Your opinions on some changes

Evil admin Posts : 3812 Join date : 2007-12-08

Those last few months I have been considering making a few changes to Felarya. It would be pretty big ones so it's not something I would do just like that, without asking everyone's opinions on it first Smile

The first thing : The immortality.
I'm pondering about replacing it by living for very very long. The soil would still heal and regenerate things and prevent diseases, but it wouldn't be something absolute any more, expect in some cases. Why that ? I feel absolute immortality is a bit.. how to put it .. "convenient". Plus it can poses some problems in its own regards.

The other thing : the random connections
This one is a bit tricky and I'm not totally sure how to proceed at this point. I don't want to put in question the unstable nature and working of Felarya, but the point is the more it goes, the more I'm bothered by having totally innocent and unaware people stepping into Felarya in drove and getting eaten for their troubles ^^;
As I see it, the random connection could still happens but maybe more rarely. And there could be some sort of barrier to that aspect. Maybe by either having it happens mostly in certain zones, or by making the transition more obvious ( not just walking into this " jungle that wasn' there yesterday" as currently described in the wiki and not stepping in without realizing it ). I'm still in the thinking phase about that and merely sharing my thoughts about it. Of course, aware people who choose to come to Felarya by themselves are fair game.

At this point I'm only gathering opinions and thoughts, so please don't hesitate to post yours ^_^

Also I would like to take the occasion to make something clear...
Recently I have seen people being chastised for coming into Felarya for the vore >>
This is not acceptable. If somebody comes here only for the fetish, it's their absolute right. As well as somebody coming for the adventure aspect only...

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 8:10 am

Hmmm... I understand where you're getting at, but it'd be hard to change aspects like these that have been part of Felarya since the dawn of... well, Felarya. The changes may be more trouble than it's worth if they've been exploited heavily by Felarya writers.

Quote :: The first thing : The immortality.
I'm pondering about replacing that by living for very very long. The soil would still heal and regenerate things and prevent diseases, but it wouldn't be something absolute any more, expect in some cases. Why that ? I feel absolute immortality is a bit.. how to put it .. "convenient". Plus it poses some problems in its own regards.

Perhaps. Would there be any characters at the moment who have used the immortality to their advantage? If so, such characters would need to be seriously modified; their appearance and age would have to match, and they'd need to have lived within the age expectancy of that race.

Quote :: The other thing : the random connections
This one is a bit tricky and I'm not totally sure how to proceed at this point. I don't want to put in question the unstable nature and working of Felarya, but the point is the more it goes, the more I'm bothered by having totally innocent and unaware people stepping into Felarya in drove and getting eaten for their troubles ^^;
As I see it, the random connection could still happens but more rarely. And there could be some sort of barrier to that aspect. Maybe by either having it happens mostly in certain zones, or by making the transition more obvious ( not just walking into this " jungle that wasn' there yesterday" as currently described in the wiki and not stepping in without realizing it ). I'm still in the thinking phase about that. Of course, aware people who choose to come to Felarya by themselves are fair game.

Same deal. It'll be really hard to pull this off without throwing off countless origin stories, although if the change is done correctly, as just a less subtle, rarer version of its former self, it could only result in minor tweaks.

Quote :: I wonder also if there isn't a way to cut once and for all the recuring "eating children" argument, by saying that most sentient preds act like some real predators on earth who spare the youngs of their prey species, so they can breed and grow in numbers.

I really think it would depend on the predator. Of course, that is a good explanation, but I'd still think that some would see no problem with it. ^^;

Evil admin Posts : 3812 Join date : 2007-12-08

AisuKaiko wrote:: Hmmm... I understand where you're getting at, but it'd be hard to change aspects like these that have been part of Felarya since the dawn of... well, Felarya. The changes may be more trouble than it's worth if they've been exploited heavily by Felarya writers.

This is the reason why I'm being cautious on this one and why I'm looking for something satysfying Smile

And while keeping in mind the fact that it may not need change after all. At this point I'm just asking for opinions and feedbacks ^^
Thank you for giving yours Wink

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 8:27 am

You're welcome, just doing what I can to contribute ^^; I hope I was of help to you.

