Talk:Humans Are Their Own Precursors

It has a clear description, plenty of examples, and two categories above and beyond the default ones. And it passes a grammar check.

I vote to launch.

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Voting to launch. But I'd like to suggest renaming it to "Humans Are Their Own Precursors". As seen elsewhere on this talk page, the title as it is now misled me into thinking it was just a copy of Humanity's Wake.

Concur with this.

Voting to launch.

Voting to launch,

Vote to both launch and rename, but we might want more than two trope categories before the actual launch. It's not that big of a deal though.

Five votes to launch, no objections. And the page has four categories now.

Launching with the rename.

And done.

Thanks for clearing this!

As written now, technically almost anything Post Apocalyptic counts. Obviously needs something that excludes it.

I disagree. I think that this and Post Apocalyptic goes along quite nicely, because they both contribute heavily to the world building, atmosphere, and feel of a work. Just because two tropes have a lot of overlap, does not mean we automatically should exclude each other. Sometimes the usage of one trope means using another one is natural, like how you can guarantee Magic Wands will appear at a Wizarding School. Same thing here. It's like how the Castle in the Sky trope is almost always a Floating Continent, because those tropes go along well in contributing to the feel of a world. Adding an exception, like what you're proposing, makes the trope more tedious, as it excludes a lot of potential examples.

It does depend on exactly how catastrophic the apocalypse is, though. Instead of saying anything Post Apocalyptic doesn't count, I propose we include post apocalyptic works if the technology levels after the apocalypse is significantly lower than the level before the work. That way, we can exclude settings in which a mythical "advanced human precursor" feel is not achieved.

I'm fairly sure pre-Apocalyptic tech being vastly superior to post-Apocalyptic tech is the standard for the genre. Scavenger World and Lost Technology are staples after all. The problem is that the overlap with would be near 100% with that. I was thinking something like "This only applies if the setting has sapient non-humans not created by or derived from humans. If humans (and their creations/offshoots) are the only sapient specie(s) in the world, ancient humans are just ancestors, not precursors."

The "advanced humans are precursors to less advanced humans" thing is quite different than "non humans have humans as their precursors". You might want to start another trope for that.

Your problem is the two tropes has a lot of overlap. It could just be me, but personally I have no problem when two tropes overlap. They're two expressions of a bigger picture. After the End explores what is happening right now. Humans are Precursors explores what happened before. A skilled troper should be able to write two different descriptions for each because they explore what happened before and during the apocalypse. Plus, there are some occasions where Humans Are Precursors won't overlap with After the End, like if humans genetically engineer and send out a new race of explorers into the universe.

Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with post apocalyptic settings. I apologise if I misunderstood anything about this setting.

It's not "non humans have humans as their precursors", but "humans are precursors and non-humans exist"

Sorry for the misunderstanding. My opinion remains unchanged despite this.

The "advanced humans are precursors to less advanced humans" thing is quite different than "non humans have humans as their precursors". You might want to start another trope for that.

That would be Uplifted Animal, I think.

The definitions of the two tropes are vastly different, one is "some sort of event changed the world", the other is "more advanced humans once roamed the world". Staring of the definitions, they don't have much in common, even if, once they are applied, there is a lot of overlap.

Subtropes and their parent trope overlap all the time. Maybe we can make "After the End" a subtrope of this?

The way I understand and envision the trope, while there can be some overlap with postapocalyptic scenarios, that isn't necessarily the case. Yes, it is definitionally after the end of the precursor era, but that happened far in the past. Unlike the standard After the End, the current era is not necessarily a Scavenger World living in the shadow of The Beforetimes and picking at the scraps thereof, but can be its own self-sustaining civilization that has transcended the subsistence/scavenging stage and is on its feet developing and growing. The precursor era talked about by this trope would not be the immediate predecessor that the current one is built on and directly succeeding. Taking Fallout, the prewar would not be an example of this trope because the current state of things directly follows from the prewar, which is outright in living memory for some characters.

Does that make sense?

Those in Fallout who remember pre-war are pretty rare though (Raul is the only one who isn't more machine than man or frozen I can think of),

Oh? Well, it was the first thing I could think of offhand, so perhaps it wasn't the best (non-)example.

The trope has been around for a few months now and I'd like to request help with the description, example and grammar passes.

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Sure! I can take a look for examples and the description.

I did some work. Just letting you know, I love this trope concept.

Alright, I helped with what I can.

Isn't this just Humanity's Wake?

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No.

Humanity's Wake is about humanity no longer being around.

This trope is about when there was an advanced human civilization far back enough as to be prehistory to modern mankind. Modern mankind is still around and now has to contend with this legacy.

If anyone has an alternate name suggestion that might be clearer, I'm all ears. TVT uses "Advanced Ancient Humans". Perhaps "Humans Are Their Own Precursors"? "Precursor Human Civilization"?

That explanation reminded me of an example that Looney Toons is currently writing a fanfic about...