[Rendar]

Snip

Furry-no, just no, in a game that doesn't have it, in a setting where it is clearly barbaric/less sentient cursed races, Snakemen, Kobold, Minotaur, asking to play a character this non human is fetishistic and attention seeking. To this point I consider even banning Druids and a handful of non human races in actual DnD due to the misuse of them I've seen from people out in the wild at organized play and conventions, If I was running for people I didn't know well enough yet.

'Furries are fetishistic!'

'Furries are just attention seeking!'

I mean this in the nicest way possible. The amount of people that say furries are 'fetishists' / zoophiles is honestly wild, and at this point less an actual talking point and more you just think people are weird for it. 'Playing as Bugs bunny is weird. You're just doing it bcz its a fetish!'

Do you know how many people you see in SL2 that run Big Boobied Anime girls because they think they're hot? Or want to be sexual and ERP with the character in DMs? Do you know how many people play 'weird' characters, to be fetishistic with them in SL2? Because it's more than 0. It's a lot. The amount of profiles I've reported for 'I can literally see the outline of this character's genitals' or 'I can see 9/10ths of this characters breast' is more than 0. If you're going to bemoan and throw shade at Furries for literally zero reason because they're 'perverted degenerates' you sure as hell better be willing to swing at the perverts that are playing humans.


So, with as much respect as I can muster at 8am in the morning. Shut the fuck up.

Edit: This isn't to say that I think Furries should be in SL2. At least, in regards to Unlimited Amounts With Zero RP or reason on the 'why' they have suddenly dropped (See: Muridae's release).

Karakuri/Oni's release was tied to a big area that was quite literally cut off from the rest of the world. So them existing in mainland Korvara got a lot of "What the FUCK are you?" that made sense. Furry characters dropping out of nowhere (unless they were monstrous: Minotaurs, Snakemen, Goblins. Idk why I'm calling Goblins Furries) would be just as weird as Muridae's drop in an IC perspective.

If there were a tactful way to go about? Sure. Something that isn't Just Shadow Dropped 'figure out the lore yourself'.

But I refuse to let someone act like a god-fearing republican lawmaker in America throwing out 'AH! SCARY FURRIES ARE DEGENERATES AND PERVERTS!' because that straight up fucking sounds like 20 years ago where all gay people were degenerates and perverts, with literally zero basis.

They're just people, my guy.

[Neus]

Hell, Karakuri initially had very little visual restrictions. Dev started making them after release when he realized how few there really were.

No, I clarified the lore when asked. Said lore for Karakuri was there on the website day 1 - they are made for infiltration, and part of their creation involves resonating in the Sanctuary to both repair their mind and instill them with an ability to move their unfamiliar body; something not possible if the Karakuri's form cannot effectively 'relate' to the memories they are resonating with.

Furthermore, because youkai are revered in Yokoshura, Karakuri aren't made 'for fun' - meaning that some quirky Maker dishonoring them by turning one into a funny dog or freakish abomination Karakuri wouldn't be permitted.

Hopefully this clarifies the reason.

This point isn't really explored or justified in-lore and never has been, it's just a purity edict. Karakuri get it even worse, where the only thing preventing them from having an unusual form is.. culture..? And then also a shadowy cabal that will kill anybody trying to make one that doesn't conform to norms.

Mechanations have been the same since pre-SL2, with the only difference in Korvara being the origin of creation; instead of the Scar being a magic tree core, it's a space stone. Part of that lore has always been 'if they cannot recognize themselves as a person, the Scar breaks down'. Scar damage can't be repaired, and damage to it results in loss of motor skills and memory, and eventually renders the Mechanation inoperable.

The easiest way to ensure that doesn't happen is to make the Mechanation look like an actual person; after all, living people the Mechanation engages with are 'persons', so something close to that is naturally going to make the Mechanation feel the same way about themselves.

Now, if you don't care for that lore or want a more mechanical/robot-y race, that's fine. But it's certainly been justified by the lore, and I personally think that it's an interesting 'failure' state for characters of that race that wouldn't exist otherwise.

'It doesn't fit the setting!' -- Neither did mouse people before they were dropped with zero RP leading up to their arrival to the world.

They're one of a number of races with animal features; saying they don't fit with the setting is silly.

