there's seems to be a correlation between a setting being focused on humans (or HFY) like delta green or warhammer and poor writing. is a common thread between all best written fantasy and sci-fi stories that they're never focused on humans as the center of attention
Because HFY inherently is the same kind of thought process/writing behind Mary Sue self-inserts.
The problem with HFY is that it exists purely as a reaction to other types of stories. That is to say, stuff like the new Devil's May Cry anime, where humanity is the 'real monsters' and the invasion of hell is treated as a weird stand-in for the war on terror.HFY basically takes that and says, "Well I can be insufferable in the OTHER direction!" and proceeds to list out a bunch of ways in which humanity is supposed to be badass, but really just makes every other species look like they're made of wet tissue or otherwise cripples them in basic ways to make ordinary human things looks badass, and it just comes off as cringey instead.Generally speaking the easiest way to avoid both extremes is simply to make humanity another species in the setting. Give humanity a unique niche, but not something that's ultra-badass or that other species are in awe of.
The best stuff is human-only, so the HFY faggotry usually doesn't exist because the bad guys and tragedies are all also very human
>>97889644I wish RE had a good RPG
>>97889661i was thinking something similar. is an unnatural way to write a story that ends up feeling artificial.>>97889707this approach also seems to be just HFY but the opposite direction. why would demons that are supernatural beings and very likely inmortal just don't erase humans with a finger snap? or temp them to do something stupid, you know, like actual demons are supposed to do
>>97889707This is a problem, but if you look at the dialectic, the stories HFY was a response to were themselves responses to other things from older media. I'm starting to suspect that this is just how it works, and every trend is basically a juvenile rejection of what came before it. The effect is just being magnified by the internet now, so it's become more obvious that nothing is actually a genuine expression of the human spirit anymore, but rather a fight for the microphone to express one's own heuristic worldview onto mankind as a whole.
>>97889644>delta green>hfyAre you stupid or ignorant? There's no other options.
>>97889644>writingDoesn't matter one whit to games and playing them, you fucking secondary.
>>97889644>Delta Green>Warhammer>Hfy3/10, got me to reply.
>>97889736congratulations, you've discovered the core of the human condition.
>>97889644Focus on humans may be necessary for something to be HFY, but it's not sufficient for it. There's plenty of good scifi and fantasy that's either humans-only or has non-humans as background more than anything. Most good scifi and fantasy is like that, even.
>>97891515>There's plenty of good scifiCould you name a couple?Every time I think I've found one, it turns out to be fantasy.
>>97891664He means Sci-fi as in the genre as classified by book retailers and libraries.
>>97891907Ah, so fantasy, got it.That's a shame.
>>97891961You'd probably save yourself a lot of disappointment by assuming that people referring to sci-fi are using it to refer to that, rather than always asking in the way you do.
>>97891982No, I won't.I will always be disappointed by retards using words for how grifters want them to be used, instead of using them for what they mean.
Oh, and adding on to >>97892118, it will always be disappointing to find out what they're referring to is no different from fantasy despite having a different name.It's a waste of time to keep getting excited at the prospect of a work being different from fantasy, only to find out it's just another work of fantasy.Quit trying to reinvent the wheel.
>>97891664I'm almost sure that you're using some kind of a weird non-standard definition of scifi and fantasy and pretending that using words wrong makes you smart, but try Alastair Reynold's stuff, for instance.>>97892118What counts as scifi to you, do any of the classics of science fiction fit your definition, and has anyone else than you ever used the term same way you do?
>>97892138Fantasy is the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable. It is fiction cranked to the highest freedom of the imagination.So a DIFFERENT genre from something IMPOSSIBLE OR IMPROBABLE would have to NOT HAVE IMPOSSIBLE OR IMPROBABLE ASPECTS.If a genre HAS IMPOSSIBLE OR IMPROBABLE ASPECTS then it is FANTASY, because FANTASY is the faculty or activity of imagining things, ESPECIALLY THINGS THAT ARE IMPOSSIBLE OR IMPROBABLE.This is fantasy's established definition; I'm not the one who made it, I just know what words mean.If that doesn't spell it out for you, you're beyond help.
>>97892133>It's a waste of time to keep getting excited at the prospect of a work being different from fantasySo stop getting excited. That's the point. Everyone else is using the "grifter" definition. Do you still refer to bundles of sticks as faggots? Or do you recognize that there is a very different usage for that word that has been commonplace for decades? >>97892118>grifterA grifter is a petty or small-scale swindler. If it's on a scale large enough that the term has become commonplace, then it is no longer small scale. Why are you a retard who can't use words for what they actually mean?
>>97892185Okay, so I was right and your definition is very weird and non-standard. Got it. You're using the definition of fantasy as a mental facility, which is not the established definition of fantasy as a genre - I'm pretty sure you know that and don't honestly imagine, or should I say fantasize, that you genuinely have a point here. Fantasy interpreted broadly could very well include literally all of fiction - even the definition you pretend to be operating on calls fantasy "the faculty or activity of imagining things", "especially things that are impossible or improbable" but not "solely things that are impossible or improbable". Even operating on that definition, it doesn't in any way or by any stretch of imagination follow that science fiction must be something distinct from fantasy. The more obvious and straightforward conclusion to come to would be that science fiction is a subset of fantasy (interpreted broadly) with its own distinctive traits but also with features shared with fiction in general. The way these terms are actually used, though, is that fantasys defined by differing distinctly from reality, science fiction is defined on being rooted in scientific ideas but not necesarily in established scientific facts, and a work of fiction can be both fantasy and science fiction at the same time. Pretending to not understand the common and established use of these terms as applied to genres of fiction doesn't make you look smart, anon. Also check out the way Merriam-Webster and Cambridge Dictionary define fantasy while you're thinking about this, consider the differences between those definition and take a moment to ponder on how firmly established the meaning of the word even is:https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fantasyhttps://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fantasy#google_vignette
>>97892247>>97892185Also, the source you're using, which is obviously just googling what fantasy means, gives the meaning of science fiction as>fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets."Imagined future scienticic or tehcnological advances" certainly seem like products of the faculty of fantasy being applied.
>>97892185fantasy in the context of fiction is a noun and has a specific meaningesls should be rangebanned
>>97891982You'd probably save yourself a lot of disappointment and effort by not replying to a contrarian troll. It gets off on feeling special by saying its definition is better that everyone else's despite decades of correct use before it was born and some of us, ie you, me, almost everyone on the planet who's read the genres, being smart enough to understand the difference that this troll is acting like doesn't exist.I'd probably do well to save myself the effort of telling you to not feed the trolls since it's been Usenet and Internet advice for decades but doesn't seem to have achieved much.
>>97893125To be fair, we only get posts like OP's because this board (and, by extension, this website) is a safe space for the whiniest, most insufferable contrarians to ever blight the net.
>>97893940But enough about HFY fags.
>>97893940>>97893944Counterpoint: There are whole youtube channels of AI voiced HFY stories that got posted here ten to 15 years ago.And they claim reddit as a source.We moved on, they are still regugitating shit we laughed about a decade ago.
>>97889644>there's seems to be a correlationBot threadLike seriously, extend the database of your thread generator. It's fucking tiresome.
