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The Right of a Superior Species

267 statements
49 feature instances
47 referencing feature instances

The Right of a Superior Species	type	FeatureClass
The Right of a Superior Species	label	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species	page	therightofasuperiorspecies
The Right of a Superior Species	comment	Out in the reaches of space, an alien race exists that has developed far beyond any human civilization. Said aliens will believe they are justified in killing or enslaving humans due to their higher intelligence. They don't necessarily hate humans, they just believe that humans are so insignificant as to be unworthy of moral consideration. Bonus points if they draw parallels between the way they treat humans and the way humans treat other animals. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_content_3'); })The purpose of this trope is often to question the attitudes that justify the exploitation of animals, the environment, and/or other cultures. Works that use this trope ask the question, "What if there was someone who treated you the way you treat those you have power over?" In particular, this trope often draws inspiration from the white supremacist attitudes that were used to justify slavery, the actions of European colonial empires, and America's westward expansion, to say nothing of the Nazis. Not every alien species that victimizes humans fits this trope. As a guideline, please note that this trope applies if either: A character in the work articulates this trope, such as the aliens explicitly stating that their superiority frees them from moral considerations; or It is shown that the aliens behave in a more honorable manner towards those whom they believe to be their equals or superiors. A race that treats everyone badly when they can get away with it may be simply evil. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_content_2'); })Overlaps heavily with Social Darwinist, type three. Contrast Alien Non-Interference Clause and Benevolent Alien Invasion. See also Can't Argue with Elves. When these attitudes are applied to fellow members of one's species, then you're looking at a self-styled Master Race. It can be argued that any species that practices this trope is probably not actually a Superior Species, but stories that use it heroically/unironically never seem to touch upon this argument.
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The Right of a Superior Species	parsed	2020-06-25T17:29:54Z
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_1331990c	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_1331990c	comment	Puella Magi Madoka Magica's Kyubey plays with this trope. He turned vulnerable teenage girls into magical girls in order to fight witches, but doesn't tell them that he does so by essentially turning them into Liches. Then the girls find out that if they don't keep their Soul Gem pure, they become witches too, and it then it turns out he's doing all this to collect energy to fight the Heat Death of the universe. He justifies it by wanting to prevent said heat death, and by the fact that his kind has been assisting humanity since the stone age. All this while subtly implying that his race regards humanity the way humanity regards cattle. However, Kyubey doesn't have emotions, so he doesn't do this because he thinks he is superior to humanity (or at least that's not the most important reason). He does it because they need to prevent the universe from dying, and this is the most efficient way he's found to do it.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_18c0192b	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_18c0192b	comment	The dragons from Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings are like this. Even after a long absence and teetering on the brink of extinction, they fully expect humanity to serve them.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_213274af	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_213274af	comment	In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch, the Kurlans are completely unapologetic about their infestation of humanoid beings, insisting that humanoids are simply "meat". Whenever someone tries to reason with one of their number, it responds only with sneering contempt, mockingly explaining that humanoids "think with their glands" and know nothing of true intelligence.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_28fe1376	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_28fe1376	comment	The Observers from Fringe see their takeover of humanity as justified by their superior technology and intelligence. Windmark even thinks of humans as animals.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_2a139e05	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_2a139e05	comment	The Orville: The Krill are fundamentalists, who believe that theirs is the only species that has souls. Therefore, all the other species are annoyances at best and obstacles at worst. They see nothing wrong with nuking an undefended Union farming colony in order to take the planet. The Calivon are one of the most technologically advanced races in known space. They see all less advanced races as inferior and refuse to deal with them. They see nothing wrong with sending out probes to kidnap members of other races and put them into a zoo for their citizens to enjoy. The only race they consider equal are the robotic Kaylon, whose level of technology is comparable to theirs.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_33728d94	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_33728d94	comment	In the Dragaera series, this attitude crops up among powerful Dragaerans as regards humans, at least when they bother to really think about humans at all. The Dragaerans can make a case for it, as they live for millennia, are taller, stronger, and more magically gifted than humans, and have a variety of other advantages. Whenever the question comes up whether the Dragaeran Empire should invade its human neighbors, the argument against invasion is usually more "Is the army ready for it? No? How inconvenient. Bored now, let's do something else." And yet above the Dragaerans are the Jenoine, alien beings of fantastic power and Blue and Orange Morality who created the Dragaerans from human stock as an experiment, and mostly just want to get the lab rats back in their cages.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_4110f1d0	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_4110f1d0	comment	In Baten Kaitos this thought is enforced by the government schools of Alfard ("The Empire of the flame"). Lyude, the one heroic character from the country, is revealed to have been homeschooled by a nanny.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_413dba77	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_413dba77	comment	In Master of Formalities, Lord Frederain muses on no intelligent alien life being discovered in the millennia since humankind left Earth and spread throughout the galaxy. He then admits that it's possible some colonists did, in fact, encounter alien life forms but then simply reasoned that any life form that gets in the way of a heavily-armed colonist can't rightly be called "intelligent".
