Fishshadowing and Forefishing are important writing divices.

Uh-oh..

Oof the poor boy's gonna spook folks if he catches that fish ;;

Bet on him makin a spear to fish!

Or seeing the bunnies do it so he learns how to!

Yeah, bugs should be cool if eggs are. Fish should be ok one hopes. Unless they talk too. I just wonder about birds. If eggs are ok - but are some birds intelligent?

You raise an interesting point. If cows and chickens could talk, would we still eat them? x D

This comic suffers from A Wizard Did It since there is no way the situation of EVERYBODY arriving at sapience simultaneously could arise. It presents us with "preds as serial killers" and thanks to the inexplicably slow breeding prey you either have to kill off the preds or make the jump to a peaceful coexistence in a generation.

You just have to handwave the situation or assume a malevolent god had it in for the setting and suddenly Uplifted everyone.

Thank you! This is why I find things like Zootopia and Beastars to be terribly hard to swallow but couldn't put my finger on it.

I think in Zootopia's case it's a story meant to parallel modern society dealing with racism. It doesn't make the claim that out of nowhere everyone became super evolved. Instead, various species have irrational prejudices against each other based on the excuse of their long-distant biological past.

Explain how they'd be able to build a society together if they didn't evolve sapience at the same time.

In the case of Zootopia the prey still outnumber the preds at least ten to one (more like a hundred to one if you count the bunnies) so there is time to eventually reach an accord - even if one species evolved a little faster than the others. In the case of this comic the prey and preds are of relatively equal numbers and the prey breed as slowly as the preds, which means one or both groups are going extinct in a few years at most. The preds will eat all the prey or the prey will kill all the preds very shortly unless a solution is found, which is why we have the rather heavy handed approach of one pred suddenly realizing he doesn't need to eat squirrels to survive. If the prey still bred fast and matured quickly there'd be time to work things out but here we are, the fix has to happen RIGHT NOW or at least half the population dies.

Now that's a movie I'd like to see

There's also the aspect I use in my story "Michael and Amanda". Humans are going extinct. In order to save something of themselves, they genetically alter mammals to become anthropomorphic. Part of their alteration is that they have sapience enough to understand that eating intelligent "species" isn't the wisest thing they can do. By only anthropomorphizing mammals allows the "predators" to have their meat without causing the herbivores any fear that they are on the menu.

Yeah... what I want most to see explored here is answering questions like "how did the the protagonist never face questions of prey animal sapience before?", and assuming that there is a good answer (he HAS faced these questions before), "how is the overall society structured whenever clans of species intersect?".

I could accept the idea that there are purely carnivorous species in this story that genuinely are just entirely blood thirsty by necessity as a part of this, but it does still cheapen the plot to have such a simplistic "bad guy".

your uncalled for explanations sounds like serial killer's

...aggressive much? He was giving valid criticism for this comic, and not in an insulting way.

Mind you, I like this comic too, and both Zootopia and Beastars. But that doesnt mean they are flawless. Maybe you should chill a bit, dude/tte.

look at his art, now bac to me, now back to his art, now back to me, I am a prosecutor and he has full package for a ride to loony house. bet my ass hell eventually eat someone irl just to fulfill the fantasies. ;) youll see.

I can separate my fetishes from reality. I was just pointing out a worldbuilding issue with the comic. I played D&D for many years and I do like my worldbuilding.

ok boomer

lololol

a. We're all degenerates here, bitching at another furry over a completely unrelated comic makes you look like a dumbass tbh.
b. I took a 3 minute glance at your favorites and can say the same thing about your unhealthy giantess/macro/stomping fetish, yet you don't see me claim you like stomping on smaller animals for sexual gratification. Get over yourself.

My man, I can see the logic you're aggressively trying to apply to the comic, without even having the full story to read.
But let's be real for a second-- a furry world of multitudes of sapient creatures just could not evolve and thrive without some outside influence shepherding it (be it magic, aliens, science, religion, whatever). This story is specifically about the nature of animals progressing from tribalism (specisim, you could say) into the sapient world of a culture larger than eat-sex-die. Surprise, it's a morality tale!

