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Lus Timberpines is acclimating to his new town when the unthinkable happens and he's stuck in the middle of it. Can the neurotic chipmunk and his cousin survive the afternoon hunt?
13k word thriller. Drama, hunting hours, fatal.
Some optional notes and trivia:
'Hunting hours' is a term used to describe the period of time in which prey may be legally hunted, captured, and consumed. The exact timing may change, but they are typically assigned to eight o'clock at night to five o'clock in the morning. In other words, after dark.
This story occurs on year 426 on the most widely-adopted calendar on Eanli. Their level of technology is similar to that of the early nineties on Earth.
Speaking of that, this takes place in the heart of the pseudo-nation continent of Verria. Other stories that take place in Verria include: Watercolors, We Wretched Creatures, You Do It In The Desert, and Close Only One.
Posted by Randomness 4 years ago Report
There is an exquisite, casual horror in a predator informing a child that they will be eaten with their mother as if it is some great mercy.
Wonderful piece.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 4 years ago Report
She was putting them in the same cage until then, but she is implying that at the same time, isn't she?
Thank you yet again! I'm glad you enjoyed this one.
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Posted by fire238 4 years ago Report
These predators all deserve to be exterminated.
Their hypocrisy is galling, their beliefs are unconscionable, and even their very existence is predicated on suffering and death.
I feel terrible for Lus, but at least now he's learned. I regret that he had to pay such a high price.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 4 years ago Report
I respect your feelings on this, and I think you have a healthy spirit of jutice in you. I'm still going to defend the Eanlian predators here, if ever so slighty: They are predators, after all, in the model of earthly ones. If they doth offend, I recommend a vegetarian diet.
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Posted by fire238 4 years ago Report
My apologies for my excesses. I've gone on record stating that I abhor injustice and unfairness, but the added layers of the predators' moral myopia and their naive belief that they can just carry on with business as usual - acting like they're friends and pretending nothing happened - after a night of wanton carnage only adds fuel to the fire.
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Posted by Entirely_Logical 4 years ago Report
The fact that it isn't yet night is a big part of the issue here. A very large, very loudly spoken taboo was broken here, and done so with what will be no legal repercussions; the council allowed it to happen, after all. And since all the predator folk of the town were clearly prepared for what was going to happen, it's clear that not enough warning - or rather the warning was there but left in such a cryptic manner - was given to the prey folk. It's quite clear that no one on the council died as a result of what they did - there's no reason to be anywhere but home when you know what is coming - and I doubt any form of justice will be done in the end.
Of course, if the cousins had been a bit more myopic themselves and stuck to their initial plan, they probably could have gotten away before Dr. Rivers, and perhaps Sulo would have survived. With that said, she didn't do a very good job of putting forth her own grievances, especially when - unlike the drought seen in We Wretched Creatures - there is apparently plenty of food - and prey, for that matter - to go around which really leaves her words feeling hollow.
In the end, the circle of life goes on, even if the last semblance of society in this town has been broken.
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Posted by fire238 4 years ago Report
THANK YOU! Yes!
This entire scenario is a microcosm of all the horrific and ugly truths of this society: predators are monster made to believe that they are somehow morally right and upstanding, prey are made to believe that being a victim is noble and that getting angry and fighting back is "uncivil," those in power want to stay in power and are willing to do anything toward that goal, and as stories set at later dates prove, it never really gets any better.
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Posted by VampireBunny 3 years ago Report
This is great horror but I don't think it's a fair comparison to nature, because there aren't misinformation campaigns and conspiracies in nature.
Osiris here has a good point to say about but It's pretty much negated by her being sadistic and phytologically tormenting her victims, even young children. And her only real argument at the end is that prey who are in the government allow something, so it is fair to all prey which doesn't make much sense at all.
It's not really morally grey at all because Lus and fire here are 100% right because his brothers murder wasn't done in a fair and natural way but instead as the result of what was plainly cheating.
I think Lus's prejudice would be incorrect if there was at least a single predator character who warned people or was at all against the idea of conspiring to cheat and break the rules that everyone trusted. Like finding it dishonorable or against a code of honor like Bushido. But instead I can't imagine that a violation at a scale like this wouldn't cause pretty much every prey to never trust the system or laws again and just try take matters into their own hands violently
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Posted by ribs 4 years ago Report
I really liked this one preds powerful but not perfect pray weak but not automatically submitting. ATM I want to know what happens next now that the fragile lie their society is built on is gone.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 4 years ago Report
I'm pleased to entertain, as always.
