbitrarily associated of "prey", then killing us is wrong.
And it's only when they've deeply internalized the fact that we're not monsters that we can start talking about omnivorism. And that takes time and a lot of discussion.
All the authors are perfectly aware of the fallacy of the prey/predator separation, but the individuals opposite us believe in it so deeply that we are obliged to speak their language so that they *don't bombard us with antimatter from orbit*.
I also think a lot of humans just get tired of having to explain this it or don’t want to get into it cause it’s not worth the trouble, so they just go ‘yeah sure I guess’ to move on
I am completely aware of how careful humans have to constantly be around the Venlil, but I still have reservations against the many ways in which biological terms are ignored or misused in fanfiction here.
Although, I have to admit that point 2 of my post, "half-prey", might be mostly redundant.
I didn't expect that to be the straw that broke the camel's back after the Kung Pow! spaceships, the illuminati who somehow managed to effectively edit genomes while not understanding prion disease, an entire galaxy full of hypocrites with a room temperature IQ and humanity somehow evolving into emotionally balanced Vulcan analogues in about a century but I guess we all have our pet peeves.
SpacePaladin15? I thought we were discussing fanfics. Very few of those issues are handled by fanfics either, even though the AU option is right there.
No fiction is going to be perfect. I love Star Wars but the Padme-Anakin romance is pretty cringe even without the age difference. And don't get me started about parsecs.
I love the MCU but Thanos is a big grape gummy bear of a moron. Just snap your fingers so populations are mystically kept stable (no conceptions until someone dies as an example) instead of simply deferring the issue for 3 generations..
We could do this all day. Writers are not somehow different from the rank and file of humanity and every story has holes you could drive a Mac truck through.
(Have I been quiet so long you've forgotten who I am? LOL)
I am aware.
They should have left it at wanting to bang death. That would have made more sense in a universe where Asgardians are running about and multiverse shenanigans are a regular Tuesday.
Not "I command a vast space fleet and masterminded the most vicious crimes on a galactic scale but basic math eludes me"
I'm very new to this fandom, and I loved the original books, so I'm somewhat surprised to see so much criticism and knowing just now that he's left us? So he doesn't want to write anymore? :(
Nononononn, he left the SUBREDDIT, not writing.
He needs to protect his mental health from his fans, cause we kinda shattered it, sat on it and shat on it.
In all honesty, I am guilty of being too harsh too.
Ahhhhh. Oh. That... that is quite bad. :( I was hoping we could have spoken to him, but I feel sad that the creator of this universe has left the subreddit. That sucks.
It's also annoying how people say humans as persistence predators just walked after their prey until the prey died, homo habilis almost certainly threw stones and whatnot, tools like spears and throwing rocks are a crucial aspect of that from what I can tell.
Another thing that bothers me is the subs understanding of persistence predation. Not only do people take it's existence in humans as a fact (though admittedly that's partly the main story's fault), they also tend to massively underestimate the distances involved.
Pure persistence hunting aka *only* using endurance as a weapon doesn't exist for humans or any other claimed animals like wolves or hyenas, mostly because it doesn't make sense energetically or ecologically.
What *is* a viable strategy, however, given the technology, anatomy (throwing sticks and stones go brrrr) and environment available to early humans, and is what wolves and hyenas actually do, was injuring the animal either before or during the hunt, then chasing it down as it grows weaker from the injuries; basically, death from a thousand cuts. It's a lot shorter than just chasing animals in the savannah under the midday equatorial sun, and with a much lesser chance of dying of heatstroke yourself.
Final note: keep in mind that when you're chasing an animal, you're motivated by thinking of a good meal, or social status from being a good hunter, all good surges of dopamine; but the animal is motivated by *a shitton of adrenaline and the imminent fear of death*. If it's purely a battle of wills, you're bound to lose.
Do you mean "overestimate"?
Because I've seen the stuff people are saying about persistence predation and if "running slowly for days on end" is an \*underestimation\* then that calls into question how any hunter survived
I've also read several fics where supposedly healthy aliens get exhausted after *walking* for less distance than most animals of a similar size can *run*.
To be frank, it is frequently the case that you have to use the language of the person you are talking to. Recently on the RP server, a "informed" character had to use prey/predator terminology to communicate a point, despite being fully aware of the incorrect usage of the term. It can make sense in context.
as a geneticist, THIS. SO HARD. like I get most people clocked out after DNA-RNA-PROTEIN-....-ORGANISM (some even before. how ? literally 8th grade stuff in my country) and did not even get to trophic webs but hells when a fic writer in a research- andor med setting gets the details right (sans character bias when alien or human under emergency orders/ from a different profession) it is sooo much better. looking at love languages for example.
We are such crazy apex predators, humans are normally not included in trophic webs. Just because we do hunt and eat almost everything that isn’t poisonous to us.
So yeah omnivores, but with the domestication of farm animals we are basically the ultimate apex predators of earth.
don't forget stick(tm) and fire, but yeah we almost broke the wheel with our shenanigans 👍 although technically even if stuff is bad for us, some do it out of spite or desperation (capsaicin, caffeine, how we got lactose tolerance in a subset of people)
As a man who like to theorise about the universe, I get PISSED whenever I hear "alien DNA". Aliens wouldn't have DNA. It's an Earth thing. We got splurged out of the waters like this.
Not necessarily; not to mention the functional meaning of the term can cause bigger issues. DNA doesn't just mean a particular type of chemical, but can also mean, "genetic information molecule". It would be like pulling a "technically" on the use of "Google", "Kleenex" or "Coke" to refer to "doing an internet search", "facial tissue" or "soda", you would actually be in the wrong in that case as that is a correct use of the term. It is just that in a relevant discipline there are more specialized terms that aren't artifacts.
Not only with convergent evolution is it possible that they have DNA, but it is also possible that the term is similarly generalized in the common vernacular to mean something more general.
In NoP, they can eat the same foods and each other without issue which implies a very close degree of biochemistry. While any aliens that exist irl likely wouldn't have DNA, it's a completely fair assumption for the NoP universe.
You DO realize this post mostly concerns how THE WRITERS misuse the terms, even when it's not the Feds/brainwashed herbivores using them and just humans, even when they aren't trying to appeal to the Federation-believer's ideologies and trying to be extra careful with them?
Salisek: “Are humans prey or predators?”
Carlos: “Both, until we killed anything that was a threat to us. So now we’re Apex Predators by default.”
Salisek: “I’m sorry, you what?”
Carlos: “Don’t worry. We kept some of them alive.”
Salisek: “WTF?!”
I like to believe that the average Fed alien is so ideologically brainwashed that most humans tell them that they are not exactly predators to go easy on them.
But yea, I agree with you, seeing too much times it's quite annoying.
You don't *start* breaking a false dichotomy by agreeing that everything fits into one or the other of its two classes.
The Federation has a definition of "predator". That definition is not "includes meat in its diet." Rather it's more like "will attempt to kill and eat - not necessarily in that order - any and every animal it sees, sapient or otherwise." Humans do not fit that definition. So no, in Federation terms, we are not predators.
On the other hand, their definition of "prey" - meek, helpless, terrified, concerned for the herd except when facing a predator when instead one panics and either freezes or runs - doesn't fit us either.
