Vuni the slug girl returns, in all her... sluggishness. This is a story I'd been meaning to write for many months, and I've finally got it done. Like the previous, it's a "scene" rather than a story per se.

My main concern is whether I got Katrika right. I wasn't entirely sure how she'd behave in such a situation.

http://frenchsnack.deviantart.com/art/Story-26-124662149

Another short one, with Crisis this time:
http://frenchsnack.deviantart.com/art/Story-27-124699556

I confess, I'm actually beginning to lose interest somewhat.

Initially, what I liked about the stories I read was that they painted a picture of Felarya as a savage, yet unbiased land. Both humans and predators were likable and interesting.

But the more I read, the more I'm picking up a distinct predator bias, which is working my nerves. A lot of these stories seem to be illustrating concepts like "human technology will always be useless in Felarya" or "Even the most well-intentioned of people will die if they dare to take nagas in a negative light," or other nonsense. Something I get enough of browsing all the crappy stories I find on DA or so much as glancing at the character discussion board.

Personally, I think you ought to explore human AND predator interaction more. Present the predators in a light that DOESN'T make me want to beat them senseless, and portray humans in a light that isn't confined to "Evil corporate business archetype" and "cynical pro-pred human who doesn't mind seeing innocent people die daily archetype."

Contrary to what Karbo said, I'm not seeing much emotional development. Emotions, sure, but nothing that I think is genuinely worth following. There's no surprise anymore. Everyone dies in epically predictable ways. It's to the point where the human characters are only interesting before they get to Felarya. After such, they become predictable dinner of the day. Why should I care? Why should anyone care? We know what's going to happen to them. There's not going to be any further development beyond "OHMYGOD I'M ABOUT TO DIE! THIS ISN'T HOW THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN! I WAS SUPPOSED TO NOT DIE! TRULY THIS TRIP WAS A COMPLETE RIPOFF!"
That manner of story was entertaining the first five times I read it. Now it's just stale and cluttering.

The problem is, you were exploring various aspects of Felarya and now you're just looking for how many different ways you can tell the same story. It's like a sci-fi original movie. Same plot, same characters, same bad CGI, just with a few different irrelevant quirks. Only difference is, I NEVER get tired of crappy CGI snake movies. But I'm definitely getting tired of predictable vore stories.

That's just my two cents. Which compared to everyone else's two cents is like, a million bucks.

I can't get enough of your storie personnaly
They are very well written, explore lot of aspects of Felarya and contains *emotions*
Also on the last one, you captured very well Crisis and Anna

Gregole: Thanks for the advice. I'm not sure I quite get where you're coming from, though. More specifically:

GREGOLE wrote:

But the more I read, the more I'm picking up a distinct predator bias, which is working my nerves.

Hmmm... I do try to show that predators are complex characters rather than mono-dimensional evil monsters. I don't see that as "pro-pred bias", though. "Predator bias" would imply that I'm "anti-prey", that I show prey characters in a negative light. I honestly don't think I do that. I try to make my prey characters likeable. In fact, it's one of my main "themes", so to speak.

Quote:

A lot of these stories seem to be illustrating concepts like "human technology will always be useless in Felarya" or "Even the most well-intentioned of people will die if they dare to take nagas in a negative light," or other nonsense.

I'm not sure what you mean by "dare to take nagas in a negative light", but if you mean what I think you mean, you're wrong. I never use "eating as punishment". I don't think I've ever done so; not once. One of the reasons is because I tend to identify with prey, and I can't identify with an unlikeable characters. So unlikeable characters tend not to get eaten in my stories.

I've never considered or implied that a character is eaten because he or she is angry about nagas. Or that they deserved to be eaten. My prey characters never "deserve" to be eaten.

Quote:

Personally, I think you ought to explore human AND predator interaction more.

Well, damn. That's kind of what I've been trying to do all along.

Quote:

Present the predators in a light that DOESN'T make me want to beat them senseless,

Likewise. I thought that's what I'd been doing.

Quote:

and portray humans in a light that isn't confined to "Evil corporate business archetype" and "cynical pro-pred human who doesn't mind seeing innocent people die daily archetype."

Ehm, what? Those are precisely the two types of character I've been trying to avoid! I really don't see how you can say my characters are "confined" to archetypes that I dislike and reject! I don't like evil or cynical characters, and I try to use them as little as possible.

