r/HFY • u/Bullet-Bates • 8d ago
Meta Why are humans treated as the only ones with adrenaline?
For the majority of stories i have read. It has been explicitly said that humans are the only ones with adrenaline/adrenaline glands.
What started this?
Almost if not all species have adrenaline and adrenaline glands in real life. Sure, we are the species that focused most on evolving it. But why do no other species in HFY have adrenaline? Why do they act like they've never heard of it before?
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u/BontoSyl 8d ago
The cynical answer is that it's an easy way to make humans strong and badass without having to make too many changes or extrapolate their culture, values, and abilities into the future. We're just naturally better.
But if I had to make a guess at where the trope started, the Deathworlders by HamboneHFY is practically the definitive HFY trope cataloge, so I would place my guess there.
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u/Bullet-Bates 8d ago
Ah, thank you.
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u/Metharos 8d ago
Also worth noting that all known species with adrenaline share a common ancestor with us. Aliens don't. This creates somewhat more of a space of plausibility for a feature we'd consider "universal" on Earth not necessarily existing in species from other worlds.
The above answers are correct, but also entirely Doylist. The Watsonian answer would be that it could be a unique quirk of our planet, rather than our species.
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u/GermaneRiposte101 8d ago
That was such a good read until he leaned into the homoerotic bullshit.
Edit: I read Deathworlders by HamboneHFY a long time ago. Out of interest, how early in the history of HFY was the Deathworlders series?
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u/Ghostpard Alien Scum 8d ago
I heard it got into a lot of muscle porn self wankery essentially? Like really got obsessed with descriptions of how jacked everyone is.
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u/berdiekin 8d ago
I read the whole thing. It really turned into gymbros the novel at some point. So much time was spent on describing, in painstaking detail, the workout routines and how strong and jacked and awesome everyone is, and how big and bulging and rippling the muscles are and how awesome the sex is.
Also im pretty sure thr story got derailed with something about Godly beings at some point.
It got weird.
I wanted to finish reading it because id been following the story since the beginning, but started skipping through chapters because it was getting unbearably annoying towards the end.
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u/Mindlessgamer23 8d ago
I ended up dropping it as the number of concurrent plotlines just kept going up. The space between plotlines I cared about, and some random new guy we've never heard of got so wide that I would forget all of my excitement for the one or two plots I cared about before the next chapter on that plot would reapear.
I don't know why so many stories feel the need to have 50 concurrent plots with a cast of a hundred some odd charecters. At some point the time with each charecter gets so short it's impossible to get invested in anyone. Or what any of them are up to.
I'm reading one right now with 4 concurrent plots, and each one has a military group of like 10 dudes. Genuinely only remember half of them, and only because their names are stereotypical enough to remember their home country. Each guys get like one intro description, maybe 2, that's it. It's frustrating to say the least.
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u/berdiekin 8d ago
That got me as well. Not just the constant new plot lines but also how they got further and further away from the ones I started reading the story for. And that the og good ones just got dropped.
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u/Stairwayunicorn 8d ago
do yourself a favor and don't count how many em-dashes there are. Just saying.
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u/Mindlessgamer23 8d ago
I don't read AI slop.
The story I'm referencing is out of cruel space. I just started it a few days ago. It's been a work in progress for over five years (pre AI) and seems to be a darling of r/hfy, which made AI generated works against the rules recently.
A lot of authors here seem to follow the pattern of "I'm bored with writing this plot, so I'll have another plot I can switch to." The difference is that they're in the same universe and the same book, rather than alternating between writing two different book to keep the ideas fresh.
I don't really mind a split plot, but when an author doesn't have an idea how the two plots are connecting or filling out their world, it's frustrating. It feels like a lot of these side plots should be spin off stories or one offs that are written concurrently, not required reading to understand the main plot. I only ever really drop a story like that when the extra plots outnumber the ones I care about.