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_4784994d	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_4784994d	comment	The comic book version of Cowboys & Aliens gives the aliens this viewpoint (pretty much explicitly stated to be a metaphor for Manifest Destiny and the treatment of Native Americans).
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_49a88435	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_49a88435	comment	The Occuria to a lesser extent in Final Fantasy XII. They aren't evil persay, but they like to give the equivalent of a nuke to someone every few centuries to let them cause enough destruction to wipe the world's slate clean. Why they do it is never 100% explained, but they seem to think that without empires and controlling forces to rule over humanity, we'll destroy ourselves, or worse them, in no time. Their justification being that the last race they were in control of (The Espers), all but one of them rose up against the Occuria, and the last was so powerful that they sealed it away out of fear.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_4c1c835b	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_4c1c835b	comment	In Star Trek: Millennium, Leej Terrell considers the Bajorans little more than cattle, and refuses to accept that Cardassia was doing anything wrong in enslaving them. Indeed, she tells Sisko that humanity's biggest problem is its refusal to distinguish "truly sapient" races like the Vulcans from "stock" like the Bajorans. Dukat made a similar argument in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, though he wasn't quite so brutal in his description of the Bajorans.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_4e182290	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_4e182290	comment	The Strong Races are this to the Weak ones in The Stars Are Cold Toys duology. The galactic rules are like this: if your race is powerful enough to wipe out any other race except fellow Strong ones, you can do whatever you please. If it isn't, you better possess some unique talent useful to the Strong races, or be wiped out by them to make space for new strains of evolution.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_58ffa5db	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_58ffa5db	comment	The Lost Regiment: The 9-foot-tall Human Aliens roaming the planet Valennia have no other word for humans than "cattle". Their people are the "chosen ones", while humans are there to serve them and fill their cookpots. Even horses (brought from Earth thousands of years ago and bred to carry the huge aliens) have a higher status than "cattle", since they enable their nomadic lifestyle. Other animals like pigs and cows are considered to be "lesser cattle", but the preferred meat of choice is "cattleflesh" (i.e. human meat). The aliens impose a Medieval Stasis on the various human cultures that come over periodically through the Tunnels of Light and have themselves maintained their level of technology for thousands of years, maintaining their way of life. Any new weapons that show up with newly-arrived humans are quickly destroyed or buried (last time, they tangled with some pirates and many Tugar warriors were lost to firearms before the pirates were killed). They themselves were once on the receiving end of this treatment by a race of technologically-advanced Starfish Aliens, who had ended up on their planet via the same means as humans. They were conquered and treated as slaves, until they turned their masters against one another and slaughtered the survivors despite the heavy losses. They then took their advanced technology and threw it into the sea.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_5cfeb0b4	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_5cfeb0b4	comment	The Ancients from the Ancient-Shivan War mod for Freespace 2 regard every other race in the universe as inferior, and believe that they have the sole right to decide which ones are worthy of existence. They had absolutely no qualms about hunting other sapient races to extinction, yet when the Shivans start doing the same to them, they never even bother to compare it to what they themselves did, at least until the very end.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_60156176	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_60156176	comment	The Cetagandans of the Vorkosigan Saga constantly flirt with this trope both in their internal and external politics. The haut ruling caste are engaged in a centuries-long genetic experiment in what they consider the uplifting of the human species into something greater. The main point of internal debate on the matter is whether they've reached "superior species" status yet — as opposed to merely being a Master Race — and much of the rest of galactic society is worrying about the day the Cetagandans decide they've transcended humanity and don't need the rest of the species anymore. Especially since the Cetas have tailor-made diseases that can literally melt bones.