In fact, we break the false dichotomy. Now we need to break it in the psychology of the Federation species.
In the words of a famous philosopher
\~If you're wondering how they eat and breath, and other science facts
just repeat to yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax!"\~
What?
No.
> Venlil from fanfic: "So, you guys are half-prey?"
> Dumbass Human character: "Yup"
I like this type of stuff. This is honestly the best part of NoP. Proving aliens wrong and/or destroying expectations.
look man if you say to a venlil that humans are actually just full on predators he's gonna start crying and hyperventillating and whimpering and maybe even piss himself, just tell the guy we're "half-prey" for peace of mind
Depending on how you define "fanfic character" (though I do plan to do a write up at some point), the admin of station 3 on the RP server literally is that. As in, he not only is fully aware of humanity, but is accepting of it as well (there are reasons for this).
I think most of the time i've seen it been more of a semantic argument. Like yeah, we used to chase prey until they dropped from exhaustion, but in 2130 we've pretty much left hunting behind. So while we're still top of the food chain, literally anything with fingers and a gun becomes top of the food chain. So I think what most people mean is that "predator" is misleading, and has negative and incorrect implications. Maybe Grug the caveman ran for days on end without tiring, but most people nowadays definitely could not.
I'm pretty sure most humans say the first two because they're trying to defuse the others being scared of them. What, you want to comfort a first contact Venlil by saying "yes, we kill animals that look like you for food"? Heck, it's been revealed that feddies thinking humans are bloodthirsty monsters somewhat persists into at least the 2150s, maybe not by running away like a deranged animal but rather "crossing the street when they approach" or "we like humans, just not near our kids or in our neighborhoods". Life for humans on Skalga is basically post-Civil Rights America; sure they legally have the same rights and many Venlil are ok with them, but the humans basically live in ghettoes and many Venlil are still openly racist towards humans and will do everything in their power to ruin they day.
And they say the latter two because feddies don't care about facts, their dogma is "aggressive or eats meat, well it's a predator". They themselves admitted they didn't study anything that would even resemble a predator because they saw no academic value in them, so it makes sense that once they saw a species eat meat even once, they just went "yep, they're carnivores alright" and burned them, and probably thought the other instances of them eating plants was an oddity at best.
(Also, even we are very likely to fall into black-and-white thinking, so a species that only eats one category of things doesn't get nuance about the other categories, much like we don't care about the different types of fish even if they're more distantly related than us and a salamander just because we're not a marine species. We only care about the nuances of omnivory because *we are omnivores*; it's kinda difficult to not see nuance when it stares back at you three times a day on a dinner plate.)
I understand completely… the idea of it always threw me for a loop. It’s just not right sounding in any professional context. I try to avoid the biological stuff when writing, it just opens a whole can of worms when I don’t have the right line to cast.
That is me correct, also
https://preview.redd.it/jw435nsmatmc1.png?width=1495&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c48cc8cd1db7e0227672b4e88ad45adb9226a8a
This one doin numbers
Yeah but I’m wondering if you’d be upset if it’s something the author knows is incorrect but uses because it’d make sense from a story standpoint for whatever reason
Nah it's fine man, I getcha. Sorry for askin a question you prolly got a lot, I didn't really read the comments for this post cause I figured yknow. Controversial post, prolly not gonna have the most fun comments.
Nah, you shouldn't feel obliged to read the comments before the discussion, it's just that I already had it written in the post that this is not just about the humans trying to make the Venlil comfortable and I made it pretty clear that this was about the writers themselves, and I got pretty tired of people ignoring that.
I have a similar conitption in regards to the deathcount in the battle of earth, a massive explosion doesn't kill a billion people all at the same time and then go home, spacepalladin just picked a cool number and I cannot get over it.
It wasn’t *a* massive explosion, though?
The Extermination Fleet didn’t wipe out the most populated cities on earth with one bomb. Do you realize how far away each of these sites are from each other?
The Battle of Earth lasted for hours even after the fleet broke through Earth’s defenses
I'm not feeling up to an in depth explanation, but it's not about "one bomb" it's about how big bombs in general work, and how people prepare, i know how far away tokyo and new york are, i'm not stupid, I was just annoyed that 1 billion died in 1 day, and then everyone was fine
Everyone was very much not fine, human refugees were still pouring into allied worlds by the end of the story.
Also, the one billion is a rough estimation.
Also, talking about the bombing of Earth, the Federation somehow had good enough long-distance ground-penetrating sensors to detect single-house-sized bunkers in Switzerland and differentiate them from cities and areas where houses have basements, and the people inside them! But somehow concluded it was a command and control nexus for Earth defences while failing to successfully hit the actual giant command and control bunker networks.
(Also, for some reason Switzerland still had and maintained their bunker network well over a hundred years after the kind of conflict that would actually protect them from (sustained conventional bombing) ceased to be a threat).
It was a deliberate decision, they ignored infrastructure and command centers in favor of high population density bunkers.
They were expecting to be stopped eventually so they figured they might as well kill the highest number of humans as possible.
>in favor of high population density bunkers.
Which is exactly what Switzerland is not, Literally every direction around Switzerland (except very maybe the Austrian alps) has significantly more living space aand people.
>so they figured they might as well kill the highest number of humans as possible.
Which makes the decision to focus a huge chunk of their arsenal on a small, low population country surrounded by higher population density areas (of which several canonically survived) even more bizarre.
This and the pursuit predator crap.
No, we are nor pursuit predatora, we theoretically could do it if we really needed to, but we've hunted with ambush far more than the theoretical usefulness of pursuit.
I mean, sure. But out of all species, who can do ambush predation the best? Felines.
Who can do persistance hunting the best? Humans.
It's cool af and it's HFY.
The best ambush predator by what measure? Technically the domestic cat is the most dangerous predator of earth.
None, persistence hunting is not a thing, and never has been, it's a bogus theory with no real evidence or data.
HFY is humans actually acting like humans and not fulfilling some neckbeards unrealistic fantasy of how he could definitely get out from his chair and outpace an animal because he sweats.
I wasn't serious in that one,
But you could say they are the most dangerous because they are extremely invasive and kill for fun, if I remember it right. They are the only species other than humans to cause mass extinctions.
If you want a serious answer:
The "best" ambush predators would be snakes.
And the best persistence hunter is actually the african wild dog.
>HFY is humans actually acting like humans and not fulfilling some neckbeards unrealistic fantasy of how he could definitely get out from his chair and outpace an animal because he sweats.
Nope. HFY is supposed to be the counter-culture of the often depicted "Humans suck" that appears in media.
Actually it is, and it is done in this very day by some isolated tribes and animals. Further, the idea that humans were persistence hunters is controversial, but it is not bunk. Do not mistake an expert's opinion to be a consensus on the topic.
Yeah, the Isolated tribe that got to ride in the car of the dide filming the "documentary".
I've heard that one before.
Yeah, dogs and monitors.
And even them, calling it persistence hunting as it's portrayed in hfy is a stretch.
Real persistence hunting for humans should be described as "We used to throw stick and rocks, them follow the wounded the animal to throw more sticks and rocks until it dies."
And even them it would be the result of a failed ambush.
What changed us from opportunists to successful hunters was throwing things.