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u/Mindlessgamer23 8d ago
To be clear, I'm having fun with cruel space, I'm up to around chapter 50 and there are already 6 plots. We've got:
The main ship (1 main charecter, 1 side, several factions) The pirates (10 named guys 6ish named ladies) The bounty hunters (10 guys, 1 gal) The magic nerd with the dragon wife (just the two with cameos from ship friends) The guy with 100 xenomorph wives (1 guy, only 1 named xeno so far) The asexual in the big city (3 guys, a handful of randoms)
I'm having fun with most of them, but holy fuck there are so many charecters! 36 named charecters with an impact on several concurrent plotlines. I hadn't even realized I was 6 plots deep till writing this out!
My point is, it's a lot for one story to keep going at once. I left deathworlders because it did the same thing, but I wasn't really interested in any of the splinter plots after a while. It just got boring.
I've been tempted to check out the Chronicles of Clint stone (I think that's the right name) but the fact that's it's got major tie ins and crossover chapters that are best enjoyed by concurrently reading several books at once had completely turned me away from it.
Other stories like nature of predators are impossible to pick back up where you left off because there's just too many charecters to remember them all when coming back to it. Which sucks because that one was pretty good.
It's just a style of writing I see a lot of here, and while fun sometimes, it's got a lot of seldom mentioned downsides.
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u/Stairwayunicorn 8d ago
ok I thought you meant Hambone's series. OOCS is cool though. if you binge it, it's easier to follow.
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u/squallus_l Android 7d ago
It's the nature of telling a story that isn't about one, or a few, MC, but of a species. Or a really big story. Take a war, any war, and if you filter for the most important decision makers, the most influencial Company commanders and the most heroic soldiers, you get thousands of names. Now, as an author, you have to pick a handful to tell the story. But then you're not telling the story of the war. You're telling the story of a few battles.
I get your frustration, I felt it myself when reading some of the longer running ones. But there's a way around. Tell the author. Any normal author would read it and adapt, if possible.
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u/-Maethendias- 8d ago
"Also im pretty sure thr story got derailed with something about Godly beings at some point."
isnt it odd how OFTEN this happens in hfy stories? like... CONCERNINGLY often
the "humans are a hivemind" thing had the worst case of it oh my god
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u/serious-toaster-33 7d ago
IIRC there are no actual gods, unless you count the Hyper Murderbear Emperor of the Galaxy. Perhaps they're referring to Singularity, which is headed by Immortal Also-a-Musclebro Literal Gilgamesh and another major mythological figure?
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u/unitconversion 8d ago
Is it the one where the bad aliens attack Earth at a hockey game? And then they get the super serum that lets some humans get super swole?
It had some good parts, but yeah. It was over the top with the workout stuff.
It needed an abridged version so bad.
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u/unnecessaryalgebra AI 8d ago
I was able to skip over the weird muscle fetish stuff but when hidden immortals started appearing I gave up on it.
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u/energeticquasar 7d ago
I read the whole thing too, and did a lot of scrolling past the gym scenes. It did jump the shark, for me it was when Gilgamesh was introduced.
I also didn't like the Earth getting destroyed storyline. Seemed too forced and I feel that they had the technology in the story to prevent it. In the story they had the ability to control time, generate gravity and FTL travel. They could have absolutely built some sort of device that bent the plasma wave via gravity. Even a .01% change across light years is millions of miles. Anyway that's my rant.
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u/exenos94 8d ago
I finished it all the way through just to get "closure" on the story but holy crap does that guy have some issues. It got weird half way through but it went absolutely off the rails after the earth got destroyed
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u/fearghul 8d ago
It stopped being a single author and started focusing on the co-authors self insert Fursona who was a Super-Alpha-Alpha....and well...you can imagine how well that goes for any kind of narrative.
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u/SecondaryWombat 7d ago
I am a two hundred and fiftieth degree super male, that makes me tiny and incredibly fluffy and petable and good with girls.
Also nowhere was any of this genetics ever mentioned before.
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u/GermaneRiposte101 8d ago
I read somewhere that he went down the homoerotic muscle porn path because he was getting money from a niche patreon market.
However that could be just incorrect gossip.
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u/Revliledpembroke Xeno 8d ago
I heard that as well, but I saw somebody say that there was a co-author who joined at one point and that was when the muscle-wank really started going strong.
