Yeah, the "Humanity, **** yeah!" trope is kind of fun. Like a lot of things on the internet, I think people tend to go overboard with it and kind of wear it out. I like the idea of humans in a sci-fi setting having a mix of strengths and weaknesses when put up against other species, rather than just being the middle-of-the-road guys.
Or maybe we're the crazy warrior race, idk.
Yeah, it of course makes sense to begin with the humans in the middle and then start building all the other races around them, but it could be fun to have humans at one of the extremes. Perhaps the largest, physically strongest species.
Sometimes there's a dominant race, imagine it's the humans, stronger, faster, smarter and larger than all the other races with the best ships!
A lot of sentient aliens are like humans, as in bipedal, upright. Imagine a universe where humans are the weird ones, and most of the aliens instead of being bipedal are something else, like going around on all fours (or sixes!), or insects, or aquatic, with a few other types thrown in. Maybe humans are the only mammals, which makes us thoroughly weird to the rest of the universe. Imagine mammals are the most disgusting, phobia-inducing species to the rest of the universe! Which of course makes humans terrifying monsters that are the stuff of nightmares!