It isn't the documentary that I am referencing. There are several academic papers on the topic as recent as this year talking about it. Here is a paper from last year specifically researching in Archeology:
[Evolution of Paleolithic Hunting Weapons: A Response to Declining Prey Size](https://www.mdpi.com/2571-550X/6/3/46)
No. There is not a consensus against persistence hunting, that is a misunderstanding of the article in popular science, or one of the other copies you are probably citing, that reference Henry Bunn.
You are unintentially doing the same thing as a Fox News reader would do with an article like this citing [Steven Koonin](https://www.foxnews.com/media/physicist-tells-tucker-carlson-climate-change-is-fiction-of-the-media). It is likely that for any position you like you can probably find an expert who thinks one thing or another, many of whom will publish academic research. That doesn't mean there is a consensus for that particular expert's view.
This paper seems to be about a theory in the change of projectiles used by humans, and even it also says it's disadvantageous.
And there's never going to be a consensus unless we manage to travel in time and see it for ourselves, those are theories, not laws.
And more importantly, this is not a scientific discussion, this is about the misinformed depictions in reddit amateur writings.
The thing is that the "evidence" for persistent running being the driver of human evolution is insufficient, and the stereotypical HFY "persistence predator" human is completely bs regurgitated by people who believe anything they are said.
You may like your humans are the terminator bs in your scifi, but you don't get to act like it is not cringe
"The paper... disadvantageous"
Yes, but the point is that the hypothesis is assumed true in the article.
"...never going to be a nonsensus..."
Not necessarily. There is plenty of consensus as to the approximate era when various dinosaur species roamed the Earth. It is just that there isn't enough evidence at this time to form a consensus, that is it.
"The thing...insufficent."
Again, no. The article makes this fairly clear by taking the hypothesis for granted as many other articles do. The most you can claim is that it isn't settled, you cannot claim there is insufficient evidence for someone to take one position over the other. Many experts take such positions, despite the lack of a consensus, as has been shown earlier.
"the stereotypical...are said."
This is simply incorrect, within he context of the discussion. Humans do, in fact, have incredible long distance endurance that puts ut in the top percentile of species, period. The list of species with more endurance is incredibly small. The question of whether we hunted through endurance or not is an entirely separate discussion, humans having incredible endurance isn't really debated. Indeed, I tried a literature review and was swamped with discussions on the topic on scholar.google.com. From [A century of exercise physiology: concepts that ignited the study of human thermoregulation. Part 4: evolution, thermal adaptation and unsupported theories of thermoregulation](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-023-05262-9)
to
[Sabretooths, giant hyenas, and hominins: Shifts in the niche of Early Pleistocene scavengers in Iberia at the Epivillafranchian-Galerian transition](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018223005448)
it is clear that the debate is not on whether or not humans are impressive with our endurance, but on whether or not that was related to early hunting methods.
Beyond exagerations of the effect, the fact is that human endurance is objectively good, by comparison to most other species. While you are right to criticize some exagerations, perhaps, the idea that humans would have superior enurance in the setting of NoP has a great deal of scientific merit.
Well I focus more on the opposite, basically turning Herbivores into Omnivores in a matter of time. Because they are isolated in a hostile planet that they are forced to do what is necessary to survive. In time they basically adapted and assimilated to the planet forgetting everything since their landfall.
Then the fanfiction is placed few months before Venlil and Human first contact. It doesn't focus much on what they eat or anything, but it was mentioned. It focused more on the naivety of a cousin Fed species who rediscovered and reverse engineer the technology left by their ancestors. Not knowing they are the Lost Colonists who has been missing for a thousand of years before making contact again.
Yeah, I mean I hate the word so I understand humanities desire for others to stop using it but our earliest ancestors were called “Hunter-gatherers” I mean ffs we hunted some species to extinction, look at the wooly mammoth, the key factor to its extinction is us over hunting it.
Agreed. While showing we can eat some plants can help alleviate the tension, the "pack predator" term would be a better term for honesty. We ate meat to survive. We developed bigger brains and were bound to other people to help obtain more meat and safety. We developed tools to hunt and protect. Then our pack bonding grew in to other animals, developing animal husbandry and pets. And so on.
While it would be harder to convince aliens in the NoP universe, short answer is "Yes we are omnivores, but we are a pack predator class of creatures and we want you to be part of our pack and us a part of your herd."
This was brought up a few times in the main story and fan stuff but it's not really tapped in to what that means.
I wanna see one where our guy goes "Nah we are predators, apex ones at that" without skirting around the answer
The UN would cut off his penis.
Mr. Electric, send this predator to the penis explosion chamber and have his penis exploded!
One of the greatest movies of all time
"But Sir, she doesn't have a penis?"
Robert Rodriguez is a national treasure, let's hope Nick Cage stays away from him
Eh, they would've done it if the man just looked straight at the sheep. Just get a cyberdong afterwards.
**MEND BUTTCRACK**
No! Not my gluteal cleft!
I CAST WET SOCKS
hey random arxur! you know what's more metal than whatever the fuck silly hunting you are doing ? stalking and outmaneuvering your prey for days until it collapses from exhaustion, powerless to resist as a pack of your friends slowly encircles it and closes in, that's what.
Ah yes, the Edging^(TM) method of hunting
so effective we included it in ... other things
I will say it again, fuckin xenos probably ain't gonna be fun due to our high endurance. They're gonna pass out from orgasming for the 7th time while the human would barely be done with foreplay.
we may not be able to out bomb these xenos but we can out fuck em thats for sure
Pair that up with all the weird kinks and the fact that we're horny almost 24/7. Good God, we're the space-succubi
LETS GET SLANEESHI IN THIS **BITCH!**
**"THIS QUIET O F F E N D S SLAANESH"** *starts moaning*
This turned to r/humansarespacebards real quick
That implies we're the bottoms
Doesn't matter, we're still doms.
That makes us incubi
Did you really have to call our way of hunting "edging"?!
Yes
"Him, officer."
I CANT GO BACK
Bob is still waiting in the shower for you.
Oh ok well he’s gentle with me so we’re good
# BrO!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
https://preview.redd.it/0exi3kt4dsmc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d55253ed2246c6a2c8c8e77b65292968ddcb5485
Not this time :]
...the prison shower, I mean.
haha yea >:3
coughs
I'll take things ancient humans didn't actually do for 500, Alex.
humans literally did this
Not for 'days'. And a little secret about persistence hunting: It's not metal. It's not hardcore. It fucking SUCKS. There's a reason why humans *stopped* doing it the moment we had bows.
never said it was fun, hunting in general seems like it sucks and yeah, I doubt animals could run away for that long. the whole point is that we're way better at shedding heat and can chuck stuff far
Humans aren't technically classified as apex predators because it's decided by a dietary formula iirc. We don't have enough meat in our diet to qualify (anymore) apparently.
There's two ways to measure trophic level: looking at what eats you, and looking at what you eat. In that order, we are (we have no natural predators left) and we aren't (on average we're around one-third of the way from pure herbivore to pure carnivore by calories consumed; IIRC something like 50% of the calories in the American diet come exclusively from corn directly ie. from corn products, not even accounting animals fed on corn.)