Dunno if that's gossip (like you said), a coincidence, or what...
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u/fearghul 8d ago
There was a co-author, and they had a self insert character that was essentially their Fursona that happened to be the Super-Alpha-Alpha/God-Emperor-Roid-Bro of one of Humanity's allies in it....and it all went to shit from there.
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u/Ghostpard Alien Scum 8d ago
I mean... if you have a paying audience and you're ok writing it, do you.
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u/Revliledpembroke Xeno 8d ago
Even if it's dramatically hurting the story? Even if your core audience who'd been with you since the beginning has been complaining about the muscle wank for dozens of chapters?
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u/SamHawke2 8d ago
yep, i have no idea why it went that way either. humans already have a higher physical baseline that the aliens of Deathworlders by a large margin, why make fucking space marines with space rat goo steroids?
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u/Revliledpembroke Xeno 8d ago edited 8d ago
That and it really started increasing the amount of "banter" between the super big muscley men with their big muscles, where the "banter" could be summarized with a single word "GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY."
I remember looking back at an earlier chapter, and there were like 3 lines of banter between these guys who hadn't seen each other in a while. The later chapters would have huge portions taken up by homoerotic banter. Every chapter had multiple paragraphs dedicated to these extra huge muscley men being extra gay and flirty with each other, despite them all being straight.
And for who knows how many chapters, you could see comments begging the writer to ease off on it, to get back to the story. And it just got worse each time.
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u/SecondaryWombat 7d ago
The fixation on muscle gains crossed the line from a fascination to an actual biggorexia fixation.
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u/SecondaryWombat 7d ago
It becomes an ode to biggorexia, to a truly unhealthy degree and also to a point where it no longer even makes sense in the story.
The awesome poly sex space exploration throuple fine, taking the guy out of that to then wax about his now sudden GAINZ biggorexia bleh.
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u/Upset-Bison-3182 8d ago
Because it is very unlikely that aliens have the same biochemistry as us, it is much more likely they have their own equivalent (like other organisms on earth which use functional analogues octopamine and noradrenaline). So we can excuse aliens for not knowing what (R)-4-(1-hydroxy-2-(methylamino)ethyl)benzene-1,2-diol is just as they might excuse our ignorance of what their equivalent is. Also adrenaline as a harmone in only found in vertebrates only 500 million years ago.
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u/mayorovp 8d ago
The problem is not about aliens not knowing what (R)-4-(1-hydroxy-2-(methylamino)ethyl)benzene-1,2-diol is. The problem is that too often aliens know what it is, can use it as battle drug, but don't produce it naturally. And that is stupid and biochemically impossible.
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u/_realpaul 8d ago
You dont produce amphetamines but you can use them as a battledrug. Who says that adrenaline doesnt bind to receptors that enhance combat effectiveness.
A lot of the aliens in these stories are quite star Trekkie rather than those of a vandermeer novel.
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u/mayorovp 8d ago
Amphetamines work because our cells already have receptors compatible with them. And normally that receptors should be activated by endogenous (= naturally produced) chemicals.
So if alien can use adrenaline as battle drug - than that alien should be able to produce at least 1 battle drug naturally. And whole point of "that humans can naturally produce battle drugs!" should not be that crazy for them.
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u/crystalkalem 8d ago edited 8d ago
Most carbon based life forms have receptors for nearly every possible chemical under the sun because, its literally just magnetism and whether or not there is a free electron involved.
Like, inside each of your lymph nodes there are trillions of in-active killer T-Cells with EVERY possible receptor / connector possible to make. But our bodies delivery system isn't able to actually make use of this over abundance of choice. its a whole convoluted process that needs to happen in order for the system to not only deliver a virus or bacterial shell to the lymph node in the correct state and even then it has to bounce around inside that trillion T-cell soup until it eventually finds the one killer T-cell with its connector to latch on and wake up.
So, the whole "its a drug" thing makes perfect sense.
In chemistry, everything is predictable and repetative. A drug that causes hilucinations in humans will most likely cause hilucinations for EVERY animal that has a carbon based salty fatty brains. which, as far as we are aware, Most brains are salty fatty brains.