---

Now, on the greater subject of non-humanoid races/playbys, I've talked about it a few times in the Discord. Here are the major reasons why it doesn't happen very often:

1) Purely from a practical perspective, lack of icon parts/bases. This isn't a massive roadblock, as I can always commission some, but it does add to the complexity of adding races like this.
2) People being weird or just not treating a race with the appropriate gravitas, and not reading or respecting the lore. Sans Liches and other meme characters; Dullahan has also had issues where people try to hamfist things like mobile suits into it. Potential moderation nightmare.
3) Harder to find ways to fit into the lore of the setting when added. It's easier to accept that 'this new Kaelensia race was obscure but it's just another Kaelensia' or 'corruption does a lot of unpredictable things and we just didn't know about this kind of it yet', than it is to say 'oh yeah, my grandpa was a lizard guy, you know the peaceful lizard guys that have always been part of Gelagrad?'. (Not insurmountable. If it were, we could just never do new things, but can be very tricky to pull off.)

None of these are a 'never gonna happen', but they are real concerns. Hell, I've expressed interest in making some less 'human-like'/monstrous races playable (such as Snakemen). Breath of Fire is a series I have very fond memories of that blends vastly different races. In short, I'm creatively open to it.

It's possible we will do more races like this in the future if the opportunity presents itself, although they may require an app, for the sake of sanity.

[Rendar]

I didn't say they didn't fit the setting. Or at least that was not the intention.

I meant that they were dropped with zero lore pertaining them or why they just appeared one day.

Animal people are per the norm.

[zericosmic]

Furry-no, just no, in a game that doesn't have it, in a setting where it is clearly barbaric/less sentient cursed races, Snakemen, Kobold, Minotaur, asking to play a character this non human is fetishistic and attention seeking.

I don't got any skin in this game, my desire for races has slowly been turned to apathy, and I've never really cared about fully furry races personally, but...

We're complaining about certain things being "fetishistic" in a game where there's a mechanical item that lets you strip off a bikini to gain an advantage in a fight? A game where we have a maid outfit, which grants -tentacles- if you dismantle it. A game where a high number of profiles are all about sex appeal? Cleavage, Huge tits, Body suits, half naked dudes showing off just how sexy they are? As though one 'fetish' is higher on the purity test than the other... People need to get over themselves.. Hell, actually, all things considered, "Kemonomimi", SL2s brand of soft furry, is an incredibly popular fetish if you look at it the same way.

Just because something can be a fetish thing, doesn't mean it's always coming from somewhere horny, and being adamant on seeing it as that is more telling the one who sees it as such in everything. If everyone thought like that we wouldn't have Khajit or Argonians in TES, we wouldn't have Hrotghar in final fantasy, or Tauren in WoW, we've got guardian in Elden Ring now so that also is a spooky fetish game, and who could forget dog ningen?

[pilcrow]

Mechanations have been the same since pre-SL2, with the only difference in Korvara being the origin of creation; instead of the Scar being a magic tree core, it's a space stone. Part of that lore has always been 'if they cannot recognize themselves as a person, the Scar breaks down'. Scar damage can't be repaired, and damage to it results in loss of motor skills and memory, and eventually renders the Mechanation inoperable.

The easiest way to ensure that doesn't happen is to make the Mechanation look like an actual person; after all, living people the Mechanation engages with are 'persons', so something close to that is naturally going to make the Mechanation feel the same way about themselves.

Now, if you don't care for that lore or want a more mechanical/robot-y race, that's fine. But it's certainly been justified by the lore, and I personally think that it's an interesting 'failure' state for characters of that race that wouldn't exist otherwise.

The trouble with this is that while the phenomena is mentioned, the actual mechanism - the 'why' - is barely touched upon, which is a speedbump I encountered in planning a hardcore mechanation specifically DESIGNED to blot as a guaranteed character end. Besides realising I didn't really want to RP out death-by-alzheimers (seriously, I just don't want to), there was also a lingering question that kept coming up in my mind: 'Why?'

Why specifically human? Why not anything else in the world? Why not spatial? Why does it have to be anything? How should I design this character with this in mind? How would they feel? If somebody they trusted asked, 'what's the problem here?' how would they respond? They're a robot - what stops them from just getting rebuilt? At that point, why bother pursuing this storyline?
It feels like these questions are better answered by the nuances of Karakuri lore than anything in Mechanation lore, and Karakuri don't even blot! You had to come up with extrinsic forces to stop Karakuri from being built Weird!

Figuring out what actually makes a mechanation blot is hard because it's just kinda.. muddy and vague. Like, does anything else that calls attention to their nature blot them? Does a character acknowledging their being a Mech put them at risk? What about their friends doing so? Their loved ones? How far do they have to embrace being a Mech before it can hurt them? Is bullying a mechanation by calling them a clanker every day going to kill them? Is it inherent or could a mechanation survive being built Weird through a fuckass series of shell games? Why is 'it's just a helmet' fine? 
I have to ask myself this kind of shit about a character with robot ears! The gamer girl headband! I don't have any answers!

