Flight Rising Discussion

I honestly don't understand the hate. :/

I'm fine with the lore. We're talking about creatures that wear cloths and can use tools. Site's story is meant to be fun. Not dark all the time.

Honestly though Lightning never really screamed corporate to me. More like mad scientists going about building their machines.

Tbh i love this direction.

Arcanist messing up on his first children so hard that he made them literally hunger for knowledge and then low banishing them to orbit is the sort of moral gray crap I live for. His hand writen notes for his kin arer endearing too so it all came from a place of a child-like wonder that's consistent with his character - wile still being incredibly dark if you read between the lines.

As much as Athers are dorks and fools, the way that they were treated by their creator is both so fatherly and so eldridge horific if you just think about it for more then a few extra seconds.



And the Sandsurge seems to be a direct "spoof" / homage to how the IRL Lightning flight community parodies human corporate culture. We birthed this type of culture only off of a few choice words by Stormcatcher his glorious self. And it feels nice - as a lighting flight enjoyer - to be acknowledged that we are acting the correct part with now the first beings being a direct nod to how we act and work.

[quote name="Renaiwom" date="2023-07-31 14:39:10" ] I think it's also worth considering the whole "the site can't use any lore the players were spitballing during the livestreams" stuff... we could have taken away a really cool angle from the breed for legal reasons [emoji=sandsurge sad size=1]. It could have been cool if the Surges weren't just a construction team- they were also an elite, advanced strike force! But if somebody suggested that during the livestream, [i]the staff couldn't use it[/i]. [/quote] Just going to highlight this, because if people were in fact doing that in the livestream, it does bring a whole host of incredibly fuzzy legal issues. Creators have had to protect themselves from "you stole my idea because I told it to you and then you used it!" lawsuits since forever, whether those lawsuits are valid or not. (Generally, I think the idea from the creator perspectives I've seen is "it doesn't matter how valid this is, I don't have the money/time/energy to get dragged through something like that so I'm going to take more precautions than I might need to.") I don't know if this is speculation or the devs in fact brought it up, but it's something to keep in mind. Also just going to say that as someone who prefers writing more lighthearted things on this particular site, Aethers were genuinely the most inspiring breed that's ever been released for me. Also just a clarification from a writing perspective: conflict being necessary for stories is being cited a lot, but conflict does [i]not[/i] have to mean external disharmony or battle (as it is commonly used for outside of storytelling). Conflict in storytelling can be simple or internal or existential and doesn't even have to involve more than one person or "side"— the Aether story actually has a [i]ton[/i] of conflict and narrative tension and payoff despite being comedic, thanks to the whole "eats paper => they have eaten all the manuals => now they are crashing." Setup, payoff, consequences. The Sandsurge story, too, has conflict, though it's not really resolved— the tension between knowledge and lack of knowledge, the continuing pursuit of a larger salary that does not exist but drives the story forward, etc. If I might hazard a guess, I might put forth that, based solely on this thread, the Sandsurge story might appeal to less people [i]because[/i] it doesn't have the same sort of finished structure that the Aether story has and the salary issue is used primarily as a punchline rather than payoff? That sort of storytelling can work but is far more hit or miss; personally in punchline instances I tend to prefer the joke a little brick-ier or Chekhov's gun-y because then even if the humor itself doesn't hit, the surprise and enjoyment of narrative payoff can often get a laugh of enjoyment out of me. But that's just me. This doesn't mean anyone has to like comedic stories, or these particular comedic stories, just that they do, in fact, have conflict and tension. It's okay to just not like things! Everyone has preferences and taste is something extremely personal. But all the repeat of "stories need conflict" with the implied "and these stories don't have it," was making me a bit itchy because they [i]do[/i] have it, so I wanted to mention that.

I'm firmly in camp not everything needs to be a 24/7 spew of serious gritty grimdark to be good writing. at the end of the day this is a site where you can buy a rainbow dragon and put a funny hat on them and make it your clan's lore that they arm wrestle the deities every sunday and win, if the lore isn't your thing you can just make up your own but if you're looking for lore that takes itself serious as a heart attack to its core, this site doesn't really feel like the place you're gonna find it

I think there's an inherent problem they probably run into while creating new lore. At least, as a writer myself, I've run into it a lot.

