ObsidianSnake - 4 weeks ago

On the white house thing: because reception and security was through sealed vehicle and a side passage, per protocol. He never saw the front. Imagine how boring this hypothetical section would've been to read!

Regarding the second thing: what is he doing? Retiring.

Mourtzouphlos - 4 weeks ago

Wait wait wait. If the new White House looks completely different than the old one, how didn't he recognize it when they went in? (Also, are they one in front of the other or back to back? Or even off to the side?)

Oh, I'm well aware that dictators are often more clownish than impressive. But they usually want something, if only power; by definition they have to be willing and able to seize and hold their position, otherwise they wouldn't [i]be[/i] dictators in the first place. He feels like Bernhard von Bulow: someone in it for the prestige, not the power. But Bulow got his position because Wilhelm II required a chancellor, and so selected an obedient figurehead, while dictators are extra-constitutional; they don't need figureheads. So what's he doing there?

Mourtzouphlos - 4 weeks ago

Don't worry, that was five weeks ago and it's gotten to the point where I can walk on it (in a walking boot) without worrying too much about how much I'm doing it at a time. That's part of why I got it out now.

ObsidianSnake - 4 weeks ago

Thanks for reading! I can't respond to everything here for one of a few reasons. Some topics you've mentioned here will be examined in future stories. I often like to let people have their own thoughts on things, rather than over-explaining them.

Regarding the vague timeline: yes, I'm depicting events relative to one another. There is a non-relative timeline of events. I even have the doc open right now, right next to this window. :)

The ambiguity of the amount of the time at the final skip is intentional. Is it good writing? Maybe not. I'd be more specific in other cases, but it works for this series of stories. I think that somebody reading these in a different order would find that last part fairy open and easy to understand. They'd know what those two were referencing.

Regarding the final fate of the last great rulers: psh, who cares? The only reason I would write a story about it would be that I was deliberately trying to bore people.

What's there to say? They got what they asked for, exactly and specifically, and then they can't leave the place. Paradise, in a box... with each other... It brings to mind a play by Oscar Wilde. You might know the one.

Regarding the portcullis stations: you're correct, and you're also correct. Without going into superfluous details, the technology creates a brief link between places, and the train goes through it. When it's not active, which is most of the time, there's a weird wall at the end of the track. It's not a spectacle to experience. Many are deeply disappointed by this.

Regarding the new white house: The worst part was that it wasn't even white. The main grand facade was designed to have three layers, with the inner layer being reflective glass and black. The middle pillars and structures are polished cut stone with mid-tone slate color palettes. The outer layer is distinctively metal and light gray. To be fair, in official documents, they didn't identify it as "the white house". The term just lingered.

"Can I just say: Calvin doesn’t feel like a dictator." Does he not seem powerful? Does he not seem unstoppable? Does he not feel super-human? Doesn't his complete cultural dominance seem inevitable? Well... no. When you look behind the curtain, they're never impressive.

ObsidianSnake - 4 weeks ago

Ank... hold on gotta look something up




NO THOSE ARE OBVIOUSLY IMPORTANT! Don't break those!
Seriously, no need to apologize. :) Joint injuries are the absolute worst, especially if you have active interests or vocations. I wish you a miraculous recovery!

Mourtzouphlos - 2 months ago

An extra layer of bureaucracy to handle things that duplicates efforts on the state and national levels - did the regime want to run things that way because they wanted to send in more loyalists with an excuse to be officious, or were they responding to a breakdown in communications or something (just like feudalism)?

What sort of information can they glean? If it's chemical, it's based on chemical reactions with the inside, and the whole point of having an epidermis is that the inside and outside don't react with each other except through highly controlled conditions.

ObsidianSnake - 2 months ago

Okay there's some things that are a bit easier for me to respond to without spoiling upcoming sections or stories, or about matters I don't have interesting commentary about. Hey, I write the stories, I'm not telling people what to think of feel here.

Regarding Leon - he's a people pleaser. Deep down, he likes to make others happy. I would argue that, ultimately, that's a neutral personality trait, with potential to be both bad and good. Also, he totally has some minor problems due to that thang, but good diet and exercise does a lot.

State / Regional Block structure - Yes, the regional blocks are administrative entities comprised of continuous multi-state regions and territorial holdings. The regime wanted to run things that way.

Regarding Eanlian predators' sense of taste - they have them, and it's more than just simple taste buds. They've evolved to eat like this, and waves of chemical information pour into their nervous system as they consume their prey.

The historical legend of the matriarch of Paxhe and the myth of the origins of the Lau are two entirely different stories. At the time of writing this comment, you can currently read the truth behind the second one. :)

Mourtzouphlos - 2 months ago

Alright, we’ve finally got back to civilization! Time for us to get to talk with someone who actually knows what’s going and get some answers and he doesn’t bother explaining anything and just sends them all off to perform various tasks. Well, it is an authoritarian dictatorship that has clearly cocked up the situation worse than Luigi Cadorna, so it makes sense that no one would want to talk about what went wrong when it was obviously their fault, and the story is a character drama so it’s not like there’s a compelling out-of-universe reason for them to find out anyway. That’s fine. It’s not like I was hoping for him to drop everything and spend half the story going on an exposition dump covering a detailed history of the Eanlian’s plan to infiltrate and subvert the US government and an analysis of how they’d successfully engineered a global takeover. That would be unreasonable.

Anyway, Leon Price as a person. We see a lot of that here, and I’m pretty sure it’s enough to get a good view of what makes him tick, but I can’t figure it out (I’m pretty sure it’s a me problem. It feels like I’m taking a test I didn’t study for at all, not like the answers aren’t actually there). Top line though: he’s a follower, not a leader. A really reliable hatchet man. The sort of person who honestly regards “I was just following orders” as completely sufficient justification and absolution for anything. Whenever he’s on his own, he goes to the big guy in the room, vows loyalty, and means it, because he does not want to be the one making decisions, he wants to be told what to do. The extremely rare sort who can be trusted with significant power in a dictatorship without any sort of risk that he’ll back a challenger or become one (no wonder he rules a quarter of the population), because his only goal is obedience and loyalty, even if he knows it’s a bad idea (his drunk speech is basically ‘we did everything wrong and everything’s fucked now, but the same people will fix it. Somehow. Unless you hold our past actions against us’). I suspect his repeated (and apparently failed) relationships tie back into this by way of him being unwilling to sever (platonic) relationships no matter the cost (which in turn help explain his popularity with those who actually meet him in person) as well as his hypertrophy (also, [i]holy shit[/i] how does he not have medical problems from that thing? The blood supply alone...). I’m rather reminded of the emperor Tiberius, in that they were both loyal subordinates who, due to their loyalty and competency, were entrusted with increasing responsibilities but never sought to be at the top because they didn’t [i]want[/i] to be, except that Tiberius was eventually ordered to take the top job due to lack of alternative candidates (and still skived off to Capri), while Leon wasn’t supposed to be in charge, he just sort of ended up here and look, here’s someone who wants to be in charge and oh how his knees just feel so much more comfortable bent before someone…

That bit with Venus is actually very revealing about the social structure of post-coup America. The things she talks about are things that actually happened in the past (good job looking all that up), but only in highly stratified societies with basically no social mobility. Regarding social class altering physical boundaries: in Victorian Britain, it was relatively common for the highest aristocrats, despite the otherwise strict social mores, to have absolutely no compunction about being naked in front of servants, since they were viewed as being more like furniture, while regarding the ‘anatomical reification of class divide’: medieval archaeologists can tell whether any skeleton they unearth is an aristocrat or peasant because the aristocrats are all much taller and larger because they always got enough to eat, while the peasants are all malnourished, and they can be dated to pre or post Renaissance/Enlightenment improvements in medicine by whether or not the nobles are in much better health than the commoners. (Although I do wonder: she says she’s really interested in Eanlian music, but the Eanlians have been restricting human access to information on Eanli. Something cultural like that would probably have a lot of avenues to convey some things they probably don’t want humans to know, while also being famously hard to fully censor)

The little stuff: You did the introduction again! Is it in the last part too? I’ll find out later.

So ‘state capital’ and ‘federal regional capital’ are apparently different things, and counties are meaningful internal units (since one being dissolved is not solely a matter of administrative convenience). I think that’s another point in the ‘neo-feudalism’ column.

So (if I’m reading this right) Johnston gets into power, then pulls a Bismarck with Indonesia to cement his popularity. Alternatively, one of hypothetical John Birch guy’s successors pulls a Napoleon III, Johnston begins forming the political groundwork for a coup, then launches it when the old government got voted out.

How does Leon Price know who Pat is already? Is ‘The Last American Communist’ [i]actually[/i] famous?

I have exactly one source for evangelical theology, but, yeah, that accords with what it says. Whatever the right wing already wants but say it’s for Jesus.

Apparently fifteen thousand people is a significant amount for Leon Price right now. California has a population of forty million. America has a population of three hundred million. Yeah, I don’t think you’re doing too well.

We actually finally get a rational debate over whether eating people is acceptable! That then immediately fizzles out and goes nowhere because one side is in an extremely poor position for it, but I think it’s still enlightening. Notably, Lord Rhes does not actually affirmatively argue that it’s [i]good[/i], he merely implies that it’s natural and inevitable (via unfounded assertion) then skips straight to criticizing the humans instead. This is classic what-aboutism, and it’s used not to establish superiority but to delegitimize the idea of it being possible for anyone to be better because everyone is horrible, and I think it’s an admission that there [i]is no[/i] rational argument for why Earth should be annexed by Eanli, which is why the Eanlians aren’t going to give the humans a meaning ful choice.

How do the Eanlians even taste anything from their prey, anyway? All they get is the outside, not any of the actual nutritious bits.

I actually agree that the habitats, [i]as presented[/i], are indeed better than the current government. It’s the bits they aren’t telling them about that tips it over into being worse.

The mother of Paxhe – is that Lau from Kiyi and the Pale One, and they’re just wrong about her species? I’m pretty sure that’s the right part of the world.

When I was reading this Lord Rhes sounded like Mel Brooks in my head. When I did it again, so did Leon Price. I have no idea why.

Some typos: His desk was grand, fourteen feed wide

It was a regional conflict, centered around a small sore the State [i]department[/i] nursed into a full gushing wound.

These men would fair worse, probably

Mourtzouphlos - 2 months ago

The first thing I’d like to say (and probably the most important), is that I think I understand Eanlian psychology better now. Yes, it’s been talked about and demonstrated plenty before, but seeing a human perspective try to overview all of that and put it into words allowed me to internalize that in a way I really hadn’t before. I don’t think I actually understand it, not really, but I understand more than I did before.

I notice that in the first few paragraphs you do the whole ‘introduce the readers to the premise’ bit. Can I ask why? It’s not like they’re going to stumble across just this one by accident; Part One is right there – if they start reading in the middle, that’s a deliberate choice.

So we’ve got the weird legality behind slavery and the really weird legality behind the habitats (the habitat jurisdiction is supreme – not even a facade of government control?). Did you map out all the details of how those worked, because I’d like to see that if you did. But, uh, that bit about forcing a sale – we’ve seen them buy slaves previously and treat them as owned prey, and I don’t believe that Eanli has a process for manumission: free prey to owned prey is a one-way street. We’ve also seen them let owned prey think they’re free until master their decides they want them now. What’s going to happen to them when the annexation is complete?

So slavery predated Johnston – I’m liking my theory about a John Birch type trying to make everything 1950 again (they probably sold it as a solution to economic problems that are absolutely, positively, definitely not our fault).

Why do you call her ‘Misses Goodyear’ instead of ‘Mrs. Goodyear’, as would be standard? (also I like that both she and her husband don’t actually do anything useful (a lawyer in a non-rule of law society is only worth their connections) but expect to be part of the elite anyways)

Kudos to you for acknowledging that some slaves are also highly skilled workers, and not just manual labor! That sort of thing is normally associated with the Romans (a highly educated slave could be, quite literally, worth their weight in gold), but it occurred in the antebellum South too, although the racial hierarchy made talking about it awkward, so it tends not to come up.

I’m curious about why Pastor Carson was (if I’m reading this right) essentially ordered by the Eanlians to move to the habitats, instead of simply being arrested like the rest of them (which they probably could do; the otter acted like not arresting Pat’s group was him being merciful, and they were forced into this at gunpoint and called the Eanlians as soon as possible, while the pastor was here willingly and supported it). The only reason I can think of is that they want him in the habitats reminding people of how much of assholes the people running things outside of Eanli are (he’s absolutely in the religious tradition that originated in the antebellum South to rationalize slavery and has been glorifying the powerful and the status quo and demonizing the powerless and the prospect of change ever since – something those who fled the status quo aren’t going to like). However, that does bring up something I don’t really think we’ve seen much of before – the impact of humans on Eanli. Even in hegemonic conquest, cultural exchange rarely goes one way, but the Eanlians don’t seem to have adopted much from any humans. The British Empire imported art, food, music, religion, philosophy back to London and the homeland, but apart from the cult in Anonymouse Sources (where it isn’t really gone into in detail, just as an aside) we don’t see that sort of thing actually happening, even when it’s likely to have. Christianity is actually a good example (not Pastor Carson’s version, which was created solely to excuse the powerful from the moral demands scripture would normally make on them, as the Eanlians have no need of that, but the not-asshole version), as it has historically, when first encountering societies that hadn’t heard of it before, spread widely enough to become at least a notable minority due to its central premise being simple, relatable, and easily explained, as well as the radical egalitarianism inherent in it and the gospel’s anti-authoritarian sentiment being very attractive to those lower on the totem pole (who indeed are often the earliest and most successful converts, historically speaking). For example, the Catholics (since we know from the conversation that they’re still around), I would expect to be among the more successful proselytizers, given their institutional heft (lots of resources for the effort), reluctance to take sides in international conflicts (no nationalist enmity), familiar feeling (to the Eanlians) ecclesiastical hierarchy, and intellectual rigor (which is itself a good example – the early church basically adopted Cicero’s idea of natural law wholesale, and it’s still an important base concept in Western philosophy, one which – as it’s not culturally bound – applies to the Eanlians just as well as humans).

The big war in East Africa – are you referring to the Congo Wars? The timeline fits (I think) and it involved a lot of East Africa, although all the actual fighting occurred in the Congo.

Why would the Eanlians be taking photos of the flag as a trophy? I would think it would be too petty for them to bother with. Is someone impeccably anal about recording everything they did? Are they making a montage of Eanli conquering human groups and need to pad it out a bit?

Well, now we know what the UEA is (no strikebuster irony…). Although America’s definitely feudalized if they’re that concerned with states “and their subordinate bodies” (Like what? Counties?) acting independently. The Ephyra unit being the best known is a joke, right? All those famous Ancient Greek cities and then a super obscure one (Where’d you even hear of it, anyway? The best I could do is Aegina, and you blow that out of the water). Also, them being called the Spartans is a highly appropriate name in that it’s a horrendously [i]in[/i]appropriate name; these people are political officers, assassins, and saboteurs; the original Spartans were pitched-battle heavy infantry and (somewhat famously) [i]horribly incompetent[/i] at literally everything else (and they weren’t even [i]that good[/i] at battles either; they relied a lot on opponents losing morale when they realized they were fighting Spartans, lost all relevance after Alexander and ended up as a glorified tourist attraction for the Romans). The only people who would choose a name like that are people who are completely ignorant of any actual history and base everything off of how well they can PR it – like fascists!

A typo (that might also change the meaning of the sentence? Or it’s just fascists being stupid?) “We’re one of the most efficient armed forces of the federal government, so we do often rely the better-equipped and more staffed departments for intelligence.”

I actually agree with OT: America [i]is[/i] the greatest empire in history, it [i]is[/i] unique, and the standard historical parallels of conquest don’t apply … except that his bosses have spent the past few decades [i]removing all of those advantages![/i] America could survive and fight back against the Eanlians. The Johnston regime couldn’t.

So the meaning of ‘sugar daddy’ has shifted over the years. I might be reading too much into this, but is that because society has grown to be highly stratified, leading to it being a practical impossibility to access things above your station or improve your lot without assistance from someone above, leading in turn to a client/patron system similar to that of the Romans, which of course would adopt/co-opt already extant language to the new kind of relationship?

On a related note, there have definitely been humans that wanted to have sex with Eanlians by now. How did the Eanlians handle it? Also, what exactly is the status of predator/prey sex in Eanli? It’s generally not done, but is it illegal? Frowned upon? Technically not illegal but everyone hates you now so you have to change your name and move away?

So the ability to take charge of a situation using solely your words is considered an exemplary skill requiring specialized training. Why do I get the feeling that’s because fascists are unable to communicate except through herding people at gunpoint and view civilian agency and initiative as inherently borderline treasonous? (And guess what sort of reaction that conditions them to have towards angry authority figures? The annexation in a nutshell, really)

The fate of the cyborgs is a perfect thematic parallel to fascism (it’s no wonder they pursued it): the idea that you can overcome normal rules and become better than everyone else, but it fails and goes horribly for you and you end up losing everything, over and over and over and over, but there’s still people lining up for it on the grounds of ‘I’m different. I’m special. It’ll work this time for [i]me[/i].’

Jesus Christ, what even [i]are[/i] Eanlian stomach acids? I know they worked fast, but inorganic material is a whole other ball game.

I like the way the owl (being out in the wilderness with no humans around) has an older translator that doesn’t quite work right. I also like the way its word choices reveal a bit more than intended (humans being babies … just like animals, while she’s ‘Mother.’ Yes, there are no implications there, I’m sure)

Why does Pat refer to the “old” Space Needle? Did they build a new one as a vanity project (typical dictator behavior)? Did the old one get destroyed somehow?

Aaaand they’ve got human kibble already. Of course. (Yes it makes logical sense based on the location’s logistical needs, same as having them ride in animal cages, but [i]still.[/i] It’s [i]thematic[/i])

I didn’t see it coming, but the ‘empathy suppressant’ being a placebo makes complete sense: empathy is really important for something as basic as discerning what someone else is thinking and is deeply rooted; removing it would be incredibly difficult, selectively removing some of it so they don’t become completely useless is way more difficult, and fascists are incompetent, hold no attachment to reality, and are very good at talking themselves into believing that something false is true just because they want it to be. It’s basically just a more sci-fi version of actual fascist indoctrination. What else would it be?

There seemed to be kind of a focus on OT in this one, the way he’s breaking free of his conditioning and actually confronting his emotions, in sort of the same way there was a focus on Pat in the first one. Is that going to be a pattern? Is the next one going to focus on Pontius? (he’s been out of the spotlight so far)

Some more typos: “I would like to confer with the Director. The situation with Albus is a startling development. He isn’t responsible for whatever happened to the Brain, but the agency going dark presented an opportunity for him to go rogue. The [i]Direction[/i] should be aware, if she isn’t already.”

The Sargent Commander’s sensors are apparently equipped for low-light battlefield situations.

The Sargent Commander’s tone and cadence of speech became eerily lucid fo a moment.

Mourtzouphlos - 2 months ago

I started to suspect that might be the case once the document I wrote it in breached five pages (at least you [i]read[/i] the whole thing; I was a bit worried I was being presumptuous). I'll be reading the next part shortly; hopefully it won't take as long to write up the analysis this time.

ObsidianSnake - 2 months ago

Thanks for the comment! :) I wish I could respond at length to this but alas I don't have the time, and also many of the things that you're interested in will continue to develop in future parts. However! There's something extremely salient that you mention that I think needs to be highlighted immediately due to its thematic and factual importance:
Yes, Eanlians have always had very large genitalia compared to Earth life. Other characters have remarked or observed it in stories prior to this one but, yes, Pat is unique in that he's the first protagonist that highlights and raises it as a topic.

Also regarding the comment thing -- Eka's Portal is a bit buggy when it comes to moderation actions. In the spirit of forgiveness and encouraging a positive environment, let's not dwell on it.

Mourtzouphlos - 2 months ago

So I’ll start with the most important thing I noticed, which is that I FUCKING CALLED IT! PROBABLY! ASSUMING THAT WHAT HAPPENS LATER STILL MATCHES AS IT’S RATHER EARLY ON AND THAT WHAT’S HAPPENING OFFSCREEN AND ISN’T GONE INTO IN DETAIL ALSO DOESN’T CONTRADICT IT SO THIS IS ACTUALLY QUITE PREMATURE BUT I’M CELEBRATING ANYWAY!

Anyway, the first thing I noticed when I was thinking through this is that Patrick’s commune’s situation is pretty similar to Clearhaven: they both were founded to provide an isolated, safe haven from societies they didn’t want to be a part of, they didn’t try and threaten those societies directly in any way, they just sought to be left alone to live their lives in peace – but that in and of itself, the prospect of an exit, the idea that the main society is not the inevitable, eternal, be-all and end-all, the realization that something different is possible, was enough of a threat just by existing that the powers that be had to shut it down hard. The Eanlians were just smarter in the way they went about it.

