Expanding Felarya and the timeline

I know it may be popular to adopt a tone of pessimism and bemoaning, and it is true that many locations, species and ideas are vastly underutilised, but let's not neglect to point out the positives. The active writers on dA contribute greatly to world-building, and to the increasing popularity of certain aspects of Felarya, which otherwise would be sadly ignored. I'm thinking of Globfish, for instance, who's constantly giving prominence to underutilised features - and who could perhaps do with getting a little more recognition for it.

The popularity of slug girls, who are now well-established enough to have earned their own page on the wiki (They were initially ranked under "Minor species", unless my memory is faulty), seems very much due to dA writers providing one another with mutual inspiration. Zoekin first gave them prominence as Katrika's prey, and then there was a move towards creating actual characters. There was Fish's sadly short-lived Ariol (unless she came before Katrika?), then my Vuni (the inspiration for whom I got from Zoekin), who in turn helped inspire timing2 to come up with his lovable slug girl characters (one of whom is now canon on the wiki), and more recently Globfish has put his innovative twist on it all by creating sea slug girl characters. I in turn am indebted to timing2 for helping me get more interested in tomthumbs, etc... Likewise, mantoids have become a lot more prominent thanks to people (Asuroth, among others) inspiring one another on dA. There's been, and continues to be, a healthy virtuous circle of creativity and mutual inspiration on dA, which has helped bring certain species or ideas to prominence.

Of course even more could be done. But let's at least recognise and celebrate that healthy, creative community spirit, and its achievements.

Regarding locations... There have been stories featuring uncommon locations. Timing2 uses the Great Marshes, for instance. Zoekin and Fish, I think, both popularised Bulvon Wood. Most recently, NickinAmerica wrote and drew his great comic, taking us all over the map in an unprecedented fashion, bringing the various parts of Felarya to the eyes of new readers, and hopefully inspiring some in the process. And while my main characters are based close to Ur-Sagol (which, unless I'm mistaken, wasn't actually seen all that often before I "settled" there), I've occasionally set a story in, say, Ryzlem'oire or the Malyra fen. But having said that, I think part of the reason for most stories being set in Tolmeshal is, apart from familiarity, a sense that these stories are intended to participate in a unified world. That characters in different stories, by different writers, evolve in the same space, and might occasionally bump into one another. And sometimes they do; character "sharing" is one of the positive features of world-building. You never know when Jade or Malika, not to mention Crisis of course, might pop up in some sorty set in Tolmeshal. To that extent, perhaps it should be looked upon as something positive, rather than entirely bemoaned.

Sure there are many positive things that have been achieved, but we must keep an eye on what aspects should be re-worked or just better used. And it pains me that someone like me, who wants this community alive and growing, is falling in the big mistake of using a very well known location, using generic species instead of subspecies for characters and, in general, not contributing to anything but stories that don't expand the world.

So yes, many people have achieved great things, but there is still more to go. We just can't stop when there's more to visit, more to show, more to have fun... and more for preds and prey to run around. ;P

I don't know how much more praise you can heap upon the people you named FS. I'm pretty sure everyone is aware of their talents and contributions. I'm not saying they don't deserve more praise, I'm just saying they're not in any danger of becoming obscure anytime soon.

I hope people are not thinking that I'm a squeaky wheel (even if I am), but I'm just concerned about the growth/development of Felarya's many zones and species succumbing to stagnation. There aren't many ways I can think of to prevent that, and the few ways that I can are not likely to happen.

I feel the need to say that I'm not being negative, I'm just posting my observations.

I realise that. I just wanted to make the point that things are not actually stagnant, and that the expanding pool of stories helps in that regard. And also that having characters concentrated in one region is not necessarily negative per se; in fact, it's a positive factor in some ways.

I think contests can be good for highlighting parts of the map. But we need to bear in mind that there may be less incentive for people to write about characters in an isolated area, effectively cut off from other known characters, then the reverse.

I also think that some help from karbo and his drawings wouldnt be bad for example, I discovered recently that there is not only Negav, but other cities (cant remember the name) that are quite big. even though I read the wiki about it, and may it be clear and precise, I still have no idea how those cities look like....

Krisexy26 wrote:

I also think that some help from karbo and his drawings wouldnt be bad for example, I discovered recently that there is not only Negav, but other cities (cant remember the name) that are quite big. even though I read the wiki about it, and may it be clear and precise, I still have no idea how those cities look like....

Yep. There are two other cities besides Negav that we know about (not counting Safe Harbor or the Jungle Bowl as cities, I think they're a bit too small).

We have Chiotia City, which is home to over 12,000 people. Currently its the 2nd largest known city.

There's also Kelerm over off the western side of the map. I believe Karbo has hinted that it is very large, and is closer to Negav-sized in scale. We don't know anything about it at the moment though. Its likely that Kelerm will become the 2nd largest, and push Chiotia to #3 once we get some more info on it.

Gee, I had no idea about those cities. The Wiki always confused me with how they praise Negav as the only human settlement.

I also haven't read it in a while. I guess my mind is fuzzy.

rcs619 wrote:

Yep. There are two other cities besides Negav that we know about (not counting Safe Harbor or the Jungle Bowl as cities, I think they're a bit too small).

Safe Harbour has just over 50 inhabitants. It's a village.

This further proves that we should move ourselves a bit more, there's more than Negav when it comes to cities (and yes, Safe Harbor is nothing but a village, but kinda well known). xD

Argh! I still feel bad for not having the time to help in making "the lesser known" more known. >_<