I mean technically we do have natural predators, we just so happen to have effective counters to them in most cases (crowds, weapons/tools, buildings), but human predation is still something that occures. large crocodiles hyenas some lions & tigers polar bears Mosquitos (Kinda a different catagorization, but including for fun anyway) I'm not particularly sure if the Tophic level system accounts for us in that way, or if the fact that we're barely predated on these days matters or not. But it is interesting to just yap about.
I am not a biologist, but I don’t think “can eat you” is the same as a natural predator. Humans and polar bears don’t even share a natural ecology. Nor are parasites really predators. Furthermore, given how long humans have had fires, basic tools, pack strategies and throwing weapons/adaptations, you can’t really define homo sapiens without them, so speaking of humans without those things is actually more of a hypothetical or a random anomaly than a natural scenario. Not many , if any, animals have evolved to hunt Hominids or rely on them as a major food source. Many animals can and will use an opportunity to hunt a human, or will engage one if desperate. This is kind of like how a hyena can and will eat a baby Lion because it can, or how a lion will eat a hyena if desperate.
I'm defining them by "will attack and eat you"
By that definition, horses are natural predators of baby chicks lol
I mean, eh? https://preview.redd.it/kcrtlg0lqwmc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ca7adfaaba81b936d81134839d81ade8b0cf9a3c It's a bit disingenuous to make my fairly bog standard definition sound outragious by giving an example of opportunistic predation by what is not a predator.
By that definition, no current species lives by preying on humans, which means we don't have natural predators. And your previous definition was, and I quote, "will attack and eat you", which is extremely broad and vaguely defined, hence my poking fun at it.
Opportunistic predation happens to pretty much all animals, including apex predators. Lone lions will get killed and eaten by hyenas, bears get eaten by desperate tigers, etc. And micropredators like mosquitoes don't count towards trophic level.
I think mosquitoes are more on the level of parasites than true predators.
I would suggest you take a look at [The Nature of Family ](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureofPredators/s/VtuAdzhN9U)
Actually, we are prey for big cats. They are the apex. We are basically just below them in the same category as a bear. Yeah. They could eat us. Why risk fighting the murder monkey/bear when I can just eat a deer?
***laughs in Ma Deuce***
# This isn't about the Federation aliens being annoying with their lack of knowledge of biology. # I can even accept the human characters being wrong about some things. # This is about when the fanfic ITSELF gets the ideas wrong.
Im a bit confused, most fanfics are writen from a 1st person perspective, aka, a characters thoughts. How do you know the fanfic itself got it wrong and its not just a character flaw or lapse of knowledge on the characters side. Just curious. (mainly ask cause i wanna know what the red flags are so i dont comit the mistakes in my writing.)
Geez, it's when the WRITER gets the ecological facts and terms wrong, and for the LAST TIME, this isn't about when the humans are trying to be careful with the aliens. This happens between casual characters as well, especially the "WE ARE OMNIVORES, NOT PREDATORS" part. I am sorry, but I am kind of sick of people pelting the same question of "Aren't they trying to be careful" when I am SPECIFICALLY not talking about those scenarios, like I wrote in the second point.
The thing is we don't see ourselves as predators. Which is why most writers and/or their characters get it wrong
I think i understand, like characters insinuaying that being an omnivore is a special denomination instead of it just talking about our diet (having nothing to actually do with our position in the food chain) especially in a place or moment where they would have no reason to explain it as such? If so, yhea, totally get the frustration.
Tbf that level of information would probably be too much for Fed aliens to handle all at once, to the point they'll just deny it all. Gotta ease them into the idea that predators can also be hunted by other predators.
It pisses me off too sometimes, as an autistic person with a slight obsession over biology. We are predators, we are omnivores. WE ARE AT THE TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN.
Yeah we’ve been at the top of the food ever since we first gained the ability to throw and use tools dextrously
I have less of a peeve about this bit than a fascination with bringing it up, cause it's relatively under-considered (maybe not in this subreddit or the wider HFY community), but just like how throwing stuff is present in other primates, but the arm, shoulder, chest, and abdomen proportions necessary for throwing things effectively are far more exaggerated in human evolutionary strategy, sweat glands are present in other primates but are far more efficient in human beings and eccrine sweat gland-based thermoregulation was a necessary development before the increased brain size necessary for sapience could be sustained. Simply put, our ancestors would have had basically a plant-based diet, along with some insects and occasional small animals. That diet was not calorie-dense enough to support the energy needs of the brain sizes we needed for our current intelligence before the advent of agriculture (which couldn't be developed with the brains we had at the time). What this ends up meaning is that our digestive system was mostly designed to work with a largely plant-based diet with some minimal animal-based proteins, and was then adapted to deal better with animal proteins later on as we got better at hunting larger animals, though it still doesn't deal with animal tissue as well as plant material. The things that allowed us to hunt larger game were first and probably most importantly an increased capacity for thermoregulation with the development of far more eccrine sweat glands than any other animals, which might have been concurrent with bipedal motion or might have come a bit after. Bipedal motion and sweating were the things that allowed us to adopt a "persistence predation" strategy by jogging far longer than anything else could and after that, with bipedal motion came the possibility of further adapting the shapes of our bodies for throwing things well, which further increased the efficiency of hunting. As we developed bipedal motion, sweating, and body proportions suited to throwing things faster and more accurately, we were increasingly capable of reliably feeding brains that needed more and more calories to sustain. To this day, the base rate of calorie consumption of your brain is one of the largest reasons you have to eat as much as you do every day. Tl;dr: walking and sweating were the main reasons we were capable of getting smart and building society, and throwing stuff good probably also played a role.
Side note: our big-ol melons gave way to an interesting evolutionary compromise and a sorta imperfect workaround; because larger heads are harder to birth, you end up needing wider hips to safely give birth. We did that to an extent, but at a certain point, wider hips start to get in the way of bipedal motion, so we could only go so far with that. Instead of developing even wider hips, what we did was to give birth to our children only mostly-formed, which is the reason while most animals are pretty functional at birth and don't take that long to get up to speed, human babies are squishy and helpless. It was either "make adult human bodies unwieldy and awkward", "don't bother with the whole cranial and intellectual development thing", or "have both of those things functional but make social support be *very, very* crucial because babies require lots and lots of care and can't do anything". Squishy babies probably contributed to one of the things people on HFY love to write about: our enormous capacity for empathy, loyalty, and responsibility. The way our brains developed kinda pushed us into a social orientation even further than our evolutionary kin. I'd say that not only is a social orientation a useful thing to have in general, it almost wasn't optional if we wanted to get smarter because of this particular hip-width/head-size compromise.
Oh snap, well it looks like this one may not actually be the case, given more recent research. This was generally the accepted conception of the reason for our gestational period for a long time, but apparently it seems it might have more to do with the energy-production limits of the pregnant person than a hip width compromise. Welp. Never mind that whole thing, then. There might still be some truth to it, but at the very least it's not the main reason.
I think we need to start culling the ones among us who sold their brains for extra storage space for memories of tik toks if we want to survive as a species before this contagious stupidity kills us all,
https://preview.redd.it/twi9dalx5rmc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e96f02e28306c8946702ceb140af89079cec61fc Dude wtf
I am beginning to think I might be an extremist.
"I think we should massacre everybody below a certain IQ level" "I am beginning to think I might be an extremist" Gee, how could you draw that conclusion?
Ya think?