Which brings me to my second point, which is that Patrick is pretty much the ideal person to lead an anti-Eanlian resistance. The American dictatorship (or however you want to call it) in my opinion, narrowly beats out Eanli as a place to live based on potential. The Confederate wanna-be’s are worse (they remove that potential and make everything else worse), while Patrick represents someone in the camp of inalienable human rights, popular sovereignty, and rule of law – AKA liberal democracy, one of the most attractive and successful ideologies in history. He also has experience running a grassroots movement and hiding from authorities (in a way the government should really fucking know from overseas work – is one of your themes here that fascists are stupid? Because they are, these people are fascists, and they’re stupid), which means that he can counter them militarily (popular support and evasiveness – which he’s good at – are the keys to a successful insurgency) and ideologically (he offers a superior alternative to Eanli, so people won’t join Eanli willingly, and unwillingly brings us back to insurgency). Which gives new meaning to the way Patrick could so easily contact the Eanlians (“We were hoping to hear from you” – so they knew that he, specifically, was in the area) and the Dixie cosplayers ability to fly under the radar – they’re not (the security team pretty clearly knows they’re there), but from the point of view of extending Eanlian control, they are a positive (they drive people to join Eanli and nobody will complain when they’re conquered), so dealing with them is pretty far down the priority list, while he is a threat, one which they appear to be actively monitoring for an opportunity to neutralize in some manner.

Also regarding the fascists are stupid angle – one of the things I’ve noticed is that the methods the Eanlians are using to exert control would not work if the world had been managed remotely competently. With the partial exception of the environmental issues, everything they’re doing is something that governments, historically, and for very good reason, do not outsource if avoidable. They just don’t. They only let someone else do it if they can’t do it themselves, and even then that requires balancing ‘how much I like/trust them’ against ‘how bad would it be if no action is taken’. Starting with the environmental issues, while there are a plethora of examples of governments ignoring environmental problems, those almost all involve either short-sighted selfishness (i.e. it’s not affecting me, personally, right now, so it’s safe to ignore) or lack of ability to address the problem. Once they start affecting the people in charge, they usually get addressed at least somewhat (Parliament concluded that large scale sewer works in London were too expensive until the Great Stink of 1858 forced it to adjourn due to the smell, at which point they were approved), and when they don’t, it’s usually due to other deep flaws (the Soviets for example, hated and distrusted scientists for their attachment to objective reality over Marxist theories, leading them to institute rigid control over acceptable thinking and accepting ideologically flattering nonsense like Lysenkoism and pouring resources into fundamentally impossible projects), which are also extremely not good. Here, it seems like there is enough environmental damage that it would start having effects, but it seems to be largely the Eanlians cleaning it up, meaning that either the government lacks the ability to do so (which is bad, they absolutely should), or (as military governments are almost invariably right wing) they are too ideologically opposed to environmental regulations to acknowledge reality (which is worse).

Then there’s communication. The internet is massively decentralized by design. Radio is geographically limited by the laws of physics. The telephone, and its predecessor the telegraph, can be used to create massive networks under the control of a single entity, and we can see that they do indeed – unless it involves crossing national borders. When the telegraph (and later telephone) are invented, we see very quickly national networks being created by private companies, and while countries were perfectly happy to let these new companies largely sort each other out as long as service kept improving, they did not let other country’s companies into their territory (save for those that were effectively vassal states who let their overlord in). The only time they allowed the networks they used to be under foreign control was for international connections (where it was unavoidable); even then, they tried to maximize their own leverage; there were multiple connections under the Atlantic between America and major European countries because each wanted a direct bilateral link controlled by them. They all knew that secure, fast, long-distance communication was incredibly useful, and that being able to read someone else’s messages gave an enormous advantage over them (and they were right: the British cutting of the German trans-Atlantic cables at the start of WWI meant that the Zimmerman telegram trying to convince Mexico to declare war on America had to travel through both British and American cables, allowing the British to decode the message and give the decryption code to the Americans to check against their own copy and prove it was genuine). AT&T’s headquarters in New Jersey (as close to New York as possible without being inside nuclear blast radius) was built under the assumption that it might have to take control of the entire US network in the case of nuclear war – in which scenario it alone would represent, essentially, the US’s entire communication abilities. This is a [i]vital[/i] capability, yet the Eanlians are able to take it over with what appears to be little pushback. This can only represent lacking the ability to say no.

And now we come to the big one: the military. This is a [i]big fucking deal[/i], the sine qua non of a state – the very [i]definition[/i] of a state is an entity that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a given area. Letting a foreign entity operate militarily on your soil is one of the highest gestures of trust a country can give, because of [i]just how badly[/i] it can go for you if they turn hostile. Even a purely domestic force can be dangerous and destabilizing – the Carthaginians had to fight another war immediately after the First Punic War when the mercenaries they’d hired to fight that war showed up back home and asked for their back pay (which the Carthaginians had expected to take from Rome in the peace settlement – oopsie). And this has been known for a while! It’s not a complicated concept: if I have a gun to your head, and you don’t have a gun to mine, I can hard override your decisions whenever I want, and you can’t stop me. Which is why governments do not let anyone else operate armed forces, not unless they have no other choice – medieval feudalism came about because the central government lacked the resources to control and administrate large areas and was thus forced to devolve in exchange for (tenuous) loyalty. And we can already see that they’re failing at this before the Eanlians come in and start buying out military contracts ([i]holy shit they bought military supremacy how the fuck are you this incompetent even for fascists[/i]). Mercenaries only exist when the benefits to the government of having relatively small (since they can’t rely on government support for their logistical needs, they have to be small) armed groups around for hire outweigh the risks of them doing some banditry on the side (the traditional fallback for unemployed men of violence). This is why we see mercenary groups in Classical Greece (with all those small city-states for whom a mercenary group could be quite a helpful boost to their war effort in a pinch), but they immediately disappear into either regular armies or piracy in the post Alexander era, when the big Hellenistic powers (and later the Romans) take over, who find mercenaries to small to be useful. Likewise, they reappear in the Medieval Era, when all those low level lords are constantly conducting small-scale wars over whatever petty squabbles they have with their neighbors, then disappear again when the Early Modern Era comes in and warfare shifts to the resource-heavy gunpowder based armies. A modern army should not be using mercenaries; a modern army should not even be in a position where using mercenaries is even feasible, because creating state-relevant armed forces requires the resources of a state (the Hessians from the American Revolution were the actual army of Hesse fighting with the British in exchange for payment from the government of Britain to the government of Hesse; the infamous Wagner Group is essentially an arm of the Russian military that they pretend is independent to increase legal flexibility). If a modern state has had its capacity degraded to the point where it’s seriously considering using regular (i.e. non-state-backed) mercenary companies, it is a [i]failed state[/i] (especially since the only things a modern state could use it for – those involving civilians and no serious armed forces – are the sort of things mercenaries are [i]really bad at[/i] – during the Thirty Year’s War (the last time mercenaries were used in significant numbers) large swathes of Germany were rendered essentially depopulated and burned to the ground by looting mercenaries, since they didn’t care about collateral or long-term damage – AKA the main concerns when operating in civilian areas).

All of which [i]could be avoided[/i], and relatively easily too. Starting with the environmental damage: in real life this is the best example of allowing in foreign powers, as, for historical relative power reasons, there’s a lot of rich people in America and Europe who care about the environment and a lot of environmental damage in poor areas outside of that, and it’s the hardest to use against you, since all it requires is bringing in large numbers of civilians to civilian areas, which is rather hard to weaponize – they can’t do much directly and most of what they’d observe would be public knowledge already. Allowing them to bring in their own security forces is right out – this isn’t done in real life precisely because unless there’s an active war in the area (and sometimes even then) it would lead immediately to accusations of using it as cover for a hostile takeover of the area and straight up refusal: it’s all under the aegis of the local officials. And this is all assuming they don’t have the situation under control already, like they should at least be trying to. Then there’s communications and the military situations, for which the answer is the same (and also the easiest): just do what we’re doing right now. You said the divergence point was in the 80s, and back then, we already had a reliable communications network. We already had a way to reliably exert military control [i]over our own borders[/i]. Screw the improvements made over the past few decades (which, again, we know are possible because [i]we did them[/i]), all they had to do was [i]not fuck up what they already had[/i], then they could just refuse the Eanlian’s offers and keep on doing what they were already doing.

Which brings me to some rather interwoven threads: I suspect the Eanlians are not so much conquering as taking over a collapsing state (one which they may have had a hand in pushing over the edge), the preceding government definitely laid the groundwork for this collapse (even if the Eanlians brought it down by exploiting it’s weaknesses they didn’t put those weaknesses there), and how I suspect the timeline went (which I would really appreciate some clarity on, since there’s very few references anywhere). The initiating thought: they didn’t restrict Eanlian smartphone equivalents. Why not? That should be a very simple task, just saying no. The Eanlians could have leaned on them, but in the beginning they lack leverage apart from military force, which even using as a threat would make friendly relations impossible. More likely, they were afraid of the domestic pushback from forbidding their population from upgrading their flip phones to smartphones, and this, I suspect, was because of the nature of 21st century authoritarianism. Over the past several decades, the ability of information to flow has become vastly easier. As a result, the ability to keep your populace from seeing information that contradicts the official narrative has become much harder to achieve. As such, modern authoritarians do not try and control their populations by getting them to believe an official narrative as truth. Instead, they try to control them by overloading them with mutually contradictory information until they give up on the idea of anyone telling the truth at all, and thus having no reason to side with a dissident over the regime – the infamous ‘flood the zone with shit’ strategy. This has advantages in that it meshes well with the current media environment and takes a lot of concentrated effort to dispel, but it also leaves the population with no real attachment to the regime – they may not care enough to topple it, but they also don’t care enough to save it. Instead, they form an implicit bargain – the regime gets to stay in power as long as the main bulk of the population isn’t targeted by the regime directly. This is mostly reliable, insofar as it goes, but also extremely shallow, since the state now can’t rely on the citizenry to make sacrifices. Contrast America in WWII, where the populace volunteered for the armed forces in high levels, didn’t complain about the existence of the draft, and willingly accepted rationing, with Putin’s current war against Ukraine, where he’s having trouble getting enough men and materiel but is unwilling to resort to the draft and to even ask the populace to contribute more, because that would break the bargain, and he just got a new houseguest who can tell him how quickly it can go bad when apathy kicks in against you. Thus the populace is accustomed to consumer goods flowing freely, and they will not accept the state telling them not to buy certain ones for the greater good, because that is not a legitimate claim the state has on them, and they will not obey it. They can be made to obey it, possibly, at great effort and risk, by turning the army on them, but that requires maintaining and supplying a large and loyal enough army to directly compel the entire population, as well as opening up a vulnerability to another flaw of this approach, which is that it has an obvious centrifugal effect, in that if another government marches in and declares themselves in charge, the populace – if they offer the same bargain – still doesn’t care (indeed, this basically what happens with the Eanlians – who cares if your unaccountable master changes from a human to a space furry? That’s the Eanlian’s biggest advantage right there, and they weren’t the ones responsible for it). If the army is busy compelling the obedience of the population when they do this…? As a result, this sort of regime is extremely brittle – once they lose local military superiority, they’re gone, and they’re significantly constrained in their domestic policy choices, especially once you throw in the need to maintain army loyalty, which is, after all, composed of citizens.

That explains how the Eanlians were able to just sort of show up and move in and be accepted, while the governments weren’t able to stop them, so here’s what I think the timeline was. (Also, I think the timeline is really important because an age cohort’s life experiences do shape their behavior to a significant degree: the social movements of the 60’s occurred worldwide when the post-war generation became old enough to be politically active, Russia targets those who grew up under the Soviet Union when recruiting agents in Eastern Europe and those who grew up after its fall in Western Europe and America, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re seeing a rise in the far-right now that WWII is passing out of living memory). You’ve said the timeline diverged in the 80s, so: The 80s were a time of conservative backlash to the social advances of the civil rights movement, feminist movement, gay rights movement, etc. Instead of Reagan and his sunny, Morning Again In America, no need to worry, everything is currently fine approach, the avatar of the decade is one of the John Birch Society types, the kind that spent the 50s shrieking that the civil rights movement was godless communism that needed to be purged from America with extreme prejudice before we’re all taken over by mixed-race Satan worshipers, and then [i]kept on doing that until the late 70s[/i] (when someone finally managed to bludgeon him over the head with the concept of a euphemism). Once elected, he also does a military buildup, same as Reagan, the Soviets match him, same as Reagan, unlike Reagan he doesn’t work on arms control, viewing it as an anti-American plot (since any relative or absolute reduction in American military might is ipso facto bad) and abolishes all environmental regulation (a communist plot to harm the economy). The Soviet’s internal politics happen the same, Mikhail Gorbachev (not-at-all coincidentally, the first Soviet leader not born under the Tsars) is once again installed, withdraws the military from the Warsaw Pact, and precipitates the Soviet Union’s collapse, and here’s where things really begin to change. America in its superpower era has a tendency to view geopolitical success as 100% validating everything about America. In the post-war era, Americans saw their society as basically perfect with nothing for anyone to seriously complain about, and then the civil rights movement came knocking, because no, you’ve got some pretty big flaws that You. Need. To. Address. Right. Now. Likewise, when the Soviet Union collapsed, it was seen as proving that not just liberal democracy but Reaganomics was the ideal system of governance, and that nobody could ever doubt that ever again (Francis Fukuyama famously wrote ‘The End of History’, arguing that we’d solved everything and nothing important would happen anymore). As a result, the US then proceeded to spread the gospel of capitalism and democracy far and wide, and were met with general reception (after all, the main competitor had just collapsed ignominiously while the US was still going strong). Then, of course, the 2000s came, and all the geopolitical and social problems that were going to be solved so easily turned out to be quite a lot thornier than they looked (or as I like to put it, the 90s were a mindless party, and the 2000s were the 90s hangover) and the 90s came to be seen as an era of astonishing hubris (which, frankly, should have been obvious at the time – the breakup of the Soviet Union was handled abysmally: instead of engaging in any serious economic planning for the restructuring of the entire Soviet economy and formation of new countries they just sold everything as-is, piecemeal, to the highest bidder (who were usually midlevel KGB people – which didn’t help), resulting in a decade of shortages at best, complete collapse at worst, and overall chaos and a much worse experience than they’d had under the Soviet Union – Putin’s initial popularity was based on ‘I brought us out of the 90s’). Something similar happens here, but instead of validating liberal democracy and laissez faire economics, it validates far right conspiracy theories and thinly veiled racism – which America then does it’s best to export. The Operation Condor crowd and their ilk seize on the excuse to persecute democratic movements as ‘communist’, while the ethnic conflicts of the late 90s are turbocharged by the conspiracies and excuses for racism that work just as well outside America, and through it all America’s official stance is that it doesn’t count if they’re commies. Inside America, the degradation of the civil service due to loyalty purges, increasing corruption, and an inability to address actual problems instead of crackpot conspiracy theories, environmental disasters that are obviously tied back to the rejection of environmental science as a communist plot, an economy that’s only regulated for the benefit of rent-seekers, and an increasingly heavy police crackdown on ‘domestic terrorists who are definitely not peaceful protesters’ lead to a shock loss for the regime (my guess is 2008, as Patrick’s group had access to end to end encryption when they were operating shortly after Johnston came to power, and that started being available sometime around 2010). The then-president steps down peacefully, but the army, which has been deliberately filled with the sort of people who think the Geneva Convention is a communist plot to hamstring American military might, is extremely unhappy at the prospect of accountability, so all those people who have been happily murdering democratic activists to prop up a brutal right-wing military dictatorship overseas come home to do the same thing there. Johnston emerges as the leader and marches on Washington; the remnants of the old regime aren’t willing to fight and the incoming administration isn’t organized enough to put up any serious resistance. He announces that the civilian leadership has failed to stop the communists from rigging the election and taking over, so henceforth it is clear that the military, in the person of him, must lead the country as the only people capable of safeguarding it. This is not popular, and in the ensuing fighting, America withdraws its forces back home and concentrates its resources on rebuilding (which it can’t do properly, having gone full on authoritarian) and leaving the dictatorships it’d been propping up vulnerable, leading to a series of revolutions and wars as various groups take advantage of each other’s weakness, none of them having been able to fully consolidate, while the various WMDs America has been handing out to its clients/allies like candy start being used in earnest, which just makes the whole thing worse. Europe has been able to keep itself stable through all this, but is too busy defending its own borders from incursions and dealing with the flow of refugees to offer the rest of the world any help. The fighting is just beginning to die down a little when Eanli shows up in the mid 2020s (a couple years before Patrick comes out of hiding for twenty years, which he started circa 2010), bringing us to this story circa 2030.

Now, regarding the annexation: there are two major points where the Eanlians will have the most difficult job and resistance will be maximized (and are therefore of the greatest interest as to just how they pulled that off). The second (chronologically) will be after they’ve finished taken over and are ready to allow free travel between Earth and Eanli, when they finally break it to the humans that hunting hours are a thing. In other words, it’s a ‘To Serve Man’ situation, AKA the classic low-inventiveness way to show that your aliens are evil (apart from having them be slavers, of course – which the Eanlians are as well!). This is, to humans, evil. It is [i]unquestionably[/i] evil. It is the kind of evil that the first contact era governments of Earth would not dare countenance, not just because there are some things that even they consider beyond the pale, but because the public [i]would not stand for it[/i] – even for fascists there are some crimes they can’t spin away, some taboos that hold even in the darkest depths. And when the humans find out what they’ve unwillingly signed up for, that they’ve been sold a bill of goods? The natural result is massive resistance from all corners, resistance that might very well spread back to Eanli proper or attract prey to Earth to help out – after all, even after millennia of social conditioning that predation is going to happen somewhere, prey still desperately want it to not happen to [i]them[/i]. The prospect of abolishing it entirely? Tempting. Since they aren’t going with the ‘take all their children and inculturate them directly with our beliefs’ plan, they must have some way to convince the populace at large that this is a normal, natural, and above all [i]legitimate[/i] way of doing things. A tall order, but one they apparently have a plan for.

The first one (chronologically) is the one that is apparently just finishing up: the transfer of governmental authority from the human’s governments to the Eanlian governments. This is much simpler to find parallels for, since it doesn’t involve anything fantastical, and what we find is that (if we ignore territorial swaps as distinct from one way transfers) governments [i]really, really, hate[/i] doing this. It goes against their entire raison d’etre, and there are basically no examples where governments do this if they have any other choice (e.g. Basil the Bulgar-slayer had the Venetians take over the administration of Dalmatia under Byzantine suzerainty after Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria’s westward expansion cut the overland route, meaning the Venetians with their navy were the only ones who [i]could[/i] exercise control there – while as expected the Ventians fairly quickly started viewing themselves as the actual owners of Dalmatia and ceased forwarding taxes, the alternative was losing control of Dalmatia [i]anyway[/i] and getting nothing in return). As a result, most examples fall into one of two categories: the benefiting state has superior military capabilities (demonstrated via winning a war or gunboat diplomacy) or (as per the example above) the state losing its capability to retain its authority and trying to minimize the loss. Based on the willing population transfer (people don’t [i]like[/i] being conquered, and usually try and flee conquerors, not flock to their strongholds), Pontius’s statement that national borders don’t really exist anymore, and the general decrepit vibe, it looks to be the latter. However, we haven’t really seen enough to be sure of what exactly is happening; the previous story was still in the stage where the Eanlians held no more formal powers than any other citizen; all they were doing was selling cheap advanced technology and paying generous salaries. The time skip covers the start of the territorial acquisitions (which, to be perfectly honest, I would rather like to have explored the politics of in detail, but then it would have been a political story, and while I [i]quite like[/i] political stories like that – this is a vore site), so we haven’t seen how that’s going, other than that it apparently is (although I expect (and hope) that we’ll be getting a good after-the-fact analysis once they make it to civilization; how to replace one government with another is something that a communist would naturally have spent a lot of time thinking about and take a great deal of interest in). My theory (going in, which hasn’t been disproved yet) was that the Eanlians would manipulate the humans and play them off against each other, making agreements with some to take care of their enemies for them, which of course would require boots on the ground. Then behind the scenes they would arrange for some of the other enemy groups to become more of a danger (probably by covert sabotage of their allies), or for their human partners to have a schism, and suddenly Eanlian support is worth a great deal more and the Eanlians demand a commensurate amount in return, which the humans are unable to refuse. Rince and repeat until eventually their partners are completely assimilated, polities which refused to compromise their independence have been overrun by armed groups herded towards them by the Eanlians, and the only other people left are Neo-Nazis and the like, at which point they crush the remaining opposition to widespread approval. This would also help introduce the idea of them eating people in an acceptable manner (who cares if they’re eaten? They’re Nazis). This does seem to fit at least so far, but there are other considerations – while the general milieu here seems worse than in the previous story, that could be because that was in the capital and this is in the sticks. In addition, the habitats the Eanlians are building seem to be concentrated in the large population centers, which yes would be some of the best locations to build in – but that’s also why the local government wouldn’t want to give them up, and they appear too intact for the Eanlians to have that much leverage over them. It’s most likely some form of economic coercion, as military threats are likely to backfire (dictators are notoriously egotistical and thin-skinned) and military dictatorships tend to have economic problems. However, the endgoal is to completely annex the territory, which economic coercion [i]cannot accomplish[/i] – a bankrupt dictator is still a dictator – unless they precipitate a collapse so bad as to completely eliminate their logistics capacity. That being said, that’s much easier said then done, and even if they [i]do[/i] manage it that [i]still[/i] leaves quite a lot of heavily armed people (based on the relative sizes, far more than they can control) just wandering about the countryside, AKA an instant bandit crisis (and because of the self-sorting effect, they will be the most anti-Eanlian members of society). Obviously, this is far from ideal, meaning they must have some sort of plan to usurp the authority of the remaining government [i]and then have the remaining population accept them[/i]. Which, I suspect, is what this story will be about.