I suppose I can tell you what happens after. I'm not likely to revisit this particular locale. The time-frame, yes, because the early-90s tech and aesthetic is a lot of fun when combined with these other conceits. (ONly 90s PrEY RemEMBER)
For the town of Sprucerocke: One of the town council members, themselves prey, lost their life within the week of this incident. They were murdered in their own home. The remaining council plus a lieutenant member changed the procedure rules so this event could not happen again, which was unanimous among the council. Those that ran again lost re-election. Hunting hours stabilized to reflect the rest of the region. Chesah-sci, Nutmeg and Lus used the freed whiteboard space for groceries and reminders.
For months afterwards, it was almost safe to go out during hunting hours. The predators all had a stock of prey in their homes to subsist on, so they enjoyed having the night to sleep without feeling like they were risking future starvation. With a steady diet, the predators' coats (or feathers) grew shiny and smooth, and their bodies full and powerful. Despite the social isolation and even greater hostility from the general prey population, it drastically changed the predators' lives for the greater.
Dr. Rivers's research group succeeds, and with their software and paper published worldwide, they attract foreign funding. This allows them to detach from the university at an independent lab. Dr. Rivers herself is well-celebrated, and is one of the first computer scientists to be honored for contributions to medical science. After decades of research, touring, teaching, and then a two terrible years of department administration ("How I loathe this!"), she retired into the wilderness, in a small self-sufficient predator community. She is known for her pet chipmunks, whom she raises for companionship.
The event itself made regional news. Most news-followers considered it localized enough to be dismissed as an aberration, especially when more attention-grabbing international news was occurring at the same time.
Nutmeg survived and returned home immediately. Nutmeg joined Chesah-sci and Lus in mourning Sulo. His shadow was present in their hearts forevermore, but life continued. Chesah-sci and Lus grew closer, and by the winter the two were a couple. Lus picked up employment a week later at a clothing store, filling a vacancy that was already present before the event. He helped the owners synthesize what worked at each of the major chains into the boutique experience, and the one location became hundreds across Verria over the decades. As a hobby, Lus formed a night-watch group that used the (then-new) Internet and data techniques to study hunting hours patterns. After several years, they found that community wellness and effective awareness campaigns targeting younger demographics were the best way to prevent predation. Eventually, he ran for city council, lost, ran again, lost again, and then won on the third time. He held the seat for twenty years, and was mayor for eight before he retired.
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Posted by Randomness 4 years ago Report
Well this is all wonderful, especially the little bit with Dr. Rivers. How cute. I bet she is great at raising chipmunks.
But the biggest questions of all is:
1. Where is the cat from?
2. IS THE VOLE OKAY
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 4 years ago Report
1. Hoshokon. The anthropologist and her big grumpy host will have their own story at one point. This is almost a cameo for them.
2. I hope so! I love abrasive characters like that, but I know that they're too divisive to use as anything other than tertiary characters. To be fair to her, the circumstances were a big amplifier on her quirks.
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Posted by Randomness 4 years ago Report
1. Oooh, sounds quite Eastern. Curious if this will be the Eanlianian version of Asia.
2. We all know Pine Martens love their voles, so here's hoping she lived to awkwardly serve coffee to her the next day.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 4 years ago Report
I'm actually working on something very short set in Hoshokon, and I think the imagery and the conventions will explain things well enough. It'll be a sweet and light story after the last three.
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Posted by Entirely_Logical 4 years ago Report
A brief question of my own: Can their computers run DOOM?
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 4 years ago Report
You would have to build it from the processor command level up, without the comfort of any interpolators to make everything easy, but eventually you could make software that is indistinguishable from DOOM when launched, sure. Loading .WADs is going to be a pain because it would be alien EE, even if all the usual components are there in some form. All of it totally worth it, of course.
Just realized an unexpected problem: it wouldn't look right to many species. The illusion of life, phantasmagoria, animation itself becomes expensive and difficult without some techniques to compensate for the frame gaps -- such things do exist, other than increasing frames, and I assume that they are well-understood on Eanli. The Eanli version of DOOM would need to use those techniques, which might involve making a great many new sprites, maybe. Otherwise, these smaller characters would see the sprites changing, and would get the relationship between them, but it's too slow to look convincing. Even after adjusting for that, they process visual information too fast. Despite the (for them) gruesome graphics, they would start to find it dull in a hurry. Ah, well.
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Posted by Entirely_Logical 4 years ago Report
And I have no doubt that someone actually did it Post-Admission, since that's basically the first thing EVERY software engineer tries to do when introduced to new hardware. Which begs another question. Do Eanlians have a similar piece of software that they try to make run on everything?