I'm trying to think which characters you might be talking about here. Jissy's captor is the closest I've come to an "evil" human, I think - and he was never prey. Isham is someone I've tried to portray as complex and conflicted, neither "evil" nor cynical. Roshan is more accepting of Jissy's diet, but that's not due to cynicism; it's down to his nurturing affection for her. I haven't used Roshan much yet, though, so I don't know whether you were thinking of him. On a personal level, I'm a bit uncomfortable with Léa's coldness, which is why I'd like to make Roshan a bit different. (Tina resembles Léa, I suppose, but she's not human. She's a tomthumb, and she's Felaryan-born.)

Who else...? Elaya? She's not "cynical"; she's just got a predator mentality. She's like a human fairy, albeit also drawn to the human world.

Peana? She's about as far from those archetypes as you can get.

Pal and Manda? They're most definitely not "evil", and I don't consider them particularly cynical. They're certainly not blasé about seeing people get eaten.

I'd like to think I've created a variety of humans, none of whom are particularly cynical, most of whom have fairly different personalities, and only one of whom, a minor character seen only briefly in one story, came anywhere close to the "Evil corporate business archetype", as you put it. So I'm a bit... puzzled as to where your impressions come from.

Of course we're not going to have exactly the same tastes. But your comments suggest to me that your tastes are fairly close to mine, and to what I've been trying to do throughout my stories.

Karbo: Thanks. Crisis and Anna were fun to write about. And I enjoy exploring characters' emotions. Maybe I should do something a bit more light-hearted, too, but since I like to focus on prey (or on characters who, like Vuni, are both pred and prey), Felarya is a dangerous world... Still, I'll continue seeing what I can do with predators' and prey's feelings.

I can't claim to have read all your stories. But I've been browsing and I've read the majority of the recent ones and I still get these vibes.

Your most recent one, for instance. I knew he was going to die. Like so many other stories of this nature, I didn't read it so much as skim.
I knew the human was doomed to be digested by acids that realistically should not have been able to handle a material that has already been confirmed as borderline indestructible. He was a likable person and despite the predictability of the story, I didn't want to see him die.

Crisis? Well, I confess, I hate Crisis. I don't know why. Maybe it's the fact that she's been ass-raped by so many authors that she's synonymous with bad storytelling for me. Maybe I'm just sick of the formulaic approach to each and every story involving her. The important thing is, her use in the story did nothing to make me reconsider.

Quote:

Hmmm... I do try to show that predators are complex characters rather than mono-dimensional evil monsters. I don't see that as "pro-pred bias", though. "Predator bias" would imply that I'm "anti-prey", that I show prey characters in a negative light. I honestly don't think I do that. I try to make my prey characters likeable. In fact, it's one of my main "themes", so to speak.

It's more complex than that. Characters we're made to like get killed off, yet it's never treated as anything but a good thing when this happens. Meanwhile, the predators either come off as sinister, bigoted pricks, or just plain idiots. If you use fridge logic, then you might realize that this isn't the case, but a good story doesn't depend on fridge logic. I should feel for the predator WHILE I'm reading the story.

I've already mentioned how much I hate the ending to that story involving Kat, Crisis and the "naga's egg". Not since I read that gawdawful novel have I so desperately wished to see Crisis get her ass kicked.

Now this isn't a problem with ALL your stories, of course. Many of them legitimately develop both parties. But many of them don't, and I think that's something you need some wok on.

Quote:

I've never considered or implied that a character is eaten because he or she is angry about nagas. Or that they deserved to be eaten. My prey characters never "deserve" to be eaten.

Which again, is part of the problem. These stories should either paint the predators as a horrible, evil being, or else do SOMETHING to get us to like them at least as much as the humans. If someone is supposed to be evil, then we don't hate them for doing evil things because they're designated as villains. Example: Raison. And if we grow to like them enough, we can easily forgive them for whatever atrocities they commit. Example: Belkar bitterleaf. But if you do neither, you're left with an almost schizophrenic story where we don't know who to root for, but we wind up rooting against the predator, simply because we grew to like the human first. Now this CAN be remedied, but it's not, from what I've seen.

Quote:

Well, damn. That's kind of what I've been trying to do all along. Sad

And in many cases, it's worked. In others, not so much.
What I'm saying is you need to stress it more, figure out if we'll feel cheated or angry in the end. If the answer is yes, then some rewriting is probably in order.