Various small things: How does Eanli compare to Earth, technology-wise? I’d been assuming that the portcullis was in the same time period as reformation, but apparently not. What’s the progression there?

What’s the legal status of the habitats? They can’t be fully Eanli, as hunting hours aren’t implemented yet, and formal legal takeover would come near the end of an indigenous collapse and foreign annexation (which, while it appears to be rapidly approaching, isn’t there yet)

On the Eanlians having, apparently, really big testicles: is that new? I don’t remember that being mentioned before. Or is it just that Patrick is the first person so far to be in a position to both observe that and find it noteworthy.

Apparently anyone can just walk onto a military base in this timeline. They must be very confident in their spy network catching people before they can do anything. Or incompetent.

‘Subprofessionals’ – Ah, the old ‘define something out of existence to avoid having to deal with it’ strategy. I was immediately reminded of modern Republicans and trans people – was that intentional?

America’s refeudalized, hasn’t it? We’ve seen they’re desperately lacking in military strength (see above) and have political actors with major independent support bases and significant autonomy from the central government. Feudalism was the former leading to the latter.

The federal government here really doesn’t get how people work, do they? Pontius insisting that he can be trained out of sleep deprivation, Spartan’s matter-of-fact statements that humans are evolving out of empathy – really? The key ingredient in social cooperation, AKA the sole reason a solidly second tier, physically unimpressive ape rose to unquestioned dominance of the planet being gotten rid of is a [i]good[/i] thing? These people are [i]really [/i]drinking the cult of machismo’s kool-aid.

“Maybe rewarding the elimination of internal enemies inevitably leads to aimless violence.” Gee, you [i]think[/i]? Liberal democracy was invented precisely [i]because[/i] that sort of thing elevates otherwise petty issues that you can absolutely ignore into life-or-death issues worth plunging the country into civil war over. Civil wars are [i]bad[/i]. If an ideology leads to a lot of civil wars, it is a [i]bad ideology.[/i]

Can I just say: the Foundationists. You really nailed that sort right-wing fever swamp movement: the way they interact with others, their internal politics, the highly specific ways they’ve lost touch with reality.

Is Patrick, like, famous? The Last American Communist – that seems like they’ve heard of him before, like he’s notable.

Patrick knows a lot more about history than anyone else, and he hasn’t brought up anything really complicated yet. I’m guessing it’s because he’s the only one who grew up before Johnston started ideologically purging the education system.

I’m pretty sure that if you ignore trivial statements (This is New Sumnerton), literally every statement Albus makes is either stupid or wrong or both. No wonder even this government didn’t want him. (Or possibly the better analyst than spy thing was an insult. That’s also possible.)

Spartan being officially part of the Union Enforcement Agency: is that union as in Untied States, or union as in strike busters, because that would be a hell of a lot of irony for the latter.

That bit where the security otter talks about Patrick being brave for him? He totally wants to take him as prey, doesn’t he? That’s how Eanlians act when they meet prey they’d like.

‘Pontius looked at the phone in Pat’s hand. “That thing is a class one risk, Pat.”’ He’s learning! There might still be hope after all. For it not to be a foregone conclusion, I mean.

Some typos: in the diner, Pontius says he’s unable to contact his handler “though any means.”

When they’re talking about secure in-person communications, Pontius says “Field word, is of vital importance”

And finally something technical: I noticed that when I saw it in the ‘Latest Writing’ list it had a comment, but when I went directly to the story it didn’t, and when I checked the author’s latest comment list it wasn’t there either. Is that a visibility thing? Do you know how that works?

Mourtzouphlos - 2 months ago

In my defense, like I said earlier, I've been thinking about this a LOT, which means I have a lot of thoughts and they all wanted to take the opportunity to come out ... so I just wrote them all and didn't stop until there weren't any more wanting out. And, here it is.

fire238 - 2 months ago

I really don't know why I read these. I always get so angry my hands start shaking.

ObsidianSnake - 9 months ago

These stars are very alien as beings/objects, even peculiar compared to our "mundane" stars. I didn't want to over-create terminology here. There's a balance to strike between the readers understanding things at the right time, the stars' magnificent semi-novel nature, and Vesly's mortal perspective. It's a fair critique to say I maybe under-baked in this department. Oh, well.

Regarding old Orange, there's novel processes at play here that we'd have to use a litany of terms and metaphors in order to sculpt something to the truth. And that sounds about as boring as he is. Anyway, the stars are Awesome, but they're action and experience-oriented. Even when refracted out into the tiniest spots, into something that can experience life on our scale in a meaningful way, even those individuals have complexity, which is why they're fun. ...Except him, he's still kinda boring.

Dr. Vesly is a very intelligent man, but he often misses social cues. He also tends to hyper-focus when the situation involves a subject that he's passionate about. But consider it another way: he learned all of this information because he is who is, annoying parts and all.

And the Hunter tolerates him, so that has to mean something.

Mourtzouphlos - 9 months ago

Could that become a regular thing? Humans who are about to die deciding to give themselves to one of the starfolk in hopes of continuing in some sort of existence? I mean, it's better than dying right? Why not?

Mourtzouphlos - 9 months ago

Well that was an interesting look at the worldbuilding. I kept trying to match what she was describing with the actual stellar life cycle. Is the fate of the unhatched eggs supposed to be brown dwarfs? Also, why did she use the term supernova? It's unlikely that the stars themselves would call it something like that, since the term originated from describing the phenomenon of extremely (super) bright new (nova) stars suddenly appearing and then going away, but he didn't understand it, so she can't be using the local word for it. Why not just say 'exploded'? It's relatively accurate and easily understood.

The Orange One's fate was interesting. It sounded earlier like the stars could keep those they ate in indefinite stasis, but that came off more like integrating their consciousness. Is it a matter of time, or size maybe? How much of him and his memories can she access? Are there some sort of master archivists somewhere who've passed on all their memories to a successor since the dawn of time?

And then there's the doctor, carelessly pushing onto sensitive subjects ... he's lucky she likes him; it wouldn't be unreasonable to get upset, especially after she showed a desire to change topics (he even noted the star she described didn't appear to be there anymore).

Mechdragon1k - 9 months ago

Wonder if Vespucci while old or sick, would feed Lady morning.

ObsidianSnake - 9 months ago

Thanks! This kind of event isn't something that anyone thinks about in this setting, but it also isn't a complete shock that the celestial refractions can do it. That leads to some unique and fun reactions!

Jakakhan - 9 months ago

Just jumping in here, but I love the setting and background in this one. Gives a lot more life and structure to a vore piece. Also, nice to see their hesitation and disbelief as the sentence is carried out without going into full panic. ...all the time at least.

ObsidianSnake - 9 months ago

Things are revealed as you go, that's how stories work. If I just started telling people stuff about the setting in the notes all the time, it turns into inert trivia.

Like: hags are kinda like nest parasites. You'd probably think, 'okay.' But what if -- and stick with me here! -- it was explored in a story?

Mourtzouphlos - 9 months ago

I forgot to put this in the first go, but what is a Writ of Seeing? It's compared to a warrant, which is just an official decision to arrest someone, but he states that them being guilty is now officially settled fact, skipping the trial. What's the process for getting one? Anything operating that quickly and without the accused's involvement would seem to have some pretty big and obvious fail points, but they care a lot about society working fairly. Also, "going back to that"? I would think that Besmoroth would really like being able to just declare someone guilty of whatever they wanted at any time. What other system would they use?

Mourtzouphlos - 9 months ago

This reminded me a lot of Bravery Test, at least in terms of structure (teenagers deciding to do something stupid, one of them being the driving force behind the idea, one of them knowing it's a bad idea but not willing to ditch their friends, the "I totally got this", the reality check, the confrontation with imminent consequences shepherded by those with control over the situation).

What is Brenyon? He's described as looking "mostly human" and is specifically contrasted as a "mixed-blood" human as opposed to a "full-blood" human, but we aren't given any non-human details about his appearance, and there hasn't been anything earlier about any sort of mixed species. Is that common? How many species even are there? At first it appeared that there were only humans, but the last batch added canines and this one adds sheep. Are they just normally found elsewhere?

Randomness - 4 months ago

This was great!

ObsidianSnake - 9 months ago

Solid observation on the name of the locale. If this text field supported full unicode you'd be looking at a gold star here.

Sadly, for now, I am batch-less. I got no batches. :C But that's okay. I'm still interested in writing, just exploring other stuff right now.

Knowing that there's enough sickos genuinely excited ha-ha Yes! YES! for the kind of thing the Chronea setting does is HoRRIfING and also motivating. Obviously, I had grouped some other story concepts with this one, and now I can be assured that there's audience interest in them.

Anyway, I can't leave this site. Everyone here is so fucked up -- I always feel at home :)

Mourtzouphlos - 9 months ago

Goddamnit. You announce an indefinite hiatus and then you drop something like this? You are such a tease. I don't suppose you've still got some more waiting to upload in another batch, do you?

I might have mentioned this before, but I'm very interested in societal organization, and you do that very well, and it shows here. There's a clear sense of hierarchy (at least five ranks mentioned) as well as an incentive structure to fall in line and not rock the boat (you'll rank up and get more privileges) and a consistent internal justification (run the risks now, reap the rewards later).

The bit about clothes was interesting: why would wearing more clothes become more indecent over time? The digestable, flavorless fabric is likely relatively new, and would make it more convenient for the predators for prey to wear clothes, while the picture implies there's a rank aspect to it: prey have to be ready to always be eaten, but they act as if a predator wearing such a thing would be frowned upon today.

The entire plot is also suffused with a sense of deference towards the elders and apathy towards any contraindications. The justification given is that she has to attend the town hall meeting, and doesn't have time to get another meal, but then at the end she has plenty of time, and she doesn't actually plan on doing anything there, just sitting off to the side and knitting. The staff had to have actively planned for this to happen - a single hallway with no other exits, locking the door to the auditorium immediately after the last students left and then unlocking it after she was done, the front doors locked and programmed only to open for her - yet despite destroying everything they'd worked for over the past four years in a way that can't be called anything but deliberate, premeditated killing, they don't seem bothered at all. It's even implied that their parents knew about it as well, yet everyone still shows up to the graduation despite the pointlessness of it all, apparently solely because she wanted it to go that way.

Two last notes: is the name Fallowfield a hint? She donated the land, and is involved in the school, whose classes have been getting bigger. Did she let her fields go fallow in order to be more productive later on? Is she still a farmer, just of prey?
The last couple of lines: "It made her and others happy, and that's what's important." Brilliant summation of the worldview: all that matters is what the elders want. The bit just before that though, is more subtle, but also interesting. It read to me as something like "The chancellor was well aware of the king's policies, and was equally aware of the penalties for disobeying his orders, but always made sure to keep the king fully informed of all the details, so that if he ever did have to make a decision, the king would see to it that he made the correct one, or would at least find it difficult to pin the blame on him." The seniors after all, may be quite old, but they aren't yet full elders.

VincentShadowScale - 9 months ago

heh can't help being vorny to eat a crowd of people for breakfast >w>

ObsidianSnake - 9 months ago

I wouldn't want to be in this setting at all myself, but I love your enthusiasm!

Mourtzouphlos - 9 months ago

/i not \i

Mourtzouphlos - 9 months ago

Oooohhhhhhhhhh! [i]That's[i/] what it was! I thought you were talking about her eating habits. No, I see it now. That makes a lot more sense. I would argue about it being more improper though, as their professional relationship had ended before anything romantic began, while Beya apparently had them coexisting.

ObsidianSnake - 9 months ago

Yeah, in a world where multi-child births are commonly the norm, one would expect quite a few names like that. Actually, that's common of human names, too. First and second-born children often end up with those.

Regarding Vett's impropriety: he chased after his employer to put the moves on him. That is maybe a little questionable for a roadie to do, even if the tour was concluding. He shot his shot, anyway, and it turned out unimaginably well for both of them. That's extremely similar to what was going on with Beya.

Mourtzouphlos - 9 months ago

Naming your eldest child Preema - real creative there Suzan.

Fair enough! It's just that I wouldn't have come up with names in that case and I wondered if there was a specific reason for it.

That's true, but you bring up the concept of a matter printing machine in a society of extreme scarcity and my inner economic historian starts to get [i]excited[/i].

I thought this was a joke, but at the very end: "There as conflict in her eyes, but humility won." I don't remember that being there. Am I going mad? [i]What is happening!?[/i]

It is! I could really tell that they are. Like I said, emotional vore is the best vore.

Oh, I could tell. I was speaking more of at the beginning (they both mature over the story). I don't doubt that now that her eyes are opened she's not going to ignore what she sees. Interestingly, while I did notice that it was corporate putting the kibosh on that relationship, I didn't connect it with her change in perspective. Did having her own life so irresistibly altered by those surrounding her in order to fit the accepted template help give her some empathy for those who have even less choice? Also, what did Vett do? He wasn't a predator at any point, only prey, and it's not like he had anything to do with getting the situation to that point. I'm not trying to disagree with you, I simply don't know what you're referring to.

I just suddenly had a vision of the band achieving a big career success, securing a meeting with one of the real movers and shakers, make or break careers with a single sentence types, and Haza walks into the room, takes one look, and says "Oh, so that's who you were." And Vett just starts rolling on the floor laughing, "Three fucking years I've been waiting for that payoff!"

ObsidianSnake - 9 months ago

"Haza, Beya, Preema, Korin, Etith, and Deniv" That's the complete set, yes! If you were curious about seniority, it goes Preema, Korin, Etith, Deniv, Beya, then Haza. Apparently, it's important for social dynamics and allocation of responsibilities...? Though not as much for adults.

Regarding the anthro-earth thing going on: I wanted these stories to be more grounded in the world that people know, so the inhabitants' activities and drama have heavy impact. It hits different if it's a room full of Californians the guy ate. Also, I don't get bonus points for over-working this kind of thing.

The reformation system is an international public work, and I think an outsider culture would correctly identify it as an "out of place artifact". The tech and social structure around it has its own arc, but it isn't a dramatic one. These aren't really science fiction stories, per se. These aren't About That.

But of course in Heaven's Black, there should be dark angels, no? It's a hardcore BDSM and adult playground in LA, you KNOW it's going to be on that pretentious bullshit. Maybe it isn't pretentious, though? The staff are provably competent, despite their eccentricity.

Regarding the typo: Thanks for letting me know. I've re-uploaded this story. Oh, no, I didn't fix the mistake; I've inserted another one in a different section. :)

Every single predator in these stories are intended to be different from one another. Even among the Antina siblings, with their extremely similar bodies, possess different drives, preferences, and feelings. Cheh Misuba, for instance, is entirely different in her relationship to what she does as Suzan, even though they appear from a third perspective to be the same kind of thing. I hope that it's part of the charm of this collection.

Beya's a free spirit and an absolute know-it-all. In the fullness of time, however, she is reasonable. She means it when she says that she's going to ensure her favorite eateries are backed by an ethical structure, at least as much as possible. She would be someone that could do so. Additionally, rather than just eating people, she's also accepting a nice helping of humble pie in this story. It's not heavily explored, but she's going through some stuff. It isn't a break-up, but rather it was a broken-up, an act done by other people, groups, acting in their own self-interest. Consider, also: Vett did a really similar thing. Worse, in terms of propriety. Beya's eyesight might be limited, because she's a shrew, but she sees that perfectly clearly, and we can obviously see what she thinks of it at the end of the story. So, what's Beya going to do, regarding her situation...? Well, I'm writing other things, so it's for interested parties to hypothesize about.

Excellent observation that Preema and Suzan agreed to lessen the secrecy in their family, yet Haza bears the brunt of it, still. And apparently, Haza doesn't know everything, after all. It's also possible that some of what Haza was hearing was from fallout of the conversations between Preema and Suzan, but it feels different from being so distant.

Some of those secrets might be more open than Haza believes. That's the thing about secrets and information in general: it doesn't come with a rarity indicator. Like, "ooh, a purple secret, only a select few people know this one." Haza has a couple of those, sure, but he doesn't know what they are. I mean, this is the same guy that ate the single most powerful person in the entertainment industry with his penis, after making her get down on the ground and grovel for it, and is basically unaware that he did that. (Big independent artist win!) He's a sharp guy but his vision of things isn't 100% reliable.

ObsidianSnake - 10 months ago

The stellar refractions are parts of a whole, the parts that wanted to be themselves. Self-discovery is a natural and desired result. That can be a little scary, sometimes.

Mourtzouphlos - 10 months ago

Interesting... you wouldn't expect to see one of them making a mistake like that. Knowing how to act in order to get a desired outcome for everyone is their thing, after all. But we're all only human (sort of) and at least Matronna was able to fix this. I'm sure this won't have any consequences down the line either.

leonthegreat - 10 months ago

Interesting. Glad to see a continuation of that wishea story. I guess they could tell he wasnt all bad, hence why they treates him coldy but not cruelly.

ObsidianSnake - 10 months ago

Yeah, he knows that circumstances are mostly what made him, but what is anybody supposed to do about it? If we were from where he came from, a lot of us would end up a lot like him.

Y-you know, in society, not probably... that other thing, that's a Schaida-specific kind of thing.

Mourtzouphlos - 10 months ago

So they can still kind of hear and maybe grant wishes! Interesting. I'm sure this won't have consequences later on.

Schaida's an interesting character. Full of guilt with no regret (not much choice, after all) and no way to atone. Not much self-esteem, either. Honestly, this is probably the best way this could have gone: he's alive(ish) with someone who cares and will actually try to help.

ObsidianSnake - 10 months ago

Ah, I understand what you meant, now.

Wanu's foolishness is specific. His assessments are often slanted, in a juvenile kind of way. Some of that is intellectual laziness, too.

Then again, if somebody challenged him directly on this subject, at around that time in his character development, maybe he would've come up with some stellar rationalizations, good enough that some people might even find them convincing. Hell, maybe he would've convinced himself that he actually believed what he was arguing. So, I think I agree with what you're saying, at least in the general case. It's just that isn't the conditions that Wanu was operating under, inside his own head.

Mourtzouphlos - 10 months ago

That makes sense (like I said, I've never had a problem with that sort of thing).

What I meant was, it was phrased in such a way that made it clear that you, the author, were sending a message about how this character thinks, in that it's immediately obvious that it's not actually true. Someone who actually believed it would phrase it more like "the (insert conspiracy group) didn't like to talk about it, but the data was there if you knew where to look"; people will pretty much always attempt to present their own beliefs in the most flattering light or at least a reasonably good one, rather than a bad one.

ObsidianSnake - 10 months ago

The warning is more for those with the same types of insecurities as Wanu. For those that identify immediately with Wanu, right at the opening, this story has the potential to really crawl under their skin, and I didn't want them to blow up my inbox over it. So, I placed a Dead Dove warning.

The bit about Wanu subscribing to speciest theories is the outcome of his insecurities and how he handled them up to that point. It all makes him unpleasant, sure, but also -- why is he like that? Why is anyone like that?

Anyway, just to be completely clear, I will make an authorial message here: bigotry sucks. I'm comfortable with being blunt about that. And the Carniverse stories are all about assumptions, hidden desires, social dynamics, and yes, prejudice. There's only so many of these I could write before dumb phrenology-level pseudo-science justifications for prejudice is at least alluded to. Of course it would be within a character like Wanu.

