Fifth Post: Carnivore Conundrum

Hmm, seems like I was a bit too optimistic about my thread. It’s been a little over a week now since it had a new post, and the last post was, once again, mine.

Sigh.

But, I am not too disheartened. I'll chalk it up to learning experience and press on. And it’s just a couple weeks old, maybe I just need to be patient. I should probably keep in mind that the topic is pretty niche too, I mean intelligent wolves? Get out of town!

But at least here I can get my thoughts about things down without needing a conversation partner by using my blog posts.

So, continuing from my last post, I said that my own research and reading about wolves, specifically Grey Wolves, has lead me across the fact that they are classed as a category of carnivores known as Mesocarnivores. That means an animal that has 50-60% of its overall diet being fresh meat, while the rest is plant matter and other non-vertebrate foods (fungi, fruit, cereals). It should be noted that classification of animals based on diet is actually not as cut and dry as it would first seem, I was surprised to learn that the Japanese Panda is technically called a carnivore, even though it is well documented to eat bamboo shoots and leaves. So it’s not as an exact a science as I first believed, but the more you know. In any case it’s this detail that has given me a bit of leeway with the idea of Wolves as an intelligent species in a talking animal setting. The wiggle room with diet allows for the possibility that these creatures won't need to devour any other creature of equivalent size to sustain themselves, allowing them to prey on smaller and simpler creatures instead. This doesn't entirely avoid the inherent tension and very possible conflict that two different species (carnivore based Vs. Herbivore based) could have over this issue of diet, but the simple fact it’s a possibility rather than a guarantee of hostility is what I want in my setting. If it were more simple, as in the carnivore were absolute/obligate carnivores who take 90% of their nutrients from fresh meat, and thus need a huge amount of it to survive, then it’s almost inevitable that sooner or later they'll see any creature that could fill that resource as acceptable prey, regardless of intelligence. This almost always puts the carnivore species in the antagonist role (at best, a lot of the time they are outright unambiguously, and irredeemably evil), as most people have reservations of following the stories of people who willingly (and gleefully) eat other people. This problem is further compounded when the Prey species are essentially your protagonists by default.

I am kind of tired of that kind of portrayal. Now, that is to say, I don't think that a carnivore species and herbivore species of equivalent intelligence should be joined paw in hoof round the fire singing kume-by-ya. Just that when showing the meat-eating creatures, we could lay off the illustrations of them picking their teeth with the bones of a beloved fan favourite as they are so devilishly evil, Muhahahaha. It's this flat , nearly one dimensional portrayal of an entire species of thinking creatures that I am taking to task really. Actually this symptom is present in almost any species that is set against the Pony races, be it Griffin, Dragon or Wolves. There is a prevailing common sense attitude to this issue, I think, that mostly explains why most don't give the antagonist race a second thought, especially when they are shown to be consumers of meat.

They eat meat. Ponies are meat. Thus they eat Ponies.

It kind of goes hand in hand with the type of genre writing that these kind of situations and questions are brought up most often. If physical conflict is central to the story and actually explored in-depth, its most likely tagged Grim-dark, and so every aspect gets the grim-dark treatment, especially the obviously troubling parts. Little else is grimmer and darker than cannibalism (in spirit, if not in actuality. Different species are at work after all). It’s an obvious way to set stakes and tension. Our protagonists (ponies) face death and danger from cruel enemies (anyone who isn't exactly like them). So I can understand the thinking behind this way of going about things. Its only sensible to limit the number of complications in a given project, to allow people to focus on other things. Human limitations and all that. I just gripe because it is marginally harder to find stories that portray both sides of a conflict in a reasonable light, especially if the conflict falls across divides like species. A lot of Black and White morality creeps in and, well, I find that terribly tedious at this point. Plus I feel it’s very limiting in its portrayal of conflict and tension if all-out war is almost always the only option.

If we always have fighting (and genocide, don't forget the genocide! Sorry, it’s a sore point I have for Upheaval: Reckoning) be the only option then that really limits the types of stories we can have about these two species and there interaction. While War stories are chock full of drama, action and all manner of narratives its usually only one side that gets the full treatment. The other side is the 'Other', the Unknowable Enemy, The Great Adversary, and when cultivating tension and drama for our hero side, readers and authors don't really pay much attention to the Bad Guys except to make them bad and effective (some of the times). So the War is interesting, riveting even. And then it ends and the Bad Guys are beaten and the Good guys go home and the world returns to peace. Until the sequel and new Bad Guys come into the picture of the old ones come back for revenge. But it’s mostly just repeat viewing at this stage. But it’s never really questioned in real depth why the bad guys do what they do. Why are they seemingly perfect warriors from cradle to grave? Why do they almost universally posses a bloodlust for Equine flesh and land? Why are these creatures so single minded in the destruction of Equestria and her citizens? Why can I accurately sum up an entire species in sentence or two, and speak about 90% of its named cast, in the same breath?