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_67c0a723	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_67c0a723	comment	Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series. The reptilian Race considers themselves eminently justified in conquering Earth and making humanity a subject race because of what they view as their incomparably superior culture and technology, even though said technology turns out to be not quite that advanced over humankind's. Indeed, one of the "Lizard" characters pretty much lampshades this during a conversation with a human character, when the human points out all the rights and liberties that his people yearns for and the Lizard claims, in all seriousness, that humans would enjoy those freedoms under the rule of the Race. They also find the Nazi arguments for the latter's claims of being the Master Race lacking. Then again, they don't even try to explain why they think their culture is better. Any time someone asks, they simply say "The answer should be obvious". Many times they express their outrage that humans have a level of technology close to theirs. They have no right to have technology like this by all rules (of course, by their rules, even a small technological change should take centuries of careful integration into society in order not to upset the status quo; their first two conquests were like-minded, humans not so much).
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_6ac55ec7	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_6ac55ec7	comment	Dungeons & Dragons has had several species that like to pull this out: The illithids need to eat brains to survive, and so consider every other horror they inflict upon the cattle they enslave to be barely worth considering. For bonus trope points, the illithids have been depicted as originally coming from the D&D universe equivalent of deep space (or even beyond space and time) to enforce their will upon their conquered slaves. The githyanki, who were once enslaved by the illithids, have learned that you're either a Superior Species or an Inferior Species just waiting to be stepped on. They were once humans, changed by the illithids to make stronger servants, but then threw off their masters' rule. The githyanki then turned around and began their own empire on the right of their strength as the ones who threw down the illithids, but were stopped by internal dissent from a faction who split off to become the githzerai. The 'yanki do show at least a modicum of respect toward anyone else strong enough to avoid getting stepped on, but they still aren't too fond of outsiders even so. The 3rd Edition Fiend Folio introduced the ethergaunts who came from the depths of the Ethereal Plane with strange and advanced technologies, ready to reclaim an ancient empire from before their self-imposed exile. Little is known of them except they hate divine magic and the gods, have a rigid caste system, and consider all other races inferior and subject to their whims.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_6e1d5f36	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_6e1d5f36	comment	In an episode of Farscape John is split into three forms — his regular self, a caveman-like version, and a possibility of what humans could evolve into thousands of years into the future. When they find out they need to sacrifice a Crichton, many of the crew including regular John are quite prepared to sacrifice the primitive one. When that doesn't work, the advanced one reveals he views regular John as just as disposable.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_70814599	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_70814599	comment	In the Stargate SG-1 episode 'Pretense', a Goa'uld justifies the taking of human hosts by claiming superiority to humanity and comparing the practice to the hunting and fishing practiced by humans. When Daniel Jackson points out that nearly all Goa'uld technology has been stolen from other races, the Goa'uld merely shrugs and says it doesn't matter how it was acquired. The Goa'uld have the technology; the humans don't. It's as simple as that. What's better is that both sides are trying to convince a third party represented by a Nox, a race of perfect pacifists that already considers itself to be superior to both humans and Goa'uld.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_760bd4a5	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_760bd4a5	comment	The Shedai in Star Trek: Vanguard believe they rule other species by right and generally have no issue with slaughtering those who resist them. Indeed, the Shedai word for peoples outside their hegemony often doubles as a synonym for "base criminals" or "uncivilized beings". Even the Apostate, who believes in benevolent rule and rejects the idea of conquest, seems to think the Shedai are natural leaders, above all other species.