Mourtzouphlos - 10 months ago

Oh-ho! A new family member this time. I'll admit I wasn't expecting that. I can definitely see how he fits in though, both in the themes of the series and in his family.

I can say though, it was not nearly as - I'm not entirely sure how to put this - hard-hitting? visceral? intense? as the description made it sound, at least to me; it was much more subtle and emotional (slow-boil was correct though). Possibly it's because I've never really had to struggle with that sort of feeling, but from the beginning to the end I read it more as 'rabbit can't stop being an asshole and then wonders why people don't like him' (It was the bit about shrew intelligence, I think. Way too on the nose to not be an authorial message). Comparing it to the first one in the series, it's labelled much more strongly (emotional battery! nightmare!) but I'd say the other one deserves some sort of warning more.

I think the point of view has a major effect on the story too. The previous commenter noted that the effect on them - which I believe was intentional - was to put the reader fully into his head and to make us see the world as he saw it until Korin finally got through his thick skull, but because I never bought into his delusions, I spent it thinking "Goddammnit! Stop ignoring everything that contradicts what you want to be true and pay attention to what's actually going on!" Which is highly fitting for the character, but also means that there's a lot of interesting stuff about Korin's relationship with the rest of the family that I, the reader, want to see, but I don't see because Wanu doesn't want to see it.

Ultimately, I think it's just that I'm not very receptive to the framework you used to tell the story, and so I mentally substituted a different one that then (because it wasn't what it was designed for) wasn't fulfilled.

ObsidianSnake - 10 months ago

Thanks!
Korin does have other siblings, and I have already drafted a story with two of them. The draft needs a polish, though, so it'll be up later in the foreseeable future.

Tanookicatoon - 6 months ago

Teeny preds are just the best. =w=

ObsidianSnake - 10 months ago

Leaving comments on Eka's Portal is similar to pregnancy: it comes with a small chance of identical twins. C'est la vie, this is our site, and we love it, bugs and all.

Mourtzouphlos - 10 months ago

Is there supposed to be two comments here? I've got two comments reported on my feed, but I only see the one.

ObsidianSnake - 10 months ago

Thank you. I feel that the sense of a different world helps to sell the vore elements. Also, provided I don't botch the execution, the world-stuff can be entertaining on its own!

ObsidianSnake - 10 months ago

Thank you. I feel that the sense of a different world helps to sell the vore elements. Also, provided I don't botch the execution, the world-stuff can be entertaining on its own!

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

Hey, as wise man once said, "Run wild until you die." I come to this for a good time! And trust me, I belong on here as much as everyone else.

FirstOf71st - 1 year ago

Well, I never would have guess you were into...all of this. The logic of the furry fetish community and Eka's certainly seems pretty wild when taken to its ultimate conclusion like this. It was a fun ride, just thinking about the possible existence of a future furcon-oriented world.

Also, you know you're doing something right when you have to invent new gender tags to properly categorize your work, haha.

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

Cost, mainly, then the headaches of engineering functional designs, accessibility of market parts, etc.

Entirely_Logical - 1 year ago

On a lighter note than my previous comment, I do find the neural link manipulation fascinating; if the link is able to manipulate muscles that humans aren't normally supposed to have, then is there anything standing in between commissioners and more... non-traditional frames; quadrupeds and such, apart from the apparent cost?

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

It is, yes. I've seen it sometimes when I see something I like and I check out the artists other works (transformation and latex, if I recall correctly). I think that a creators relation with their creations - making something that reflects themselves, but not perfectly, and allowing that to interact with the world - has a broad and accessible enough appeal that there's probably some works out there that do a good job of exploring that.

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

It did occur to me that there was a parallel between the future-modern era of Eanli stories and the events here. I figured it would be okay to repeat some thematic elements, because of the nature of the site. Anyway, Neil Gaiman has several works featuring a door-like portal to another world in which everything is uncanny, so, like... whatever, man. It's not like I'm going to do it a third time, anyway.

You know, I wasn't the biggest fan of fantasy, either. At least, that's what I believed. The foundation of this work began as a challenge, an adventure into a different genre, and I found that I enjoyed it. I ventured out of my comfort zone and was rewarded for it!

FirstOf71st - 1 year ago

Walked into this one having little to no idea what to expect, and I found it a good read after getting a handle on the premise and setting. I'm not a big fantasy-genre person, so I cared less about the worldbuilding here, but the emotional journey of Luemilla kept me engrossed. The fairytale-style wish fulfillment, a world transformed into perfection because of one's own desire is fascinating. And by that, I mean it produces a social-moral-ethical tension that beautifully enhances the vorish scenarios within it. I've come to regard this effect as your work's signature, if I'm allowed to point it out for the umpteenth time (does drawing attention to it reduce the magic? Eh, that's overthinking).

Speaking of analysis, it's also easy to read this story as an odd rearrangement of the Eanlian encounter with the fallen society of Earth featured in your other works. An alien race of (furry) non-humans descends to a ruined world and proceeds to supplant it with their own (superior?) culture (which involves vore). Also, _mustelids_.
Nothing wrong with knowing what you like!

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

I assume by 'forward' you mean 'formal?

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

The Dovy is a type of democratic republic, with regional and organizational characteristics that prompt a more specific term. It also differentiates it from prior (looser) historical federations from the same area. It's also the forward name of the nation.

People are hesitant to formally utilize the term 'Republic' as a form of national identity due to Haj'v-Ayoc, which is so predominant that it's synonymous with the term. If you say 'the republic' at the barber's, folks assume that you mean Haj'v-Ayoc. But, let's not get ahead of ourselves...

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

The time period: Yes, that sort of thing is what I meant when I said that it made sense when I thought about it more and looked deeper. If that was what you were aiming for, you hit it.

The diplomat's reaction: So it's very unlikely to happen and very unlikely to be this dramatic, so while they had known it was theoretically possible, it had never happened before, and they still figure that something like this is so vanishingly unlikely to happen to them (and impossible to predict or prepare for) that there's no point in worrying about it, and instead just focus on the immediate consequences, which are all positive.

The Dovy: Yes, but ... Dovy is a noun. What is it? What does the word mean? If I ordered one (1) Dovy, what would I get? (other than a [i]Columbidae[/i] with a torn label)

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

Excuse me a moment.


YES!!!! I KNEW THAT LEVEL OF CONSISTENTLY HIGH QUALITY MEANT AN EXPERIENCED WRITER!!!!


Sorry, I just found myself unexpectedly proven right.

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

This story is similar to what I wrote before I had a gallery here. How ironic that this kind of story inverts some of my better-known conventions!

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

To the challenge thing?

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

Yes. (Nod of agreement)

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

Well this was a punchy little piece. I was somewhat surprised that the description and tags looked more conventional than you normally do, and it seemed quite short (was it a writing challenge? Under 1000 words?), but when I read it it still felt like your style. It's brief because it's about a scene of brief, casual gratification, and without going into other things before or after, that's just all there is.

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

It could have been worse. It wasn't even five minutes after I posted it that the internet went down and I had to reset the router. I write these in the comment boxes directly, so if that had triggered a page refresh...?

Table.

Flipped.

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

I've got many things ready to post, I'm just adding them to the gallery at a regular cadence. I, however, will extract some joy in obliquely referencing things before they're available. ;)

You'd probably be able to whip up an angry mob composed exclusively of people that post on the forums here. I have to admit, I find myself provoked by absolutist statements when it comes to art. But, I'm here for a good time, not get into fights and make enemies. I have to temper the first drive, lest I sabotage the second.

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

...Korin, you say? I think you're letting some things about the setting slip before they're ready (unless he's from Hall of Keys - you clever devil you).

I think Emmett would be more of a 'dead dove - do not eat' situation. They're already posted to your account after all - I doubt there's a lot of people who would make a fuss about it who would come here [i]to a vore site that won't show works with those tags unless you're logged in[/i], check out the folders, and notice if it were in a separate folder, but not notice it if it were still mixed in the general folder (maybe people deliberately trying to be offended, but I'm pretty sure avoiding them here is a crapshoot anyways). Maybe a subfolder of general as a sort of quarantine folder, or putting minor continuities in their own things in there?

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

I'm glad I wrote something that engaging, but oh no!

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

By topic:
Similarity to Eanli - Yes, others have observed that, too. :) It has a similar recipe; domination, society, vore, and style of anthro. However, it isn't the same recipe. Perhaps a few more helpings and everyone can taste the difference. Perhaps develop a preference? I enjoy cooking both.

Folders - Hey! That's data mining. >:o
I jest, of course. The style of organization is mostly intended to assist discovery. Some people are going to like certain projects more than others.

Future stories - Funny you mention the thing about how secrets warp relationships. That can lead to feeling like one is a [i]hypocrite,[/i] or a [i]monster.[/i] (sfx: 'mystery' chime) Before you read that, though, Korin is going to (CENSORED) and I mean, he's really gonna (CENSORED).

Unless it's gross - A fair criticism! I was hoping that it would be seen as Suzan being uncanny, having acute predatory senses about people, but I agree that what I did there was a miss on that. Oh, well.

More Emmett stories - Those are deliberately provocative so I need to be in a mischievous mood to really sink in and write them. I have one simple one and two complicated ones, all of which are in a different stage in the process. I feel that collecting them into one folder would be writing my very own "ObsidianShorts is Very Problematic Cancel Receipts". Maybe I should! Maybe I am, and maybe I would deserve whatever came of it, in a way. Or, it would be a "dead dove - don't eat" situation.

Furryvoreonly - 10 months ago

Wow, that stuff about the way Lagous works is pretty interesting. That's some serious newspeak level stuff right there if they just straight up don't have a word for suicide because they removed it.

It's a shame that you don't think you know enough about music to properly portray LeFeure in a story. Do you have any friends that are knowledgeable in music? They might be willing to lend a hand (or paw) to help you out with the musical side of things.

ObsidianSnake - 10 months ago

Paxhe isn't the name of the continent, as it's part of a compound super-continent, but the region is known as Paxhe. The name comes from the empire that once held dominion over it. That empire collapsed before they could truly take Aphernia, though there was definite impacts.

Paxhe itself is a fairly well-developed union of states in modern days. A region of remarkable contrasts, pastoral elements of life share a horizon with the extreme edges of modernity.

I do have one story in Aulendia: Miss Four. It's offers a slanted and specific point of view, but some of the character of life comes through.


On future bondage: Yes, you are noticing something important there. There's a matter within Lagous, the multi-modal language developed by Eanlian linguists to enable semi-universal academic communication. In Lagous, there's no specific term for self-destruction of the terminal variety. There's several ways to say it, but one has to stitch it together with multiple terms. Furthermore, content guidelines within the prey habitats severely inhibit self-destruction as a topic, so at least within the prey habitats, deliberate self-destruction has few cultural attachments. This leads to some eccentric behaviors regarding predators and hunting hours. That said, ideation still occurs, it's just harder to talk about.


Regarding the Dame: Yes, she is actually an intriguing character. I feel like I don't know enough about music to properly execute her viewpoint, though.


Regarding the animal charisma of Eanlian predators: I feel like I walk a balance in the Admission stories on that. From the human perspective, especially one with little experience with encountering much of any non-human animals, there's an initial jolt of adrenaline at seeing the Eanlians, but also a lingering fascination at their form and movements. They leave people with feelings of awe and dread. I feel like that's fairly realistic, but I also don't want to over-state it, either.

Furryvoreonly - 10 months ago

(Whether they like it or not, the Aphernian isles are involved. They're not as distant as they makes themselves out to be. In fact, Aphernia and Aulendia are basically like siblings,)

Shoot, I forgot about Aphrenia! For some reason I thought that Aulendia was the name of the continent. Come to think of it, I actually just realised why the slavery in "Hunting Paradise kinda unnerved me in a new and unique way. It's not that it is slavery, it's that it is truly inescapable. Given the futuristic tech, running away would be nigh impossible and even death couldn't save you from your bondage as you would just reform in a machine to do it all over again.

I think that a story set in Aulendia or Aphrenia (what is their continent called?) would be a great idea. Maybe It could be about Dame LeFeure form "The Education of Oseri Rivers". I really liked her in that story, although I may be biased seeing as I have a particular fondness for vixen predators. Her personality was great along with her cool rapier that she used in the street fight. I think a story about her could be used as a great way to flesh out her homeland wile also contrasting the culture of where she was born to her current home in Veria.

And to add onto that she didn't participate in the horrible events of "Our Tears in Daylight", or at least we didn't see her...

She doesn't seem like the type of person to betray society's trust like that.

------------------------------(This break was added for comedic effect.)

(I saw a young eanlian pred sneeze so hard they scared themselves so I don't think they're that scary)

Awww, that's a really cute visual. When I was talking about them "being scary" I meant it as the way most humans / prey would see them. I don't personally think they are monsters or that they are inherently scary (they can be though if they want to be). I personally find mammalian predators to be beautiful in their own strange predatory way (Im biased lol). I'll admit that if earth were to get invaded by a bunch of predatory fox anthros bent on world conquest, ... I'd be a colaperator.

I for one welcome our new foxy overlords. subjugation is a small price to pay for fluffy cuddles :)

-----(This break is named Bort. Please be nice to Bort, he tries his best.)

Thanks for responding to my crazy long comment. I hope you have a nice day :)

ObsidianSnake - 10 months ago

Thanks for all this thoughtful comment, as well as the others. I'm delighted that you're enjoying these!

I'm trying to avoid too much commentary in my responses, as I sometimes feel like those kinds of responses can come off as instructing people how to feel about the story, and quashing their own ideas. Who is to say that other peoples' interpretations aren't correct? Even if somebody's reading isn't aligned with my intention, that doesn't mean that reading isn't valid. Anyway, I don't want to ruin somebody else's fun.

That said, it's also fun to talk. And I don't want to leave anybody hanging. So, as compromise, please forgive me if I'm occasionally vague in my responses. :)

On Lau's vigilance: it's a complicated hang-up. She is multi-faceted, a primordial philosopher that serves as a progenitor for well-defined behavioral codas, and a stickler for adherence to those codas. Additionally, she's got some hang-ups, and trauma. Furthermore, this is her terms with a pachylemur, a primate, with some natural instincts relating to a natural predator.

And what's a love story without drama and resistance, anyway? :)

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On Lau and Kiyi's crafting love-language: Somebody on BlueSky observed that we have examples of the ancient garments in the form of carefully preserved things (royal finery, for example) and things made of metal. If it decomposes, we barely know of it.

As a result, we tend to be surprised by the rare finds of preserved tools and wear. Like, mummified remains wearing a jacket and pants that are TIGHT, total drip from 6,000 B.C.E.. I remember when an archeologist showed me a blade from a site in Alaska, dated about 1500 years ago. Supposedly, when they found the knife, the edge was still deadly sharp. The dig lead cut his hand open testing the blade on his own hand (oh my god, why would you do that?) so the quality was self-evident, but I'm a superficial bitch because I was into the carvings on the handle. It was made of bone, forgot which type, but it had little animal figures etched in, some of which were still visible.

Anyway, making things for somebody else, even as something like food, indicates that you're thinking of them.

...I think Kiyi would hate crafting systems from video games. She would say that you can make anything you want out of anything, but how good it is at the purpose depends on the materials. Additionally, how time isn't factored into those systems. Time is an important factor in projects! Time is important.

------------------------------ (I copied and pasted this break) (I copied this break from the break above)

On the pelican and her perspective on the Kiyi/Lau dynamic: I think there's some constructive envy there, too. That sea-bird does form a meaningful mutual bond with a community of her own, and observing Kiyi was opening her inner eyes to new possibilities. Kiyi and Lau did that kind of thing for a lot of people.

Kiyi has her own ideals and social philosophies, too, it's just hidden under the stormy disposition and hurt.

------------------------------ (I copied this break, too, but in chunks, for some reason)

On organized mass-conflict between prey and predator factions: I imagine there's a lot of that in Eanli history. It's never as simple as pred v. prey, though, because of the reality of social structures.

For example, in Verria, there's some tensions between prey groups. It's not harmony at all! Large grazers/browsers don't have immediate cause to ally with their tiny counterparts (the "squeaks"). In fact, in a technologically developed and rigid land-use society, the great hooved ones have serious grievance with animals like mice, as technology disproportionately increases the agency and potency of little creatures. And that's the basic level of inter-prey conflict!

That said, organized conflicts between prey organizations and groups against predator-controlled hegemonies and individuals do occur on Verria. In many cases, the prey do achieve their goals, or mutually beneficial terms are agreed upon.

Eanlian predators aren't invincible, and they are people. However, it's not a good idea to punch a tiger. If your plan involves that, it's not a good plan.

------------------------------- (I added an extra - to this one. Now the breaks are uneven. I apologize for anybody that is distraught by this careless mistake)

On Aulendia: It closely resembles France, yes. Aulendian society believes in democratic principles, in theory; bear in mind that all predators are as lords in that section of the world, as far as prey are concerned. The bordered Paxhian states have histories that overlap and interweave with each other like a tapestry that they resemble.

Whether they like it or not, the Aphernian isles are involved. They're not as distant as they makes themselves out to be. In fact, Aphernia and Aulendia are basically like siblings, in a blue-oni red-oni kind of way -- different as they are, both are still oni.

Behind the curtain, Aphernia is a shameless rephrasing of the continuous setting from several stories from Randomness, and I'm not going to hide that at all, because those stories are CLASSICS. They were one of the pallets with which I painted Eanli. If the milder heartbreak found in some of my Eanli stories give the reader sting, I would caution on the source -- those are full dose, baby. But if you need the stronger stuff, you know where to go now. And it's all still as pure as the day they were written.

------------------------------ (This break contains an aura that seems somehow to apologize for the weird fiction-as-drugs tangent I went on)

On Yyudo: Behind the curtain, part of portraying and highlighting Yyudo was to set up this story. I picked up and abandoned KatPO multiple times. Most of the ideas were made concurrently with Paradise.

But also, I like places. I'm big on locales. Real ones, too. They really are like characters to me. They have moods, personalities, they develop, and they can even die.

I wonder, on the hill where the Elder Tree once was, what would be found there, when Kelriot was at the academy? Did Kelriot stop there, and not feel, but experience the shadow of feeling, halt and look out, suddenly aware of herself and the place where she was at? Was there buildings, a green-belt, or a plaza? Perhaps nature and civic projects obliterated it so thoroughly, that it's entirely gone, utterly unrecognizable in any way, lost to urban marginalia and arterial structures and such.

------------------------------ (...)

On character heights: Kiyi's species are fairly similar in upright height to humans. Kiyi's smaller than average, but Lau is kind of a pitiful specimen, too. Lau is about 1.33x taller than Kiyi, at full upright heights.

------------------------------

On Eanlian predators' nature: The feeling and instincts they have, and how it drives them to behave, is central a conceit to all of these stories. Judged as humans, they appear monstrous, and I don't fault anyone for assessing them as such. That fear and revulsion is rooted in self-protection. However, there is more to Lau, and all the other Eanlian predators, as they are just that: ecological predators, as highly evolved as their prey. They are a state of being, just as their prey are in a state of being.

------------------------------ (I saw a young eanlian pred sneeze so hard they scared themselves so I don't think they're that scary)

On not writing out sex: Yeah, the relationships are important, as are the complexities of them, but they don't always do something. Plus, it wouldn't be THAT interesting.

I'm glad I didn't get flack for the relationship that Ku-rahrah and Kiyi have. Somebody can easily present it in bad faith. For the record: no, it isn't a good one. For anybody reading this in good faith feels that Ku-rahrah's relationship with Kiyi has problematic elements -- I would agree. I'm not presenting it as a model. At the same time, it's too complex to label the relationship as simply bad or good. They're surviving in a hostile and uncertain world together... up until they didn't, but they did for a long while. I believe we're all like that, too.

----------------------------------- (That break up there had an extra - so its fair that I have several because it didn't get in trouble)

On the fire-chief: It's maybe too sub-textual, but he's Kiyi's family, too, a blood-relative. She really didn't want to face that, and the implications, of what could have been, and who she is.

------------------------------ (Heeeey, so, just to let everyone know, that last break received a formal demerit for breaking regulation, but the first one didn't, so things are pretty bad in the break room right now, they're talking a strike, so this might be the last section break for a while, until we work it out with the bosses, sorry about that)

On the meta-level involving Elena: I assumed that the framing of this story would be a popular topic, though it turns out to be less of a matter of interest than I thought.

I'll be honest here for a minute...

