[META] Why do many stories on here seem to romanticize war, prejudice, and genocide?

TL;DR - I'm all for spreading a message of "let's not glorify xenocide and murder in these stories about badass humans", I can get behind that. What I can't get behind is disallowing those warmongering human stories to be here at all. HFY is for the potential good or bad humanity is capable of. Humanity isn't always going to be the good guys, and that's okay.

If you look through a lot of the stories on here, especially the most popular ones usually are about war, and often times, the complete destruction of an alien race, which can accurately be called genocide.

Well, that is a staple in a lot of HFY stories; the human capacity for war. Many times writers portray humans as being very spiteful, a concept alien cultures often don't have in these stories. The point of those stories isn't to glorify the extinction of a race, the point is to recognize why the human race did it in that context. Many times it's revenge, or a last stand to take the other species out with us out of spite. I haven't seen a story where humans are conquerors going around nuking planets willy nilly, and stories where humans are these all-powerful and feared creatures, there's usually a motif of "we do not want to fight...but we will if we must."

Since the stories on this subreddit are meant to reflect the, "Humanity, Fuck Yeah!" motif, one has to wonder why someone would consider these among humanity's best traits...You can showcase humanity's intelligence, compassion, reason, accomplishments without war, Imperialism, prejudice, or other problematic themes.

You can also show it very easily with war, and that's what most stories do. Because let's be honest, practically every technological advance is because of, or soon will be used for kill each other. It may not be the best quality, but humans have a gift for surviving no matter the cost. Many stories involving a xenocide give reasons like protecting a weaker ally race. One of my favorites is a story where the humans say the line "we don't want to fight, but we will" (or something along that I don't remember the exact quote). Humans applying confusing gravity manipulation technology into weapons in a way no other species in the universe thought to do.

It's not pretty, and it's not fun. It's war, and like it or not, many stories portray that humans are notoriously good at it, and many more go so far as to portray how we hate how skilled we are at killing.

A lot of stories on here either depict humanity being faced with an Other that threatens their existence and must be eliminated, or humanity being the saviors of inferior aliens. The former which reflects Western jingoism, black-and-white morality, and of course, genocide. The latter reflects the, "White man's burden" complex.

...what? Don't start sounding like tumblr here. In a subreddit called HFY I expect a humanity faced with extinction to fight back. To get some final act in as a last "fuck yeah". There are stories where humans become wandering space nomads helping the wounded across the galaxy after their almost complete annihilation. You're focusing on stories that fit your arguments when there are plenty that show exactly what you want to see. Preferring one portrayal of humanity over another is one thing, by all means go read the ones more to your liking and ignore the rest, but wanting them all to be the way you think is best is not okay.

Portray aliens carefully When portraying aliens, examine what traits you're giving them. Could they possibly be offensive to minorities? Are you intentionally/unintentionally using them as a smokescreen for racial stereotypes? Really, I'd stay away from making your aliens represent human cultures you're not familiar with, cultural appropriation is a thing and it's wrong. Portray humans carefully Are the humans in your story merely stand-ins for the West, or colonialism? Are they portrayed as superior to other aliens in every way? Does their influence in the story flow from their ability to destroy or exploit? Examine your message What message is your story sending? Is it a xenophobic message, a prejudiced message? If so, revise, revise, revise.

Yeah that's just straight up censorship because you don't like an idea. I'm all for bringing awareness of "let's not glorify murder guys", but that's a bit much. if I want to write about a fearmongering advanced human race conquering the galaxy and harvesting suns, I should have the ability to do that here as long as it first in with the guidelines. From the FAQ, "HFY is a story/series that takes a “human element” in either humanity or an “other” (race/species or object) that exists in a “setting” (future or other world/universe) with varying levels of culture, technology, society and history that help show in some shape or form the potential good or bad for humanity’s race/culture."

Potential good OR potential bad. That means we get to show how evil humanity can be, and why is that a bad thing for a fictional story? Humanity won't always be the good guys.

Get rid of the sludge This is pretty self explanatory, remove content that is problematic. I'm sure some may be against this, but if someone's using free speech to spread hatred and vitriolic ideas, that's not good. Ban users who habitually do use the genre to spread problematic ideas.

You want to delete old popular stories? Good luck with that.

/r/HFY Thread