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 4 years ago Report
Oh, I thought you meant the machines available in this story, like Dr. Rivers's home-brew computing cluster. If we're talking Admission-era machines, those aren't even silicon circuits anymore. DOOM would be trivial to run on those, although it would be in a sandbox console rather than a specific machine.
I'm not sure about specifics of demoscene on Eanli but they've got to be there.
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Posted by Marked 4 years ago Report
I had some trepidation going into this after having taken a glance at the other comments, and with the setting being much different this time. I'm glad I gave this story a chance though. It left me curious about two aspects of the setting, though I expect that these questions will be answered in some of your other stories.
1. What is the demographics of Verria, or Eanli in general? I would assume roughly 90% prey 10% predator as a good rule of thumb, but it's possible that civilized prey: make up a much smaller portion of the population if predators can source meals from outside the city. It would be interesting to know either way.
2. Are prey able to use technology in order to fight back against predators. I should expect that even if weapons were largely banned for use by prey, some of them would invent their own explosive devices or traps. I can guess that the hunting hour laws and concept of civility in general exist because of a compromise that was forced on predators by prey who were capable of mounting genuine resistance in the past. Otherwise I would expect that all prey would have been kept as stock.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 4 years ago Report
1. Demographics are a hard thing to study due to cultural and social differences around classification. A cosmically third-person count would put it around 150:1 ratio. In the cities of Verria, it's usually far more extreme, up to 400:1 in certain communities. The prey of Verria were responsible for the cities, and the predators have the general run of everything else.
2. Prey are fully permitted to use any means they have available to defend themselves from predators during hunting hours. Placing traps is problematic because they can't discriminate between predator and prey, although crime groups rely on alarm traps to cover their operations from both predators and prey. At this point in time in the setting, weapons that are suitable to halt or mortally harm an Eanlian are pretty heavy-duty, and difficult to use in personal setting, so they are uncommon. A predator with enough experience in hunting can overcome all of these barriers, and they all talk to one another. The most reliable defense is staying at home during hunting hours.
You're correct that at some point, the prey were collectively self-conscious and powerful enough to force terms on the predators, at least in Verria. On most of Eanli, this was not the case. On Eanli, the prey lost the evolutionary competition for a little while. This actually takes many forms:
*In Aphernia, prey are mostly livestock. They're culturally alienated from the prey as anything other than food items.
*On the other hemisphere, the Dasacians have a rigid caste structure for prey, with masses of obedient food-stock at the bottom, some serfs to oversee them, and a select few servants at the top -- all of these attached to a specific predator individual, a family, or their clan.
*In Hoshokon, predators feuded over land for a thousand years before an era of peace. Those feudal lines were used to control the movement of prey, and so the result is noble predator lords and isolated communities of prey. Prey families typically arranged the sale of individuals or children to the lords for survival, which seems ghastly, but their lives are otherwise peaceful. Hoshokon predators consider hunting beneath them.
I could go on, but I'm sure you're getting the idea that individual cultures vary on what predator-dominated societies look like.
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Posted by Marked 4 years ago Report
Oh its very clear that you've got a lot of my questions covered. Thank you very much for the reply as it gives me just enough information that I can turn into excitement as I read through the other stories in your gallery.
Thank you for writing these nuanced stories that show a tension between the dignity of predators and prey.
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Posted by Randomness 4 years ago Report
A subtlety I just noticed: Dr. Rivers is exhibiting a real life behavior among weasels of over-hoarding prey.
What a nice little touch.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 4 years ago Report
Excellent observation! Thank you for noticing and pointing it out.
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Posted by FirstOf71st 4 years ago Report
Man, the ending of this one hits hard. Clearly, you've created a world without easy answers, and that's part of what makes it feel so plausible (or at least, continually intriguing to me).
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 4 years ago Report
I still sting with some of the flack I got for this one. Despite that, I don't regret writing it, as the honesty of it resonates with some. Thanks for your comments, by the way!
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Posted by wolfSnack 3 years ago Report
It's really sad, reading this story after seeing your backstory for Oseri. The world wasn't kind to her, and in response she turned into a monster.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 3 years ago Report
Yeah, this is definitely her lowest point.
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Posted by wolfSnack 3 years ago Report
Where does she go from here? Does she regain any of that optimism/tolerance for prey species, after her confrontation at the end of this story?
Also, I apologize if I misunderstood, but what DID prompt this event in this town? Were these "middle of the day hunting hours"? If so, how was that accomplished? Or was this all illegal but no one could stop them?