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_7b039953	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_7b039953	comment	The film Avatar runs on this trope, though it's a rare case of humans being the superior species while the "primitive" Na'vi have to deal with mankind strip-mining their planet.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_81692f99	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_81692f99	comment	Star Trek novels: In Star Trek: Millennium, Leej Terrell considers the Bajorans little more than cattle, and refuses to accept that Cardassia was doing anything wrong in enslaving them. Indeed, she tells Sisko that humanity's biggest problem is its refusal to distinguish "truly sapient" races like the Vulcans from "stock" like the Bajorans. Dukat made a similar argument in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, though he wasn't quite so brutal in his description of the Bajorans. The Shedai in Star Trek: Vanguard believe they rule other species by right and generally have no issue with slaughtering those who resist them. Indeed, the Shedai word for peoples outside their hegemony often doubles as a synonym for "base criminals" or "uncivilized beings". Even the Apostate, who believes in benevolent rule and rejects the idea of conquest, seems to think the Shedai are natural leaders, above all other species. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch, the Kurlans are completely unapologetic about their infestation of humanoid beings, insisting that humanoids are simply "meat". Whenever someone tries to reason with one of their number, it responds only with sneering contempt, mockingly explaining that humanoids "think with their glands" and know nothing of true intelligence. The superhumans from Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars believe that they're inherently superior to the rest of humanity and that it's their natural place as rulers. They're not above gassing a UN meeting to strike at a single person, for example, because the others are only human.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_825b802d	comment	The title character in Odd John believes that mutants like himself are justified in doing whatever they feel like to humans, no matter how cruel, because they're smarter than humans. Disturbingly, the author seems to agree.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_8c1caf4	comment	Megatron (and probably the other Decepticons) in Transformers, who says that "Humans don't deserve to live."
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_8d8357dd	comment	In the short-lived show Prey, the new Human Subspecies feels it's their evolutionary imperative to destroy and supplant humans, the way humans did it to Neanderthals. They are stronger, faster, smarter, sociopathic, possess limited Psychic Powers, and reproduce like crazy. In addition, any pairing between a baseline human and a member of the new species always results in a member of the new species. This eventually leads to them being labelled homo dominant. Hunting the Most Dangerous Game is their favorite pastime, and a high percentage of serial killers are Dominants.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_90c73dda	comment	On the rare occasion that the Animorphs directly interact with Yeerk controllers, the Yeerks almost always pull out this argument. As far as they're concerned, all other species are to Yeerks as cattle are to humans, so Yeerks are fully justified in enslaving, Mind Raping, and killing human, Hork-Bajir, Andalites, and so on. Of course, the Yeerks the Animorphs can interact with are the ones who think this — the ones who don't agree don't leave the Yeerk pools in the first place, except a few who only changed their minds later. The Yeerks do have something of a point in that being a Puppeteer Parasite is what evolution made them, and expecting them to not take over and use other beings as hosts is tantamount to expecting them not to live, as without a host a Yeerk is a blind, deaf, helpless worm, despite possessing the same sentience as more physically-able creatures. Some more sympathetic Yeerks (such as Aftram) argue that they can't help what they are. Where the argument falls apart is when they claim this entitles them to form a galactic empire to conquer and enslave all other sentient beings in search of more and better hosts.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_928a8b2b	comment	The Death Gate Cycle: The Sartan and Patryns each believe that they are the superior species and the only one fit to rule the lesser races of humans, elves and dwarves. The lesser races are viewed as children to be protected by the Sartan and subjects to be ruled by the Patryns and pawns to be sacrificed by both. Inverted in one realm where the lesser races have achieved peace amongst each other and offer to mediate the conflict between the Sartan and the Patryns.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_94ec4af0	comment	In Wicked City, Makie's ex-lover Jin tries to make her admit this by saying, "Human are lower-class creatures than us. They're only fit for slavery. That's their heritage."