I'm not going to tell anyone what to think about it, or the metaphysical elements of the other Eanlian stories. You can take them as literal, direct, symbolic, or hypothetical as you desire. I try and make them work on multiple levels. How competently am I able to achieve that? (MASSIVE SHRUG)

There are many tragic elements to the situation with Elena and Kelriot. Assuming the a connection between the stories make both even more tragic, with some additional layers. A cozy coffeeshop AU it is not.

...Aside from that one cozy coffeeshop. Okay, that is there. Life isn't all crying, drama, and car chases.

Even then, I hope this story stands fine on its own. I want them all to do that. I guess, what I do in terms of my writing, is like a bakery. Sometimes, it's a multi-layered grand tiramisu with original artwork in the chocolate on top. But I also make little wads of fried dough dunked in way too much chocolate. I'm just messing around, really. Everything I do here is an experiment, and the results are always inconclusive.

It still comes as a relief that sometimes people enjoy it. That does help with some of the burn-out.

Anyway, I know my answers aren't perfect here, but you can understand why. Once again, thanks for the comment!

Furryvoreonly - 10 months ago

Hi, I really like this story, and I want to ask some questions as well as comment on some things that happened in the story. These different questions and comments should all be separated from each other and in order of where they appear in the story so they can be easier for you to respond to if you want. A lot of them will also include quotes from your story of what I am talking about. So here we go! Sorry in advance for the long comment.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

I'm a little confused about Lau’s reasons behind wanting Kiyi to not see her, so I would like you to try and clarify them a little for me. I think that it is a combination of Lau being self conscious about being albino and her not wanting to scare Kiyi and ruin their friendship. What I am confused about is why she wasn't willing to let Kiyi see her after Ku-rahrah explained what albinism is and how she isn't cursed or some sort of freak. After finding out that there are others like her out there of a multitude of spices, why did she still decide that she would rather Kiyi not see her?

Also, right after that conversation about albinism, there is a break in the text and then Lau is referred to by her name for the first time with no mention of how Kiyi learned it. I thought it would have made sense for her to tell Kiyi it at some point in the story as the two start to grow closer to each other.
------------------------------
I like how Kiyi and Lau started leaving gifts and making things for each other. It was really sweet and heartwarming to see the two getting along like that despite their places on the food chain.
------------------------------
(Kiyi touched her neck, feeling how exact the fit was. Kiyi imagined a gigantic white fossa reaching into her shelter to delicately measure her sleeping body with those giant paws - it was a morbidly adorable thought. Kiyi couldn't help but laugh.)

Morbidly adorable is the perfect way to describe that. I hope somebody decides to draw this scene in the future. It's just too cute not to have art of it!
------------------------------
(The pelican made a click of amusement. "I meant this nest she's built. It's very stable and thorough. A very clever mammal you have tamed here, Pale One.")

I find the casual disregard / misattribution of Kiyi’s achievements here by other predators to be pretty telling of what they think of her. I don't really blame Lau that much for not correcting them though; It would have been pretty embarrassing for her to defend a prey animal like that in front of all those other carnivores. It might even have impacted their opinion of her and therefore her ability to effectively lead / organize their efforts in combating the Biyan-Tanah.
------------------------------
(The thought reminded her - the Biyan-Tanah were so stupid! Teaming up with friends of other species was so easy. She could not fathom why they chased them away, treated them as foes, and squabbled over space and resources, when it was so much easier to share and share alike.)

That's the main thing that the Biyan-Tanah were doing wrong in terms of strategy. If a group like them were to form a wide coalition of prey species for the goal of mutual defense and combating the predators, Dasaci could have very well ended up like Veria or maybe even better when it comes to the treatment of prey animals.

That brings me to another question. Have there ever been any widespread prey rebellions before in Eanli’s many predator run nations / continents? You'd think that with this much operation, servitude, and class divide, you would at least see some revolts break out. If so, have any of them ever succeeded, even on a local level. Basically, I'm asking if a rebelion akin in scale to the Haitian Revolution has occurred on Eanli? If something like that were to happen, my moneys on it happening in Aulendia? If you were to make a spectrum of “How fun is it to live as prey” for the different societies on Eanli, Aulendia is probably at the bottom of that list with the arctic being at the very top of the list.

Tell me if I'm wrong here because I might be. Judging by the species present, their societal structure, and the general vibe they give off, I think that Aulendia is basically europe if the french revolution never happened and the aristocracy were big scary predators. I know we haven't really had any stories there yet, but it seems that the continent is similar to the world “Randomness” created. Both of them seem to have the prey get sent down the gradual path through history from going from peasants, to serfs, to finally slaves. That is speculation on my part when it comes to Aulendia though, so please let me know if I'm wrong here.
------------------------------
I really liked the scene where Lau and Kiyi cuddled together. That's my absolute favorite type of stuff right there! Cuddles are so underrated and underrepresented in stories like these! I also found it pretty funny how Ku-rahrah got jealous about it saying, "No! Pale One, stop that! Only I can cuddle Kiyi!".
------------------------------
(Kiyi said, "We know that the Biyan-Tanah are collecting in their big camps along here, the ridge of Yyudo.”
Lau emitted a hmm? "Yyudo?"
Ku-rahrah groomed the inside of his wing. "Broken flats that descend to the sea."
Kiyi shrugged. "I'm tired of saying the whole thing. So, the first part of each word, kind of. Yyudo.)

I like the tie in here connecting this ancient Dasaci to Its modern counterpart where Yyudo would later become its largest city and capitol. Details like this help make the world feel more lived in :)
------------------------------
I like the scene where Kiyi rescued that rail bird that was a jerk to her earlier in the story. It does a good job at showing us her kind nature.
------------------------------
I like that Lau learned all those weaving techniques by watching Kiyi and eventually with her help made herself her own set of armor so that both her and Kiyi would be armored in fights.

I do have a question though, how much taller would you say Lau is than Kiyi? My guess would be somewhere in the 2-3 times taller range, but I don't know for sure.
------------------------------
(Her feet sank into the wet soil of the clearing with every step. She sat down beside the entwined pair of pachylemurs, legs spread wide. Lau reached around her belly to take up both together. In the moment, Kiyi thought that Lau was going to eat both of them together. Strange, then, that she didn't resist, just stared with wide eyes.)

Interesting! Maybe Kiyi’s friendship with Lau has sorta warmed her up to the idea of being eaten by her. She already knows that Lau will eat her when she grows old and life becomes painful, so she might have internalised getting eaten by her as the way she would go. This might also have to do with some of her submissive tendencies that get shown a little later in the story.

I also liked how Lau spared that younger female lemur during the fight and took her mother up on her offer. That little bit of mercy there helps the reader see that predators aren't just big scary carnivores; they are also people too.
------------------------------
(She said, "Your kind is meant to feed from the trees and plants, tend to them, to play, grow, mate, tend to your families and friends, and be consumed by us, by me, when the time is right.")

This quote does a great job at showing us some of Lau’s predatory perspective and worldview when it comes to prey. I like that you included it to help give the reader some insight into her thoughts.
------------------------------
(Kiyi scampered away at the power behind the word. Strangely, she felt a tingle go up her spine, a thrill, as she obeyed.)

It seems that some prey may become submissive in some way after prolonged exposure to predators such as Lau. I wonder if Eanli’s predatory societies later began to selectively breed the prey species under their control to increase their dosility and hopefully spread these submissive tendencies to the rest of their population. Something like that seems like something a power hungry and predatory elite might try to do in order to try and stop uprisings before they even happen.
------------------------------
I love the way you described how Lau ate the pachylemur that she captured after realising the futility of trying to pry him for information. I could really tell how satisfying that meal was for her, and I enjoyed seeing her happy like that. When predatory joy is described that well in stories like this, I can almost feel some vicarius koy in return from seeing a predator being so satisfied and full.
------------------------------
(There wasn't anyone around. It was just them.
Kiyi shifted position and looked at her lifelong companion down the length of her body. He turned his head to see the dark flesh through the gaps in the fur there.
"Hey. Ku-rahrah, do you think we have some time for...?"
He gave her an avian smile and put a wing over her thigh. "Always.")

As someone who is asexual, I really appreciate that you left their “alone time” implied instead of writing some sort of lemur parrot sex scene. I know that some people might like something like that, but others like me would have to skip that part of the story.
------------------------------
I liked the whole scene where Lau, Kiyi, and Ku-rahrah had to shelter from the monsoon. I remember reading somewhere that Eanli has about ten times the surface area of earth, and the shear strength of the weather seen here does a good job at showing the sorts of things that this world's atmosphere is capable of producing. The truce inside of the hollow was also a nice touch. The sensation of hostilities and predation during the monsoon helps clue the reader in to the true strength of the weather event, seeing as everyone seemingly teams up to weather it out together.
------------------------------
I liked Kiyi’s conversation with the fire chief. It helps show us how ordinary people like him could get wrapped up in a moment like this while also revealing some of Biyan-Tanah’s backstory along with his true selfish motivations behind his cult.
------------------------------
(Her fossa was... her fossa was…
Kiyi grabbed Lau's arm. "No. No, I can't... no, I need to be with you. I can't explain, but…”)

I love this sort of dynamic between predators and prey as well as the way it hints to a certain mindset. “You are my predator, and I am your prey”. I feel that Kiyi would have a much larger impact on Dasacian society if she didn't end up dying in the process of killing Biyan-Tanah. Maybe her name would also be carried on in a similar way that Lau’s was…
------------------------------
(Kiyi's voice shuddered as she whispered, "Let's make a new promise. Find me again, in... another world. We'll be together again there."
Lau hesitated, unsure of what to say, but she found the words. "Yes. Yes, another world. Okay. Keep breathing, please."
Kiyi started to laugh, delirious. Lau's image grew indistinct. She couldn't see anymore. "I'll be a primate there. Still... tail-less.
Lau... you're so pretty.")

Such a tragic death, I truly feel for Kiyi and Lau at this moment. The whole “I'll still be a tailless primate” thing along with the weird way the Epelouge and opening text are presented seems to imply some sort of reincarnation for Kiyi as a human at some point. Is the Elena in the confusingly worded epilogue and prologue the same one we see in Hunting Paradise?

That would make too much sense as the personalities of the two couldn't be any more different. The main difference being that Elena was very power hungry while Kiyi was kind.

Sorry if this question didn't make any sense, the ending and brief opening statements were very confusing to me.

There are two theories I have about what is actually going on here.

One, Elena is the reincarnation of Kiyi and Kelriot is the reincarnation of Lau. The two finding each other again on another world (Earth).

Or the second option, which I think makes a lot more sense despite all the weird language in the epilogue and prologue, is that this story is essentially being told to Elena by Kelriot as a way to share her people's history with her.

I really hope that option one isn't true because it would be really heartbreaking for Kiyi 2.0 to be born on a world just as cruel as Eanli (the predators still run things after all) while also getting literally ENSLAVED by what would be Lau 2.0

Sorry for showing my personal feelings there, I never really got too into the Hunting Paradise series as enslavement is a big nope for me. It is very well written dont get me wrong, It just isn't really for me. Even if you treat them well, owning people is just a big nope for me.
------------------------------
Sorry for the giant rambely comment, and especially that last section. Feel free to take as long as you need to either answer or not answer my questions here. All my questions and comments aside, I really did enjoy this story of yours. You did a wonderful job writing this ObsidianSnake!

ObsidianSnake - 2 years ago

Glad you liked it!
There's a few similarities! I'm exploring a couple new topics in this one, but in the same language.

Mourtzouphlos - 2 years ago

This is kind of your thing, isn't it? It's a lot like Eanli, except the subtext is text and it's not really dystopian.

Mourtzouphlos - 2 years ago

Wasn't sure how much I'd like it based on the description.

I liked it a lot

alockwood1 - 2 years ago

Interesting.

alockwood1 - 2 years ago

From the way it looks at first glance, it just looks like just another paragraph, and thus some might think it refers to some other group of characters that aren't connected to the first pair.

(I get what happened, but there might be some that don't.)

Mourtzouphlos - 2 years ago

I mean, it's clear from the context what happened, and it's in a separate section to mark the transition, so I'd say it's fine (you could use a horizontal line or symbol or something else visible instead of an extra newline, but that's [i]super[/i] nitpicky)

Entirely_Logical - 2 years ago

I'm not entirely sure this is what they mean when they say that cats have nine lives, though that's certainly a generous number of second chances for someone down on their luck.

alockwood1 - 2 years ago

To be fair, that last section could use a "X amount of years later" label.

ObsidianSnake - 2 years ago

Maybe this is unbelievable, but...! I'd completely forgotten that scene.

When the concept of being messed up by Disney movies was brought up here, I imagine she was thinking about all the human characters, I suspect Aladdin, for some reason.

ObsidianSnake - 2 years ago

Want a moment of bittersweet epilogue? Look very carefully at the story thumbnail. :)

Randomness - 2 years ago

I was /just/ listening to a Podcast where they were discussing the 'sexy squirrel' from Disney's Sword in the Stone.

Wavelengths!

Mechdragon1k - 2 years ago

Not going to show pred reaction, I am curious.

ObsidianSnake - 2 years ago

I'll answer that first question.

I base the dimensions on their Earth counterparts, with a slight modifier -- the smaller species are very slightly larger and the largest species very slightly smaller. In other words, I squish the scale. Just a little bit! This allows these stories to explore those differences without making that impossible.

I need to illustrate what I mean by that. Here's an example of a related thing: The speech of a mouse would be too high-pitched, quiet, and rapid for something like a rhino to understand, but that's not the kind of stories I want to tell here. So, on Eanli, a mouse CAN converse with a rhino, but they both have to actively try. There's meaning in that effort.

Anyway... the Eanlian greater fossa described here is their own species based upon two things: 1) extrapolation of a ecological of the island as well as a solitary incomplete rogue fossil; without getting too bogged in details, hypothetically there was a species about Lady Kelriot's size. Remember: the height here is including their rear legs, [i]not just their rump-to-nose length,[/i] and she's going to stand up tall whenever there's prey around. 2) There's also some (possibly related) Malagasy legends of a creature, an animal-like vampire, that seem about this size, at least in the telling I received. I found those inspiring.

Mourtzouphlos - 2 years ago

So I only just noticed this and I had to go back and check, but how big are Eanlians? I thought they were the same size as their real world counterparts, but Gray is described as being about 7 or 8 feet tall, while actual fossas would be around 3 feet (and the extinct greater fossa is described as "around 30% bigger", so four feet). Am I missing something here? Because I feel like I'm missing something.

Mourtzouphlos - 2 years ago

True, but that was in the 17/1800s equivalent. Supposedly they're more civilized now. What I'm wondering is how much of that is posturing versus how much of that is genuine belief - if fulfilling them meant they had to interact with those that they viewed as their natural subordinates while really, fully treating them as equals, would they be able to handle that, or would it break their brains so much they decided to go full Nazis on the Eastern Front.

Entirely_Logical - 2 years ago

We have before seen that they aren't above full on imperialist conquest; The marsupials shown in Private Lessons and What Comes After were subject to such events before they began, if I recall. Lane was absolutely a hypocrite and a monster and even as he was willing to sacrifice the lives of hundreds to regain some semblance of power over others, he kind of had a point at calling out their own hypocrisy.

Mourtzouphlos - 2 years ago

Now that I see how the Eanlians are treating the annexation process, I can't help but wonder how they'd react if they met a civilization that wasn't a cyberpunk dystopia, and was in fact quite a nice place to live, perhaps even one where multiple species lived in harmony (a la Zootopia). They couldn't just take over without going full on imperialist conquest, and they couldn't justify it without going full on White Man's Burden (i.e. our civilization is the best possible and it is therefore our moral duty to ensure that everyone becomes part of it). Based on how she treats Lane, Agent Gray seems like she'd see through that logic to the self-serving rationalization that it is, but she's also on easy mode (it's her enemies that are saying that, the principles she's upholding are the same as on Eanli (innocent until proven guilty), and she can get what she wants without breaking them). They clearly want a world where predators are unquestionably in charge, but where does that rank in terms of their priorities?

Mourtzouphlos - 2 years ago

On the one hand, I do find that sort of logistics/worldbuilding thing very interesting (Why doesn't anybody notice that everyone the company signs immediately disappears? If they do, why doesn't anybody look into it, and why do they still sign what's basically a death warrant?). On the other, you really couldn't write that properly without drastically changing the structure of the story; the band doesn't come into the picture until basically the endpoint of the process, so there's no way to explore the bulk of how it came to be with them (after all, if they knew it would end with them being eaten, they wouldn't do it). You could do something following Kilawa and seeing how he actively manages the company and signing new musicians before eating them, but that would be very different in tone and structure (and saying 'the story's good, but it would be better if it were completely different', sounds very back-handed). The only way I see you could do that would be for him to expound it more to her at the end, but I'm not sure you could do that without interrupting the flow with an obvious infodump (after all, he does see her as only a meal, so why would he explain it to her?). What's already there is already on the long side of what's believable for him to explain, and that's mostly what's necessary for the audience to understand what's going on, so I don't really see how you could successfully add more.

TLDR: In theory yes, in practice, I don't think so.

ObsidianSnake - 2 years ago

That element is ambiguous when it's isolated. However, he states his intentions and history with this process fairly clearly. Non-rhetorical question: Would it have been interesting if the story explored that more?

Mourtzouphlos - 2 years ago

So I'm pretty sure I'm not missing something, but when I got to the part where she calls him a criminal and a murderer, he seems genuinely offended, like it's not technically accurate, and following the contract talk I expected it to go to a 'should have read the fine print' moment, but it doesn't, and I don't see any other support for the idea that it isn't illegal. Is it just supposed to be part of his self-centeredness? (i.e. 'I can kill you but you can't call me something that makes me feel bad, because I matter and you don't')

Furryvoreonly - 10 months ago

Humanity be like, https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2F5HPLnVdHaNVb9WhaynVnHw9yS3nm4lG6qCpe6I7YDss.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D39574f6e3bca08cf28518e504a2b672ef7993c77

Furryvoreonly - 10 months ago

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2F5HPLnVdHaNVb9WhaynVnHw9yS3nm4lG6qCpe6I7YDss.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D39574f6e3bca08cf28518e504a2b672ef7993c77

Furryvoreonly - 10 months ago

Humanity moment, lol
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2F5HPLnVdHaNVb9WhaynVnHw9yS3nm4lG6qCpe6I7YDss.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D39574f6e3bca08cf28518e504a2b672ef7993c77

alockwood1 - 2 years ago

Guess it depends on how this world works.

Mourtzouphlos - 2 years ago

That's what I'm saying - they wouldn't be able to do it themselves, and I don't see anyone who would be both willing and able to help.

Mourtzouphlos - 2 years ago

:) I actually didn't notice it the first time, but when I got to the end I specifically read through it again a couple times to find those little details and make sure I was able to put everything together.

ObsidianSnake - 2 years ago

Ah-ha, the difference is a small plot hole caused by re-writes. They were intended to have the same time, except Maizey would be early. Nice eye for detail! You win:....nothing, sorry. :(

Mourtzouphlos - 2 years ago

So if I'm putting things together correctly, the secretary has been messing with the appointments to feed people to the bat to get him to come in more often so she'll be able to ask him out and be accepted. But why did the bat and Maizey have different times for the appointment? She was able to just flip tomorrow's appointment, so why was there something extra going on today?

Snekpizza - 2 years ago

Makes sense, it will get repetitive. Very nice one shot tho!

ObsidianSnake - 2 years ago

I'm not currently planning to; I think they'd be repetitive, as this story illustrates the routine. One-shot characters are like that. I'm definitely taking a note on the interest, though!

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

I've always thought that legal institutions/concepts around man-eating is still an unexplored frontier. That's why hunting hours struck me the way it did! It's an alien concept, unsettling and fascinating. It enables kinds of experience, states of being, too.

Personally, I've enjoyed breaking the mold with predators that have overall pleasant dispositions or positive intentions, at least in terms of how they see the world. Besides, an obligate carnivore isn't obligated to be a jerk about it.

FirstOf71st - 1 year ago

There's something about the way you write hunting scenes the future-era Eanlian works that I find irresistible every time. Imagining sneaking through a modern urban setting on a hoverboard, as a beautiful superhuman beast, equipped with the latest tools of the trade, and with full sanction of the law -- it's peak power trip. Doesn't matter who the predator is, or who they're hunting -- but maybe that just goes to show how I've never really disliked any of your predator characters. Even if Eliviza gets a few points knocked off here for selfishly exploiting legal loopholes.

Taklia's good too though! I'm a big fan of characters with "nice," or "innocent" personalities encountering the wider world (and their own desires), and then learning to reconcile the contradictions between them. Come to think of it, that's almost another running theme throughout your work, I feel…

Also, that lovely third-to-last sentence -- truly, less is more in these stories.

alockwood1 - 2 years ago

I read that one.