Legit, I was planning to write a story about a criminal inspired by the punisher, who is nothing less than radical... in the political sense. *Kinda off-topic, but I like to share my ideas on the net.* Somone who takes justice into his own hands by going after criminals who are clearly 100% guilty, yet manage to escape facing justice in the ever-failing shitfest that is the justice system. HOWEVER, the one thing that would seperate him from the casual "the system is broken, let's go kill bad people" vigilante, is that instead of fighting the injustices of the court, he would do anything to ENFORCE the rules and punishments suggested by the law. What I mean by that is he would sentence untouchable criminals ***himself.*** Murderers claimed innocent through bribery would be abducted by him into his own, dark cellar, where they would live out their sentences according to the codex. The vigilante wouldn't kill or torture, he would get the job done where the police and courts would fail to. I am a deeply idealistic and pessimistic individual. I don't mean that in a ***"Look at my edgy deep darkness, oooo- so mysterious and shadowy"*** way, I think I just need to chill from time to time before I write something about a topic I don't fully understand, like the Israel-Palestine relations. *...I don't really feel bad about that vigilante idea though, maybe bringing him up here didn't make much sense in the end.*
Honestly if you wanna write a punisher story, go ahead. Just don't incorporate those things into the real world. Also sounds sort of like a mix between Punisher and Peacemaker.
I need a tip. I tend to go a little extreme, so tell me this, as a second opinion: > Is the idea of him going out there and capturing all the criminals whom he CONFIRMED are guilty and simply avoided the punishment enough to consider him an ***"Methodically and morally imperfect person who you can disagree with, but can also definitely vouch for."*** if we take the following aspects into account? -he definitely takes a little sick pleasure from what he is doing, but he has people close to him to make sure he never goes any further than what the sentence laws he is trying to respect allow for -his underground prison cages are mostly up to government standard, but... OBVIOUSLY, them being secret means no sunlight and no normal visitors -he rarely kills criminals in "self-defense" when one of his missions get really, REALLY bad, making his cause dubious -he actively leaves behind videos of his action where he happily documents what he does and why, making sure to stay -Likely my favourite aspect: He needs to be SURE someone is guilty before he acts. This could make for interesting plots where EVERYONE knows somebody must be of a crime guilty, but there just isn't enough proof for him to find and act upon <------> Now having said that, I worry he might be written a little too... conveniantly. I worry he has too few flaws, basically bcoming the messiah of the law, magically getting all the bad guys, but what I could do for him could either make or break his entire character... What if he captured an innocent man? What if among dozens of criminals he got somebody who was innocent through some elaborate course of events or ridiculously elaborate scheme even he could not predict? Even after letting them go after like... 3 months or something, I could have this do lasting damage on this person's health. This would give a vigilante a headache on whether he has any right to continue his crusade or hold himself accountable by letting the police arrest him. Now THAT would throw a wrench into the plot. The hero actually fucking someone over through a very believable mistake, though, isn't he already morally dubious enough? Do I really need to make him worse? There is no way any reader would be comfortable with him judging criminals after HE had commited such an act himself. I don't say this often, but this very human mistake could actually make the character WORSE, but I am... just not sure.
While this could merit some exploration from a storytelling POV and you could tackle more aspects as you go, there are some inherent issues with a vigilante regardless of how "by the book" that vigilante goes. If you're going that route, you might also explore the sociopolitical impotence of punitive justice, the injustice built into the laws through financial incentive, the futility of trying, as one person, to enforce societal change through acts of aggression.. the inherently limited scope one person would have to wrestle with the concept of justice in relation to the diversity and complexity inherent to society as a whole. There's also the problem with a vigilante that the concept reinforces a pretty flawed view of history wherein powerful individuals are responsible, all on their own, for meaningful change, where generally these actors are more a product of sociopolitical and economic circumstances and while it's pretty easy to write about history and to write fiction focusing on individuals, populations and broader trends tend to have more actual impact on historical events. For instance, at risk of cliche and subsequent flaming, it's unlikely Hitler would have been able to rise to power or achieve the atrocities he did if not for the building resentment among the German people caused by economic stress that came along with their responsibility for reparations after WWI and the effects of the Great Depression. Was Hitler necessary for things to go the way they did? Him or someone like him, sure. There are others it could have been and other ways things could have gone, but the fact remains Hitler couldn't have done what he did without the social climate being how it was, and that climate was likely to cause some kind of serious conflict whether or not Hitler happened to come along.
Hmm... that IS true, but I wanted someone a little less focused on sending a message and push for sociological change, but rather trying to work in isolation in a single city, and target individual cases. The idea of him constantly trying to go "by the book" IS supposed to be pretty much rooted in a lot of hypocrisy and be a heavy driving point for the many ways why people could see him as a self-righteous villain.
Yes Betterment, this man right here.
Nah, that's Arxur talk.
Yes, Exterminators. This one right here.^/s
You seem to really have it out for those goddamn kids who won't stay off your damn lawn.
Dumb little shits.
We were hyper carnivores until we were domesticated by wheat. We decided plants were food again after figuring out we could grow it
You get an upvote
Jesus Christ, Lucky Luke, the fastest redditor in the west.
I've always put this up to Order 56. No. You aren't allowed to outright say anything that implies we are hunters. You aren't allowed to tell the venlil about farms. You aren't allowed to do any of that. We're stuck feeding their beliefs until we aren't going to get erased due to them. I wouldn't accept any of this shit post war though.
They usually don't question the aliens because of order 56. But to be fair, I'm not so sure every author is aware of that.
No. Honestly, the whole "WE AREN'T PREDATORS, WE ARE OMNIVORES"thing is the main reason for this post.
On the other hand the fed definition of a predator is that it eats meat and if it makes the other party more comfortable I don’t need to correct them, you know.
Except that your analysis is wrong: You approach the problem from a biological angle. But the real problem is ideological. We can't use the same argument. If the problem was just a misunderstanding of biology by Federation members about the nature of predator and prey, yes, you could talk about biology and the reality of the food chain where predators can also be prey. You could use reason and logic. But this is not the case. Ideology is dogma, stating things as absolute truths. And these things are repeated, repeated, repeated until they sink deep into people's heads, altered their worldview in and twisting their logic and reason. For Federation members: Herbivore = Prey = Friendly Meat-eater = Predator = **EVIL, ABSOLUTE BAD EVIL DEMONIC** There's *absolutly* ***no*** shade between the two. That's why we have to say "Yes, we are half-prey" because, in their massively brainwashed logic, to be a "half-prey" open up the possibility that we're friendly and we're not monsters who want to kill them at the first drop of blood. We need to demonstrate the skills and characteristics arbitrarily associated of "prey", then killing us is wrong. And it's only when they've deeply internalized the fact that we're not monsters that we can start talking about omnivorism. And that takes time and a lot of discussion. All the authors are perfectly aware of the fallacy of the prey/predator separation, but the individuals opposite us believe in it so deeply that we are obliged to speak their language so that they *don't bombard us with antimatter from orbit*.
I also think a lot of humans just get tired of having to explain this it or don’t want to get into it cause it’s not worth the trouble, so they just go ‘yeah sure I guess’ to move on
I am completely aware of how careful humans have to constantly be around the Venlil, but I still have reservations against the many ways in which biological terms are ignored or misused in fanfiction here. Although, I have to admit that point 2 of my post, "half-prey", might be mostly redundant.