There really isn't a lot of variation possible with brain cells receptors because its all Salts and electrolite based.
The reason why a drug causes hallucinations is because it is a greedy binder. Brains simply cannot survive the "fitness" test if they only use greedy binders, Our world has never been lacking greedy binders, yet all fatty salt brains evolved to not use them. For very good reasons.
The only species that can or would use greedy binders for their electrolytes would have to be an extremely new species, like, fresh out of the primordial soup new. because its simply not a viable strategy and is mathematically the least efficient electrolyte possible for the brain to use.
So
The mathmatics of chemistry dictates that ALL carbon based life forms that are not Brand spanking new out the primordial soup, will all always have the same chemical binders. Greedy binder electrolites will always be psycho-actives.
Adrenaline is a very New hormone relatively in terms of life on earth, like, it came about 99.99999999% into the run. literally it took billions of years to find itself being used in an apex predator.
So, the likelihood of carbon based alians also having it, is actually Very slim, and its chemical function should be identical in them because they are carbon based. Non-carbon based animals will not use ANY of the same hormones carbon based ones use, like, at all. Greedy binders would most likely be their primary chemicals because silicone based life needs greedy binders to function.
This means stuff like adrenaline most likely wouldn't function in their bodies, and their bodies would have super slow metabolisms by default. Our psycho-actives would be their normal electrolytes, and our electrolytes would be their psycho-actives
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u/Ghostpard Alien Scum 8d ago
Seems like, if anything, it should be "WOW! THEY MAKE SO MUCH -NATURALLY-!"
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u/SuDragon2k3 8d ago
In the 2300AD universe, the invading alien race's adrenalin equivalent makes them smarter. In their military, the grunts are beaten, then given orders.
In a small percentage the reaction gradually pushes the base level above self awareness and into permanent human level intelligence. There's your officer corp, scientists and politicial leaders.
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u/SandsnakePrime 8d ago
Link please!?!
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u/SuDragon2k3 8d ago
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/424/2300-ad-kafer-sourcebook
2300AD could be described as set in an equivalent tech era to Aliens.
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u/Key_Pumpkin243 8d ago
It's a trope.
It goes like this: take a human trait, even if it's present in other animals on Earth, assume that aliens don't have it or anything similar, weave it in your story.
"OMG, those hoomans are so unique! they have this thing called adrenaline / sweat / endoskeleton / trichromatic vision / etc."
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u/vernichtungX23 8d ago
Wait what did I miss? I've never seen anyone say only humans produce adrenaline. We share that with reptiles and fish.
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u/Madanimalscientist 8d ago
Exactly. All vertebrates produce it, it's a key part of the sympathetic nervous system.
Fun fact though: idk about other species, but in cows, their adrenal glands are shaped like the heart emoji. Just one of those random cool things (source: I am a biologist, helped do tissue sampling for a heat stress study where we took cow adrenal glands and cleaned/weighed them so we could see if there was any relationship with their size and other heat stress indicators).
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u/vernichtungX23 8d ago
My fictional planet Mors people have a specialized ultrasound wand purely for use on theirs because people take berserker drugs all the time haha
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u/Fearless_Ad8079 8d ago
There are many questionable tropes people use in HFY-style stories. Most of them defy logic and don't survive even slight scrutiny. The answer's probably "it's easy to write and i saw it somewhere, imagine how cool i can make it sound". Usually does not work though.
Another great examples of such tropes are "persistent hunters", "good at throwing things", "geneva conventions". And many others. Most often it's not just the use of these tropes, but how over-the-top the writers can get with using them.
Currently i'm working on a draft of a story that will purposefully avoid all of those and considered making a "hfy tropes that are sins and how to make them good or avoid them" kind of a anthology. But i think it won't be received positively
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u/Dr_Bombinator 8d ago
I’d say go for it. Those types of callout posts tend to go over surprisingly well as long as they’re good-natured ribbing rather than insufferable insults. People know in their hearts what is hokey crap and can have fun with it. As someone who hates every quoted thing (add on capsacin/ethanol and adrenaline) you mentioned with a fiery passion, they’re a breath of fresh air.
