Announcement is locked, probably for good reason, so I wanted to ramble about lore, canon, headcanon, and storytelling at large.
I had always figured that draconic relations with beastfolk were more complex than the canon lore let on, since we can keep them as familiars. I had always internally justified Arena stuff and the Marketplace as typical territorial struggles, Shade infestation, and different individual tribes of beastfolk having different opinions about dragons. I was never convinced that beastfolk tribes were unilaterally involved in the dominance effort, because no political movement is ever that simple. There are always internal conflicts, disagreements, and schisms.
I have mixed feelings about the wholesale removal of the Beastclan war from the timeline. Almedha's thread here addresses a lot of issues surrounding the choice to wholly retcon it out of the lore, as opposed to retconning how long it lasted or whether it's still happening. I agree with the primary sentiment on that thread that I would have rather seen a lore drop about armistice and peace treaties. That said, I would also have accepted a partial retcon that the armistice happened many centuries ago. They also could have retconned out the deliberate, caluclated extermination and replaced it with a more "scary dragon lives in the mountain" fairytale approach.
My headcanon for the timeframe of Flight Rising is that each real-world year, barring holidays and seasonal harvests, can be interpreted as decades or centuries of history in the Fourth Age. My progenitors are hundreds of years old, the old world map is a canon representation of a previous era, the beastclan conflicts have long since grown in complexity and internal controversy. My clan is relatively uninterested in world conflicts, preferring instead to focus wholesale on their scholarly work. The clan is full of ambassadors to other flights, so ambassadors from various beast tribes would have been easy to incorporate once I got around to my lore overhaul. Why wipe out the local humanoids when they could be valuable trade connections, military allies, or research partners?
Perhaps it was easier for me to ignore Sornieth's geopolitics because I simply do not actively participate in Dominance. Perhaps it's easier for me to forgive fictionalized atrocity because I'm a white American. I love the intricacies and tragedies of large-scale conflict in fantasy settings; it helps me process and comment on the real deal. Plus the reframing of old "slay the dragon that's razing the countryside" fairytales as sociopolitical was really interesting to me! I liked it a lot! It made things murky and strange and I like it when fiction does bold things like that! However, perspectives will obviously be different for the people who are more directly affected than me. Sweet Arcanist, I'm dancing WAY too close to the politics ban.
Perhaps I'm biased. I've used geopolitical conflict and discrimination as plot points to redeem "evil species" bad guy characters in other settings because I liked them and I didn't want them to be inherently bad. I also like the catharsis of scary geopolitical events in fiction being fully resolved, and the Beastclan retcon was a golden opportunity to do that.
The root of all of this for me is that Flight Rising's active inclusion of lore is a main selling point for me and is one of the main reasons I've been sticking around since 2013. Flight Rising is the best pet game in the business, so good that other pet games are putting in the work to catch up. It's made all the other games I play better just by existing and trying as hard as it does. I just wish there was a little more trying so we don't have to completely erase a part of the story so old that's become foundational. It's been eight years. I really don't feel like you can just take something that old out of the story without leaving some big gaps behind.
I had always figured that draconic relations with beastfolk were more complex than the canon lore let on, since we can keep them as familiars. I had always internally justified Arena stuff and the Marketplace as typical territorial struggles, Shade infestation, and different individual tribes of beastfolk having different opinions about dragons. I was never convinced that beastfolk tribes were unilaterally involved in the dominance effort, because no political movement is ever that simple. There are always internal conflicts, disagreements, and schisms.
I have mixed feelings about the wholesale removal of the Beastclan war from the timeline. Almedha's thread here addresses a lot of issues surrounding the choice to wholly retcon it out of the lore, as opposed to retconning how long it lasted or whether it's still happening. I agree with the primary sentiment on that thread that I would have rather seen a lore drop about armistice and peace treaties. That said, I would also have accepted a partial retcon that the armistice happened many centuries ago. They also could have retconned out the deliberate, caluclated extermination and replaced it with a more "scary dragon lives in the mountain" fairytale approach.
My headcanon for the timeframe of Flight Rising is that each real-world year, barring holidays and seasonal harvests, can be interpreted as decades or centuries of history in the Fourth Age. My progenitors are hundreds of years old, the old world map is a canon representation of a previous era, the beastclan conflicts have long since grown in complexity and internal controversy. My clan is relatively uninterested in world conflicts, preferring instead to focus wholesale on their scholarly work. The clan is full of ambassadors to other flights, so ambassadors from various beast tribes would have been easy to incorporate once I got around to my lore overhaul. Why wipe out the local humanoids when they could be valuable trade connections, military allies, or research partners?
Perhaps it was easier for me to ignore Sornieth's geopolitics because I simply do not actively participate in Dominance. Perhaps it's easier for me to forgive fictionalized atrocity because I'm a white American. I love the intricacies and tragedies of large-scale conflict in fantasy settings; it helps me process and comment on the real deal. Plus the reframing of old "slay the dragon that's razing the countryside" fairytales as sociopolitical was really interesting to me! I liked it a lot! It made things murky and strange and I like it when fiction does bold things like that! However, perspectives will obviously be different for the people who are more directly affected than me. Sweet Arcanist, I'm dancing WAY too close to the politics ban.
Perhaps I'm biased. I've used geopolitical conflict and discrimination as plot points to redeem "evil species" bad guy characters in other settings because I liked them and I didn't want them to be inherently bad. I also like the catharsis of scary geopolitical events in fiction being fully resolved, and the Beastclan retcon was a golden opportunity to do that.
The root of all of this for me is that Flight Rising's active inclusion of lore is a main selling point for me and is one of the main reasons I've been sticking around since 2013. Flight Rising is the best pet game in the business, so good that other pet games are putting in the work to catch up. It's made all the other games I play better just by existing and trying as hard as it does. I just wish there was a little more trying so we don't have to completely erase a part of the story so old that's become foundational. It's been eight years. I really don't feel like you can just take something that old out of the story without leaving some big gaps behind.
"Here lies Scout. He rAN and dIEd."
Please PM if I missed your ping.
