User blog comment:Krayfish/New changes to humans/@comment-5870856-20141026211021

No offence intended here, Kray, but I'm gonna be perfectly honest - I hate this idea.

One of the things that I love about Galactic Crucibles, that separates it from other sci-fi, is that humanity isn't the centre of the universe. I mean, in Star Trek, they're the founders and one of the most powerful members of the United Federation of Planets, and every alien in the universe looks pretty much like they do except with forehead ridges, which I find pretty hard to suspend my disbelief for, even considering the events of The Chase (great episode, btw); in Star Wars, they seem to be everywhere for no reason despite the utter absence of the Earth, and like in ST, most aliens look a lot like them (though to be fair to George Lucas, SW has a lot more non-humanoid and creative aliens than most sf movies); in Battleship Galactica, they're the only sapient life-forms in the universe (aside from the Cylorns they created) and have a rich and ancient history stretching back millions of years before contemporary science places their evolution, not to mention they're technically aliens; in Doctor Who, they last to the end of the friggin' universe, are at the centre of every alien conquest plot from Daleks to Slitheen to Autons to the Time Lords themselves and have to constantly be saved by the Doctor, who's seemingly adopted the Earth as his new homeworld despite the multitude of planets bearing (suspiciously humanoid or Earth animal-like) sapient life out there.

You get where I'm going, no doubt; the "all-powerful, super-important human" cliche is prevalent in 95% of science fiction, and I'm sick of it. It's pure wish fulfillment, it's highly unrealistic and it's boring. I honestly think GC is a lot more interesting, original and universe-spanning for not having it, and bringing it back would make it feel like a carbon copy of other human-centric sci-fi. Please, give humanity a cool spin, but don't make them important, because they're not. We are small, and that's why the universe seems so big to us. Don't shrink the cosmos to make us feel big. That's not what GC's about.

Gee, that was one hell of a rant! Sorry about that, but I just feel very strongly about this topic.