Talk:Human
Oh, for God's sake. Someone's feeling cynical.
This is not how humans are portrayed in the SC2 universe, anyway. The human society of the future is much more peaceful and rational than the nations of today, and even at our worst we aren't as bad as many of the fictional races portrayed in the game. It shows as much lack of imagination to claim that human beings are the worst possible race in the universe as to claim they are the best.
And why does everyone pick on the last 2000 years? Human beings have been fighting for much longer than that. Is this some misguided attempt to blame Christianity in particular for the bad things of the world, or something?
Indeed. The last 2000 years, and actually, the last 100, represent the human society at its best. World War one.Hitler. Stalin. World War two. Auscwhitz. Birkenau. Normandy. Hiroshima. Arnheim. Iwo Jima. Berlin E/W. Vietnam. Nuff said.
Yes. And before then there were no genocides, pointless wars, cruel oppressions, enslavements, or whatever. Right.
Just because we *know* the most about our recent history (because it's, duh, recent) doesn't mean that everything in our recent history actually outshines our ancient history. The most you can say is that we've done bad things on a larger *scale* in recent history than in ancient history. A hell of a lot of bad things happened to a hell of a lot of people in the years B.C.; human nature hasn't changed, despite what romantics who think modernity is the root of all evil will tell you.
Even then, you're historically blind if you don't see that the past 100 years, despite all the madness and terror, is the time the largest proportion of the world has had a chance to live to a decent lifespan, with a decent level of education and physical comfort, and a decent level of political rights. Or that, even in all the madness and terror of our long history, there haven't always been people trying to do their best to make life better for others out of love. The fact that you and others have the *capacity* to react to our history with such outrage shows that there is hope for the human race; one can easily imagine a human race where the people who saw this kind of sight with indifference, or outright glee, were the norm and not a chilling minority.
It is not conclusively proven that Humans and Syreen are cross-fertile. The only things known for sure are that Zelnick is telling is telling the tale to his "grandchildren" at the end of the game, and that those grandchildren are not obvious Human/Syreen hybrids. There are several explanations for this:
- Humans and Syreen are cross-fertile; human pigmentation genes (melanin) are dominant and thus will not appear in offspring if a Syreen appears at only one point. Syreen are, for all practical purposes, another race of humans (but are not Humans -- this term reserved for the Earthlings).
- Humans and Syreen can breed, but the offspring are not fertile; these children look human because they are -- Zelnick and Talana's children adopted. Syreen are hominids, but not (small-h) human.
- Humans and Syreen cannot breed; Zelnick and Talana themselves adopted. Solves all these problems neatly.
- Humans and Syreen may or may not be able to breed. We don't know, because on Unzervalt, "Grandfather" is simply a term of respect for the aged. Unlikely at best.
Er, we don't know exactly to what degree Syreen are blue, or why. I'm assuming there's some blue pigmentation in their skin, but whatever it is is actually pretty faint, and may only appear as blue as it does because of the radiation of their native sun; in the scene where Talana appears to Zelnick at the end of the game, she barely looks blue at all, probably 'cause it doesn't show well in the light of the Starbase. Maybe the light on Unzervalt is more similar to the lighting on the Starbase than to the Syreen ships' lighting or Syra's lighting.
See the image here for what I mean: [1]
I see little reason to believe humans and Syreen aren't meant to be implied to be cross-fertile. Maybe it's me reading into the authors' minds, but then the authors did choose what to show and what not to show intentionally -- we shouldn't treat the game as though it were a real-life record, random bits and pieces of information falling into our laps; it's like a real-life documentary, where the director shows us certain facts because we're meant to take home a correct interpretation based on those facts. In this case the final choice is almost certainly invalid -- kids might address some random elder as "Grandfather" out of respect, but they wouldn't refer to the man's wife as "Grandma" in the third person. Believing the children are second-generation adoptees is even weirder (human/Syreen offspring being infertile, like mules, is even more of a wrinkle than human/Syreen offspring being cross-fertile at all).
I think if we weren't meant to understand that humans and Syreen are cross-fertile, we wouldn't have been presented with these kids as Zelnick and Talana's grandchildren in the first place, and they would have just been adoring kids asking Zelnick the war hero about his past. We are meant to take home a pretty big shock at seeing that Zelnick and Talana are married, and that they've reproduced.
