The Future of Fa'e

[Sable Eye Cerena]

Let's get some forward movement, guys. We have several options here:

[1] Create an entirely new shop based off of this one, keeping the same concept but having a better, looser story. Will probably be based on AU Earth. Guardians can import their old characters into this new shop (memories intact, still called Fa'e, ICly nothing would change except the location of the HQ and the status of Airi) and keep going where they left off. Called "Fa'e: Reborn" or something idk

[2] Keep this thread, do all the rewrites in this thread, keep the same guild, but do some major rewrites.

[3] Keep this thread, make as little change as possible beyond trying to get more activity in the thread through events and such

[4] ??? Post your opinions!  

[Silverah]

Re: AU Earth - a lot of the current shop's thing seems to be that it is set /on Gaia/ and a lot of characters have plots that revolve around being /on Gaia/ and all the wackiness that that allows. Changing it would involve either some justification for moving to Earth, or a lot of retconning. How does everyone else feel about this?

I'm definitely in favor of a new thread and a lot of rewrites to work things over. However what would Airi's status in the canon be? Would she be gone from the past /and/ the present, or just the present? (DOCTOR WHO METAPHOR TIME, did she die or was she flat out deleted from existence.)  

[Sable Eye Cerena]

There's no reason why people couldn't still live on Gaia if they wanted to -- and move between the two through portals, because a lot of the Fa'e actually do so to VISIT THEIR HOMELANDS and other earthly quests -- but I definitely feel like the new thread's focus would be more on AU Earth?

There could definitely be an IC program that helps guardians move to Earth though. There can also be an option to switch guardians to one that lives on Earth.

As for Airi, I think she's just plain AWOL. I think there should be a vague possibility there in case Anya ever wants to pop in and play for a while... Again, I'd really like it if people could basically just pick up their characters and start playing in the new thread without a bunch of major rewrites :C  

[Silverah]

Ahhh... gotcha! That makes sense to me. smile

(Actually Astor's youth quest would be so much cooler if I could actually logically send him to Yucatan for it, SO YEAH THIS IS COOL WITH ME.)  

[Seeno]

I'm in favour of the spinoff shop. But without Airi, how will we introduce more Fa'e and would the new Fa'e be considered Fa'e? Lots to think about I suppose! I'll just chuck those questions out there for starters.

I guess it does require some rewriting and simplification of the metaplot. I'll put my hands up and admit I have no idea what is going on with the metaplot currently, so a clean slate in the form of a new thread would be ideal.

With regards to making sure that as many Guardians and followers as possible have their say: do mass friendslist PMs still work? Chiri could send something out to advertise this thread to everyone.

Edit: In addition to the above, I should maybe add that I think some elements of the shop need to be reworked, particularly RP requirements. Thoughts?

I don't have the answers I'm afraid, I just know that I don't have as much time to commit these days. But I'm fully behind this and will be logging into Gaia a lot more, without a doubt.

I'm excited! biggrin  

[Akina Tokuwa]

WHOOPS. I meant to vote for option one. I voted for two on accident. SO UH. I fail.  

[chirigami]

Maybe instead of referring to it as an AU Earth, just an AU in general? [A different dimension, maybe? Multiple Earths? Red and Blue? Yellow! FRINGE] A few of the Fa'e did have a heavy hand with Earth as it was; Rei visited it from time to time, Kanoa was actually found there, as well as Mik and several Fa'e did have quests based around it [which, always confused me since I never knew if Gaia was supposed to be a different like planet from Earth or a new kind of continent of Earth based in the Fa'e story. anywho]

I am kind of down with the idea of a new thread and obviously an AU type setting. Creation of Fa'e could come from a sort of Airi like being, maybe she's not the only one or maybe she's a special case who had a humanoid body. That could also raise a conflict between those types of Fa'e and the original Fa'e - as well as just confuse the hell out of the Lost Children who were created by Airi and are like 'but.. what about those guys! D:'

Airi would just be yeah, MIA but not totally counted out if Anya does want to stop by and do something. I could see if there is anything on the mule account regarding the meta to see if we could kind of put it at a close if we do in fact get a new start, kind of like adding to the prologue sort of thing 'and in the end, this happened but then this happened and here we are now!'
Along with Airi, I think we would need to also figure out what to do with the older generation of Fa'e. Sayuri brought up a few good points. Obviously I don't want to take them away and I don't want to deny them advancing to the last stage they can especially when they would have earned it.

Hm. Roleplay requirements. Well, the current system is based on time and not quantity which worked in the old days since we didn't really ... tend to have like guilds to set roleplay in like we do now. So, it never mattered how much you did just that hey, its been 3 months, you can grow to teen! Tell us your plan biggrin Would we want to do quantity now or have kind of a mix?

mass PMs do work, I tried it when I tried to get in contact with Sosi and Arri on their opinions on the art. Couldn't do it totally since Arri wasn't on my friendslist but it works. Would you want me to, obviously on the mule since I'm sure that has everyone ever who was involved with Fa'e?  

[Sable Eye Cerena]

Metaplot-wise:
Honestly, we don't actually have to have an NPC that's in charge of creating Fa'e. We can just say that it naturally happens. The setting where I currently write Lethe is an alternate Earth where most of the population has been killed off due to plague, and the Earth is overrun with dead people and atheists alike. Because there's so many confused souls overflowing in all forms of Hell, the cycles of birth kind of got criss-crossed, so instead of babies being born with human souls, some were being born with souls of gods...