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 8:34 am

Perhaps with the random entry you could make it like one of the guardians "stepped in" and made it so that the portals would be less random. That way the many origin stories that exist right now wouldn't be changed yet at the same time this can be implemented as something that has literally just happened.

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 8:40 am

I agree with most changes. The immortality thing is kind of unfair, same with the random connections. I do like the idea that only certain zones would have more frequent connections.

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 9:45 am

Karbo wrote:: The first thing : The immortality.
I'm pondering about replacing it by living for very very long. The soil would still heal and regenerate things and prevent diseases, but it wouldn't be something absolute any more, expect in some cases. Why that ? I feel absolute immortality is a bit.. how to put it .. "convenient". Plus it can poses some problems in its own regards.

Immortality and eternal youth are too different things, because you can be immortal and still grow old contrary to eternal youth which mean you still remain youth. As I understand in Felarya you don't grow old and can recover from non lethal wound this correct in my opinion, and keep your youth because the soil help you to stay healthy because when you become too old you are as vulnerable as a newborn baby to disease and injuries so the soil allow you to grow old and prevent to get too old. The problem here it's the term "immortality" which is confusing. A good rephrasing have to be done.

Karbo wrote:: The other thing : the random connections
This one is a bit tricky and I'm not totally sure how to proceed at this point. I don't want to put in question the unstable nature and working of Felarya, but the point is the more it goes, the more I'm bothered by having totally innocent and unaware people stepping into Felarya in drove and getting eaten for their troubles ^^;
As I see it, the random connection could still happens but maybe more rarely. And there could be some sort of barrier to that aspect. Maybe by either having it happens mostly in certain zones, or by making the transition more obvious ( not just walking into this " jungle that wasn' there yesterday" as currently described in the wiki and not stepping in without realizing it ). I'm still in the thinking phase about that. Of course, aware people who choose to come to Felarya by themselves are fair game.

You should do some rephrasing and put out correctly your idea and be less greedy about the explanations even if it can become very long give all the details. You are surrounded by many talented people who can help you to rephrase them. I speak about Fish and Oldman they are very talented for that.

Karbo wrote:: I wonder also if there isn't a way to cut once and for all the recuring "eating children" argument, by saying that most sentient preds act like some real predators on earth who spare the youngs of their prey species, so they can breed and grow in numbers.

First all, real predators preyed on youth and weak member. The answer for the "eating children" is simple, children is too small, even if predator swallow adult children are not big enough to became prey. So giant prey give an importance to the size of their prey. They don't want them too big but not too small.

Karbo wrote:: Also I would like to take the occasion to make something clear...
Recently I have seen people being chastised for coming into Felarya for the vore >>
This is not acceptable. If somebody comes here only for the fetish, it's their absolute right. As well as somebody coming for the adventure aspect only...

It's because people tend to think having a fetish means you are weird or a bad writer. It's not true, I read excellent story where fetish where involved people make an interesting story. I have different fetish like curvy ladies with a round pot-belly and expansion. In giantess growth community for example, Alice in Wonderland or the modern remake of the attack of the 50ft woman, this people are not pedophile or crazy it's just they are fascinated by the process, in their story they make it more erotic and sensuality and give more importance to their imagination. This community starts to become more exigent and do some research to make their story more credible to the reader even they are still some inconsistencies but in the end they are fictions.
It's true the fact the story which emphasize only to the vore can become very repetitive even me who write this kind of story I become tired quickly but the fetish aspect is not responsible to all the flaws of Felarya.

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 9:52 am

Wow... I've gotta say these are major. When I read the title of this thread I was definitely not expecting them to be this big. I'm in shock. Shocked

I'll have to post a proper response later when I can think clearly, this kind of thing always affects me far too much.

Evil admin Posts : 3812 Join date : 2007-12-08

gwadahunter2222 wrote:: You should do some rephrasing and put out correctly your idea and be less greedy about the explanations even if it can become very long give all the details. You are surrounded by many talented people who can help you to rephrase them. I speak about Fish and Oldman they are very talented for that.

