Why always giant nagas

Why always giant naga's? It seems that the majority of naga's in Felarya are giant, but my question why? Is it that we all love a giantness, or is that we want bigger body parts...
post below your reason if you made a giant naga.

I'm shooting from the hip, but Smaller things tend to get eaten without some sort of plot relation to back them up.

loyd1 wrote:

Why always giant naga's? It seems that the majority of naga's in Felarya are giant, but my question why? Is it that we all love a giantness, or is that we want bigger body parts...
post below your reason if you made a giant naga.

It's not that the majority of nagas in Felarya are giant, is that the majority of naga characters in Felerya are giant.

Yeah I think there's a whole tribe of normal sized ones kicking around.

Their just not as interesting as the giant ones with the massive...appetites.

Personally I like the human size ones, because you can actually just sit and talk to them the first time you'd meet them without having to worry (weird, I know, especially from me >.>), but then again:

Quote :

Their just not as interesting as the giant ones with the massive...appetites.

I do have to agree XD

I believe that much of the matter has more to do with group/club mentality than strictly personal preference.

As I recall, there are some roughly fifteen non-Karbo canonical giant nagas in the wiki and dozens of non-canonical ones around. Mainly this is due to an unintentional precedent set a long time ago. Three of Karbo's original main characters for the setting, Crisis, Anna and Vivian, were 1. Female. 2. Giant. and 3. Nagas. Crisis is the mascot of the universe. That set a very large precedent in and of itself and of course with just her, her species would be popular. As it were, similar (or compatible) personalities and eating habits were also often emulated (Although much of that doesn't apply to this specifically).

In people's minds this created the notion that this was how to do it: 'use those three traits as a basis and go with it from there' had the best chance of being well-received. It snowballed over time as this variety of character was recognized as the most popular and those three traits became a tempting unofficial template for a Felaryan (predator/giant) character more often than not. Whether for notoriety in the fandom, to have a semi- plausible reason for two otherwise unrelated characters to get along in a fan fiction, just because it seemed the cool thing to do, to snakes simply being someone's favorite animal, many have ended up with a naga character which is most probably female and of giant stature. It's a large influence that causes any of those three traits to tend to magnetize the other two.

I do have a naga, Monty- a giant male. I created him in the first place partially because there seemed to be roughly a male to female gender ratio of 0:132434 representing the naga race here. My logic was probably that I didn't want to make a too-different giant character from the norm but at the same time was put off by the 'character mold' (I also couldn't resist his obvious name pun : P). I later greatly reworked him to be a more fleshed-out character that could hopefully be taken seriously and usable in further stories without getting stale.

I find it to be rather a shame that one gender of the comparably rare giant variety of but one half-reptile race available has greatly overshadowed the usage of most of the other great and varying races for such a long time. I'm not saying that nagas are an inherently bad character choice, or indicative of the quality of a character. I'm simply offering what I see to be the wider explanation of this trend over time.

I think newer people really should be made aware of the many other interesting and largely untapped options available for characters, which is why I'll try to point them to that section of the wiki if possible during their development process. After all, it kinda sucks to see this particular race tend to be frowned on these days for its sheer popularity and the 1'. 2. 3. base' trend, discounting the possibility that the character is poorly designed or possessing shallow characteristics, which would further contribute to a negative image of the usage of the race.



The dreaded 'cookie-cutter mary-sue giant naga character' stereotype. I've actually seen few characters that would really cause me to apply this to, but they do exist in my opinion, at varying degrees. The thing is, overuse of giant, female nagas in the setting exists. With these two things in mind you're bound to get some grumbles at 'I made a naga character' statements. But hopefully by giving other races attention (as mantoids duly received) as well as some constructive criticism both being given and considered, annoyed-by-trend views of nagas can improve and other races can see their fair usage come to be.

That was kind of long. Naga loooooooong. I hope that what I've stated here has something positive come of it.

More or less what /Fish/ said. Also, not all of us have a crush on giant nagas. xD Myself, I knew one thing: "making a female giant naga is so cliché that it hurts me", so that's why I have a fairy (woops! another Mary-Sue-esque race here!), a dryad and a dridder.

So well... some people will always go for the female giant naga, while others will try to find some diversity among nagas or even in other species. There's lots to choose from...

Well, perhaps this is precisely why I should not post on this thread, but I have no naga characters. I never had one, and don't really have any plans for one. In fact, I don't really have any giant predator characters. While I do have one predator, she is a fairy who can not change her own size from being tiny. And regardless, she's a sidekick character for the main, human, character. While nagas and other giant characters make appearances, mostly as adversaries and obstacles to the main, human or neko, characters they aren't actually main characters.

See, this is just my own opinion, and may be a bit off topic, but I see the prey races as much more ripe for stories than the giant predators. After all, the majority of predators in Felarya stay in one location. They stake out a territory, and rarely leave it. I would consider fairies an exception in that they travel all around and don't localize themselves. And while stories could be written on a predator's daily life in their location, or the rare few that travel around and go on adventures or whatnot, I just see humans as having the most story hooks, and the best backstory to have reason to traverse Felarya.


Aah, but back on to the topic at hand. Why always giant nagas? Well, just read Fish's post for that. Honestly. After an excellent in depth analysis like that why would you still ask?

/Fish/ wrote:

The answer to the question

In my opinion
/thread.

/Fish/ put it very well, indeed.