ObsidianSnake - 2 years ago

Thanks! This one is a semi-prequel to the story Private Lessons.

alockwood1 - 2 years ago

Well, an interesting story. Would like to see more of this sort of series.

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

First, thanks for commenting. :)

Next, I've said it a few times here, but I'm writing the kinds of stories that I like to find, the types of which I feel are too uncommon. I know fully well that they aren't going to be in niche taste. I expect at least some displeasure at some of my decisions here. This is Eka's Portal, after all, the house of a thousand tastes.

Anyway, it's okay if people don't like my weird stories. They're not obligated to. It's unfortunate that it leaves some people disturbed, but it's all in accordance with the theme of our site here, so I don't spend too much time worrying about it. I'd like to think my tags are descriptive enough to say, "don't like, don't read." I think that's how every writer contributing to this site feels. We're writing for those that are going to enjoy it, which includes ourselves.

FirstOf71st - 1 year ago

An excellent story exploring another pivotal moment in Earth-Eanlian history from the personal perspectives of those involved. Incredible world-building and continuity as always, and I like the inclusion of two endings -- neither really felt "definitive," and so the ambivalence worked.

Now, I don't know where else to put this, so I'll drop it here. I often feel the urge to hop on the "Obsidian Snake Defense Force," seeing the extreme comments your stories inspire (not unexpectedly). I feel this way because I think it's absurd to judge your setting by the standards of modern Western egalitarian morality, on two levels:

On the diegetic level: Earth's "modern Western egalitarian morality," as I called it, is not absolute universal (though by its nature we treat it that way), but the result of a historical process. As in, it is dependent on history (ie, Judeo-Christianity) and the material factors of the world. Eanli, having not just a radically different history but biology than earth, will of course have civilizations that come to ethical configurations radically different from our own. In that sense, they almost can't be judged -- I always imagine some human explaining universal human rights to a predator and getting a purely uncomprehending response. For the predator, the concept isn't even wrong, evil, blasphemous, or even misguided -- it's just incomprehensible due to the circumstances of their world and mind, both shaped by eons of evolution.

On the non-diegetic level: You are an artist, and an artist is justified in using any and all ideas and depictions to achieve their desired aesthetic effect. The artwork stands alone, and its merit is independent of how others interpret it. Any "ethical judgment" of a work has nothing to do with the work itself, but is the opinion of the one who made that judgment. As in, a work that depicts good things can be interpreted or "utilized" unethically, and a work that depicts evil things can be utilized ethically.

Now, does this mean that every Obsidian Snake story should come with a moral disclaimer of "I condemn the power structures depicted in this work" -- of course not, that would detract from its intended effect of an erotic vore experience. The "moral outrage" of the story, is of course an inseparable part of that erotic vore experience, and is part of why the fictional world feels (painfully) real. The erotic vore experience, as a fantasy, is also completely independent of our actual real-world behavior, which indeed ought to be ethical. But talking about ethical behavior and making critical analyses of media is obviously not the purpose of our fantasy vore community here on Aryion.

It would be incredible (and ridiculous) if some piece of critical essay work actually used an erotic vore story to make an ethical or moral argument - and your stories have the depth to possibly be such resources. It's just I'd rather see more vorish flirting in the comments and less of the moral criticism. This is a space where we can safely suspend our "moral censor."

I say this as I dump a small essay in your comment section rather than playful vorish flirting, but I simply have to get it off my chest and into words. I've been catching up on your backlog since "The Education of Oseri Rivers" after more than a year, and the writing is just as good as I remember. Any extreme reaction, in my opinion, just means you're doing something right.

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

Yes. Nice catch!

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

I just reread this, and something occurred to me: Is the use of 'incarceration contracts' in dictator-America based upon the fact that the Thirteenth Amendment contains an exception for people who have been convicted of a crime, which they then used to ignore what the Constitution says without technically changing it, a la Jim Crow, thus allowing them to pretend that nothing significant has changed?

ObsidianSnake - 2 years ago

Thanks! :)

ivyankovsky - 2 years ago

100% agree :)

Littledude - 2 years ago

Great story. Your preds are both kind but still dominant. Love it.

ObsidianSnake - 2 years ago

For sure, one of the cool parts about writing and reading is learning to see things in a different way. I'm happy to bring it!

Marked - 2 years ago

Always a pleasure seeing these kinds of stories with a chance to get into the mindset of a very different culture (for both pov character and the reader). Thank you for sharing!

Furryvoreonly - 7 months ago

This story is so so good! I love the character arc that Sika and Taklia go down, and the resolution to it. Seeing more of your wonderful foxy pred like this is always a joy.

I hope we get a sequel to this some time, I'd love to see more of these characters and the unice little family they managed to form with each other by the end.

I also love the way you describe the joy predators feel when they eat prey. It's so vivid and deeply satisfying that it honestly makes me really jealous of them!

Amazing job on this story ObsidinSnake, keep being you!

Vulpini18 - 1 year ago

I agree with the sentiment.

Randomness - 3 years ago

#MehilgaDidNothingWrong

This is the perfect story to read when exiting winter. I crave the beach and umbrella drinks.

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

You shouldn't think their psychology makes them less relatable - IMO, their [i]experiences[/i] are somewhat relatable, as are, in some cases, their ideas (Taklia and Eufenris come to mind).

I do look forward to more of these ideas.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

You touch on this, but these predators are keen-sensed and very highly adapted to be what they are. You can stuff them into a suit and have them analyze data streams to optimize production systems, and many of them will be excellent at that, but they're still a predator of highly intelligent creatures. The shadow of their prey haunt the dark corners of their lives, should they be physically absent for too long.

To these predators, prey are a near-open book to them. That does create some barriers to empathy. That's difficult for them to overcome. I guess that can make them less relatable...? Either way, it makes them fun to write, so [i]eh.[/i] I will probably examine some of these ideas more in future works. :)

Furryvoreonly - 10 months ago

Nice alt account. Really shows your maturity when interacting with people online. If you aren't going to be constructive in your criticism, don't even say it at all. This isn't even criticism at this point, your just being mean for the sake of it :(

Do us all a favor and learn when to shut up and keep your vile thoughts to yourself.

Furryvoreonly - 10 months ago

Your comments on ObsidianSnake's stories are just horrible man...

ObsidianSnake - 10 months ago

Something I often explore in the Verrian stories is the complexities of overlapping dynamics. Commonly, predator/prey and class. That provost has invested himself in the common view of his self-perceived class: predators keep the rabble anxious and orderly.

Sure, the way different groups and needs are leaning against each other might appear as a house of cards to us. Though, with how plastic the connections are, maybe it's better understood as an ecosystem.

Furryvoreonly - 10 months ago

Amazing story! I especially liked how Oseri's new predatory friends comforted her after all the fighting had ended and they were back in her house.

The way you described how she felt as she ate her first prey was just phenomenal. I really want to feel that way too; to experience the predatory joy and satisfaction that comes from eating a live squirmy meal and making them truly yours. Alas, I was born human and not as a fox... :(

The reason for that rabbit rejecting Oseri at the beginning was really silly and illogical, but I suppose normal life is to. You'd think a rabbit would like that she didn't eat prey. Well I guess in our world, we have the equivalent to that with people holding beliefs and protesting for stuff that really just amounts to "Chickens for KFC!".

As for Oseri's and the other predator's actions during "Our Tears in Daylight", that was pretty messed up. Not the eating people part (They have to do that to live), but the whole betraying society's trust part. What they did was cheating, amoral, and deeply reprehensible. It was also especially bad because it took place in a time before reformation technology existed.

I honestly can't blame Lus for not wanting to trust predators ever again after what he went through that day. Breaking the social contract like that is just next level scummy.

It was kinda nice to see Oseri over hoard food as weasels and stoats are ought to do though. At least she seemed happy...

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

That's true. I get the feeling that if she had someone on her side, as it were, the decision would be significantly more turbulent (and dramatic). As it is, there's no real internal conflict: everyone around her is either pushing for this outcome, or trying to kill her, and she doesn't have the moral center to push back. Two opposing sides, both offering comfort and surety, but implacably opposed? She'd have to make an active and conscious decision on what she believed and who she'd spurn, with no way to avoid at least some further emotional cost. Ah, the drama!

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

Thanks! (I want to touch her pads, too...)

FirstOf71st - 3 years ago

Lighter and fluffier indeed. Just a slice of life in Verria, and it works. Nothing more to say, so, I'll just give my favorite line, again at the risk of SPOILERS:

“Oh? You think my pads are warm?” Jhanfyr winked. “I have someplace much warmer for you to go.”

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

Thank you kindly. This was actually directly based on one of your prompts from a while back!

Randomness - 4 years ago

Wonderful job, as always. Loved the little connection between the two at the end, even with -SPOILERS-

Jhanfyr offering the position transfer with no hard feelings. Unexpected and quite sweet.

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

Thank you!

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

[i]The predator "family" isn't exclusive to the mammal carnivorans, but includes birds of prey, sharks, lots of reptiles, and the like.[/i]

So, like Beastars, then, except not.

Man, that setting is fucked up.

[i] Look: I have to keep some cards in my metaphorical hand here...I still want to hold onto certain props and set-pieces for later in the game/play. [/i]

This is basically my problem: not condensing everything into one story. It's very, very hard to write things down [i]and then just leave them there for later[/i]. Drives you mad.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

I think about these sorts of thins often, in terms of setting. It's funny that you bring up specifically that species. Here's a cleaned-up regional Verrian tale from my notes, which is based upon a real one, How The Wolf Mouse Came to Be.

[s]How The Wolf Mouse Came to Be.

Long ago, there was a village of mouse in dark-earth clay burrows in the shade of a great red rock. Early one day, _REDACTED_

So, I was originally thinking of writing out that legend as a narrative myth, framed as a folk-tale, but I thought it would confuse people. I guess it's bonus content for anybody scrolling through comments in the future, now.[/s]

[i]Hey. Future me here. I have changed my mind! I think I WILL present this as part of a collection of folk-tale-style stories, magic and myth, just-so, and all that stuff. This one is actually perfect for that, and it's going in.

Anyway, as past me was saying...[/i]

I presumed that grasshopper mice would just be predators in the usual sense, accepted by larger predators as such, although it would be complicated, as there aren't many species like them. The predator "family" isn't exclusive to the mammal carnivorans, but includes birds of prey, sharks, lots of reptiles, and the like. The idea of them intentionally surprising prey with their nature is really dramatic and thrilling, though!

Yeah, and what about pandas? What about pandas, indeed. How 'bout them pandas, eh? Now, on Eanli, pandas are still pandas, but Eanlian. If you were to ask them how they're doing, they'd probably respond that they're doing okay.

It's also interesting you brought up bears. Most species of bears aren't effective terrestrial hunters, with a notable exception of the polar bear. Grizzly bears spend most of their time foraging, with varied diets, but they nuts for salmon, though. I can't imagine grizzlies without thinking of salmon. They are obligate carnivores, but they're quite omnivorous, like most fox species.

Look: I have to keep some cards in my metaphorical hand here. I could put everything about the setting on a public-facing wiki, but that would be the most boring thing [i]ever.[/i] The setting is part of the vehicle for the stories, not the other way around! I still want to hold onto certain props and set-pieces for later in the game/play.

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

So, you say that this is "based off of need". I have a question for you, in that regard: what about grasshopper mice?

Grasshopper mice in real life are, as far as I can tell, even [i]more[/i] carnivorous - in terms of how much animal-based protein they eat - than a bear, a species that has already been established as a predator in your setting. I feel that this covers the "need" bit. Moreover, they're incredibly aggressive, and they'll attempt to kill/eat things as large as they are, and sometimes larger - they're basically stoats in an even smaller package. Hell, they're partially immune to neurotoxins, because the scorpions they eat part-time sting them constantly.

Now, consider how this might work in your setting.

They [i]look[/i] like a normal mouse.

They likely [i]act[/i] like a normal mouse, at least in terms of behavioral tics, body language, and the like.

They might be like a weird, mute friend to a bunch of normal mice they hang out around; they act just like other mice, except they don't speak (the whole "voice reverberating" thing Eanli predators have would be an instant giveaway/RUN AWAY! signal). Maybe, in later settings, they can pretend that they were refabricated without vocal cords, and, in earlier settings, they can just claim (via sign language) that they were traumatized as a child. After all, who'd believe that the mouse eats other mice?

Provided that they don't talk, nobody is going to find out; hell, their skull structure is similar enough to a normal mouse's that even if someone forced them to open their mouth to check for pointy, predatory teeth, they wouldn't be given away.

But then, you know, you're some tiny mouse, trying to hide late at night in Verria, and there's this other, somewhat larger mouse that lets you into their house - a good Samaritan - and they go through the normal process of locking their doors behind you, herding you into an inner room, getting you a glass of water, et cetera, and you think you're safe for the night...

...and then you hear their voice, and you realize that you're never going to leave.

Of course, this is your setting - you do you - but I just figured that I should float the idea to you, because an Eanli predator that's almost 100% (other than the voice) biologically disguised as a prey species is something I thought you'd find interesting. It lets you write so many interesting things.

Also, what about pandas?

VampireBunny - 3 years ago

I see now. That makes sense as for making a character distinct and interesting compared to others. But as a first time viewer it confused me due to how it wrapped up without addressing that just because of the other thing.

Anyway, thanks for your time have a great day. I write too but I don't share it outside of a circle in real life, since it's on paper. At first my writing was supposed to be vore themed and about laws and predation but then I got a bunch of other ideas and that quickly faded into the background as it turned into something wildly different. But that's just how writing always is, you don't always need that story board like an animator would, so things change quicker.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

Re: Izino and Erinees relationship
That would be interesting! However, I wanted to have a combination of a more volatile, meaner domme responding to a character that is initially poorly equipped to handle that. That was something I hadn't done yet.

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

Thank you! I often think of these as kinds of stories that contain some vore, rather than vore stories. I've really liked things in that kind of genre in the past, which is one of the things that inspired me to finally write here.
Also, for how they are, mustelids are totally under-represented.

Vulpini18 - 1 year ago

Great job with this story, you have a great talent for weaving a compelling narrative. And it's always great seeing some voracious mustelids!

ObsidianSnake - 2 years ago

Those are great observations! They are each unique beings. I think there's something special about that, how things like species creates different modes of being, as it were. These characters have a different kind of experience of the world, with different capabilities, size scale, different experience of time frame, different priorities of senses, and so on.

Maybe that helps the people reading to reflect on their own mode of being? Maybe! How can somebody see instinct in our own behavior without having a frame of reference to compare it to? I doubt that's what people are looking for on this site. Well, I like to sneak that kinda thing into these stories, anyway, for spice.

Fun side note: I struggled with a nomenclature problem in this one. In English, the term "elk" is ambiguous. On the east side of the Atlantic, the word is associated with the genus I know as "moose", but on the west side of the Atlantic, the term "elk" is used exclusively for the larger species of deer. The specific word "waputi" is growing in popularity and it solves the problem, but I decided MOST readers would infer what the characters were from the context provided in the first few pages.

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 2 years ago

Warning! A huge battleship [b]“SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T READ IT YET”[/b] is approaching fast!



Kalay going into rut and rationalizing his trying to seek out Sunchaser (when IRL cervids in rut tend to obsessively pursue does) makes a [i]very[/i] good benchmark for trying to recognize Eanlian instinctual behavior in your other works, which I'd had a few issues doing before. Oseri Rivers and her over-hoarding prey is second, but that could be misinterpreted as Rivers being Rivers (certainly, though, other readers saw it, and that's why I did). This's more blatant, thanks to Kalay's little...awkward misinterpretation. It makes it more obvious his ego's trying to make justifications for his temporarily rampant id, so to speak.

With medical attention, Kalay can hold his own against his brother within a week of getting shot with what seemed like a punt gun or a large anti-material rifle, and Sunchaser apparently threw said gun — almost certainly tens of kilograms and several times her body weight — into her floor hard enough to break its bipod. [i]Seven Days[/i] had a note on "primitive" human cell membranes/skeletons/genetics/such, but, well...there's no way an Earth moose could survive a point-blank punt gun blast or 20-mm shell to the gut, regardless of what medical attention was on hand. And humans can barely move that kind of gun around, but an Eanlian porcupine or fisher? Easy.

I think this is your best demonstration of how Eanlians are both aliens and animals (as we'd think of them) so far, or, at least, how they behave differently from humans in some aspects.

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

Thanks for the comment!

This might seem strange, but I'm delighted that somebody identified Sunchaser as the true mystery. A friend of mine, another writer, is into stories with two protagonists with their own slightly divergent narratives, and that inspired me to try something based on it.

The timing on this comment was appropriately timed; I was posting another novella tonight! There will be a novelette coming as early as next week, too. Anybody wanting longer works from me are in luck this month!

FirstOf71st - 4 years ago

Alright, first your question: I was surprised by the final chapter's twist, but only because Mr. Bachelor walked right into it with no suspicions of his own. I had a vague feeling that the powerful people up top were responsible once it was established that the letters were being carefully censored and not just lost. So if I had actually stopped to think about it, I probably would've concluded one of the Patholders was responsible. However, mystery novels were never my jam, and I was fixated mainly on the character relations this time around.

Now with that out of the way, let me congratulate you on a job well done. I think this novel was a distinct step up from "Hunting Paradise," feeling more focused, streamlined, and entertaining overall. A lot of this is thanks to the protagonist; a scholarly "baby" of a rich family struggling to prove his worth in the real world was quite an easy character for me relate to. Verbose narration is also my guilty pleasure, and it's a style that went quite well with the pseudo-19th century setting. I feel absolutely spoiled that vore literature with this level of quality and depth exists.

My one complaint is that we never got to see the feared lanterned lodge itself, or any of the wild predators outside the city. Given who the narrator is and how the plot shaped up, I suppose this would have been impossible. However, the lack of that information does give an excellent air of mystique to Sunchaser once we figure out her origins. On some level, her backstory almost feels like the real mystery of the novel.

Meanwhile, there's yet another novel on the way? Whatever it is, I'll be glad to see another longer piece from you.

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

I'm glad you're enjoying it! I knew that this chapter was going to be emotionally challenging so I'm relieved to see everyone survive it.

FirstOf71st - 4 years ago

Holy hell, this chapter really put me through the wringer. But like you said to the previous commenter, it's been a storm of highs and lows, not just a freefall into the darkness.

(More spoiler warnings): The interaction of Sephoni's daughter and her mother's predator is not an image that will be leaving my head anytime soon. Nor will the phrase "living resting place." Genius work so far, and I'm still only 2/3 of the way through.

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

Thanks! This chapter contains some extreme emotional peaks and valleys, so it's good that it feels more like a ride than getting hurled and falling.

Randomness - 4 years ago

-Spoiler Warning-

A predator singing a little lullaby to her special prey.

An element I will never cease to be floored by. Favorite chapter so far, and what a ride it has been!

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

I prefer to limit the amount of talking about myself in the comment sections of things on here but I'll say something about your first point: I've been lurking around here and a few other places for a while, and I've read a lot of stuff. I've enjoyed many tersely written shorts, those that are to-the-point and direct. Eventually, I began to realize I was more invested in the longer-form stories that incorporated the "vorish themes" and events into their plot and structure. Even though it's comparably niche, I'm writing the kinds of things I want to be available.

FirstOf71st - 4 years ago

It looks like someone already brought up the paragraph I had in mind, the one discussing "dubiously-crafted titillating verses." You're probably just being ironically self-deprecating here, but this is honestly something I've considered several times when considering how much effort one ought to put into erotic fiction. Is it really worthwhile building a robust fictional world around the story when so many readers are just there for the "money shot," so to speak?

Personally, I've read your work so far for the story and world first. The possibility of various vorish scenarios coming up as I read adds a certain excitement that wouldn't be possible with ordinary fiction, and that keeps me interested. Not to mention that vore is so far removed from conventional eroticism that it itself adds novel elements to a fictional universe, as you've demonstrated many times over. Those are the two reasons I've stuck around here, at least.

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

Ah, a denizen of the magical land of Canada! I wondered if anybody would ever notice that most of these stories are grounded in real places, among other things.

Rest assured that Kalay's opinions on literature is partially for levity. I don't take myself [i]too[/i] seriously!

Entirely_Logical - 4 years ago

It's fascinating to read about the similarities and distinctions, the parallels through which their society developed from our own, particularly as a Canadian whose home turf seems to very closely resemble "Kabec."

With that said, this is somewhat starting to resemble the plot of a Yakuza game; all about real estate except not really.

I am quite pleased to see you uploading once more, though there's an early paragraph that almost sounds like a cry for help; I hope you're taking care of yourself!

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

That was my favorite moment in that section.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the rest!