But here, if it will satisfy your nit-picking -- TWO GENERATIONS AGO, IN A WORLD NO SO FAR REMOVED FROM ANY OTHER TALKING-ANIMAL WORLD:

The light streaked across the sky, blindingly. A meteorite smashed into the hillside, sending detritus flying into the air, scattering the animals in it's wake. All across the world, similar events were happening. A miasma from another world seeped into the upper atmosphere, finding its way into all systems of life on this near-earth. It had no effect on the avian or reptilian species, but it affected mammals differently. Something in their minds unlocked, something in their bodies began to bend, and they began to change. A balance of life cultivated by the course of evolution has shifted over several generations as changes take hold. The system is off kilter as animals bear less young, tend them longer, and find them stronger and smarter than their parents. Food begins to become scarce. To survive, all creatures must become clever or become food, adjusting their strategies, innovating technologies, forming social bonds to protect them. WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT IN THIS CRITICAL JUNCTURE?


OR HERE:

The two aliens looked down on the little blue planet, filled to the brim with crawling, breeding, fleshy machines that had no purpose beyond eating and reproducing. It screwed it's mechanical face into what you'd call distaste.
The first alien took a long pull on his space-vape. "Dude, what would happen if you like, made all those bio hazards morally aware. Like, really cognizant of their actions."
"Hold my space-beer," the other said, reaching for the inexplicably complicated machinery to do just that.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT IN THIS CRITICAL JUNCTURE?



OR HERE:
"And on the eighth day, GOD realized His mistake and wiped the earth clean. On the ninth day, He took a nap. On the tenth day, He pulled up His blueprints from the Garden and was like, "oh, yeah, some of these were okay. Let's try this." And He repopulated the earth with all the animals of the garden-- except for humans. He uplifted them beyond their curated existence and released them like fledglings into a new world. God popped some popcorn into the microwave, excited to sit and watch the latest installment of OG Reality TV."
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT IN THIS CRITICAL JUNCTURE?



My point is, there are so many different ways I could answer you, but I'm not telling *that* story. I explained this to you before; something happened in this world that prompted the natural balance to shift. I don’t care what people’s head canons are for how this all got rolling. I also don’t need to hand-hold people through every step of the journey— there’s a place where “world building” ends and you let a reader immerse themselves in a world partially yours and partially theirs.

If Oren's Forge isn't something you like...you don't have to read it.

Best of luck with whatever stories you decide to tell.

There's always going to be some grognard pointing out a plot hole or flaw in the worldbuilding. This time I was that grognard. When Larry Niven published Ringworld, an award winning novel, MIT students soon worked out that the megastructure wasn't stable and ran through the halls of a sci-fi con where he was the guest of honor chanting "The ringworld is unstable!" It happens.

You set up a situation that isn't sustainable even in the short term, naturally something weird must have happened very recently but no one in-comic knows about it. I know it's a downer to have someone keep poking at that gap but it's going to happen, someone's going to raise the question. I'll stop commenting about it since it's causing you to take valuable time to argue about it, but I'll still be wondering how it happened.

Yeah, a better understanding of just what is a "person" in the "you don't eat people" sense of person and what isn't. I suppose we'll learn that when he starts to go for some fish.

yes the birds talk, or at least some do.

Rask said before the crows or ravens were scouting for the wolves.

Gotta be careful about who’s eggs your eating then. :) Now do reptiles and fish also talk? Perhaps we might see.

fish is technically meat...

Feesh!

Fish would certainly be a more filling meal, one does worry about witnesses not being okay with it and having a "THE MURDERBEAST IS STILL MURDERING!" freakout.

OMG! Poor Kieran!

Professor emeritus Dr. Nicholas Hopper: "Ah finally, my chance to establish communication with this group of inventive mammalians! Goodness me I can hardly believe they've begun mastering fire, I- Great Scott! I say young man put me down! No NO DON-"

*crunch*

Oren could come now and teach him how to fish! It would be a great opportunity to socialize with the new Predator.

Well, this is the only way to go if the predators and prey are going to coexist. Of course they are in a stone age level of development, which means it's hard to transport meat, which means the predators will largely migrate near coasts and rivers or die off/be wiped out by prey armed with spears.

I keep thinking they're gonna be up the proverbial creek without a paddle once winter sets in...

Wasabi!

Well, for now he has some alternative food source. That's good, though as mentioned above, the season change will be horrid. Then again, even in normal circumstances it usually is.

I predict a Smeagol moment coming on!