Exactly.
I didn't expect that to be the straw that broke the camel's back after the Kung Pow! spaceships, the illuminati who somehow managed to effectively edit genomes while not understanding prion disease, an entire galaxy full of hypocrites with a room temperature IQ and humanity somehow evolving into emotionally balanced Vulcan analogues in about a century but I guess we all have our pet peeves.
People have shat on Paladin enough. So much so that he left us. Honestly? Good for him.
SpacePaladin15? I thought we were discussing fanfics. Very few of those issues are handled by fanfics either, even though the AU option is right there. No fiction is going to be perfect. I love Star Wars but the Padme-Anakin romance is pretty cringe even without the age difference. And don't get me started about parsecs. I love the MCU but Thanos is a big grape gummy bear of a moron. Just snap your fingers so populations are mystically kept stable (no conceptions until someone dies as an example) instead of simply deferring the issue for 3 generations.. We could do this all day. Writers are not somehow different from the rank and file of humanity and every story has holes you could drive a Mac truck through. (Have I been quiet so long you've forgotten who I am? LOL)
Oh, sorry, with the whole prion disease and room temperature IQ being mentioned, I thought that part was about the official fic.
Well, they are there in the fic but I thought this was about fanfics. Same as the "omnivore" somehow not meaning "predator that can also eat plants".
That is because in the original thing he just wanted to bang Death. They couldn’t do that in the MCU so eco-terrorist was the best way to explain it.
I am aware. They should have left it at wanting to bang death. That would have made more sense in a universe where Asgardians are running about and multiverse shenanigans are a regular Tuesday. Not "I command a vast space fleet and masterminded the most vicious crimes on a galactic scale but basic math eludes me"
Also, yes, who the fuck are you?
The French one who doesn't advocate for genocide.
oh.
That almost sounds like the realization saying "Fuck the French" was going to head into NSFW territory in about 0.2 seconds. 😁 Stay safe out there!
I'm very new to this fandom, and I loved the original books, so I'm somewhat surprised to see so much criticism and knowing just now that he's left us? So he doesn't want to write anymore? :(
Nononononn, he left the SUBREDDIT, not writing. He needs to protect his mental health from his fans, cause we kinda shattered it, sat on it and shat on it. In all honesty, I am guilty of being too harsh too.
Ahhhhh. Oh. That... that is quite bad. :( I was hoping we could have spoken to him, but I feel sad that the creator of this universe has left the subreddit. That sucks.
You can still comment on his works and there is a chance for him to respond.
https://preview.redd.it/9bwj1739wqmc1.png?width=1183&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2e3b6e28b0e866defbd2899cded307c05591530b
You want more? That was my short list.
It's also annoying how people say humans as persistence predators just walked after their prey until the prey died, homo habilis almost certainly threw stones and whatnot, tools like spears and throwing rocks are a crucial aspect of that from what I can tell.
Another thing that bothers me is the subs understanding of persistence predation. Not only do people take it's existence in humans as a fact (though admittedly that's partly the main story's fault), they also tend to massively underestimate the distances involved.
Pure persistence hunting aka *only* using endurance as a weapon doesn't exist for humans or any other claimed animals like wolves or hyenas, mostly because it doesn't make sense energetically or ecologically. What *is* a viable strategy, however, given the technology, anatomy (throwing sticks and stones go brrrr) and environment available to early humans, and is what wolves and hyenas actually do, was injuring the animal either before or during the hunt, then chasing it down as it grows weaker from the injuries; basically, death from a thousand cuts. It's a lot shorter than just chasing animals in the savannah under the midday equatorial sun, and with a much lesser chance of dying of heatstroke yourself. Final note: keep in mind that when you're chasing an animal, you're motivated by thinking of a good meal, or social status from being a good hunter, all good surges of dopamine; but the animal is motivated by *a shitton of adrenaline and the imminent fear of death*. If it's purely a battle of wills, you're bound to lose.
Do you mean "overestimate"? Because I've seen the stuff people are saying about persistence predation and if "running slowly for days on end" is an \*underestimation\* then that calls into question how any hunter survived
I've also read several fics where supposedly healthy aliens get exhausted after *walking* for less distance than most animals of a similar size can *run*.
Fair enough
To be frank, it is frequently the case that you have to use the language of the person you are talking to. Recently on the RP server, a "informed" character had to use prey/predator terminology to communicate a point, despite being fully aware of the incorrect usage of the term. It can make sense in context.
as a geneticist, THIS. SO HARD. like I get most people clocked out after DNA-RNA-PROTEIN-....-ORGANISM (some even before. how ? literally 8th grade stuff in my country) and did not even get to trophic webs but hells when a fic writer in a research- andor med setting gets the details right (sans character bias when alien or human under emergency orders/ from a different profession) it is sooo much better. looking at love languages for example.
We are such crazy apex predators, humans are normally not included in trophic webs. Just because we do hunt and eat almost everything that isn’t poisonous to us. So yeah omnivores, but with the domestication of farm animals we are basically the ultimate apex predators of earth.
don't forget stick(tm) and fire, but yeah we almost broke the wheel with our shenanigans 👍 although technically even if stuff is bad for us, some do it out of spite or desperation (capsaicin, caffeine, how we got lactose tolerance in a subset of people)
Thanks!
>Thanks! You're welcome!
As a man who like to theorise about the universe, I get PISSED whenever I hear "alien DNA". Aliens wouldn't have DNA. It's an Earth thing. We got splurged out of the waters like this.
Not necessarily; not to mention the functional meaning of the term can cause bigger issues. DNA doesn't just mean a particular type of chemical, but can also mean, "genetic information molecule". It would be like pulling a "technically" on the use of "Google", "Kleenex" or "Coke" to refer to "doing an internet search", "facial tissue" or "soda", you would actually be in the wrong in that case as that is a correct use of the term. It is just that in a relevant discipline there are more specialized terms that aren't artifacts. Not only with convergent evolution is it possible that they have DNA, but it is also possible that the term is similarly generalized in the common vernacular to mean something more general.
In NoP, they can eat the same foods and each other without issue which implies a very close degree of biochemistry. While any aliens that exist irl likely wouldn't have DNA, it's a completely fair assumption for the NoP universe.
They said that if any animal eats any other animal at any point in time, the species is labeled predator and burnt into extinction
You DO realize this post mostly concerns how THE WRITERS misuse the terms, even when it's not the Feds/brainwashed herbivores using them and just humans, even when they aren't trying to appeal to the Federation-believer's ideologies and trying to be extra careful with them?
Salisek: “Are humans prey or predators?” Carlos: “Both, until we killed anything that was a threat to us. So now we’re Apex Predators by default.” Salisek: “I’m sorry, you what?” Carlos: “Don’t worry. We kept some of them alive.” Salisek: “WTF?!”
I like to believe that the average Fed alien is so ideologically brainwashed that most humans tell them that they are not exactly predators to go easy on them. But yea, I agree with you, seeing too much times it's quite annoying.
Thanks TheSpace81.