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_9582bc82	comment	The Gua in First Wave view themselves as superior to humans because of the ease with which they are able to infiltrate and manipulate the human society. They kill without remorse and are determined to, eventually, take Earth for themselves. One episode features a Gua surgeon who explain to Cade that he views his experiments on humans in the same light as humans experimenting on rats. The Gua believe they are superior because they have managed to throw off an invasion of their own planet by a hostile race and transformed from a race of peaceful philosophers into conquerors (they have already taken at least one other world). The name "Gua" literally means "power to overcome". Some of their experiments are aimed at determining if humans possess this quality and are disturbed to learn that one in 117 humans do. One female Gua even boasts how easily it is for their infiltrators to "sleep [their] way to the top". In another episode, a Gua cult leader reveals that Gua mating is painful and not at all pleasurable. Since all Gua on Earth inhabit human/Gua hybrids (called husks), they find human sex pleasurable and lack any sexual taboos present in most human cultures (likely another reason for the Gua to feel superior). Joshua's opposition to his people's planned invasion of Earth primarily stems from the expected losses that will be sustained by the Gua during the invasion and the subsequent guerrilla warfare (assuming the Gua even get past the invasion stage). After all, if 1 out of every 117 humans has Cade's determination, then that means that there are about 60 million people on Earth who will actively resist.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_970b532b	comment	The Lunarians in A New World use this excuse to justify their annihilation of humanity via faking a colossal nuclear exchange and letting them kill themselves by the billions with their own nukes. The universal answer to this act is "Screw You, Space Elves!"
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_985ad25d	comment	Dragon Ball Super: How Zamasu views his attempted genocide of mortals. He believes that everything he does, no matter how heinous, is justified because he's a god, and he passes judgement on mortals despite being just as bad, if not worse. Near the end of the Future Trunks Saga, he even spells it out:
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_a81325d3	comment	Final Fantasy: The fal'Cie from Final Fantasy XIII are all over this trope like flies over jam. At one point, Lightning realizes that to them, humans are nothing but pets whom they keep for amusement and some housekeeping chores they don't care to do themselves. It is eventually revealed that humans and fal'Cie are related species in the sense that both were created by the same creator deity. Fal'Cie were made infinitely stronger but without the capacity for free will, so when the creator has left the building, things went south for the humans as the fal'Cie hijacked that free will to turn them into weapons. The Occuria to a lesser extent in Final Fantasy XII. They aren't evil persay, but they like to give the equivalent of a nuke to someone every few centuries to let them cause enough destruction to wipe the world's slate clean. Why they do it is never 100% explained, but they seem to think that without empires and controlling forces to rule over humanity, we'll destroy ourselves, or worse them, in no time. Their justification being that the last race they were in control of (The Espers), all but one of them rose up against the Occuria, and the last was so powerful that they sealed it away out of fear.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_b2296c8b	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_b2296c8b	comment	In Battle for Terra, the human race stages an invasion of an alien planet. They justify this by the right of their superior technology, their view that the aliens aren't sapient, and that Earth was destroyed and they need to repopulate the species somewhere.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_b747108f	comment	Out of the Dark by David Weber, is about a race of aliens who usually do this successfully but get way more than they bargained for with humanity. In this case, the carnivorous Shongairi view themselves as superior to all galactic species, especially those annoying herbivores dominating the galactic society and dictating the rules. As far as the Shongairi are concerned, they're just biding their time and building up their advantage before showing the others who's boss. Averted with Dracula, who doesn't consider vampires to be superior, merely different. Maybe he did once, but those days are in the past.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_b75fa829	comment	In an episode of The Outer Limits, an astronaut returning from the first manned mission to Mars learns that his crewmembers have been turned into aliens. He kills one via airlock, but the other one convinces him that they're peaceful and merely wish to survive. However, during re-entry, he sees through the ruse and realizes that the alien intends to spread spores through Earth's atmosphere, turning humans into others of his kind. The alien drops all pretense and outright claims that his species is very old compared to humans and deserves to live much more than we do by that comparison alone. The astronaut opens the airlock, and the pressure imbalance causes the ship to blow up.