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 3 years ago Report
1. She goes home, back to her house full of computers, whirring fans, and caged prey. Lus has said some things that are bringing back a lot of memories, which she would have a new perspective on. She's going to learn a lot from taking care of so many prey. She gets very good at it. It adds a new dimension to her life and to her future. Her eventual retirement is far outside the cities.
2. They were entirely legal. It was even announced, although in such a way that most people wouldn't notice -- the paper reported it but in an obtuse way due to poor diligence and everyone being numbed to the complexity. Hoswati (still commonly known as Momma Marten) and the other predator council member aren't as important as the three prey council members that worked with them to make the event happen. They did so because it was advantageous to them, their business and social partners, and key sections of their constituents. It falls into the category of Awful-but-Legal.
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Posted by wolfSnack 3 years ago Report
Those prey in her house still all get eaten, though?
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 3 years ago Report
Gradually, yes.
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Posted by fire238 3 years ago Report
I don't know if it was intentional, but this did give me bit of schadenfreude.
Seeing Oseri confirm every horrible thing ever said about predators and having to live with it for the rest of her miserable life is a little satisfying.
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Posted by TestAccountPleaseIgnore 3 years ago Report
Well.
First off, this is, as you put it, quite honest. When the predators feel they're been...dominated, I guess, is the right word, they hit back as hard as they can.
The anthropologist cat, likely one studying the "cute little prey culture" - surprisingly offered me a fair deal of insight into what was going on here once I read through this a few times.
Two minor things:
- Lus biting the cat's neck was seen by the badger -as something sexualized, wasn't it? Because, you know, animal people. Different things during sex.
- Is said cat unaware of what all this is? They called it a "festival".
Also, it showed me that all the predators might be doing this for different reasons. Rivers is doing it out of a toxic combination of emotions that I'm not really capable of putting into words, but the cat seems to think this is essentially laser tag crossed with an anthropological survey. She's doing this for entertainment and maybe research, which is incredibly fucked up, if certainly interesting reading material and rather tame for this website.
So, next up: what, specifically, drove Rivers to this point? I have ideas as to that, but I have no idea as to whether they're accurate or not.
From my perspective, it's that she consciously or unconsciously believes that some prey had gotten the best of her - she found herself on the wrong side of the whole domination/submission aspect of your work - by murdering her best friend, as well as because her shithead of a neighbor locked her out to die As such, in her mind, all the prey (including those that hadn't even been born yet) were collectively responsible, which is...creepily reminiscent of real-life "rAcE wAr" narratives, and exactly the stuff that the Ratio members in her other story were spewing.
Basically, she drank the Ratio's bigotry Flavor-Aid, except in her mind, it's A-OK to breach civility like they did, because the people with her behavioral and biological traits are victims, regardless of what they do, and everyone else isn't, regardless of who they are. For instance, she sees open-market food displays as a sort of anti-civil attack on her person, but ambushing a child during surprise hunting hours, stripping them nude in public or front of complete strangers, and locking them in a cage where they can't even hide their naked body - to her, this is perfectly fine, because the child is somehow responsible for her suffering.
Am I misreading this? I mean, I'm kind of in the dark about her motivations, but, as far as I know, someone doesn't deliberately do stuff like this of generalized anger; they do it because they genuinely, truly hate someone.
As an end: you said you still sting with some of the flack I got for this one. You shouldn't - people are pissed because you got to them with an amazing, amazing work of horror when they came here for, well...you know. They're desensitized to everything else on this godforsaken website, but you managed to get to them with this.
It's quite the feat. Think about that for a bit.
Also:
The vole responded with a look of exasperation. “To a parallel universe where there aren’t any preds."
Ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Yeah, about that...
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Posted by TestAccountPleaseIgnore 3 years ago Report
Damn the formatting. You miss one little bracketed i and the entire thing reads different.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 3 years ago Report
Regarding the cat:
The cat's guardian definitely did not totally understand Lus's intentions there, although note that the cat figured it out rather swiftly. I would say that the cat is largely ignorant, an outsider to this culture that is thoroughly knowledgeable within the context of her own.
Regarding Dr. Rivers:
Keep in mind that the direct line between The Education of Oseri Rivers and Our Tears In Daylight is almost two decades long. There's not perfect correlation or causation between the plot elements of the two. Also, there's a lot I left deliberately ambiguous or outright hidden in this story, because this story is about Lus, not Oseri or even their world.
There is a cycle, though, that these characters are caught up in, one that is extremely hard to break. The cycle itself is sort of like a force of nature. At the conclusion of this story, it certainly looks like it's going to perpetuate. I'll admit that it's not the most hopeful ending.