Randomness - 4 years ago

I wonder what those predators thought when they saw Kalay peeking out of their neighbor's window.

As always, amazing work. Excited to read the rest!

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

[i]All the quotation breaks were thus revealed to be responses to the queries from her (or her aides)[/i] Well, I didn't know that; that puts things into more context. I figured she had kind of shut herself in a bubble, and that all the quotation breaks were unrelated to her.

[i]Also, and this isn't a spoiler or anything, but she can party.[/i]
I am beginning to sense a theme with Aphernians.

[i]This has led their technology being inexplicably designed from an foreign perspective[/i] That would explain Kelriot's not-telepathy.

These comments really help contextualize things.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

In the closing epilogue of this story, Thorovo is shown confirming that she had a change of heart over a few things after scrutinizing the events in this story. All the quotation breaks were thus revealed to be responses to the queries from her (or her aides). She's not changing it all at once, but such things take time.

Also, and this isn't a spoiler or anything, but she can [i]party[/i]. You wouldn't think so, from how stuffy she is while "on the clock", but it's true.

Spooky Dasacian tech. Yeah, their culture moved on its own tempo, a very steady one. They never once had a major societal collapse, not even once. Because they're historically culturally independent and geographically isolated, they've found and built upon their own ways of doing things. This has led their technology being inexplicably designed from an foreign perspective. They're also always ahead of the rest of Eanli in very specific fields. They do get overtaken now and then, but the structure of Eanlian society means that they're always continuing development on everything, despite a lack of emphasis on breakthroughs or innovation.

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

[i]I don't think Eanlian predators consider humanity any kind of mistake[/i]
Thank you for clearing that up, but that was kind of easy to mis-interpret. Generally, predators seemingly correlate more predator control of a society with increased...functionality, or good-ness, or being right, or whatever people value in a society. As such, a society with no ​predators would presumably be unthinkable - like a functional family with 0 parents. To be fair, they (as you said elsewhere) were surprised to find Earth, and not subatomic particles, and perhaps a predator-less society wasn't surprising in comparison, but old cultural mores clearly die VERY hard. Moreover, human society having broken down would presumably reinforce that belief - up until this explanation, I figured they saw human society as a self-destructive aberration that had to be wiped out lest it harm humans more, and the renaming-planets (and potentially species) thing simply added to that - if they're willing to go that far, it seemed, they're willing to do anything.

Of course, [i]I[/i] meant it partially jokingly, because, holy shit, child marriage. I can certainly see why the predators are "critical" of that, at least...

[i]The questions that Thorovo trying to answer are, "Can humans live in a culture that's mostly defined by non-human agents?" "Can humans thrive in shared civilization?" "Can humans co-exist amiably with other prey?"[/i]
Renaming humanity answers 0 such questions, except "does she either genuinely confuse or purposefully conflate her own self-interest and whims with the best interests of others, including other predators?", to which the answer is, from my perspective, yes. I recognize one of the themes you're writing about in later periods in your setting is "predators learning to stop being selfish and start being compassionate". Thorovo appears to be all the former and none of the latter, and therefore is essentially a personification of what needs to be overcome on the wider scale for that theme to push forward. Am I misreading her?

As for Dasaci, it being closer to Dris, and via water, makes more sense - like, they didn't walk across a continent to carve strange reliefs of unknown meaning into a cliff. Dasaci is still weird, though. Something about whatever the Chelash are, as well as the super-advanced tech.

As for Shadurak, I'm glad that this gave him a bit of resolve in regards to trying to change the future of Earth - not saying more, we don't need more spoilers. On the wider scale, it's good to see predators have, at the very least, ideological disagreements with one another - if they were all one, big happy family, that’d be rather boring, and it wouldn't make sense, either - there's a difference between the solidarity they evidently have and them simply going along with what another predator says because they have the same diet and anatomical features.

All in all, thanks for clearing this up a bit.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

I'm glad you enjoyed this little story! Glancing over it with fresh eyes, it could stand some editing, but I'm proud of the characters and the plot.

Regarding the arctic cultures, people really respond to them! I'm relieved by this, because they're close to my heart for a few reasons. I wondered if people were going to find them boring in contrast with other parts of the setting. This is very fortunate, as I have, right now, a short novel that's heavily steeped in both the very same arctic group here, as well as Ghynlina. I'm fortunate to have a very skilled pre-reader help me with the editing, so it'll have WAY less weird mistakes than usual. :)

I don't think Eanlian predators consider humanity any kind of mistake, although they're going to have a predisposition to criticality of extant human cultures. The questions that Thorovo trying to answer are, "Can humans live in a culture that's mostly defined by non-human agents?" "Can humans thrive in shared civilization?" "Can humans co-exist amiably with other prey?"

Dris has her own vibrant and distinct collection of cultures. Why, it's practically a whole world unto itself! Contact and exchange with "outside" cultures is a normal and very historical thing for many of them. Dasaci is a relatively well-known quantity among the coastal areas, and those with central waterways, rather than a mysterious and distant land. Dasaci and those Dris cultures have long participated in an exchange of language, ideas, trade, and some technology. If something in Dris 'rhymes' with something in Dasaci, it is probably because it is a Dris execution of something with a Dasacian source, directly or indirectly. The next time, though, is it really Dasacian at that point? (We could ask an anthropologist, but we don't have all day, so let's not.)

[i]Out of curiosity, did you, as a writer, actually think about what that name would have been? Actually, how'd the predators come up with "Gardenia"? Did they just name it after the flower? Was it by some kind of world/worlds-government-level vote?[/i]
1. They probably had several already, to fit into existing systems of classifications. I don't know what those are. To be fair, it's not terribly important. A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet. (In my case, actually, would smell like coffee, at the moment.)
2 & 3. That's Complicated! Messy, even. It's a flower-bearing tree, a little one, very commonly cultivated for gardens, but exasperatingly, confusingly named after a Dr. Garden??? But, that's the English-language name, surely it can't get more perplexing and serendipitous when Eanli-language gets involved. Right...?
4. See above, but after a point, the name stuck.

[i]Oh, and - again, for you as a writer - what's up with Shadurak?[/i]
So, I gotta be mindful of the fact that these comments appear right under the story in some gallery views on this site. (If you're reading this under those circumstances, hello, yes, this is about YOU! Mild spoilers ahead!) I will say that Chastity is forcing Shadurak to finally confront some stuff, due to great many commonalities they share. It's the emotional core that's moving this entire story, really. It's a story about two people coming to terms with loss.

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

And, the other half.

I see Bergmann's rule applies to Eanli as it does to Earth, and why Eufenris is the way she is; her birthplace arguably values prey life more than Verria. Oh, sure, they get eaten, but, if I had to guess, fewer people, proportionately speaking, are dying than in Verria, which is the best-case scenario.

If Chastity is one of your best-written characters, Unakia Yeda is one of your best-written settings. Just a snapshot of better predator/prey relations from hundreds of years ago, chilling away in the Eanlian north. It'll never really change, will it? Even as everyone else spreads off-planet, Unakia Yeda will continue to do its own little thing, regardless of how amazing or nightmarish (both) Eanlian civilization on the outside gets. It makes sense from a realpolitik standpoint, too - they live in a sparsely-populated, freezing wasteland with no strategic value, meaning they're not going to get conquered.

There's something almost creepily existential about them. They're the Svalbard Seed Vault of medieval Eanli civilization.

[i]“I met him once, during a big gathering. He was fine. Well-behaved, I suppose. He was four years younger than me. Shadurak’s brow twitched. “How… old were you? Fourteen.”[/i]
I am beginning to concur - just slightly - with several Eanlian predators in regards to the idea that humanity was a mistake.

Dris: The goat from Dris can be taken one of two ways, I think. Either he's simply being a boorish asshole, or he's trying to justify his own lack of freedom to himself by claiming that anyone he sees traveling in from outside Dris is enslaved/food/enslaved food, and that he's the only one who's truly free. Sour grapes, you know. And then, there are the carved reliefs, apparently from Dasacian (Dascadian?) visitors a long time ago. The more I read about Dasaci, the more uncanny it seems.

In regards to Thorovo's idea of renaming humanity...well, I can imagine other predator rulers looking at Thorovo sideways, slightly wide-eyed, and cringing slightly when they think she isn't looking. Out of curiosity, did you, as a writer, actually think about what that name would have been? Actually, how'd the predators come up with "Gardenia"? Did they just name it after the flower? Was it by some kind of world/worlds-government-level vote?

Oh, and - again, for you as a writer - what's up with Shadurak? I mean, I know he lost his family in a similar sort of unstoppable way to how Chastity did, and the two clearly connected in some way, but I can't really tell what's running through his head towards the end. Maybe it has something to do with fighting for human habitation rights, rather than...whatever Thorovo wants?

Vulpini18 - 1 year ago

Thank you, I appreciate that :)

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

I'm delighted you enjoyed it, Vulpini the 18th. I've noticed that you've recently started uploading your own works this summer and I eagerly anticipate your development and ongoing works. :)

I know I haven't commented on them; I've been spending less time on the site temporarily for entirely neutral reasons.

Shadurak knows a lot more than he is feasibly able to explain. He also has some biases and his own perspective on matters. Your reading on how we felt about Chnembi and her friends is interesting! Personally, I think she's dangerous in a cool-bad-girl kinda way.

The Eanlian judgements on animal intelligence and personhood is complex. They would see many animals, parrots, ravens, dolphins, great apes, etc., as being "very close" to being full people. The Eanlian specialists understand that those animals evolved to be as intelligent as they needed to be in order to sustain the species, so they aren't judged as failures for not being like their Eanlian counterparts -- quite the contrary, the Eanlians marvel at the fact there was life to study at all in this lower part of the cosmos.

I constantly find myself astounded by it, too.

Vulpini18 - 1 year ago

I really like this story. Im curious about when Shadurak said "Some of the others were close, before they were destroyed," when referring to sapient species on earth. He must be referring to the fellow hominids that used to exist before they were wiped out by a combination of us and climate change. I also have a feeling that he only called those women in Veria "dangerous" because they might give Chastity some funny ideas about what plans Eanli's predators have for earth. Earth seems royally screwed in this timeline. It looks like stuff hit the fan a few decades back and humanity as well as the planet's ecosystems are on the edge of collapse.

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

[i]not apocalyptic, per se[/i]
I'd say the state of the world in this counts as an apocalypse. Things are evidently so heavily screwed that human civilization is collapsing; I simply cannot see humanity persisting as multiple biospheres collapse.

[i]We could, collectively, choose for the world to be worse. I think The Good Fight is worth it.[/i]
Out-of-universe, yes; it's very irritating to see people these days talking about how things have never been worse than today. It really just seems like a way to absolve themselves of responsibility, but that's not really for here, so I digress.

In-universe, also yes, but I get the feeling that, regardless of how well things are going on Earth, the Eanli predators would have invaded them anyway. They've clearly fought wars to destroy and conquer prey societies before - Ghynlina, certainly, as well as an attempt at Verria, from what I can tell.

That would be an interesting non-canon or alt-universe, actually - predators encountering a functional, prosperous prey society on Earth that has no predators of its own. Watching the beliefs of predators get challenged is one of the best things about your work, IMO - it's both unique and interesting.

As for Chastity, she does seem to have an inability to separate reality from fiction; I guess what happened in the grove was an indication to her that things weren't as different from Earth as she thought. The predators seem to have attempted to replicate that part of her in regards to the academy-produced trained prey; I can imagine some predators finding out what most other humans are like, being disappointed they're not like Chastity, and then attempting to copy that.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

Chastity's Earth is different from the familiar one in a few ways. I think the people of our world would start to enumerate several divergences while comparing the 1980s. Chastity's world is not apocalyptic, per se, just bad, but in ways that aren't unrecognizable from our own world. As unsettling as it is to imagine, our world could be quite worse. We could be doing worse. We could, collectively, choose for the world to be worse. I think The Good Fight is worth it.

Regarding her attitude in this first part, as she mentions, she's not entirely sure if any of these events are even real. Her frame of reference for everything is stories, picture-books, and tales from her religion. That includes things like Peter Rabbit, and she is assessing events through that lens. What happened in the grove was an indicator that she was more in The Jungle Book than, say, a therapeutic layer of heaven... maybe, she's still uncertain of that, and who could blame her?

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

Honestly, this almost feels like the start of a coming of age story, where afterwards they all have to confront what happened and how they were wrong and didn't handle that well. (So many potential threads to tug on, warping in meaning among each other and as their point of view changes, so many potential bookends to echo)

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

Oh, yeah, this is a situation where a bunch of teens fail to have a good understanding of the world or each other, while boldly asserting that they do.

Growing up is hard, sure, but the real moral is: don't go out during hunting hours.

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

This whole gallery system is a giant phpBB hack and I'm still shocked it works as well as it does. Who knows what adding new features here would do, what it would break, and what it would encourage? Anyway, without the ability to edit our posts, we utilize markup tags down here at our peril...

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

Missed a closing tag

Mourtzouphlos - 1 year ago

Missed a [i/]

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

It's all the same setting, just different places and times. After a point, they make hard-science reformation technology universal, and many of the stories I write in the setting are placed then. I get some flak on these, because the conventional understanding is that reformation means no consequences. I wish I could say that these illustrate that there is consequences, but many people have read that as a flaw. In the stories without refabrication, a usual piece of feedback I get is that the predators are incredibly evil and mean. This is strange, because they're some of the most compassionate natural predators I can imagine.

The point is, the fatal/non-fatal aspect is divisive either way, and people take issue with both category of stories I write. Shucks! I suppose I'll just keep writing both. For what it matters, I have a bit more reformation stories planned than fatal ones.

Fun detail for you: I'm hiding information in the thumbnails. The computer-generated text implies a later era, so it's non-fatal.

Tahg - 4 years ago

I had failed to recognize the setting for this at first, since it's rather different from your last several stories. Really nice story, though based on your comments and prior stories, I assume it's a one-off (unfortunately for me). As I've said before though, I imagine I'm in the minority for preferring stories with regen/reform.

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

I think you're right, so I added the specific content tags.

After several attempts at a different image for that part, I realized that particular piece of art was the best. In a metaphysical sense, it was always there, because I want to be open about the inputs and themes that make the setting. I'm leaving all other questions up to the reader. :D

Randomness - 4 years ago

If they did, then certainly I would like to escort them into a Joke Sensitivity class. I feel the tags would add a bit of charm, but ultimately the decision is yours.

Now, excuse me while I fawn over you making my works canon in your universe...

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

I take it you found that entertaining!

I'm enamored with TristanHawthorne's thumbnail tags, but can't do them because they work against my personal aesthetic. Do you think people would vote them off if I put them in the tags directly...?

ObsidianSnake - 1 year ago

We ask bells to signify a lot, don't we? Bells, chimes, that kind of things. Arrivals and departures, weddings, calls to prayer, ends of class periods, and starts of work factory work shifts -- and if you forgive the morbidity, dinner bells. A single distant chime of a bell is often utilized as a funerary shorthand for mortal finality in cinema and cartoons.

I think, for hunting hours, there's a piece of each of those things when they ring.

juicefox - 1 year ago

I like the idea of inconsistent Hunting Hour times to facilitate predation. And the idea of a town bell going off to indicate the commencement of and conclusion of Hunting Hours for any preds and prey who may have forgotten. The bell is so simple and obvious, I wish I had thought to implement that in my own stories.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

[i]The prey are closer to humans psychologically, but there's still this sort of weird...alien-ness to them. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure they act differently from humans.[/i]
They have a different set of senses, different instincts, along with some different physical capabilities. I try to write to that. When a chipmunk blusters, they won't pound their chest, or knock things around. Lus doesn't think to offensively hurl objects or swing his limbs, but instead bites and maybe scratches. I wouldn't mistake those differences for deficiencies: they're all well-adapted to the realities of Eanli. In terms of cold biology, Lus is quite a successful little creature. Sure, I suppose that he would still need to (find hot single chipmunks in your area!) and so on, you know, but I'm not his mom, I'm not going to pressure him for grandkits. I suppose Darwin would. Darwin and grandma Timberpines.

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

[i]Woah! No, he's still himself. If that's where things were going, it would be in the story. That would be exciting, right?[/i]

He certainly seemed mad enough to, there's precedent from Rivers's other book for prey murdering "collaborators", it's certainly what [i]I'd[/i] do (if I had the spine to), and people out-of-universe seem to be willing to kill a lot more than one person, so it seemed like something he'd do. Also, there's Lus's "[i]Thanks for that information. That last bit, I mean[/i]". I figured he had realized who let this happen, and acted on it.

Sorry for misinterpreting that, though.

Incidentally, I initially hoped the murderer got one of the right ones; apparently, two tried to stop this. It'd be like a punctuation mark on the end of a bad sentence if they killed one of those two rather than someone willing to sell out their fellow citizens.


[i]This story, and in fact a lot of these, don't put the predatory species in the best light.[/i]

I suppose that focusing on only one aspect of their behavior will do that, yes, but I also think that this happens with the prey species too. There seems to be a much higher rate of bigots, murderers, petty thugs, evil politicians, and the like among the prey then it seems there would be otherwise. Maybe it's just a product of the world, but I guess it seems a bit...cynical to have so many characters be like this?

That's why I really like this story: Lus isn't some backstabbing bigot, or a murderer, or a terrorist, or anything like that; he's some random, non-ethically fraught person. Most people in real life are like Lus. He and his relative doesn't deserve this. Nobody does, really, not even Rivers, although I do believe it would be slightly cathartic if a few of your not-in-this-story-not-relevant-to-it predator characters magically body-swapped into a prey's body the next time something like this happens.

Also, while I'm veering on the topic of morality, I just need to compliment you on how disturbing it is to see things from the perspective of [i]anyone[/i] in-universe who isn't a human. You made actual [i]aliens[/i], not just humans shaped like animals. The prey are closer to humans psychologically, but there's still this sort of weird...alien-ness to them. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure they act differently from humans.

Which I suppose necessary for the story to work, because humans probably would have systemically exterminated everything else in the Stone Age if they evolved on Eanli. Not necessarily hating on humanity, it's just, unfortunately, what we tend to do.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

[i]As an aside, what's the dating system based off of?[/i]
There's many, mostly rooted in geographical cultures, but the one you see used here was arbitrary, consisting of an after-the-fact agreement to standardize dating between scholarly groups across the world. The event was a full solar eclipse that was observed across Eanli. A key part of the "third renaissance" is deliberate building of take-it-or-leave-it inter-culture exchange like that. The Lagous language is another example.

[i]He killed that town council member, didn't he.[/i]
Woah! No, he's still himself. If that's where things were going, it would be in the story. That would be exciting, right?

[i]Honestly, though, if both the predators and the prey basically isolated themselves from the other group, everything would probably be much better.[/i]
It'd be simpler... at first. They co-evolved. They are what they are because of each other. Many of the predator-run cultures sort of agree with your assertion, and typically only interact with prey as meals. The extreme opposite case, prey-run cultures that entirely lock out predators, ultimately do not withstand the test of time. There are situations where it occurs through natural causes, you know, heavily forested islands populated by flightless birds, chonky descendants of foragers that ended up there... (NOTE!: YES! THIS IS A !!!VERY!!! SUBTLE TEASE FOR AN UPCOMING STORY!!!)

This story, and in fact a lot of these, don't put the predatory species in the best light. The narration in this one isn't neutral, either, because it's Lus's perspective. You can subscribe to it, too, if you want to, but that would also mean accepting its limitations, its blind-spots.

Vulpini18 - 1 year ago

I really liked it when Maershe talked about how many prey shes had, for some reason that sort of talk is just perfect for me.

VampireBunny - 3 years ago

All I was saying by bringing up bias is that it can make stories boring. It's why a lot of people find it hard to read about superman dying for the #15th time, when every reader knows he will be resurrected again next week. Because it's extremely obvious DC would have a bias for his success, so the drama can become stale. When stuff like that is obvious to the audience it feels like you've already read it before you even have.

I really disagree with the idea that those stories being provocative is strange, it's just how things normally work. When you make a character the protagonist, you are psychologically asking your reader to seek aspects of themselves that align with the protagonist. It's why the Joker movie is executed so well, because everybody can relate to his feelings and expirances in some way, even if they aren't mentally unstable enough to commit violence over it. Likewise, everybody has something they can be worried about getting in trouble with others for, so the feeling of being hunted comes even more naturally than just our instincts as descendants of cavemen fleeing from wolves in the wild.
So people are going to, without even trying to, be forced to imprint their reason upon the characters who might end up just getting lynched randomly for what seems to their perspective like no reason. But that's why I was complimenting this story because it gives really great reasons.