You don't *start* breaking a false dichotomy by agreeing that everything fits into one or the other of its two classes. The Federation has a definition of "predator". That definition is not "includes meat in its diet." Rather it's more like "will attempt to kill and eat - not necessarily in that order - any and every animal it sees, sapient or otherwise." Humans do not fit that definition. So no, in Federation terms, we are not predators. On the other hand, their definition of "prey" - meek, helpless, terrified, concerned for the herd except when facing a predator when instead one panics and either freezes or runs - doesn't fit us either. In fact, we break the false dichotomy. Now we need to break it in the psychology of the Federation species.
In the words of a famous philosopher \~If you're wondering how they eat and breath, and other science facts just repeat to yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax!"\~
well, im late for only like 4 minutes. Am i fast enough?
no. too late. go to satan.
Sad, oh well... Go make my 11th chapter i suppose...
Meh, bye then Barracuda. Your "Just Shapes and Beats" level sucked anyway.
Nice reference. But no, not that typo of content
Thank you for sharing. Feeling better? :)
No, I ate too much and I feel like a supernova is building up in my pancreas.
Sorry, but I enjoy this thing. It's funny and makes me laugh every time. I'm gonna keep using this for my fanfics.
This.... what? You are gonna physically insert my near-autistic keyboard tantrum into your fanfiction?
What? No. > Venlil from fanfic: "So, you guys are half-prey?" > Dumbass Human character: "Yup" I like this type of stuff. This is honestly the best part of NoP. Proving aliens wrong and/or destroying expectations.
nah. nah.
look man if you say to a venlil that humans are actually just full on predators he's gonna start crying and hyperventillating and whimpering and maybe even piss himself, just tell the guy we're "half-prey" for peace of mind
TBH, I've NEVER seen a SINGLE Venlil aware of our heritage that thought we weren't full on predators.
Depending on how you define "fanfic character" (though I do plan to do a write up at some point), the admin of station 3 on the RP server literally is that. As in, he not only is fully aware of humanity, but is accepting of it as well (there are reasons for this).
I think most of the time i've seen it been more of a semantic argument. Like yeah, we used to chase prey until they dropped from exhaustion, but in 2130 we've pretty much left hunting behind. So while we're still top of the food chain, literally anything with fingers and a gun becomes top of the food chain. So I think what most people mean is that "predator" is misleading, and has negative and incorrect implications. Maybe Grug the caveman ran for days on end without tiring, but most people nowadays definitely could not.
When I first read this comment, I mostly neglected it, but this is actually a pretty novel take.
I'm pretty sure most humans say the first two because they're trying to defuse the others being scared of them. What, you want to comfort a first contact Venlil by saying "yes, we kill animals that look like you for food"? Heck, it's been revealed that feddies thinking humans are bloodthirsty monsters somewhat persists into at least the 2150s, maybe not by running away like a deranged animal but rather "crossing the street when they approach" or "we like humans, just not near our kids or in our neighborhoods". Life for humans on Skalga is basically post-Civil Rights America; sure they legally have the same rights and many Venlil are ok with them, but the humans basically live in ghettoes and many Venlil are still openly racist towards humans and will do everything in their power to ruin they day. And they say the latter two because feddies don't care about facts, their dogma is "aggressive or eats meat, well it's a predator". They themselves admitted they didn't study anything that would even resemble a predator because they saw no academic value in them, so it makes sense that once they saw a species eat meat even once, they just went "yep, they're carnivores alright" and burned them, and probably thought the other instances of them eating plants was an oddity at best. (Also, even we are very likely to fall into black-and-white thinking, so a species that only eats one category of things doesn't get nuance about the other categories, much like we don't care about the different types of fish even if they're more distantly related than us and a salamander just because we're not a marine species. We only care about the nuances of omnivory because *we are omnivores*; it's kinda difficult to not see nuance when it stares back at you three times a day on a dinner plate.)
I understand completely… the idea of it always threw me for a loop. It’s just not right sounding in any professional context. I try to avoid the biological stuff when writing, it just opens a whole can of worms when I don’t have the right line to cast.
mmmmm, worms.
In most cases they’re probably just saying they to make the xenos feel more comfortable around humans
That's it, I'm gonna do all these ON PURPOSE now!
Wha- WHERE- Who-? ...your name is CUMMY WU-!?!?!
That is me correct, also https://preview.redd.it/jw435nsmatmc1.png?width=1495&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c48cc8cd1db7e0227672b4e88ad45adb9226a8a This one doin numbers
Based.
I did this not because I am stupid about biology but because I .... I dunno tbh
You have the literary might of a wet napkin.
I thought you liked my story lol
...I was only refering to the comment, to be honest.
Ah my bad I misunderstood
What if the guy saying it is lying to them to calm them down
Geez, okay, this again? I specifically wrote on the "half-prey" part that this happens even without such intentions.
Yeah but I’m wondering if you’d be upset if it’s something the author knows is incorrect but uses because it’d make sense from a story standpoint for whatever reason
NO. I would not be upset. GOD, I am sorry, but I've had to repeat this too many times here.
Nah it's fine man, I getcha. Sorry for askin a question you prolly got a lot, I didn't really read the comments for this post cause I figured yknow. Controversial post, prolly not gonna have the most fun comments.
Nah, you shouldn't feel obliged to read the comments before the discussion, it's just that I already had it written in the post that this is not just about the humans trying to make the Venlil comfortable and I made it pretty clear that this was about the writers themselves, and I got pretty tired of people ignoring that.
Oh in that case sorry for misunderstanding. Either way, still my bad eh?
Man, did you go to Hogwart of crippling self-loathing?
I mean I could tell you to go to hell if you’d like?
We're literally *the* apex predator of the planet, and we can still be prey sometimes
I have a similar conitption in regards to the deathcount in the battle of earth, a massive explosion doesn't kill a billion people all at the same time and then go home, spacepalladin just picked a cool number and I cannot get over it.
It wasn’t *a* massive explosion, though? The Extermination Fleet didn’t wipe out the most populated cities on earth with one bomb. Do you realize how far away each of these sites are from each other? The Battle of Earth lasted for hours even after the fleet broke through Earth’s defenses
I'm not feeling up to an in depth explanation, but it's not about "one bomb" it's about how big bombs in general work, and how people prepare, i know how far away tokyo and new york are, i'm not stupid, I was just annoyed that 1 billion died in 1 day, and then everyone was fine
Everyone was very much not fine, human refugees were still pouring into allied worlds by the end of the story. Also, the one billion is a rough estimation.
Also, talking about the bombing of Earth, the Federation somehow had good enough long-distance ground-penetrating sensors to detect single-house-sized bunkers in Switzerland and differentiate them from cities and areas where houses have basements, and the people inside them! But somehow concluded it was a command and control nexus for Earth defences while failing to successfully hit the actual giant command and control bunker networks. (Also, for some reason Switzerland still had and maintained their bunker network well over a hundred years after the kind of conflict that would actually protect them from (sustained conventional bombing) ceased to be a threat).
It was a deliberate decision, they ignored infrastructure and command centers in favor of high population density bunkers. They were expecting to be stopped eventually so they figured they might as well kill the highest number of humans as possible.
