Let's talk about defining 'humans' in Aether by Clouds.
Kinfolk are the primary humanoid people in the Cloudlands. For language purposes, which I muse on often, the usage of the term are like so:
- "All kinfolk need food and water to survive."
- "He's such a dirtbag with no humanity that I can't even consider him a kinfolk."
The main feature of kinfolk is bearing some feature of an animal, plant, or other aspect of nature across their bodies. Simply put: animal people, plant people, elemental people, and so on.
(Note: I really dislike using [blank] people as a phrase in-fiction. It reads as there's people and then there's people.)
In ancient times, there were humanoids with no -kin features that we're familiar with in our world. Over time, the ancient humans took on features of the nature around them as part of their bodies. Gills of fish in the floating seas, quirks of special flowers in a region, wings of avian species.
The aspect of nature a kinfolk takes their features from is, simply, their Kin! Group of a type of kinfolk are referred with [Aspect of Nature] + -kin.
For example let's take Mao. His kin are the cattail feline. Cats with typha-tails! So Mao's a cattailkin. The way the first part is decided mostly up to in-universe regional variations or what seems least painful to write in dialogue from me, haha.
When referring to what Cloudlayer a person is from, [Cloudlayer] + -folk is used instead. Skyfolk, rainfolk, soilfolk. Mao's a soilfolk!
Kinfolk also inherit some ability related to their kin. Generally, kin abilities are for making navigation in your home Cloudlayer trivial.
- Soillayer kin abilities help bridge the small gaps between island masses with plant growth or agility.
- Rainfolk kin abilities help with swimming and enduring extreme ocean/snow conditions.
- Skyfolk kin abilities are flight or other mechanisms like hovering and airborne platforms.
While kinfolk abilities tend to be simple, they can also be defining for a character's identity. This is seen in kins with powerful creatures like dragons or kin pulling from fundamental elements (earth, fire, water, etc).
I stress that I want to be cautious around making one's kin too defining. The idea is premised on having a fundamental tie of yourself to nature but I do want to explore conflicts over marginalization due to your kin.
It is NOT a vehicle for race science garbage and I'll shut down any attempts to pull it toward that.
I'll also briefly talk about the scale of furry and the like. Animal-kin characters will skew to the 'kemonomimi' scale of furry so you'll see natural human-range skintones often. And there's personal reasons for that!
I'm Filipino, I have a long history of dealing with colorism around darker skintones. So an important part of portraying characters to me is portraying darker skintones in characters that match our world over fantasy skintones.
This is not to say I'll completely avoid or I outwardly dislike fantasy skintones! I just want make fantasy character leads that look closer to me than I've experienced over my childhood.
With that through, that's it! After the signoff are various kinfolk design I've done that I still adore.
For peace in the clouds.