When the overarching lore of your world develops much more slowly than your character's lore, you can often end up with inconsistencies between each other and the world lore itself.

Think of the dragons breeds as the characters, in this case, then add on the Beastclan lore retcon on top. There's some work staff has to do if they want everything to be consistent now ^^

Honestly, I think ancients are gonna follow their flight's general mood.

Plague is edgy as hell. We got the abbies, who have an equally edgy backstory.

Ice, although tundra themselves are pretty goofy, always had themes of harshness, secrets and this underlaying sense of something going on. Gaolers were a really fitting lore for it, and answered a bunch of headcanons i saw ppl make about the ice flight.

Veil's lore is so shadow i don't have anything to say about it its exactly in the expectation for the flight

Fire is a bit stranger to me, as I wouldn't call it edgy. So i don't know why the banescales got sucha treatment? Although I interpret their story as trying to tie hope to the flamecaller I suppose.

Arcanist has always been somewhat goofy. Although yeah theres catastrophic consequences to what he does, its always somewhat treated in a luney toons fashion? so the aethers make sense to me.

Similarly, the stormcatcher is somewhat humorous, with the Big Boss Yelling All The Time, so it doesn''t shock (ah!) me that the surges are a bit on the lighter side



So honestly, id expect the light flight ancient to be Pretty Serious And Dramatic, the wind flight ancient to be on the more humorous side, the earth ancient to be serious, and the nature ancient is a bit of a gamble, because although nature is treated seriously in lore, it does tend to be a little bit made all pretty and clean sometimes in aesthetics.

Maybe this is just me, but I wasn't the biggest fan of the "darker" lore surrounding other ancient breeds. It just felt a little out of place compared to most of the modern breeds' lore and the rest of the site in general. I'm not saying there aren't some dark elements in the lore (the Arcanist being born from a reactor explosion that wiped out an entire civilization comes to mind) but there's also a lot of silly parts too. [quote name="Strangeflesh" date="2023-07-31 16:21:52" ] pretty much all ancient lore before aethers has been pretty angst-y so I'm cool with some levity from all that. plus I wouldn't be comfortable with like a suffering worker angle because I feel that would be too real and not handled well. [/quote] [quote name="Superlunary" date="2023-07-31 17:02:49" ] but i feel like if flight rising was serious and mature toned all the time in lore,, it would be easy to get burned out and everything would feel similar after a while. when it comes to writing, you need the sunshine to appreciate the rain and vice versa. all these goofy moments can lead up to something really good! [/quote] As for new ancient breeds having existed all along and springing up out of nowhere, well...wasn't that an issue with all [i]modern[/i] breeds as well? (with the exceptions of the obelisks and bogsneaks, of course).

I disagree that Sandsurge lore is too silly - the tone of the story is for certain lighthearted, but that's down to the nature of the POV characters, not at all the breed themselves - they're definitely quite serious. Hell, I'd say even the story isn't all that unserious, no more than the original Lightning BotE story, which I haven't really heard people complain about. It seems that Lightning lore in general is supposed to have a somewhat unserious but not outright goofy tone, at least from what I've read and remember off the top of my head - the story doesn't feel any more silly than the Lightning BotE story, and Ridgebacks have always been seen as a slightly silly breed imo (not to mention the Stormcatcher's almost cartoonish GET BACK TO WORK).

Aethers 100% are supposed to be taken as a complete joke, though, and that type of lore absolutely isn't for everyone (I myself was delighted upon reading it, but it really hasn't grabbed me like other, darker, site lore). But there it served a purpose overall I think - the past 4 breeds have some dark lore, and it was good to have a palate cleanser. (Then again, if you do read between the lines, Aether lore can certainly be seen as dark, it's just nowhere near as on display/emphasised as other breeds)

The Nature ancient will almost certainly be back to your regularly scheduled angst, however, so at least we shall have that to look forward to!

I think the main problem is just the fact that a joke breed and a lighthearted breed released back to back - it may have been better to push the Sandsurges back by a year or two, so we got some more dark lore inbetween followed by a palate cleanser. I'm not really gonna raise this as criticism though - Staff design the breed first, then the lore, so it was just bad luck that two stories on the lighter end of things ended up following one another