Every 'reborn as a nonhuman' webnovel

[lnv]

The 'they really are superior' excuse has always sounded like complete nonsense to me. Because we are not talking about a difference in the mind, but a difference in power.

Humans possess self-awareness and 'sapience' while ants do not. To truly write a race that is as far away from humans as we are from ants it would be necessary to write them as having a level of cognition beyond what humans are capable of, which is naturally impossible for a human writer to do. The most they try to do is make them smarter in a more conventional way, and since most of these authors are incapable of even that, they resort to making humans unrealistically dumb (and no, 'to be fair', real humans are NOT that dumb).

Who says?

"In 2015, scientists published research11 that suggests some ants can recognize themselves when looking in a mirror. When viewing other ants through glass, ants didn't divert from their normal behaviors. However, their behavior did change when they were put in front of a mirror."

https://www.animalcognition.org/2015/04/15/list-of-animals-that-have-passed-the-mirror-test/

All you are doing is looking things from the standard of a human and judging things from human standards.

Even plants have consciousness, we simply don't understand it very well because it works so different than ones of animals

So rather than humans exterminating ants, a more appropriate equivalent would be if some modern soldiers invaded an island of primitive people and killed everyone there. Because that's what we are talking about here, a difference in power, and I somehow suspect that you would not see those soldiers in a very positive light.

Human history was like that, we spent thousands of years killing each other, even children simply because we had more power. We simply developed ethical standards. If anything, most medieval age novels these days sure have quite modern standards compared to what they were back in the day

But in the end, everyone understands that a character that slaughters humans as if they were ants is always going to be extremely unlikable. That's why they feel the need to make the humans evil in the first place.

And here you have the real issue. That novels are written FOR humans. Thus it is the job of the author to make it palatable for humans

 

[forli]

All you are doing is looking things from the standard of a human and judging things from human standards.

Yeah, I'm sure that these novels would be amazing if I judged them with the standards of an onion.

Even plants have consciousness, we simply don't understand it very well because it works so different than ones of animals

Which is not something that can be said about these fantasy races. They really are always just humans with extra powers and weirdly shaped bodies. That's why the only moral standards that can be applied to them are the same as when humans kill other humans.

Human history was like that, we spent thousands of years killing each other, even children simply because we had more power. We simply developed ethical standards. If anything, most medieval age novels these days sure have quite modern standards compared to what they were back in the day

And most of us see people that do that as evil assholes that we want to see punished, making them a very bad choice for a character that we are supposed to like and that wins every time. (Also, I know that many people here like to pretend that medieval times were like super extra edgy, but I'm pretty sure that killing children was seen quite negatively even back then).

Look, don't try to pretend that these novels are trying to say something deep about the nature of existence when they are obviously intended to be nothing more than a power fantasy.

 

[rain-090]

Who says?

"In 2015, scientists published research11 that suggests some ants can recognize themselves when looking in a mirror. When viewing other ants through glass, ants didn't divert from their normal behaviors. However, their behavior did change when they were put in front of a mirror."

https://www.animalcognition.org/2015/04/15/list-of-animals-that-have-passed-the-mirror-test/

All you are doing is looking things from the standard of a human and judging things from human standards.

Even plants have consciousness, we simply don't understand it very well because it works so different than ones of animals


Human history was like that, we spent thousands of years killing each other, even children simply because we had more power. We simply developed ethical standards. If anything, most medieval age novels these days sure have quite modern standards compared to what they were back in the day



And here you have the real issue. That novels are written FOR humans. Thus it is the job of the author to make it palatable for humans

That's misrepresentation of things

Those animals can barely even compare yet in all fantasy the non human creatures are shown to be on similar intelligence levels as humanity plus what ever nonsense buff the author wants to bullshit in

 

[Keriahenta]

Literature Masterpiece.

 

[CupcakeNinja]

Sweet! Always nice to see a fellow NASCAR fan here, right?

He said racist, not a hillbilly

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

He said racist, not a hillbilly

There's lots of racing in NASCAR, like bubba wallace.

 

[aattss]

Yeah, “monster” protagonists tend to fall into the same pitfalls where the author takes a “cliche” “good versus evil” plot and put the protagonist into the role of the evil side, but don’t actually make them evil or even morally fallible, but the author still wants to make good guys fight them as per the trope so they don’t accidentally write something original or coherent, so they either contrive ways to make the “good” guys incapable of comprehending that the protagonist just wants to mind their own business/make friends, or just make the “good” guys actually evil so the fic can be “subversive” like all the other shallow fics.

 

[Zsaitisl]

Tbh I haven't read anything like that but I am picky as hell so any recommendations?

 

[CupcakeNinja]

There's lots of racing in NASCAR, like bubba wallace.

Ah, that makes more sense.

 

[TroubleFait]

Research shows that cetaceans like dolphins and whales, and monkeys like chimpanzees, are very intelligent. Their cognition is different than ours, not necessarily inferior. I mean, it's probably inferior but not as much as we think it is.
We lack the means to understand animals and thus we underestimate them.

But yeah, you're still right. You could have been wrong if those novels were actually trying to be interesting instead of being power wants but here we are. I dream of a novel where the protagonist actually has a different cognition, it must be interesting to read.

If you want a story where the author actually does their job and non-humans versus humans don't suffer from the pitfalls you described, try reading Reborn From The Cosmos.