There are a few smaller nagas wriggling around, though. Early on, I created Selima, a human-sized naga, but then I killed her off in her first story. (She was eaten by a giant naga - virtually the only case of a naga eating a naga in Felarya, as far as I'm aware.) I mention her because, when I created her, I intended to reuse her in backstories -or possibly even in stories set after her death. I still have a few ideas about her, so she may appear again one day.

More recently, I created Shaan, a human-sized naga who befriends a giant dridder. I've only used her once so far, but I have got plans for her to feature again in at least one story.

If there are any other human-sized nagas around, I'd be interested to hear about them.

Because giant nagas can gulp down little things...little nagas get gulped down by big things...bigger nagas have a better chance of survival...plus Trixy can safely meet Crisis.

I admit it, I made a giant naga, though she's rather on the small side of giantness. I'm joining a 12-step program to try to prevent this from happening again. I also have a slew of giant slug-girls and an extremely large orchid mantoid, so that has to count for something.

Silliness aside, in my case it was because I already had tomthumbs, a miniature slug-girl, a human, a neko, a miniature dridder ... so when it came time to create a naga, she was of the giant variety. I did consider making her small, but then I already had a plethora of small characters.

I didn't make a giant naga. I made a normal sized one. And in fact-I almost made Katrika a Chilotaur at first. Had I known how popular she was going to be I would have gone ahead.

Kat's becoming giant had more to do with the company she was keeping at the time. And one person in particular.

*ahem*

I certainly didn't want to copy anyone.

The same reason all fan-made kaiju are dinosaurs, all fan-made fantasy characters are Cloud-analogues, and all giant robots after the eighties being based on Gundams.

It's not just about "Follow the leader", it's literally the idea that it was Crisis who got them into Felarya. She probably got a lot of newcomers to enjoy the very concept of the naga, and caused folks to try and replicate that, with varying degrees of success. It's not really about wanting to mimic success, so much as wanting to mimic what caught their eye.

On the other hand, some of it is DEFINITELY a significant portion of the newbies mistaking nagas for the dominant race, top predators, etc, etc, etc... and thinking that a naga is obligatory. Even we tend to use them as the default giant predator in our speech.


It's definitely a problem that needs fixing, however. Though I think it's been well on its way to recovery, as of late.

GREGOLE wrote:

Even we tend to use them as the default giant predator in our speech.

Hmmm, that actually could be useful, a sort of standard generic unit of measurement, much like how most horses don't produce exactly one unit of horsepower, but it's still a useful unit.

Oldman40k2003 wrote:

GREGOLE wrote:

Even we tend to use them as the default giant predator in our speech.

Hmmm, that actually could be useful, a sort of standard generic unit of measurement, much like how most horses don't produce exactly one unit of horsepower, but it's still a useful unit.

Nagas =/= giant.

Giant = giant.

Most nagas are not giant nagas.

Nagas ~ Human-sized.

/Fish/ wrote:

Oldman40k2003 wrote:

GREGOLE wrote:

Even we tend to use them as the default giant predator in our speech.

Hmmm, that actually could be useful, a sort of standard generic unit of measurement, much like how most horses don't produce exactly one unit of horsepower, but it's still a useful unit.

Nagas =/= giant.

Giant = giant.

Most nagas are not giant nagas.

Nagas ~ Human-sized.

Non-character nagas, that is, right?

any naga. for each naga someone here makes, it means theres that much more wandering around. frankly having 200 giant nagas isn't a lot anyway, not for the size felarya is. I mean its supposed to be a dimensional plane that goes on forever right?

Archmage_Bael wrote:

any naga. for each naga someone here makes, it means theres that much more wandering around. frankly having 200 giant nagas isn't a lot anyway, not for the size felarya is. I mean its supposed to be a dimensional plane that goes on forever right?

Not forever no. There's a theory on it. It goes on forever in the same way Earth does. It's round, kind of. There is a finite size to it, but it is HUGE. And nagas are common in Felarya, so are mermaids. Slug girls are less common, and so are dryads. There are still thousands across the continent we know about though.

i would think felarya is at least the size of jupiter then, but without the 3,000 x gravitational intensity that jupiter has.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

i would think felarya is at least the size of jupiter then, but without the 3,000 x gravitational intensity that jupiter has.

It may have the same surface area, but not the mass, since it is a self contained plane. See the physics thread for more info. (too lazy to get the link atm).

Anime-Junkie wrote:

Archmage_Bael wrote:

i would think felarya is at least the size of jupiter then, but without the 3,000 x gravitational intensity that jupiter has.

It may have the same surface area, but not he mass, since it is a self contained plane. See the physics thread for more info. (too lazy to get the link atm).

Yep, Felarya is a self-contained pocket dimension. It is not spherical, and it has no space around it, Here's a link to the wiki article that discusses it. http://felarya.com/wiki/index.php?title=Physics

rcs619 wrote:

Anime-Junkie wrote:

Archmage_Bael wrote:

i would think felarya is at least the size of jupiter then, but without the 3,000 x gravitational intensity that jupiter has.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

It may have the same surface area, but not he mass, since it is a self contained plane. See the physics thread for more info. (too lazy to get the link atm).

Yep, Felarya is a self-contained pocket dimension. It is not spherical, and it has no space around it, Here's a link to the wiki article that discusses it. http://felarya.com/wiki/index.php?title=Physics

yeah thats what i thought, but people keep contradicting the statements that I write.