Humans Are the Real Monsters/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Humans are evil compared to other intelligent species.

  • Straight: When viewed impartially in comparison to other intelligent species, humanity is basically evil - perhaps even by its own standards.
  • Exaggerated: What we consider good and virtuous behavior simply doesn't exist in human societies. Humans are all hateful, savage, sociopathic, backstabbing, card-carrying Complete Monsters without exception, the planet they inhabit is a stinking Wretched Hive even among the worst of wretched hives, everywhere they go instantly turns into a miserable Hell, and their every waking moment is spent glorifying violence and seeking how to hurt each other in the most painful way possible over the most trivial of excuses, or even without them.
  • Downplayed: Humans aren't all card carrying villains or complete monsters, but almost every other species consider them to be a bit of a Jerkass.
  • Justified: Human violence is an uncontrollable instinct.
    • Violence and aggression are essential for human survival, evolution and innovation. The aliens didn't go down this route.
    • It's actually averted, but for other reasons the humans that would try their best to get along with everybody are forced to stay away from the borders of the human empires, effectively shutting off any humans who only and peace.
  • Inverted: Humans are paragons of virtue compared to alien species.
  • Subverted: Humans are gruff and harsh, and their cities are a grim sight, but in the end it turns out to be that their moral standards are actually higher than those of the alien species, who live in a Crap Saccharine World.
  • Double Subverted: ...But then it turns out that any redeeming qualities that humanity seemed to have don't really exist, and humans are really as bad as they seemed to be at the beginning of the story.
  • Parodied: All humans are Card Carrying Villains and the source of all evil in the universe.
  • Deconstructed: The reason the aliens view humanity as evil beings is because that they are just as bad the humans themselves. They see them as a scapegoat for their own violent actions and behavior.
    • Alternately, humanity just has really bad public relations with the rest of the universe, due to their liaison being a General Ripper or a Jerkass.
    • The reasons humans are scum is because they've been treated like scum for their entire starfaring existence-at some point, we decided as a species, that if we weren't going to have respect as allies and trusted friends, then we would have it as conquerors and manipulators.
  • Reconstructed: The aliens, realizing their hypocrisy, right their ways. However, the humans begin a vicious cycle by using the aliens as a scapegoat for violence in return.
    • Alternately, this public relations representative has a lot more influence than the aliens realized, and though not all of humanity is JerkAssly, humanity still rises up under their corrupt leader's flag during an ensuing species war.
  • Zig Zagged: Humans are jerks, but they're jerks with hearts of gold. But some humans aren't.
  • Averted: Humans are neither particularly good nor particularly evil compared to aliens.
  • Lampshaded: "Lousy human bastards!"
  • Enforced: "Hey, those fucking green bastards can't talk to us like that!"
  • Invoked: Humans have been created as a Servant Race to a more intelligent, manipulating race. The "master" race makes sure that no genuinely nice human lives a happy life, no evil deeds go unrewarded, and puts neural implants to the brains of every single human to program them into heartless psychopaths.
  • Defied: The human ambassador gives alien children lollipops and shakes the hands of every alien he meets.
  • Discussed: "Man, we're such assholes, aren't we?"
  • Conversed: "Unbelievable! How dare those humans act so rude to us!"
  • Played For Laughs: The human ambassador is a pompous asshole who wizzes on the feet of the alien king, kisses the alien queen, kicks their pet, and gives the chancellor a wedgie.
  • Played For Drama: Humanity, upon first meeting another sentient species is immediately branded as a race of bastards, whether it be justified or not. Humanity must continuously prove this to be true in order to survive, leading to an unending war between the two or more forces.

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