Oh! Actually I just realized the perfect explanation. This reminds me so much when I was a younger kid and I saw this animation: https://youtu.be/nfLS4nt5aQw
It's a funny joke but I really do think this could be shown in school as a great example of how powerful perspective is. Like obviously who's going to care about killing a goombah in mario. Yet all you have to do to invert that is change the perspective.

Also, I disagree with that about "large-scale works" Because some of my favorite fiction follows individuals who's character, loyalties, and motivations really shine and show in those situations where they have to make big decisions on what is the best thing to do, instead of just reacting to the events of their own life. For example the character I mentioned, in my profile picture, made the mistake in thinking that because he had found a home with others who share a radical opinion, that they would also accept any and all other controversial aspects of his soul. Which let's both characters have a natural way and good reason to "feel betrayed" by the other, when they end up going against each other in the future.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

I normally dislike sub-threading like this, but... I'm gonna do it anyway, as a treat.

I'm guilty of typing many screen-fillers myself, so long comments are entirely welcome here. :)

Any bias toward predators in my stories should be attributed toward a love for dommy predators with parental proclivities. I will not apologize for that! Strangely, the stories that have been more from prey characters' perspectives have been the most provocative, judging by the temperature of the responses.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

Towro wasn't supposed to seem like an idiot, but instead conceited, dangerously over-confident, and most importantly [i]desperate[/i]. At some level, he knew, and he consented anyway, because it would produce one of the best possible outcomes given his situation.

Okay, but maybe he is an idiot, too, for making enemies with the most powerful mob boss in the world, putting his loved ones in danger, which is a culmination of a lifetime of overly-impulsive antics.

A few people have suggested that Maershe should have been the viewpoint character in one way or the other. There could have been a valid story there, however, that's not the one I chose to write. I thought that Towro's side of the arc was far more interesting.

I feel like I should say that I'm not interested in writing large-scale works centered around armies of predator and prey clashing for dominance. It doesn't readily produce the kind of character dynamics that I'm looking to explore. That said, I think a lot of people do like those kinds of stories! I'm surprised that's not a more common genre.

VampireBunny - 3 years ago

Also I'm realizing my comment was a long tangent and I should have made it much shorter. I normally don't feel really interested in some of your stories because it feels like it has an extreme writers bias in favor of the predators out of the two sides. but I think this story is a perfect example of a way to make things feel fair and balanced and therefore engaging to continue reading.

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

This is fantastic feedback, thank you.

I have indeed been thinking about putting together a reader's guide for the Eanli Cosmos, although I was hoping that I could provide exactly enough context within any given work to ground the reader. There is a history, a timeline, that I'm utilizing. To make matters worse, there's whole continents and societies on Eanli that are highly distinct from one another in terms of geography, society, and also population. For instance: On the continent of Verria, where We Wretched Creatures, Close Only One, Watercolors, and You Do It In The Desert take place there. Prey have a LOT of power in Verria, because they established the cities, so a complicated social contract emerged to keep everyone playing nice. The predators didn't quite ever [i]win[/i] there, although as Eanli culture advances and enmeshes, prey in Verria note their sway slipping. Thus, even within this one place, different points in time will have differences in dynamics.

Refabrication is the product of a long series of bio-medical advances, and is a hall-mark of the 'cyberpunk' and 'science fiction' eras. The scene at Eldis Agricultural Machines would have been year 322. The very first successful refabrication was in year 461.

Gardenia is the name the Eanlian researchers bestowed upon the planet Earth after it was discovered in another dimension. Even after they understood that it had existing names, they preferred 'Gardenia', so they decided that it would be the proper name from then on. Eanli and Gardenia are in different dimensions from one another, with Gardenia placed at a nadir-level of minimal "energy", where the Eanlians were shocked to find stable matter that isn't quarks and other sub-atomic particles.

Tahg - 4 years ago

Ok, note to self: don't put anything in square brackets on this site. The software gobbles it up. The blank area contained a note stating that most of the last paragraph was answered in your gallery description, but I left it in anyway.

Tahg - 4 years ago

The story made sense to me, but I've had a bit of a background in the Hunting series. As these stories cover quite a wide range of locations and stories, the issue of finality of prey, or I suppose less common, predators comes up.
Was regen something that was available in Riot's stories because she lived in a more modern time, or because that was a habitat and not typical of the world?

Regarding this story specifically, the setting seems clear enough, but again I have some background on the universe. The description is a bit ambiguous though. I read it as "Emotional" and "Fatal, but hopeful ending" whereas I guess it's "Emotional and fatal" with a "hopeful ending". (To clarify, there is nothing fatal about the outer story or the ending, only the flashback story.) TBH, at least in my opinion fatal is the "expected" outcome on Eka's and probably something I'd reserve in the description for a MC, if at all.

[Ok... it seems like most of what I was wondering about below was answered in your gallery description. Do people read those?]


Perhaps it might be nice to have a "fact sheet" about Eanli and Gardenia if you want (case in point, I think they are in different universes but I'm not sure?), that offers some basic info about the worlds, the predator/prey relationship, and locations and era's of your stories.

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

Thanks, and I'm glad it hooked you, even though I know it's going a bit afield.

Randomness - 4 years ago

What a brilliant premise. I'm envious of not only the quality, but that this is such an obviously amazing scenario and not ONCE did I ever think of it!

Touche. You are keeping me sharp

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

[i]I was worried that this one was going to get some flack. Instead, it was quietly popular, as far as my works go.[/i]

I think it's because it's first-time readers of your work mistake your other stories as trying to portray their dommes as "morally right", or sympathetic/etc. - a mistake I made, too, until I read through them again and realized they aren't about morality. Sure, people do horrible things to other people in them, but that's not the point - the point is the story.

On the other hand, Sadurna is obviously [i]not[/i] sympathetic/nice/anything like that. As you/I know, she wasn't written with morality in mind, but anyone reading this, even if this is their first time on your work, won't get confused on that. They go "yeah, this woman's pretty horrible, let's just enjoy the story", rather than getting hung up on relative ethics.


[i]I usually write gentler domination than this[/i]

It's probably the hardest domination you've ever written, yes, but it's closer to everything else on this site, so people [i]aren't[/i] put off by it, ironically enough. Your other work sometimes falls into an uncanny valley of "are these predators supposed to be good people?", at least at first glance, whereas this doesn't.

Maybe people should read this first to set a baseline for the rest of your works - like, "it's all uphill from here". I probably should have, myself.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

Wow, thanks for the comment! The very first on this one, too.

The emotional components of the domination are rather intense here. Put simply, it's horse-breaking, from the perspective of the horse, made worse by the facts of the horse's already existing depression and the half-forgotten connection she has with her owner. I usually write gentler domination than this. That said, if the dommes are all gentle, then none are.

I was worried that this one was going to get some flack. Instead, it was quietly popular, as far as my works go.

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

This, I think, is another example of you writing something well by taking a different tack from most writers on this site. Anyone can write pornography; you write erotica. Anyone can write gruesome [i]physical[/i] torture, but there's just something that sticks with you about someone who deliberately destroys people's lives. Sadurna follows through on that - to her, every single aspect of Sunshine's self-worth, independence, and past life has to be destroyed, and, if I'm not mistaken, there's a faint implication that Sunshine will be forced to reproduce with one of those stallions in order to make a better runner.

Like, when you write this stuff, you pull out all the stops, and I gotta give you credit there, because I don't think that I'd have the spine to write something like this.

My only real sort of nitpick is that I personally suggest the "psychological torture" tag be applied here. Yes, there's the content warning in the description, but it's not really specific. I figured that said content warning just referred to elements of your previous works taken up to 11, not gaslighting and emotional abuse.

All in all...yeah, wow. Damn. I feel like I just had a firework go off in my face. Not exactly what I was expecting, since most of your other stuff is like an opera/orchestra reaching a crescendo, but it's an interesting deviation from your other stuff. I just wasn't expecting the whole Zersetzung thing with Sadurna.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

I don't enjoy negation like this, but: The scope of these stories is limited by the frame centered on predator and prey as archetypes of people, so there are some genres and plot directions I'm not able (or readily willing) to go in. For instance, I wasn't intending to do cross-overs with other works, or swashbuckling space battle things. If/when I have stories in other settings on this site, I'm wanting it to be about something fundamentally different than these stories. As a topic, I'm not sure what the Eanli Cosmos can do for other settings, either.

In other words, I could do that, but I like what I was doing more. It's sort of like how not all fantasy work stories have high-detail magic systems, or even magic at all, or at least not more than the real world does. That can appear as an error, but non-conventional doesn't mean incorrect. I'd like to imagine that I'm doing some genre-tunneling with these stories, and I hope that I'm leaving enough open room for invite others in, maybe even tempt them to grab a pick-axe of their own!

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

[i]Verria is confusingly both the continent and the short-hand name for the nation that dominates most of it. I suppose that's poor writing on my part, as everything should be clear and unambiguous, in precisely the way the that the ever-stubborn real world never is. Oh, well! Ambiguous or not, the political body of Verria includes both Canada, U.S., and Mexico. Likewise, it isn't culturally homogeneous.[/i]

Well, in real life, the USA tends to just get called "America", so you're actually perfectly-spot on there. It doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the story.

Also, Entirely_Logical brought up the possibility of other worlds occupying the same dimensional space as Eanli/Earth. Is that something you're going to explore further? Because you could do pretty much anything you want to with that - hell, if you make another setting besides the Eanli Cosmos, you could link the two together, if you so desired, by stating that they invented the Portcullis technology as well. Aside from the more obvious facets, interdimensional travel is one hell of a useful, story-advancing plot device.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

The star system here is not the Eanli one. To be fair, it makes sense that you would be tempted to try and match setting elements like that, as such things work in the other stories. This is one of the stories that introduce and entirely dwell within their own contexts, self-contained, still connected -- just like a space station.

The in-setting understanding is that Earth is a shadow of Eanli. The materialistic explanation is long and dull, so a poetic shorthand like that is the general preference. The dimensional layers of the cosmos aren't perfectly equivalent in other ways, too. Those details will come up in prose when relevant.

Verria is confusingly both the continent and the short-hand name for the nation that dominates most of it. I suppose that's poor writing on my part, as everything should be clear and unambiguous, in precisely the way the that the ever-stubborn real world never is. Oh, well! Ambiguous or not, the political body of Verria includes both Canada, U.S., and Mexico. Likewise, it isn't culturally homogeneous.

Un is actually similar. Her Higheness Tawi would see a great difference between her home nation and the others of Un, even if they're enmeshed in terms of world representation. Un is much larger than Verria! Characters have come from there often, but I realize that the opposite has not yet occurred; the stories have managed thus far to not venture there. I'm currently finishing a larger project right now, one that I've been working on for an excessively long time, so the last thing on my mind is flinging myself into another project. That said, there's some ideas I've had that are set in Un. I could see those as the active project at some point.

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

You know, it's really a great example of the sheer - obscene, almost - power differential between the predators and prey that live in post-scarcity times that the inner section of an [i]entire fucking orbital habitat[/i] got dedicated to being a hunting preserve.

Also, you say there's a "semi-habitable fourth planet". Is that the Eanli version of Mars? Because I've been mentally matching a few regions on Eanli with their respective ones on Earth - Verria is similar to Canada or parts of the United States, Dascadia is similar to Madagascar, etc. - and it seems like Eanli is essentially a mirror-universe Earth where evolution took a very, very different path.

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

The technology was applied to interplanetary travel first, and then they found a new way to apply it as they learned more. Even space travel can become near mundane under the right social conditions, apparently.

Furryvoreonly - 10 months ago

She could have at least explained herself to the poor guy!

"I love him, too, even though I couldn’t tell him that"

Why couldn't she? It's not like anyone would hear her and make fun of her for loving him in her own possessive predatory way. She could have at least tried to explain her reasoning to him.

I guess he just made the mistake of trusting the wrong predator...

ObsidianSnake - 4 years ago

I often consider the impact of tags on reader experience. The tags give a cross-cut view of the works, which defies some approaches to story-telling. I've learned to work with that, rather than around or against it. Maybe that's a similar problem as working within the constraints of genre!

FirstOf71st - 4 years ago

I can't say I'm enjoying your shorter works as much as the longer, in-depth story I commented on a week or so ago. However, it's just as fascinating to see the social and technological continuity of this universe between timeframes.

As stated by another commentator, silent first-person perspective threw me for a bit of a loop here, but it really works to build the tension for the climax - it works even though any reader on this site probably knows exactly what that climax is as soon as the characters are introduced.

ObsidianSnake - 5 years ago

I adore your commentary. Forgive me if this is uncomfortable to read, but your diction and tone are soothing.

I think it's sadly common for people to abbreviate the efforts of groups or labors of collectives as the achievements of individuals. I'm not saying that genius doesn't exist, or that leadership isn't a thing, but I think we emphasize it too much. It's something I hope this story illustrates, at least a little. It's funny, isn't it? The device takes all these bits and arranges them into something vital, much like the research project that produced it.

Entirely_Logical - 5 years ago

The real tragedy here is how close he was, historically speaking, to seeing the fruits of his research - yet falling so close to the finish line at the hands of one he trusted implicitly.

Previous stories has attributed the perfection of refabrication to a certain wolf, yet this story suggests that much of the work may have been performed by figures who met similar fates, adding on to the tragic implications.

As before, this is very well put together, and I can't wait to read more.

alockwood1 - 2 years ago

Something to think on.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

[i]Incidentally, you cited Octavia E. Butler as one of your inspirations. Are there others?[/i]
In general literature, yes! Whenever I see something that strikes me as effective writing, I try and learn from it. I read more critically these days. I'm not trying to emulate anybody's style, though. I'd like to be able to tailor style to the tone, genre, and form of whatever I'm writing at the time.

For instance, in this one, I make the third person narration perform a lot of work. It's always over the shoulder of a character, but it injects large amounts of contexualizing information, like it's a wildlife documentary. It ends up feeling like another character in the room about halfway through. I don't typically do that, but when I was writing this, it felt like a way to balance the dialectic between Eufenris and the student.

I'm not familiar with Peter Watts, but I'll happily take the recommendation!

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

[i]Ah, I think I understand. Generally starting with smaller projects is easier, but I've felt motivation and some thrill in chasing more ambitious scopes myself. Honestly, I kind of choked on it; writing Hunting Paradise was downright painful compared to the other larger works. I very nearly failed. There was a major false-start of a draft, a re-write, and the revision of the final first draft was hell. I really should have started with some of the shorts instead. Then again, I learned a lot from that bumpy start. Maybe you'll have an easier time of it than I did! I hope so.

It seems to me that you're more likely to have an approach like mine in how you construct stories. There's two ends of the spectrum: explorer and architect. The explorer side contains those that draft as they go, and the architects start with detailed outlines. It's a spectrum, and the same person may take a different approach depending on the context, like somebody that builds tight outlines when working on a gritty sci-fi thriller but uses only loose collections of character and world notes while working on a fantasy adventure. Neither side of this spectrum is right or wrong, and in fact every real writer contain a bit of both. It seems that you're more on the architect side, with me. :) Do be aware that revision is going to be far more painful using that approach. Also, we can get caught in the notes, and sometimes drafting will grind to an absolute halt when you realize that, oh no, there was something that didn't make sense about the plot that wasn't visible from the notes. It then feels like you're going back and forth between the draft and notes as you try and fix the error in both place, and you have to schedule in some time to curl up into a ball and cry at that point, too. Meanwhile, somebody with the opposite approach just laughs, leaves a note at that point to fix the problem, and plunges back into more drafting -- they're going to be a doing a lot in the revision, anyway, they can mix it all up if need be, no big deal.[/i]

Ah. Yeah, I'd say that I'm more towards the architect side, but not entirely; I take a prompt - i.e. something set, that I'm not willing to change, and a group of related plot elements - and then develop it from there. Thing is, though, it's hard to build multiple prompts off of one another side-by-side, since even the architect approach can't detail everything in full, and you do have to do a little improv; I'm not concerned about it, though, I write for fun in my free time.

If I had to guess - not making assumptions here, just observing things about writing - your shorter stories such as [i]How Apex Predators Make Friends[/i] and [i]Fitting In[/i] seem to do tend more towards the "architect" side of things - the outlines being "what if Kelriot and friend went to adult restaurant" and "sleepover except with betrayal" - oversimplifications of them, yes, but there's a single concept they're based around. OTOH, the larger/longer ones such as [i]Seven Days[/i] are still on the "architect" side of things, but given the number of different settings and characters that are encountered, they have to be more explored over time - you can't write out everything ahead of time, you have to let it evolve organically. Still both "architect", but the shorter ones are moreso.

Incidentally, you cited Octavia E. Butler as one of your inspirations. Are there others?

I'll give you one in exchange, preemptively: you should read Peter Watts. In terms of what you're interested in, Butler is more on the "parental-leaning dom" side of things, whereas Watts is more on the "interdimensional alien" and "predator psychology" side of things. Also, he found a way to explain vampires in a completely realistic and fully scientific sense, so there's that.

ObsidianSnake - 3 years ago

[i]It's not quite that it's dense, it's that it's huge. In terms of scale, if not at all concept, it's similar to Hunting Paradise and all the various other works you've written using the same characters, except each individual component isn't stand-alone, meaning that, while I'm building up these three, four-ish stories at once, I constantly have to jump back and forth between them to ensure that they match up.[/i]

Ah, I think I understand. Generally starting with smaller projects is easier, but I've felt motivation and some thrill in chasing more ambitious scopes myself. Honestly, I kind of choked on it; writing Hunting Paradise was downright painful compared to the other larger works. I very nearly failed. There was a major false-start of a draft, a re-write, and the revision of the final first draft was hell. I really should have started with some of the shorts instead. Then again, I learned a lot from that bumpy start. Maybe you'll have an easier time of it than I did! I hope so.

It seems to me that you're more likely to have an approach like mine in how you construct stories. There's two ends of the spectrum: explorer and architect. The explorer side contains those that draft as they go, and the architects start with detailed outlines. It's a spectrum, and the same person may take a different approach depending on the context, like somebody that builds tight outlines when working on a gritty sci-fi thriller but uses only loose collections of character and world notes while working on a fantasy adventure. Neither side of this spectrum is right or wrong, and in fact every real writer contain a bit of both. It seems that you're more on the architect side, with me. :) Do be aware that revision is going to be far more painful using that approach. Also, we can get caught in the notes, and sometimes drafting will grind to an absolute halt when you realize that, oh no, there was something that didn't make sense about the plot that wasn't visible from the notes. It then feels like you're going back and forth between the draft and notes as you try and fix the error in both place, and you have to schedule in some time to curl up into a ball and cry at that point, too. Meanwhile, somebody with the opposite approach just laughs, leaves a note at that point to fix the problem, and plunges back into more drafting -- they're going to be a doing a lot in the revision, anyway, they can mix it all up if need be, no big deal.

TestAccountPleaseIgnore - 3 years ago

[i]That's too big of a question to answer properly in a comment, but the professionals working in that sector aren't abducting free prey from the habitats, for multiple reasons.[/i]

Makes sense. I guess it's like Randomness's [u]Prey Date, where[/u] they try to get two individual trained prey to hook up and then take their babies - after all, it's not like the [i]trained[/i] prey care if you do that. They live to serve.



[i]I recall when I was at a panel about the production of the Lackadaisy Cats animated short, and somebody asked the cleanup animator about Hazbin Hotel (the animator in question is the creator of Hazbin Hotel). The animator shut down the question with an immediate "I'm sorry but we're only taking questions about anything but the panel topic right now", to paraphrase. It's becoming apparent that I might need to start doing that. I appreciate the continued interest, but when I write these stories, especially the shorts, I do so with the hope that they can stand on their own.[/i]

It just feels like I'm drinking a pool through a straw, so I tried to add another straw. I'll stop.



[i]Anyway, it certainly sounds like you're developing an interesting set of concepts for your story. I didn't mean to drop this part of the thread! I didn't have anything to add, but I do want to back up and acknowledge that you got your own thing going on. Unsolicited advise: finish it! You can't let a draft fester, or it'll never get done, as the task becomes heavier the longer you delay, until you're in a situation where you have to either re-read your own draft or start over again. I'm spinning my own wheels on a draft that I've been working on since the end of the summer, due to a variety of reasons, and it's PAINFUL to try to "get back in the groove". Draft fast, and if you're more of somebody that builds dense outlines and then drafts, then try and pack that outline down ASAP![/i]



It's not quite that it's dense, it's that it's huge. In terms of scale, if not at all concept, it's similar to Hunting Paradise and all the various other works you've written using the same characters, except each individual component isn't stand-alone, meaning that, while I'm building up these three, four-ish stories at once, I constantly have to jump back and forth between them to ensure that they match up.