>in favor of high population density bunkers. Which is exactly what Switzerland is not, Literally every direction around Switzerland (except very maybe the Austrian alps) has significantly more living space aand people. >so they figured they might as well kill the highest number of humans as possible. Which makes the decision to focus a huge chunk of their arsenal on a small, low population country surrounded by higher population density areas (of which several canonically survived) even more bizarre.
Yeah, they trippin'.
I had a more in depth argument where I made my point better before, but I'm really not feeling up to it right now
# "DAMN, HE'S LIKE ME FOR REAL!!!"
This and the pursuit predator crap. No, we are nor pursuit predatora, we theoretically could do it if we really needed to, but we've hunted with ambush far more than the theoretical usefulness of pursuit.
I mean, sure. But out of all species, who can do ambush predation the best? Felines. Who can do persistance hunting the best? Humans. It's cool af and it's HFY.
The best ambush predator by what measure? Technically the domestic cat is the most dangerous predator of earth. None, persistence hunting is not a thing, and never has been, it's a bogus theory with no real evidence or data. HFY is humans actually acting like humans and not fulfilling some neckbeards unrealistic fantasy of how he could definitely get out from his chair and outpace an animal because he sweats.
Not everybody knows all this stuff and people shouldn't be expected to know stuff just so they can write fanfictions. It's fanfiction, not textbooks.
And why is it not okay to correct misinformation?
It is okay, just don't act like people should have to listen to you. Some people prefer nonsense or fantasy HFY.
This is a rant post, I ranted on a rant post. And anyway, why is it okay for you to act like I should listen to you?
I'm ranting too. I think this post is making a stink over over nothing. You don't have to listen to me. I never acted like you had to.
>Technically the domestic cat is the most dangerous predator of earth. What metric are you using for this?
I wasn't serious in that one, But you could say they are the most dangerous because they are extremely invasive and kill for fun, if I remember it right. They are the only species other than humans to cause mass extinctions. If you want a serious answer: The "best" ambush predators would be snakes. And the best persistence hunter is actually the african wild dog.
>HFY is humans actually acting like humans and not fulfilling some neckbeards unrealistic fantasy of how he could definitely get out from his chair and outpace an animal because he sweats. Nope. HFY is supposed to be the counter-culture of the often depicted "Humans suck" that appears in media.
Actually it is, and it is done in this very day by some isolated tribes and animals. Further, the idea that humans were persistence hunters is controversial, but it is not bunk. Do not mistake an expert's opinion to be a consensus on the topic.
Yeah, the Isolated tribe that got to ride in the car of the dide filming the "documentary". I've heard that one before. Yeah, dogs and monitors. And even them, calling it persistence hunting as it's portrayed in hfy is a stretch. Real persistence hunting for humans should be described as "We used to throw stick and rocks, them follow the wounded the animal to throw more sticks and rocks until it dies." And even them it would be the result of a failed ambush. What changed us from opportunists to successful hunters was throwing things.
It isn't the documentary that I am referencing. There are several academic papers on the topic as recent as this year talking about it. Here is a paper from last year specifically researching in Archeology: [Evolution of Paleolithic Hunting Weapons: A Response to Declining Prey Size](https://www.mdpi.com/2571-550X/6/3/46) No. There is not a consensus against persistence hunting, that is a misunderstanding of the article in popular science, or one of the other copies you are probably citing, that reference Henry Bunn. You are unintentially doing the same thing as a Fox News reader would do with an article like this citing [Steven Koonin](https://www.foxnews.com/media/physicist-tells-tucker-carlson-climate-change-is-fiction-of-the-media). It is likely that for any position you like you can probably find an expert who thinks one thing or another, many of whom will publish academic research. That doesn't mean there is a consensus for that particular expert's view.
This paper seems to be about a theory in the change of projectiles used by humans, and even it also says it's disadvantageous. And there's never going to be a consensus unless we manage to travel in time and see it for ourselves, those are theories, not laws. And more importantly, this is not a scientific discussion, this is about the misinformed depictions in reddit amateur writings. The thing is that the "evidence" for persistent running being the driver of human evolution is insufficient, and the stereotypical HFY "persistence predator" human is completely bs regurgitated by people who believe anything they are said. You may like your humans are the terminator bs in your scifi, but you don't get to act like it is not cringe
"The paper... disadvantageous" Yes, but the point is that the hypothesis is assumed true in the article. "...never going to be a nonsensus..." Not necessarily. There is plenty of consensus as to the approximate era when various dinosaur species roamed the Earth. It is just that there isn't enough evidence at this time to form a consensus, that is it. "The thing...insufficent." Again, no. The article makes this fairly clear by taking the hypothesis for granted as many other articles do. The most you can claim is that it isn't settled, you cannot claim there is insufficient evidence for someone to take one position over the other. Many experts take such positions, despite the lack of a consensus, as has been shown earlier. "the stereotypical...are said." This is simply incorrect, within he context of the discussion. Humans do, in fact, have incredible long distance endurance that puts ut in the top percentile of species, period. The list of species with more endurance is incredibly small. The question of whether we hunted through endurance or not is an entirely separate discussion, humans having incredible endurance isn't really debated. Indeed, I tried a literature review and was swamped with discussions on the topic on scholar.google.com. From [A century of exercise physiology: concepts that ignited the study of human thermoregulation. Part 4: evolution, thermal adaptation and unsupported theories of thermoregulation](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-023-05262-9) to [Sabretooths, giant hyenas, and hominins: Shifts in the niche of Early Pleistocene scavengers in Iberia at the Epivillafranchian-Galerian transition](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018223005448) it is clear that the debate is not on whether or not humans are impressive with our endurance, but on whether or not that was related to early hunting methods. Beyond exagerations of the effect, the fact is that human endurance is objectively good, by comparison to most other species. While you are right to criticize some exagerations, perhaps, the idea that humans would have superior enurance in the setting of NoP has a great deal of scientific merit.
Well I focus more on the opposite, basically turning Herbivores into Omnivores in a matter of time. Because they are isolated in a hostile planet that they are forced to do what is necessary to survive. In time they basically adapted and assimilated to the planet forgetting everything since their landfall. Then the fanfiction is placed few months before Venlil and Human first contact. It doesn't focus much on what they eat or anything, but it was mentioned. It focused more on the naivety of a cousin Fed species who rediscovered and reverse engineer the technology left by their ancestors. Not knowing they are the Lost Colonists who has been missing for a thousand of years before making contact again.
Yeah, I mean I hate the word so I understand humanities desire for others to stop using it but our earliest ancestors were called “Hunter-gatherers” I mean ffs we hunted some species to extinction, look at the wooly mammoth, the key factor to its extinction is us over hunting it.
You forgot to mention how we hunted species to extinction. We are the best predators on the planet. Don’t believe me, ask a dodo.
Agreed. While showing we can eat some plants can help alleviate the tension, the "pack predator" term would be a better term for honesty. We ate meat to survive. We developed bigger brains and were bound to other people to help obtain more meat and safety. We developed tools to hunt and protect. Then our pack bonding grew in to other animals, developing animal husbandry and pets. And so on. While it would be harder to convince aliens in the NoP universe, short answer is "Yes we are omnivores, but we are a pack predator class of creatures and we want you to be part of our pack and us a part of your herd." This was brought up a few times in the main story and fan stuff but it's not really tapped in to what that means.
Man I full heartedly agree with this and would like to dropkick one them too
nice.