Because the Bad Guys aren't the focus in these types of stories, they are a device or Narrative tool used to explore the Protagonists. They only need as much work done to them that carries the story. So it’s just effective to have them be natural killers so the Ponies have to push themselves to fight back thus milking drama and character development. It just makes sense from a dramatic stand point to have the literal existence of the Protagonists and everything they hold be at stake so the Bad Guys have to be this way to make it a plausible consequence for Protagonists failing. It has to be this way so that the central conflict feels like it has stakes and thus the eventual victory means something for our protagonist, and the defeat of the antagonists is all the sweeter. They need to be all like this so that the war can happen in the first place, If the few 'reasonable' named characters were a significant portion of the Antagonist race then the war would be either be averted or severely curtailed and that would dampen its "epicness", so any persons who actually behave like rational, thinking, feeling creatures with the power to stop the bloodshed need to take a backseat, so that the war can happen and our protagonists can justify defending themselves from such terrible fiends. It’s all done in service of the main plot. Because that what the story calls for.
Now I don't want to say that all War stories fall prey to these things, the popular civil war angle that many interpret Luna's fall and rebirth into Nightmare Moon goes to some length to show and keep both side of that imagined war in a reasonable light, especially if one subscribes to the Lunar Republic Idea. Both sides of these kinds of Conflicts generally have more thought and nuance put into them, and I feel they are better for it to be honest. But that usually coincides with the fact that both sides of the conflict are the same species. As Civil wars are painted as doubly tragic, as the whole brother pitted against brother, Sons versus Fathers Etc. is a well beaten drum that still riles people up (I suspect American history also plays a big part in the popular imagery and mindset of this kind of conflict, but I can only speculate about that, not being a local of the USA after all). So it's natural, even fundamental, that they are never two different species, because if so, then the participants are too different from each other for the tragedy of the events of war to be apparent to the characters themselves, and by extension to the readers and Authors too. Once we hit the species divide, and compound it with exacerbating points such as carnivore/herbivore dichotomy, Morality conflict, Warrior race stereotypes and other grim-dark tropes we lose the opportunity to explore the perspective of the other side of the conflict, because there are increasingly slim odds that we as readers, or even as writers, want to explore such terrible monsters at any real length.

It’s fun to play around with the tropes and put our protagonists through hell, but 'hell' itself can't be a sympathetic element, otherwise it’s not really 'hell'.

So Bottom line: I would rather that the different Species be treated like... playable Races. Let me elaborate. In conventional Tabletop Role Playing Games (like the almost endemic Dungeons and Dragons), players get the option to create characters to play as, and one axis of that character creation process is to pick a Fantasy Race for both back-story and stat build. Each Race is treated differently in the setting and has a few tropes tied to them but most contemporary versions of the game (pathfinder for example) take some pains to showcase the races off as a group of individuals, rather than a collection of stereotypes. this allows players more leeway in creating very distinct and diverse characters, regardless of the Race chosen. Race is more for flavour, and gives appreciable texture for the possible interactions between Players and the created world. But it tries not to be terribly restrictive, like having certain a race always be a certain Alignment (the iconic Always-Chaotic-Evil trope that Orc races are made with in DnD settings is a classic take). So when I world build or read up stories were it's a good idea to assume a good bit of world building has been done, I approach the issue by basically asking from time to time with regard to the portrayed Species, 'would I play as this species or as a character from that species, in a tabletop setting?'.

If the answer is yes, then congratulations’ you've passed my biased and arbitrary test! If it’s a no, please go back to square one and try again.

Okay, joking aside, I feel put out when an introduced species is taken off the 'Playable Character Roster', because I feel like my options for fun are being limited and also the world building also suffers for that decision and it has a trickle down effect. Now why am I saying that a species can't be 'playable' (or in other words aren't the heroes of their own story in any shape, way or form)? How exactly do I define when a species portrayed in a story is either 'Playable or Non-Playable'? Well I define it as the ability for a party to be made up of different members (and thus usually different Races/Species) and still work effectively together, without the narrative bending backwards to justify it. An example would be... A pony and a dragon make up a pair of adventurers, the context is that they need to find an ancient artefact to avert, or stop an on going war happening between their people. The dragon, I would consider being a 'Playable' species, if the dragon's own culture has nuance and thought put into their portrayal and the reasons for why the war between these species is happening at all, has both sides saddled with reasonable intentions and equal amounts of culpability. The dragon would, by contrast, be 'Non-Playable' if Dragons, as a species, were entirely irredeemable jerks who just love picking fights with ponies, and the dragon in the party is effectively the exception that proves the rule of Dragons being Always-Chaotic-Evil, because their a super special protagonist with angst and inner turmoil about their race and so on and so forth.

That's how I break down this issue. I see a lot of my own world building through the lens of Table Topping. That’s the criteria I rate things by, which I'll acknowledge is pretty unusual for novel writing, but I kind of take to heart the idea that some RPGs are essentially story telling games and kind of emulate that mind set and practice with my own fan work. Maybe a concise way to put it is If my own fan work prompted recursive fan creation the I would consider it a smashing success.
I think it might make my idea clearer if I cite the massive Behemoth that is Fallout: Equestria to be what I am getting at, which is actually one of the most direct applications of world building through the lens of RPGs out there as it is literally taking whole aspects of the original games and trying to execute them in the world of Equestria. It’s a huge Intellectual property with dozens of writers, hundreds of stories and diverse portrayals of the species involved. It’s that effort put into all the aspects of a work, all its elements, all its species, that I think RPGs really get at, and I grow to wish story writing more often attempted.

TL;DR version
The Carnivore/Herbivore dichotomy is just one of the most apparent issues in a lot of fiction around conflict between species in equestria and beyond. And is a natural focal point for me as I try and world build a story with a species of talking Wolves in the world setting. I want to avoid making them a flat and one dimensinal species but still aknowlegde the real differences between this species and Equines. In turn I think this can yeild a variety of stories more readily than simply decising who is Good and who is Bad. I'll be working more in shade of Grey. Multi-speciesim or Multi-culturalism is a theme I think would be interesting explore and treating the majority of the different species as if they could all potentionally be the Point of Veiw for a given story is how I think I'll approach the issue. It has the knock on effect that it forces me to re-examine the world building with a little more thoughtfulness.