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_bcadd7cb	comment	The Eldar in Warhammer 40,000 have this attitude. They are ancient and wise and vastly longer-lived than humans; their technology, knowledge and cultural sophistication eclipse anything mankind has achieved; and, in the distant past, they used to rule the galaxy. More importantly, they are a Dying Race — the Eldar are slowly but surely heading towards extinction. Humanity is young and stupid and there are already a lot of them around. Therefore, the Eldar feel completely justified in scouring a human planet clean of life (or changing the present so that this will happen to humanity in the future) to save a single Eldar life. The Dark Eldar do this to extremes, though the fact that they think nothing of doing it to themselves if they can means they probably go out the other end into Always Chaotic Evil. The Eldar do have some semblance of an excuse — the reason their great empire fell was that they reached such levels of decadence and depravity that they ended up creating a new Chaos God, Slaanesh. Because of this, every last Eldar soul is damned to eternal torment at the hands of Slaanesh after they die, which humans and other sapient species are not, so they will do anything to prevent the death of an Eldar. Also, it's not like the Imperium wouldn't do the same thing to them if given a chance.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_c43df4d8	comment	In the Doctor Who adventure The Mark of the Rani, the Rani compares the exploitation of lesser species with stepping on ants.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_c592c211	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Right of a Superior Species / int_c592c211	comment	In Empire of the Petal Throne, humans are the ones who did this when they invaded planet Tekumel. The native species (Ssu and Hluss) were clearly sapient and living together in peace, and had about the kind of technology that we have now in Real Life. Humans had developed far a more advanced starfaring civilization, so "obviously" the Tekumelani species were inferior. Humans had no problem allying peacefully with other advanced starfaring species, but they terraformed the hell out of Tekumel, rearranged its orbit and even gravity, and tried their best to genocide the "primitive" natives. It's even noted that most other starfaring races wouldn't have invaded at all.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_d6423831	comment	The First-Born in The Gods of Mars regularly assaults the Thern gardens, taking their women as slaves and only the women to serve as chattel and food, invoking the right of being the very first race in Barsoom to achieve sentience to exploit the lesser races of Barsoom as they see fit. The Therns themselves qualify since they consider themselves closer to the primary deity of the planet and use it to enslave every other race on Mars. The fact that they are guilty of the same crimes that they are in the receiving end by someone else is lost on them.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_d8ec8292	comment	The superhumans from Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars believe that they're inherently superior to the rest of humanity and that it's their natural place as rulers. They're not above gassing a UN meeting to strike at a single person, for example, because the others are only human.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_dbbd4a28	comment	Baron Alexander from Amnesia: The Dark Descent justifies the meticulous, brutal torture of thousands of human beings, optimized for maximum terror and pain, with the fact that he's an immortal being from another dimension, and torture of sapient beings is the only way to gather vitae that allows him to work towards getting back home. To his dubious credit, there isn't a hint of sadism in his actions; all the torment is carefully calculated and purpose driven without any kind of emotional dimension. However, at one point when examining one of his memory things he admits that he's a monster who's done unforgivable things, but he just wants to get home too badly to stop.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_e0c93337	comment	The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Unusual in that this is articulated by the human narrator at the beginning of the book. After reflecting on how much more advanced and intelligent the Martians are, he concludes:
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_e235270c	comment	Part of the game mechanics in Stellaris, interstellar empires cannot engage in normal diplomatic relations with pre-FTL species. They can just research them like animals, uplift them as a protectorate, or simply invade. And fighting other empires requires a formal declaration of war, you can bombard or invade a pre-FTL planet at any time.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_eab0d542	comment	In The Arrival, one of the aliens tells the protagonist that humans don't deserve this planet, since they're so keen on ruining it. In fact, in their mind they're helping us along on our way to extinction by using secret underground factories to conduct Hostile Terraforming to their native environment.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_eb3f3551	comment	Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Kett Empire justify their actions on the grounds that A: "reproduction cannot be left to chance", and B: "The superior race dominates". They often don't treat or consider other races sentient, even as they're destroying them. Their monumental arrogance even applies to their language. The name for it translates as "true speech".