Quote:

I'm trying to think which characters you might be talking about here. Jissy's captor is the closest I've come to an "evil" human, I think - and he was never prey. Isham is someone I've tried to portray as complex and conflicted, neither "evil" nor cynical. Roshan is more accepting of Jissy's diet, but that's not due to cynicism; it's down to his nurturing affection for her. I haven't used Roshan much yet, though, so I don't know whether you were thinking of him. On a personal level, I'm a bit uncomfortable with Léa's coldness, which is why I'd like to make Roshan a bit different. (Tina resembles Léa, I suppose, but she's not human. She's a tomthumb, and she's Felaryan-born.)

I can't claim to have read all of your stories, so I couldn't point to each example either. And like I said, not all of them suffer from these problems. But some of them do, and they seem to be more recent than the others.
I'm not trying to get you to radically alter your style. I'm just trying to caution you in case you're heading into an unsavory phase.


Now, I would bet my life savings that someone's going to jump in at some point with the argument "Oh, it's a world where people eat each other! You have to leave room for conflicting morals!" so I'm going to stake that pest before dusk.

It's challenging to make a human-eating character likable. This is obvious, looking at how many people fail at it. But it IS indeed possible, and you CAN and HAVE done so. I'd just prefer to see more of that.
You can't just make an unlikable character and assume people won't hate them because "It's the law of the jungle". It may be a savage setting, but it's still art. Like it or not, most human-perspective Felarya stories wind up making the predators look like insensitive pricks and bullies. Now this may not be logical when you pause to go grab a snack and think about the story, but again, a story cannot sustain itself on fridge logic. It's a matter of portrayal.

You seem to really like the human perspective though, so what I would recommend is this. Have the inevitable predator converse with the prey more. Interact, be original, keep the audience guessing whether the human will survive or perish. Of course, to do this, the human will have to survive some of the time. And what I'd recommend is making a story that SEEMS to be the basic "vacation in Felarya, protagonist gets eaten" formula, then suddenly have them survive and become a major player.
The problem with some of these stories is that they're predictable. But your style isn't inherently tied to that predictability, so it's definitely somehting you can fix. I just want to give my thoughts on it now.

_________________
"Also I agree with Gregole. He's always right."

Chapter 7 of Lost in Felarya: "The price of a story"
http://frenchsnack.deviantart.com/art/Lost-in-Felarya-chapter-7-125371593

Spoiler:

Although I had the idea for this chapter a long time ago, I've worked more recent thoughts on Milly's character development into it. Someone on Eka's suggested that Isham should take a stand against her eating people, and that struck me as both logical and interesting in terms of their developing relationship. It will be explored further in future stories, although ultimately I'm not yet sure what direction I'm taking Milly in. Something else that I hadn't quite planned was the outcome of the Crisis / Anna scene. The very end kind of wrote itself. It seemed like the 'normal' outcome, with Anna taking a stand, too. (On her tail, since she has no legs any more. ) Still, I'm not certain how it came out. I seem to be putting Crisis in too many 'serious' situations, which may not really suit her.

A short story about a tomthumb:
http://aryion.com/g3/showitem.php?id=173005

(I'll put it on DA, too, maybe tomorrow.)

While writing it, I couldn't help but feel that I may have been influenced by timing2's Felarya stories. They're very good, so if you haven't read them yet, I'll take this opportunity to advertise them.

Six months ago, I uploaded a story in which Jissy was turned into a human. In it, she met a human woman called Niree, narrowly avoided being eaten by Katrika, and took refuge at the Great Tree with Crisis and Anna. I left the story with a "to be continued".

A while ago, I started writing the continuation. Now I've finally completed it. It focuses mainly on the relationship between Jissy and Roshan.

I changed my mind several times about the ending while writing the story, before settling on the final version:

http://aryion.com/g3/showitem.php?id=173084

I've finally finished the "Felaryan flashes". By which I mean I've now written the final two stories in a series of eight short stories.

Stories 7 & 8 are "Beauty of the snow" (Yshwi's story) and "Felaryan feast" (Milly's story). They can be found here:
http://aryion.com/g3/showitem.php?id=173278

I'll put them on DA as well soon.

They mark something of a temporary departure from the emotionally tense theme of some of my recent Felarya stories. These are rather more light-hearted.

Ohh damn I really adored this one about the snow dryad ! the descriptions were just wonderful

Thanks! I've actually had that idea in mind for months and months, but I never got round to writing it until now. I enjoyed doing it. It felt a bit different, since I was writing about a character who lived all alone, so indeed it was all about descriptions.

Plus, we always need more dryads.

I liked the setting for Yshwi's story, particularly the fact that it was so cold, inhospitable, and barren. Not too many Felarya stories are set in such an environment.

It gave me some ideas for some rather nasty tomthumb traps as well.