For literary convenience, these babies can always be orphans. Maybe they really do just materialize out of nowhere, because no one's actually seen one come into being. We can have different NPCs and organizations claim they're behind everything -- I know I'd be up for running an orphanage headed by monks that specializes in finding homes for the seemingly less-likely-to-become-societal-menaces of the Fa'e -- but honestly no one actually understands what's going on. You can still have the former-incarnations coming in dreams and dispensing advice, or make NPCs out of other gods in the pantheon to come harass them as spirits: the hells broke loose all over the world, so anything goes. There's always a chance that there's a Fa'e character that simply rejects the notion that s/he's a god because it, again, doesn't make sense and no one can rationally explain it.

(See, and that's the thing about gods -- you can't rationally explain how they come into being.)

If everyone accepts this ambiguity, then I think opportunities really open up as far as how to explain where Fa'e come from. People can play cults that are trying to reincarnate one specific god from a pantheon and throw away the 'failed children' (other gods from the same pantheon) -- people could play a weird wacky vagabond angel that spills her blood on random babies which supposedly makes them godlike. You know. All of these explanations could work because nobody actually knows how it works, and it's happening because of something that's ******** up with Earth spiritually.

Stages:
I really think it should be up to the individual RPer where their Fa'e starts at. We can get rid of baby/toddler in general (if anything important happens at those stages, there can be flashbacks) and people can have a choice of starting at kid/teen/youth, but I do want to keep 'kid' because that's an important stage to me, and the way I play my characters, to illustrate the bond between the Fa'e and the guardian. By teen stage the Fa'e naturally starts to become rebellious and the whole having-a-guardian thing almost becomes moot because they can move out by teen/youth.

The only real requirements we had were periods of time between stages -- you had to wait something like 1 month between toddler and kid, for example, and I don't remember any of the others -- should we just do that? I think there's nothing wrong with keeping the old growth guidelines except maybe shortening or getting rid of the time frames. But the old growth guidelines outlined the major events that should take place -- kid Fa'e need to undergo a quest to understand their past life, etc.


Drawback to Earth:
Earth is not Gaia. People are going to freak out upon seeing catgirls and winged rabbits and weird people with weird skin and eyes that glow in the dark and jewels everywhere.

Either Fa'e is an 'out' phenomenon -- everyone on Earth knows it's happening, and you're less likely to get stared at in big cities where there are probably more Fa'e, but in the countryside you risk getting burned at the stake or something like that... OR Fa'e is a hidden phenomenon and all Fa'e have a means by which to hide their true appearance. (Or a mixture of both, if guardians decide they don't want their children to suffer whatever stigma being obviously Fa'e would give them.)

What do people think about this? Also, where on Earth should Fa'e be centered? It doesn't make sense to have everyone scattered all over the globe. Should there be a research center or a 'headquarters' in a major city somewhere, or should Fa'e only be born in a specific area of the world, or what?  

[Silverah]

I kind of like the idea of Fa'e as an "out" phenomenon, and all the doomsday cult scenarios that basically come attached to that? I like the ambiguity about where they come from, but I feel like at least someone running this should know the actual reason for why this stuff is happening. Even if it's an IC mystery, there should be one and it should be agreed upon by us.  

[Mini DoII]

OKAY SO I HAVE BEEN LIKE. Trying to figure out a way to make sense but.

I've brought this up to a few friends as a kind of "HEY LOOK THERE IS INTEREST IN REVIVING FA'E WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS HERE LOOK AT IT" sort of way, and there was a really good point made that I think needs to be seen and considered before we start doing anything really rash.

First and foremost I agree a major overhaul is needed, and I also meant everything that I said in my big speechification when I said that the only way to revive Fa'e and KEEP it alive was to make major changes.

But something we really need to keep in mind is that no matter what we do, Fa'e is Anya's baby. And while none of us know if she's going to be coming back to Gaia at all, let alone anytime soon, I also admit that I'm kind of a relative newbie to Fa'e and don't actually know her all that well. And I don't know what her feelings on us doing something like this would be.

And... I'm not really sure what to suggest here! I promised I'd bring it up, and I also agree that it's something we should really consider, but I'm also not sure what we should DO about that.

And this may be a stupid post because I don't actually know if she hammered something out with you guys or left a Fa'e will or. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN RIGHT gonk  

[Silverah]

I think that it's important that this new Fa'e project doesn't become a cash cow? Like, if there is gold coming it, it should only be to reimburse the artists, and no one should be using this to make their fortune - no bribes, no auctions, and CERTAINLY no RL commissions: you get into Fa'e by winning an RP contest or by questing long and hard enough. Using this to make money - especially real world money - is where borrowing Anya's idea gets really skeevy, and it's not what Fa'e is about.

If there was a will, I don't know about it, but I feel like Anya would like us to keep the community alive somehow? I mean, yes, this has always been her baby and she's always super-nice when she comes back, but I think she would rather us change some things in order to keep playing a group of characters we're passionate about than to just see us give up all together. As long as we stick to the spirit of the old shop, give her the credit she rightly deserves, and don't use this as a payday then I feel like she would be okay with this?  

[Pixie Krysta Ordreg]

I have to admit, I love the thought of a spin off shop. I've been trying to figure out how to come up with a way to play Aylana again. A new shop might just work.

I agree it needs to be rewritten.

Also I don't know about the other fa'e. But I know with both Aylana and Nyoka, we had it when they were among the humans they look like humans. They had a special potion that allowed them to get rid of anything that didn't look human.

I know with Aylana being from Greece, I had it where she kindof went through a portal to get back to her home and time.

Overall, I can't wait to see and more then willing to help out.