Also I really dispute that there's any need for the kids to be "obvious hybrids", and that if they aren't it casts doubt on what would otherwise be an obvious implication (i.e. if Zelnick and Talana were both humans you would *never* think the ancestry of the kids at the end was in doubt). Grandchildren of an interracial marriage often don't clearly show signs of being interracial and gravitate to one side or the other of the racial spectrum by sheer genetic randomness, whether a particular gene is dominant or not. Especially given that everything about the end sequence is meant to emphasize the sameness of humans and Syreen rather than their difference -- Talana is shown to have very human-looking skin with only a hint of blueness, she speaks in a very casual, human tone without affectation, and so on. I don't think we're meant to think that Syreen are anything more than another Homo sapiens subspecies -- and indeed, the physiology of Syreen and humans are so darn similar that it'd be just as surprising in its own way if they were so physically alike yet were genetically different enough to not be cross-fertile (all other hominid subspecies look different enough from us that it's somewhat unlikely we'd find an individual of them sexually attractive, even with our closest neighbors, the Neanderthals).
Race Image[edit]
Why don't we just use the picture of Commander Hayes? It's much higher resolution. Much, much higher. (The SuperMelee pic is pretty ugly) Mmrnmhrm 23:58, 28 Oct 2004 (CEST)
I was thinking about that, but I figured we'd want to use that picture in the article about Hayes. Also, I think that the captain portrait more accurately portrays the general human populous than a picture of Hayes would. If anything, we should crop out the higher-resolution human crew from the SC1 Alliance Victory Screen. -Fadookie 07:20, 29 Oct 2004 (CEST)
My vote is for Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man
--Nic 07:53, 29 Oct 2004 (CEST)
Hahaha! That would fit perfectly with all the other stuff in the article that has no relation to Star Control. -Fadookie 08:05, 29 Oct 2004 (CEST)
Although the date given for when the Humans "joined the Alliance" in SC1 is 2115, SC2 clearly says that Humans were first visited by the Chenjesu in 2112, and formally joined the Alliance in 2116. I have attempted to integrate this by making true first contact take place in 2112 and having the Alliance Treaty signed in 2116, as SC2 says, but giving 2115 as a date when the Human agreement to join the Alliance was de facto sealed even if the treaty had not yet been drawn up and signed.
Capitalisation[edit]
The capitalisation of "humans" is an interesting issue. In other text we wouldn't think of capitalising "human" or "humanity", but there's something to be said here as we do it for other races, in the same way as we capitalise inhabitants of a country (Germans, French, etc). The capitalisation in the game is inconsistent (I guess that should be fixed), but lowercase far outnumbers uppercase. In the manual, it's lowercase almost everywhere. - SvdB 23:56, 2 Feb 2005 (CET)
"Homosaps" is used by the Spathi. You could argue it's a completely off-the-cuff phrasing, but I would argue that it's doubtful, since it's non-obvious when heard as opposed to seen written out, and it's used very casually rather than drawing attention to the coinage. Anyway, it's in the game, and worth including in case some player is confused by what "Homosap" means.
- I think it's very obvious what is meant by "homosaps". And I'd argue that "homosaps" is either used in the same way as "Hunams" (as something thought to be correct), or as some kind of denigrating term. Either way, I don't think it should be mentioned here with the common names. And it's only ever used once (so "sometimes" is at best extrapolating to what we don't see). And even if it were commonly used in the SC2 universe, putting it right after the Linnaean name (which is never used inside the game) suggests its used in the real world. - SvdB 16:09, 4 Feb 2005 (CET)
- Agreed. "Homosap" has little place in this article at all, much less in the introductory paragraph (Earthling is stated there mostly for clarification regarding the name of the Earthling Cruiser). If you really can't live without the inclusion of this word, I guess you could work it into the Earthling article somewhere. Maybe a section on other alternate names used by aliens.-Fadookie 03:53, 5 Feb 2005 (CET)
Part of the Hierarchy?[edit]
Were the Humans really part of the Hierarchy? Remember that "Hierarchy" is short for "Hierarchy of Battle Thralls". — SvdB 03:35, 4 Oct 2005 (CEST)
- That's true. I was hoping to split up the Hierarchy in terms of the races who are slave-shielded and those who are battle thralls, based on what I saw at Syreen. I'm not sure how to handle fallow slaves who have a starbase. --Phoenix (t) 14:53, 4 Oct 2005 (CEST)
- I've replaced "Slave Shielded" by "Fallow Slave". That's what matters after all. And all fallow slaves are supposed to maintain a Star Base as a service depot for Hierarchy ships. ---- SvdB 20:35, 8 Oct 2005 (CEST)