The A-to-B is just not clear, so not only does it stifle interesting design (and rp! inhuman aspects to characters can be REALLY FUN to play out!) stemming from access to these features, there's not even any real meat to bite into when it comes to leaning into it. 
At least, none publically available - surely everyone working on the mechanation project in meiaquar had something to work with beyond 'has to look human', right? They weren't just working backwards from that, right?

It's also.. really weird to try and engage with if you're trans, in the subset of people that would be actually pretty fine with being a robot with a CRT monitor for a head, or both! For one, because some of the arguments people have made are insane in the face of that - somebody asks how you'd feel if you looked in the mirror and saw a camera staring back and the expected answer isn't 'pretty good!'

But also because you're sat looking at a race where any nonconformist looks are destroyed by a far more brutal and directly-lethal kind of dysphoria, and have very limited ability to actually explore meaningful themes or topics relating to what they are because of the fact that doing so puts your character on a time limit.
I can't emphasize how strange it is to feel at the edges of that, which is why I haven't really addressed it much.. but it's there. 
Ultimately I got more out of exploring Oscar's thoughts and connection to being Amalgama, the purpose to his creation, and how he was physically designed than I think I ever could with a Mech character. It pains me to think that if he was a Mech instead I'd be obliged by lore to have his dysphoria permanently give him brain damage, if not kill him.

So. There's that.


On a lighter note. 
As far as PBs, character sprites, and whatever goes - I think as long as there's the demand for it, there will be art and graphics made for it, let alone the expansive character creation hacks we already use to make characters with. 

Bear with me, but furry SS13 servers have always let you make an astounding array of characters, and they have fundamentally worse character-building tools than SL2 does because there is no repositioning or resizing, limited part slots (usually bodytype, hair, beard, ears, tail, and a list of 'patterns'), with limited ability to manipulate clothing sprites to achieve a specific look like we do, because clothes in SS13 are a mechanical item with ingame effects.
This functions despite the limitations because their communities make stuff. Species sprites, patterns for specific coloration patterns, out-there features, or muzzle shapes, and a dizzying array of ears and tails. If furries can do it with less tools for something that is way more complex, I think we can do it for leafy doriads, monstrous chimera, or more-mech mechanations.

[Lolzytripd]

Snip

Furry-no, just no, in a game that doesn't have it, in a setting where it is clearly barbaric/less sentient cursed races, Snakemen, Kobold, Minotaur, asking to play a character this non human is fetishistic and attention seeking. To this point I consider even banning Druids and a handful of non human races in actual DnD due to the misuse of them I've seen from people out in the wild at organized play and conventions, If I was running for people I didn't know well enough yet.

'Furries are fetishistic!'

'Furries are just attention seeking!'

I mean this in the nicest way possible. The amount of people that say furries are 'fetishists' / zoophiles is honestly wild, and at this point less an actual talking point and more you just think people are weird for it. 'Playing as Bugs bunny is weird. You're just doing it bcz its a fetish!'

Do you know how many people you see in SL2 that run Big Boobied Anime girls because they think they're hot? Or want to be sexual and ERP with the character in DMs?  Do you know how many people play 'weird' characters, to be fetishistic with them in SL2? Because it's more than 0. It's a lot. The amount of profiles I've reported for 'I can literally see the outline of this character's genitals' or 'I can see 9/10ths of this characters breast' is more than 0. If you're going to bemoan and throw shade at Furries for literally zero reason because they're 'perverted degenerates' you sure as hell better be willing to swing at the perverts that are playing humans.


So, with as much respect as I can muster at 8am in the morning. Shut the fuck up.

Edit: This isn't to say that I think Furries should be in SL2. At least, in regards to Unlimited Amounts With Zero RP or reason on the 'why' they have suddenly dropped (See: Muridae's release).

Karakuri/Oni's release was tied to a big area that was quite literally cut off from the rest of the world. So them existing in mainland Korvara got a lot of "What the FUCK are you?" that made sense. Furry characters dropping out of nowhere (unless they were monstrous: Minotaurs, Snakemen, Goblins. Idk why I'm calling Goblins Furries) would be just as weird as Muridae's drop in an IC perspective.

If there were a tactful way to go about? Sure. Something that isn't Just Shadow Dropped 'figure out the lore yourself'.

But I refuse to let someone act like a god-fearing republican lawmaker in America throwing out 'AH! SCARY FURRIES ARE DEGENERATES AND PERVERTS!' because that straight up fucking sounds like 20 years ago where all gay people were degenerates and perverts, with literally zero basis.

They're just people, my guy.

Fair point, I was too harsh, they deserve a chance.i