Meta:
Yeah, Eka's Portal is the most breath-takingly expansive extensions of the phpBB codebase I've seen. We're lucky to have comments that function at all. I'm very hesitant to request new features or patches on kinda-jank stuff like the comments here. It would be nice to have comment editing. It would be nice to have the full phpBB text dash at our disposal here, too. Typically, comments are rarely verbose like this, so I suppose that didn't seem necessary when the feature was added. Sometimes I worry that the dumb stuff I encourage on this site is going to break something! :laughing:
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Posted by TestAccountPleaseIgnore 3 years ago Report
There's not perfect correlation or causation between the plot elements of the two.
So this story has an incrementally, slightly different version of Rivers - basically, her seen through the lens of being a narrative device, rather than a character?
This reminds me somewhat of the SCP Foundation, where each story is a stand-alone designed to do something on its own. If it mutually supports another one, that's fine, but it doesn't have to exactly match up with every other one.
There is a cycle, though, that these characters are caught up in, one that is extremely hard to break
Is this cycle "an eye for an eye makes the world go blind"? I can see how that'd be hard to break - non-brainwashed prey are (rightfully, at this point) too paranoid to turn the other cheek, and the predators, bar a few exceptions, exploit any possible weaknesses anyway.
Yeah, Eka's Portal is the most breath-takingly expansive extensions of the phpBB codebase I've seen
I noticed *something* was up with it well before I made an account, but, yeah, once you actually try to interface with it, it's...interesting. I wonder how long it'll last, myself.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 3 years ago Report
So this story has an incrementally, slightly different version of Rivers - basically, her seen through the lens of being a narrative device, rather than a character?
Kind of. She's much older, and she's been through a lot. This story is 90s, that one was 70s. There was an 80s.
Is this cycle "an eye for an eye makes the world go blind"?
I'm not sure it's about retribution. Lus bears a grudge, but he doesn't show interest in revenge. I think that he doesn't want these events to happen again, and would exit his prior comfort zones to see to that. Furthermore, from what he says, he will never enter any sort of alliance with a predator, even if it were mutually beneficial. The resentment and lack of curiosity help to perpetuate the cycle for another generation.
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Posted by TestAccountPleaseIgnore 3 years ago Report
There was an 80s.
Damn. I almost don't want to know...almost.
As an aside, what's the dating system based off of? IRL, it's the date of the supposed birth of Jesus, or it's based off of the movements of the Sun and the Moon, etc.; not sure what it is on Eanli.
I think that he doesn't want these events to happen again, and would exit his prior comfort zones to see to that.
He killed that town council member, didn't he.
The resentment and lack of curiosity help to perpetuate the cycle for another generation.
Honestly, though, if both the predators and the prey basically isolated themselves from the other group, everything would probably be much better.
Also, it would be insane to try to reconcile with someone who did the stuff Rivers did, just like it would be insane for Rivers to try to reconcile with the Ratio members, or whoever drove her to where she is by the time of this story. The people in-story don't know what we know about the other characters; they don't see another person you can ally with. They see a dangerous psychopath that tried to/wants to kill you, and, to be frank, that's exactly what the other side comes across as.
I mean, you cannot possibly tell me that if someone tortured your best friend to death (Rivers) or ate your relative (Lus), you'd walk up to them the next day and go "Hey, sorry about that, want to shake hands?".
Moreover, I get the feeling that most such alliances would be betrayed by at least one side. If the prey don't try to "dispose of" (read: kill) the predator once they're no longer useful, the predator will inevitably stab them in the back and go "Well, what were you expecting, dummy? I'm a predator." You can actually see a couple of instances of the latter throughout your work - Close Only One, Fitting In (if not as bad), etc.
Refusing to engage in this seems like the best possible option, given what they know.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 3 years ago Report
As an aside, what's the dating system based off of?
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.
He killed that town council member, didn't he.
Woah! No, he's still himself. If that's where things were going, it would be in the story. That would be exciting, right?
Honestly, though, if both the predators and the prey basically isolated themselves from the other group, everything would probably be much better.
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.
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Posted by TestAccountPleaseIgnore 3 years ago Report
Woah! No, he's still himself. If that's where things were going, it would be in the story. That would be exciting, right?
He certainly seemed mad enough to, there's precedent from Rivers's other book for prey murdering "collaborators", it's certainly what I'd 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 "Thanks for that information. That last bit, I mean". 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.
This story, and in fact a lot of these, don't put the predatory species in the best light.
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 anyone in-universe who isn't a human. You made actual aliens, 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.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 3 years ago Report
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.
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.
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Posted by juicefox 1 year ago Report
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.
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Posted by ObsidianSnake 1 year ago Report
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.
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