Comment on Felarya's profile
Honestly, if somebody I don't know gets eaten by a tiger or a shark ... I just don't care. Why should I? I don't pity creatures based on their race.
You forget a crucial point. What we define as "good/accepted" or "even/rejected" is based on our upbringing. A large portion of humanity has absolutly no qualms eating dogs and cats and other would never consume bovine. Drawing the line on "sentient" is also random.. what does it mean? The creature must be able to talk otherwise its life is nothing worth? Or less worth? What a convenient definition from humans, for humans.
It's up to every writer what kind of story he or she wants to add to Felarya. Don't like the eating-thing? Don't write it, but don't boss the others around because they do.
That's why I was just going to simply leave it at the last statement and say: "this is your thing; it's not what I'm looking for, so I'll just move on" and not bother you anymore and you can feel free to delete any posts I made or whathaveyou and be done with it.
I'm not going to respond to the rest because I'm determined to obey my "one rule". I'll just say I find it funny you'd think I'm "wrong" for "bossing 'creatures' around" that I myself don't know and therefore should not care about their feelings, but not if I killed and ate someone of my own species.
You may disagree, but still, I ask that you take a closer look to how blissfully ignorant many humans in the real world can knowingly and unknowingly be to each-other before you compare it to Felarya.
My primary issue is ultimately not the fact that I shouldn't expect a monster to see a human as anything more than an appetizer. (Although I should note it is one thing to accept the fact that people can be brutal, heartless, and savage to one another and another thing to embrace it onself.) Ultimately the thing that unsettled me was the fact that a lot of the artwork I saw here is making someone dying slowly, horribly, and miserably look "cute" and even "sexy". Let's be honest...a lot of the stuff here appears to have been by people who enjoy "vore". Some people may look at a big-breasted, half-nude giant gulping down someone alive and screaming and think it's the sexiest thing they've seen all day. All I see, as I alluded earlier, is someone being thrown into a flesh-coated pouch of acid and slowly being liquified. It's almost "snuff" to me.
Also as I said earlier, the stories I stumbled across were not "eating-intensive" and I thought it looked intriguing or maybe I could write from that angle...but it's just too unsettling to me everything that goes with it.
Well, the same can be done to a person eating a leg of pork (a creature that is, in itself, an intelligent being). What you consider "unsettling" is part of what illustrates the truth of life -- humans are cruel, harsh, unforgiving, senseless, and unnerving. We're the race that makes open warefare into an artform. We sexulize things like mass-killing even. We enjoy what we do, even if it's cruel (warfare, animal slaughter, ect). Blissful ignorance is disturbingly unnerving because we do things that can be constituted as "immoral" in one way or another and do so with a smile. What you consider "snuff" isn't any different then what most humans do when eating cattle or pork. It's just living life to them -- different perspectives. Different mindsets. They weren't raised in a cultural/societal atmosphere, so what do the civilization-originated laws of "equality" matter to them, anymore then then the rights of farm cattle do to us? The laws of the "Food Chain" are a constant, and exist no matter where you are - civilization just does a better job at hiding it, in my opinion.
Once again, I ask that you consider the gray areas before you judge -- the world isn't so hard-lined black and white.
Well, now you're truly unsettling me. The idea that all other humans are means to an end? The idea that there is no right or wrong...only what you can get away with? That sounds a lot like the mentality of a sociopath. I don't know if you've looked around lately, but unless you're currently nude in the middle of a forest gleaning berries and snatching up small mammals for breakfast while rolling in dust for a bath, you aren't exactly living like a "typical" animal yourself. Odds are you are taking a great many things about society and even "morality", or whatever you want to call it, for granted right now, to say nothing of how you expect to be treated by the far majority of the rest of the human race, to enable you the freedom to sit at a computer and write this message. For all this talk about "cultural relativism", all human civilizations are far more alike than they are different. And there's a big difference between saying there are "gray areas" in the world and saying it's ALL "gray", which is what it seems you're implying.
By your own admission, I'm a fully within my own rights to judge. If whether it is right or wrong to do something is simply a matter of upbringing and "what feels good to me", then if I feel I have the right to judge, then not only am I allowed, I'm obligated to do so long as it "makes me feel good".
At any rate, go ahead and have the last word. Neither of us are going to change our minds.
Also, you seem to be twisting my words around a bit - I never said there wasn't a "right" or "wrong." Only that the terms were figurative, and subject to change based on the separate definitions of the people/cultures said definitions hail from. As for the clothes argument, that's an adaptation - originally conceived as a form of protection from the elements that was later given a social signifigance for modesty. Prior to that, clothing was nothing more then elemental protection to make up for what we lacked - namely coats of insulating fur or blubber. Having clothes doesn't make you "less of an animal." It makes you an animal that learned the art of adaptation. After all, all creatures, sapient or otherwise, are animals. Same with the other tools of modern life - internet, airplanes, trains, cellphones. All are tools brought by generations of adaptation. We're just animals that adapted extremely well to our environments -- having clothes and tech doesn't change that simple fact. And as for the "gray" argument, that's what I meant -- the world is a gray mass. One man's act of necessity is another man's crime. True Black and White judgement and definitions are.... slippery to make solid categorizations for. Watch the series "Law and Order - Special Victims Unit" for a bit of a glimpse into this, or the Anime/Manga series "Death Note" and that there's only so much the laws can cover. Morality and personal senses of right and wrong are subject to change. "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" and all that, and sometimes, the greatest sinners are born from the noblest goals.
A big problem here though, is that I think you are taking this way too personally. Calling these views those of a "sociopath" is going to far, you know. "By (my) own admission" you say, yet you're using societal norms to judge, and not an actual individual viewpoint. You're only taking your own personal views into account, and not bothering to even try and see things from the opposite side of the fence, making any judgements you make at least partially one-sided. "Makes (you) feel good" comes across as slightly arrogant to me, since you're only using your personal definitions to judge, and not even trying to take the definitions of others into account. To dip into cultural reference, it's like trying to judge a religious person for breaking the laws of another unaffiliated religion. Different laws and standards. To get a fair and balanced judgement, you need to have an understanding of the ways and laws and mindsets of both parties, otherwise, any judgements you make will be biased one way or another. Try to get all the information you can before you make your judgements.
You say neither side will "change our minds," but I like to stay optimistic - at least until I'm sure the other side actually has the full story from both points of view.