Well the reason why the explanations are short and vague is I'm pretty much only thinking about it at this point. nothing is clear yet and I'm here mostly only for gathering opinions ^^;

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 10:09 am

Karbo wrote:: The first thing : The immortality.
I'm pondering about replacing it by living for very very long. The soil would still heal and regenerate things and prevent diseases, but it wouldn't be something absolute any more, expect in some cases. Why that ? I feel absolute immortality is a bit.. how to put it .. "convenient". Plus it can poses some problems in its own regards.

I liked it the way it was, the orginal concept made more sense, if you just made the age barrier "very very long" i think it would just make things a little bit confuseing and complicated. Cause everyone has their own thoughts on what a "very very long time" is.

Karbo wrote:: I wonder also if there isn't a way to cut once and for all the recuring "eating children" argument, by saying that most sentient preds act like some real predators on earth who spare the youngs of their prey species, so they can breed and grow in numbers.

I remember this argument with Crisis, and even tho eating children wasnt mentioned u said it was in her nature to do so. "predators" from what i seen in the manga or numerious amount of fanart/fanfiction dont really care about the humans they eat and have zero sympathy, spareing children to them wouldnt make sense cause its giveing up a free meal, which is not in their nature -__-. Since when did predators care about humans breeding, if children were left alone in felarya they are good as dead anyways just from the harsh jungle enviroment.

"Real" predators on earth dont give a crap about how young you are, its nature.

So if this really bothers you, dont get me wrong it pisses me off to no end, Change the individual personality of the character instead of makieng a universal term that sugar coats everything

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 10:17 am

My opinion on the random connections is this:

Make them slightly rarer but also make them much more obvious, people should know that something very weird and probably dangerous has happened.
Having the connection almost completely localised would mean that the current predator territories would have to be revised.

Grand Mecha Enthusiast Posts : 3229 Join date : 2007-12-09

Very much agreed on these changes. They could use a slight tweaking here and there.

The immortality: For a while this confused me quite a bit. Perhaps we could use the suggestion given earlier, where it means you don't die, but you still age normally. That would sound like a good point to have AND I doubt it would contradict many stories, if any at all.

Random Connections: You pretty much hit the nail on the head there. By having them less frequent, but more often in certain zones, it brings a bit more mistyque to unique areas around Felarya. And when it comes to canon and stories, it wouldn't really affect them much unless someone took specific advantage of people being hurled through dimensional portals left and right at a rapid pace. So no worries there.

Eating Children: What you suggested makes perfect and infact, I wondered why you didn't say it earlier. Leaving them be to grow up and breed is a far better idea when in the mind of a predator. Though if some preds still ate them, that might reflect badly on them.

That's all i really have to say. I for one welcome these changes.

Edit: Though, to be fair, Claire also makes some great points. So I'm not sure whose side sounds more rational. This will definitely be a loooong day.

Guest

I agree on changing the Immortality to a very long lifespan, Immortality is kind of cheap and people sometimes assume that being Immortal means that you are completely immune to death, instead of just death by aging.

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 10:28 am

I'm all for most of those changes, really. To be honest, they seem more like clarifications than true changes.

Except the "eating children" thing. Listen, I know we all try to sugarcoat it, but in vore, someone dies. Some would view it as murder, really. In nature, sympathy is a foreign concept. Predators go after children all the time, as they're less likely to put up a good fight or escape. Nature is cold, despite what Disney movies and liberals try to make you believe. Sympathy is a human concept. I think that sentient predators, having human-like intelligence, could possibly feel sympathy for children, but... why would that same sympathy not extend to the father of three children back home? The random adventurer that gets nommed on his way to the Isolon Eye could have been a beloved father, and was almost definitely someone's son. It's easy for us to make the prey faceless or harder to sympathize with, but in the end, someone's dead. And they go in a very horrible and painful fashion. Which is why I portray Felarya as a darker and more evil place, since I write from a very human point of view.

I'm not saying that you HAVE to write about children being eaten, but logic dictates that if one ends up in front of a pred... well, little Timmy won't see his next birthday, and his momma's going to be short one kid. Thank the Guardians for refusing to let kind ol' Humanity tame the "beautiful" wilderness if you will, or take solace in the knowledge Timmy's going to Heaven and that his momma won't have long to mourn before she follows him. However you put it, there's no denying the lethal nature of Felarya. Compassion has no place in a vorefest.

