Topic: Who is Kaiaatsel?

[Kaiaatzl]

Catchy title isn't it?

Explain why I named myself Kaiaatsel.

First, who is Kaiaatsel?

Kaia is a literary character from a work (co-written by Xaihyv and myself) that won't be finished, probably until we have more time than now (i.e. after we get our degrees).  He's my invention (all the characters are either my invention or Xaihyv's, one of the gimmicks here is that we each "own" certain characters, which is part of a strategy to make the co-writing itself less awkward).

Simply put, Kaiaatsel is (or more accurately was) a young man who time sort of, but not really, forgot.  He was kidnapped by an interdimensional, intertemporal being named Ultra-Newt (), and brought about 4000 years into the future.  Unfortunately, humans aren't built to travel through time.  Time has a tendency to forget certain things when objects (animate or inanimate) who weren't adapted for it mess with it.  In Kaia's case it forgot his species.
Time needed to make him something, otherwise the law of conservation of mass would be violated if he simply ceased to exist.  So, it took a look at Kaia and, after mulling it over, decided, based on what it could remember of him, that he probably was a coyote.  So when he arrived in the far future, he was a coyote.

I won't get into his personality here (it's complex and anti-hero ish), but suffice it to say that he's, by far, my favourite of the characters I invented, even though he's not the main character.
I can't go much into the story either... all I'll say is that, 4000 years in the future, we don't really have a human civilization anymore.  There are a few humans left, but most of civilization is now made up of reverse furries (thanks to Dr. Iocctaze, an alien jar of goo).

[NUMBERZero]

Hmmm. Can't say much because unfortunately that's not enough information to figure out what is going on. What is the conflict? What is he trying to do?

This is what I've got for my first book that I've written:
"This is the beginning of a new arc. Zero is taken out of his comfort zone as the leader of the most powerful peacekeeping military power in the galaxy and is dumped into a new world, forced to adapt quickly while trying to hold onto his old principles. The only thing compelling him to live on is his current objective, but how long would that really last? Under his straight complexion, he is slowly losing purpose, losing all control to a monster... Until he finds someone worth fighting for, to bring him back anew—“

Oh yeah, and

[Kaiaatzl]

We're not completely agreed but right now the basic idea of the conflict is chasing Ultra-Newt, first on the racetrack and then through parallel universes, to stop him from destroying time.

[-<WillyP>-]

Why would UltraNewt want to travel 4000 years to kidnap a human, and being turned into a coyote, does he still have his human memories? Does he know how to be a coyote and run with a pack?

[Scyphi]

The psuedo-science for this idea is a bit hard to swallow. Maybe if you present it better in-story it'll sound better, but...admittedly, I don't see it working for a serious-toned story. Of course, given how little you've told us about said story, for all I know, you could be planning to write the next Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, in which that kind of idea could just work. I don't know. Depends on what you plan to do with it.

Oh yeah, and

It actually depends on how you use them. They can fall either way.

Since we're apparently sharing premises for stories here, I might as well throw in my own two-bits. I've currently at working at editing a novel, young-adult literature, that I've been working on since I graduated from high school. In a nutshell, it's kind of a mix between Redwall and The Chronicles of Narnia with my own personal twist to it. And that's just the idea I have developed the most. I have a whole stockpile of story ideas ranging from historical fiction to science-fiction.

[NUMBERZero]

It actually depends on how you use them. They can fall either way.

I don't think Razgriz would approve. There's no way that they can possibly fail!


That's right! His name's Razgriz, but take a closer look at his name tag.

[Kaiaatzl]

Scyphi is right, it's not a serious story -- in that it's not meant to take itself seriously.  It's not quite H2G2 either though (I like your confidence there but we're not THAT good ).  One thing both Xaihyv and I agree on is that it's not supposed to be taken seriously.  We still think we can make it compelling though.
The concept for the story came from playing TrackMania  .  We got fed up with the lack of story there and decided to make our own... except the story just sort of developed on its own with us making reverse-furry characters (because the cars are driven by people who look human, at least in stadium and with the HD car models, but we wanted aliens and animal archetypes and... unconventional insults?  "TAKE THAT YOU MILK SUCKING MAMMAL!") .  The story originally centered around a racing championship (sponsored by the Fungaland chocolate company) with three teams: Team Wazzle (good team, my characters), Team Alien (evil team, Xaihyv's characters, the name is appropriate) and Team DNF (characters from both of us).  Eventually we decided to make the story more complex so that there was a different villain and the teams are just rivals, and then we decided to expand that and actually write the story!  The reason we each had our own team was so we could race them against each other in hotseat or LAN play.  Anyhow the racing championship is a big part of the story but it's only the first part.
Oh, we also had Zombie Batman.  But I don't think he'll make it into the story.  There's a fourth team run by a murderous psychopath who pays drivers to race for him, but he spectates with his sniper rifle and if his drivers fail him he makes sure they don't live to see the end of the race (TF2 reference? ).  And then there's the Five People, who own the entire Riviera Island (the equivalent of the Coast environment), having bought it because the races are so reckless that they can be sure something of theirs will get wrecked and then they can sue the ultra-rich race sponsors and get rich!
Right now we're focusing on developing the characters before we finalize a plot, but you can tell how it's not exactly serious.

My response to Zero's image is...
If opposites are true, then if everything is worse with furries; everything is better with REVERSE furries!

Umm... and I actually have an answer to WillyP for both his questions.  Ultra-Newt kidnapped Kaia because Kaia's great-grandson would have been a person powerful enough to destroy the time-traveling creature (who has what we call Temporalmania or TM! He's addicted to time travel and the power it gives him over people.)  Ultra-Newt kidnapped before he could have any children (Kaia was about Sapphirewolf's age when it happened, maybe a little older), so that that great-grandson would never come to be.

And your other question... I been researching coyote behaviour before I actually write for Kaia, and it turns out that coyotes usually don't form packs -- they only can do that when conditions are really really good.  And for Kaia they're not (he has a kind of PTSD from his change).  The only real upside of the pack-forming tendencies for him is that it's somewhat easier for him to make friends.
Also, don't forget that the workings of the minds of these creatures have become somewhat more human-like ever since, generations before the story, they started to pretend to be humans.  Evolution kind of helped them along that path a little bit but not so much that they can't be wild -- some of them have a foot in both worlds but most of them actually believe that they are human.  Even those ones, if they discovered what they really were, would probably be able to survive wild if they were driven out of society.  If they didn't discover what they were they probably couldn't though.

Okay... that was a lot more than I actually wanted to give away.  NO MORE SPOILERS!

[Scyphi]

Heh...it could work, then.

[Kaiaatzl]

I'm in charge of most of the animal characters (Xaihyv being in charge of most of the aliens -- there is some bleed between us but not much) I'm trying to make it work as a realistic what-if scenario for if you had predator and prey living side-by-side in the same society.

I have a document explaining exactly how this society should work, as well as some interesting exceptions to the general rules (spawned from social movements at the time of the story and such).
I basically have a list of facts about how predator and prey behaviour work (on the level of the individual animal, not ecologically) and what the implications would be for a society made of both.

Some of the implications have even more implications!