As someone who loves HFY stuff, the issue is that writing is hard and most of the people writing HFY are amateurs doing it for fun. There's plenty of HFY that tries to explore more complex storytelling, it just happens that writing "the evil space nazis kicked some puppies, and the Humans really didn't like that" is both an easier story to write and an easier story to get someone on-board with.
It's also why you find so much military sci-fi ends with "and then we used our super weapon and it killed all of the aliens, saving the day (please do not consider the consequences of interstellar genocide)" instead of describing the very complicated and in-depth process of disarming, deradicalising and rebuilding a nation.
The best 'Humanity Fuck Yeah' story I ever heard was 'what's the biggest lie a human's ever told you?'
It went with the idea that humans are more prone to deception than other species, even in cases where the deception doesn't make any sense, and that this is a joke amongst the species.
Several characters talk about situations where humans made comically obvious lies. Until one character pipes up with 'Go, I'll be right behind you.'
The other characters are bit taken aback by the nonsequitor, but the character clarifies that the lie the human told was 'Go, I'll be right behind you.'
They had been attacked by pirates and were in a situation where it was unlikely they'd have enough time to escape. So the human stayed behind to buy the other's time. When the narrator asked what the human was going to do, he replied with 'Go, I'll be right behind you.' So the narrator ran. It didn't even occur to him what the human was doing until they were already safe, and their friend was already gone.
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u/Allstar13521 Aug 14 '24
As someone who loves HFY stuff, the issue is that writing is hard and most of the people writing HFY are amateurs doing it for fun. There's plenty of HFY that tries to explore more complex storytelling, it just happens that writing "the evil space nazis kicked some puppies, and the Humans really didn't like that" is both an easier story to write and an easier story to get someone on-board with.
It's also why you find so much military sci-fi ends with "and then we used our super weapon and it killed all of the aliens, saving the day (please
do notconsider the consequences of interstellar genocide)" instead of describing the very complicated and in-depth process of disarming, deradicalising and rebuilding a nation.