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 10:35 am

A very important point to make:
This may divide the community, we must tread carefully.

Daejien wrote:: I agree on changing the Immortality to a very long lifespan, Immortality is kind of cheap and people sometimes assume that being Immortal means that you are completely immune to death, instead of just death by aging.

They do? I've never seen any Felarya story where people assumed that being immortal meant being invulnerable.

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 10:53 am

Also i like to add. from my previous post. that if you refering to "the predators" on earth spareing children to us then thats EVEN worse and MORE shallow....

Sure a predator can just let kids go in hopes that they breed so the predator can eat THEIR kids...... you see where i'm going with this.... its even more messed up then just eating kids in general or eating humans and not careing... seriously.

Predator "sure i'll let you go, your very young, i hope you breed so i can eat ur future family !!!!!"

like i dont understand what your trying to say.... you might as well give Crisis and her fairy friends Farmer hats, so they can start their own big happy felarya farm and start breeding humans so they can eat them when they matured....

im sorry but if ur going to make this cannon, i'm gone for good

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 11:00 am

I don't think that's what he meant. And in one of the (admittedly few, sorry) Felarya fics I read, there was a discussion about breeding humans for food. Talk about sick, right?

I myself am often disturbed by the very idea behind it all, as well. It's pretty dark when you get to the core of it. You can hide it behind cute faces and perky boobs, but in the end, vore is a fetish of questionable morality.

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 11:05 am

ZionAtriedes wrote:: I don't think that's what he meant. And in one of the (admittedly few, sorry) Felarya fics I read, there was a discussion about breeding humans for food. Talk about sick, right?

I myself am often disturbed by the very idea behind it all, as well. It's pretty dark when you get to the core of it. You can hide it behind cute faces and perky boobs, but in the end, vore is a fetish of questionable morality.

even if he didnt mean "earth predators" meaning us, the same mentality still applies.

And i know EXACTLY what fanfics ur talkin about.... The reason i'm not bashing is becuase i dont have to, to prove my point, its crystal clear.

Evil admin Posts : 3812 Join date : 2007-12-08

Well as a matter of fact, most predators don't care about humans/nekos/humanoids indeed. the majority of them see them primarily as food and live in a predatory world used to do so. So if anything, little will come out of them on that. I'm just exploring other possibilities here.

And I remind that this thread is NOT an announcement, it's more a "post your thought please" one. So please do so, but in a calm maneer I got already a bad feeling about the longevity of that thread -_-

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 11:27 am

Karbo wrote:: Well as a matter of fact, most predators don't care about humans/nekos/humanoids indeed. the majority of them see them primarily as food and live in a predatory world used to do so. So if anything, little will come out of them on that. I'm just exploring other possibilities here.

And I remind that this thread is NOT an announcement, it's more a "post your thought please" one. So please do so, but in a calm maneer I got already a bad feeling about the longevity of that thread -_-

Its ok if its not an announcement, what i said previously about leaveing if thats cannon still stands "thats my thoughts" on the subject, and thats me being calm.

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 11:29 am

Really, this entire thread is interesting, but I'd like to focus my sights upon one subject from those presented:

The child eating thing

Alright, to begin, I've not even heard of such a predatorial species here on earth that has such customs regarding the younger members of their prey species. Put quite frankly, in a setting in which you either have to be the eater or the eaten, being picky about meals due to the maturity of said food items is a bit of a foolish thing to do. Who is to say that young thing X isn't going to be the only food source encountered by predator Y in a long while? Is predator Y simply going to go hungry because "Oh, it's little, do not want"? In most rational cases I can image, the answer, is a definite no.

Furthermore, the above can primarily be applied to Earth species as much as it can Felaryan species, but Felaryan species differ in that the predators of the place have significantly higher potential for learning and such given their human intelligence. Therefor, they would better be able to sort out the logical issues with sparing something simply on a basis of age, actually INCREASING their liability to eat younger things.