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_eb6802b4	comment	The fal'Cie from Final Fantasy XIII are all over this trope like flies over jam. At one point, Lightning realizes that to them, humans are nothing but pets whom they keep for amusement and some housekeeping chores they don't care to do themselves. It is eventually revealed that humans and fal'Cie are related species in the sense that both were created by the same creator deity. Fal'Cie were made infinitely stronger but without the capacity for free will, so when the creator has left the building, things went south for the humans as the fal'Cie hijacked that free will to turn them into weapons.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_f01be35d	comment	In Priest Kings of Gor, Sarm justifies the Priest-King practice of smiting humans who experiment with firearm technology by claiming that Priest-Kings are superior to humans in the same way that humans are superior to the animals they kill for food.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_f74b5f80	comment	Both the Vorlons and the Shadows in Babylon 5 see themselves as superior beings tasked with shaping the lesser races. If that means torturing people, provoking wars or all-out genocide, that's a minor issue.
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The Right of a Superior Species / int_ff9ab17f	comment	Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is Q's go-to argument for being a Jerkass God to Humanity in general and the crew of Enterprise in particular. This has led to more than one Patrick Stewart Speech in response.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Right of a Superior Species	processingCategory2	Alien Tropes
The Right of a Superior Species	processingCategory2	Cynicism Tropes
The Right of a Superior Species	processingCategory2	Older Than Television
The Right of a Superior Species	processingCategory2	Speculative Fiction Tropes
Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars! (Comic Book) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Cowboys & Aliens (Comic Book) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Ogre Gods (Comic Book) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Tiberian Eclipse / Fan Fic	seeAlso	The Right of a Superior Species
A New World (Iced Fairy) (Fanfic) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Flesh and Blood (Cyblade Silver) (Fanfic) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Quiververse (Fanfic) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Tarkin's Fist (Fanfic) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Dark Lords of Nerima (Fanfic) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Age of Fire / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
EarthCent Ambassador / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Out of the Dark / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Out of the Silent Planet / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Phantoms / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Aurelian Cycle / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Stars Are Cold Toys / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Wandering Inn / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The War of the Worlds (1898) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Urn Burial / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Vampire The Masquerade Clan Novel Trilogy Brujah / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Worldwar / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
TheRightOfASuperiorSpecies	sameAs	The Right of a Superior Species
TheRightofaSuperiorSpecies	sameAs	The Right of a Superior Species
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Grimm / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Prey / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Ultraseven / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
V (1983) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Infinite Worlds (Tabletop Game) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Baten Kaitos (Video Game) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Final Fantasy XIII (Video Game) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
G.O.D.: Heed the Call to Awaken (Video Game) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Gigastructural Engineering And More (Video Game) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Phoenotopia (Video Game) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Primal Rage (Video Game) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun (Video Game) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
The Embodiment of Sins (Webcomic) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Vegan Artbook (Webcomic) / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Battle for Terra / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species
My Gym Partner's a Monkey / int_ddb2df91	type	The Right of a Superior Species
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie / int_193adfd1	type	The Right of a Superior Species

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