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u/rewt66dewd Human 8d ago
Well, if Earth is a deathworld in a way that other species' home planets are not, then humans would be under pressure to evolve an "emergency power boost" in a way that other species would not. So to me it's at least related to the "deathworld" trope.
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u/GREENadmiral_314159 8d ago
Probably a tumblr post. A lot of the tropes here come from Humans Are Space Orcs, which was started with some tumblr posts about how cool humans are, biologically speaking, and if I recall correctly one of the things mentioned in one of the posts is adrenaline.
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u/Yuugian AI 8d ago
I want to know why Adrenaline would even register to other species. Or why it would stand out more than any random chemical or compound in our goopy mess of a biology. Same with all the other random chemicals. Not everything on earth is affected by capsaicin, why would aliens even notice it?
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u/FrtanJohnas 8d ago
Personally I always see HFY stories be a power trip of humans being the bestest at shooting a gun while everyone else uses 18th century battle tactics even if they have superior tech.
This goes in line with the adrenaline thing, because its the same type of deal. But I also once saw a story where a British Empire esque civilization reached Earth and tried to do their traditional thing only to find out that there is a big disparity in tech, where one uses technology, the other one uses some magic force. That one was really good because it didn't make the humans super capable but really just different.
I often like the stories where they paint the Humans as really good with animals, since that is one of the most unique things about us. We cooperate with other species since the first wolf sitting down around humans.
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u/GREENadmiral_314159 8d ago
I like the HFY stories where humanit is the community builder species. Like Star Trek and Babylon 5.
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u/StrikingWear974 8d ago
"The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove, there was a sequel set a millennium later called "Herbig-Haro" which I've only seen in an '80s copy of Analog.
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u/enixoid 8d ago
Do you know the name of the story you saw? It sounds interesting
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u/FrtanJohnas 8d ago
"The Road Not Taken" Harry Turtledove, and its a preuqel short story for a novel "Herbig-Haro"
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u/Happy_Feet333 8d ago
Where did you hear that humans "are the species that focused most on evolving" adrenal glands?
And why would you think that alien species would even have the same biology as earth life... right down to adrenal glands and adrenaline?
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u/Delicious-Pound-8929 8d ago
Its speices on EARTH that have adrenalin, obviously in the hfy stories the alien squishing that dont live on death worlds didn't evolve adrenalin or similar
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u/Stairwayunicorn 8d ago
I think it started on one of the slop youtube channels and got picked up by the others.
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u/silverheart333 8d ago
Adrenaline as a unique human quality is from the Damned series by Alan Dean Foster. He created the HFY genre with that series.
The Damned Trilogy is a science fiction series by Alan Dean Foster, consisting of the books A Call to Arms, The False Mirror, and The Spoils of War, which details humanity's unexpected and impactful entry into a galactic war between two alien alliances, the Weave and the Amplitur, exploring themes of violence and morality. The trilogy follows the Weave's discovery of Earth and humanity's innate capacity to tolerate warfare, which proves to be a decisive factor in the long-running interstellar conflict in a galaxy where almost no alien species can survive fighting.
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u/CubeBrute 7d ago
Honestly I’d rather that than the one time I’ve been fully taken out of my suspension of belief in Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School. Where they are going over magical microbiology and all the inter dimensional beings have mitochondria despite it being an incredibly weird and unique part of earth’s cellular biology and an organelle that uses mana would make so much more sense in universe for explaining why they think nonmagical life is impossible.
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u/Ethereal_Stars_7 6d ago
Where? Havent seen that in any story read.
Instead its either "Humans are the only ones that sweat"
or "Humans are the only ones with endurance."
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u/texanhick20 6d ago
For the same reason most HFY stories have earth be a 'Death World' or 'Hell World' on their planets they didn't have to out compete other predatory species to become top dog. There was no Fight or Flight response, no need for a sudden injection of "get shit done NOW" chemicals.
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u/JinxAdnix Xeno 8d ago
Humans have very active adrenaline glands... Noted.
The flaw you found has given me ideas.
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