Quite simply, there's no way to work around this thing, predators, realistically, shouldn't discriminate upon what they eat in most cases, because it's just a matter of eating for survival.

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 11:30 am

Claire wrote:

ZionAtriedes wrote:: I don't think that's what he meant. And in one of the (admittedly few, sorry) Felarya fics I read, there was a discussion about breeding humans for food. Talk about sick, right?

I myself am often disturbed by the very idea behind it all, as well. It's pretty dark when you get to the core of it. You can hide it behind cute faces and perky boobs, but in the end, vore is a fetish of questionable morality.

even if he didnt mean "earth predators" meaning us, the same mentality still applies.

And i know EXACTLY what fanfics ur talkin about.... The reason i'm not bashing is becuase i dont have to, to prove my point, its crystal clear.

I'm not bashing. The author didn't really favor a stance one way or another, which I respect. It was all in-character.

The only reason vore seems okay is because people make the victims less human. It's the very basis of the fetish: taking a person and dehumanizing them into a lower role, namely food. I've seen people get upset because authors wantonly killed off likable characters. But in the end, every person that's consumed is unique and feels pain. The same goes for giantess fantasies where a hot girl goes stomping through a city and crushing people like insects. Might be sexy to some, but in real life, that would be mass murder, bordering on genocide. Men, women, and children would perish in huge quantities. Kind of makes you reconsider, really.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a vorarephile and a macrophile. I find both scenarios sexy. But that doesn't mean I can't realize the seriousness of it all. I think that excluding children from the equation is admitting that vore is, at some level, evil. After all, why is it okay to kill a helpless adult but not a child? Aren't both living, breathing, sentient beings?

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 11:32 am

personally, i think you should do as you see fit. i mean, this is your world and as you can indeed ask our opinions, it's not something you HAVE to do. If you decide to make any changes i - and many others I'm sure- will gladly help you make the corrections^^

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 11:32 am

Alrighty, where to start where to start. Let's just go in order then...

1: The Immortality: I think this is a good idea. Immortality, while cool in concept really only creates more problems than it fixes. By giving set age limits, you open up a lot more options. Now there can be people and preds of many different ages, instead of hot, perfectly fit people in the prime of their youth. The healing factor would help ensure that they remain healthy and fairly fit even in their older age.

The main plus of people in Felarya being able to age and die is that it keeps the world from becoming stale. It ensures that, eventhough it happens over long periods of time, things DO change. People live and die, and new ones come in. It makes the world less stagnant. Plus, in practice...immortality kind of sucks. Who really wants to live forever? Do you think Anna would want to still be living in the same stretch of jungle 10,000 years down the line? I would go insane. The monotany would be horrible.

If this does happen though, there needs to be set "average lifespans" for different species. I imagine preds would live longer on average than humans though.

2: The random connections: Really, it wouldn't take much at all to change this. Just make it clear that the connections are not THAT common, and make it more clearer to people that they are there. So that, if a person walks into the shimmering circle in the air, its their fault. There likely could be more "sudden" types of connections that happen on rare occaisons and give someone little to no warning...but these need to be rare.

Some origins will likely need to be tweaked, but hey, we all knew that this world changes and grows. It comes with the territory.

3: The child eating: I could see most predators letting children go, either because its not worth it to eat them, or because it reminds them of when they were that big, and struggling to survive. You likely have some preds that would eat a kid, but I think having it known that most wouldn't is a good thing.

---

Anyway, I think with the proper tweaking and work, these ideas could really make things a lot more interesting on Felarya.

Subject: Re: Your opinions on some changes Sat May 08, 2010 11:34 am

I'm posting a chat-log of me and cliff discussing immortality. I thought that it had some good explanations so I've decided to post it here.

Spoiler:

TL;DR
What this change from immortality to very long life seems to do is reduce the healing effect so instead of making the body be able to heal fast enough to counteract death, it can only slow it down.
Having people able to die means that the world is less stagnant as there will be people dying and new people moving in (although i think that happens already in the forest, this means it will happen in the cities too).

Also;
Cliff told me here that the effect of the Felaryan soil has changed from directly healing to boosting the immune system.
I had no idea that this had changed, the wiki NEEDS to be updated!