How did it all begin?

Today I’m going to answer a question I received on the forum that I’ve gotten a few times, and which I think deserves a more thorough answer that can be easily found or linked. The question, from Ashura:

“What inspired you to create this game or the very idea of Lith in the first place?”

That’s just a little complicated, and I’ve dipped into it briefly in the past in a few places, but I think this should be a good spot to explain properly. So here it is: the full origin story of both Lith and the game.

It began with Lith, several years ago, though I’m not sure exactly when. I was first exposed to the furry community through an interest in sexual roleplaying. I actually used to go to a forum devoted entirely to it, and just before it finally died off, a friend of mine there mentioned another community for finding open-minded and perverted people that enjoy typefucking. There was only one small issue: it was furry.

Now, I had seen furry porn and people playing furry characters, but I hadn’t really been involved with any of it, and I was just a little wary, but my friend was obviously furry and he didn’t seem too strange. So I followed his link and poked around in this new community– it was actually a very small, cozy chatroom, rife with drama at times as furry communities tend to be, but friendly and surprisingly long-lived thanks to a constant rotation of regulars almost every hour of the day. I hope you’ll understand if I keep the identity of this community my little secret, as I’m still fond of the place and its, ah, “small town charm,” as compared to the jaded rush of some larger communities.

It’s also important to note that my entrance here coincided with a new era in my own sexual interests. Up to that point I had largely considered myself straight, except for a slowly expanding interest in hermaphrodites. As you may have noticed, that interest has continued to expand. But just before entering this new community I had begun experimenting with actually roleplaying being on the other side of the penetration– as a woman, actually, but it was, at the time, still a somewhat bewildering and embarrassing experiment, but one that proved enjoyable to a degree.

So by the time I worked up the nerve to create a character of my own and test the waters of the furry community, I had a nervous but burgeoning interest in sexual experimentation crossing the borders of gender, which I had long considered sacrosanct. So, I created a furry character, based largely on an old favorite character of mine from my time at a fantasy (in the more traditional, sword-and-sorcery sense) roleplaying forum, a meek little mage, but in the skin of, well, the cat I happened to own at the time. I was feeling shy, passive, and a little sleepy at the time, and so it seemed like a good fit for me overall.

Lith was born from this arbitrary combination of factors, or at least the very base of his character was, many years before I began to write about him in a more permanent, published manner. I made him to be my quiet listener in this new world and get an idea of things from the beginning, and when the opportunity arose, I used him to experiment with my own ideas of sexuality, taking assistance from those around me in slowly pushing at the edges of my comfort zone to see what felt good and what did not.

I’ve been a little shocked, actually, going through some of my oldest logs: for quite some time, Lith was… well, a slut. He eagerly engaged anyone and everyone in a friendly bout as I found more and more strange things enjoyable, and my ideas of what I could find sexually stimulating were expanding by the day. It was an exciting and quite perverted time in my life online, and I look back on it fondly. Over time I came to appreciate the subtleties of what I enjoyed and what others seemed to enjoy, and Lith became quite slim, though he was already young looking from the basis on my other character and that suited him well. His rump grew a bit exaggerated in lavish prose until I simply accepted that he had the hips and rear of a fertile woman twice his age, and I finally solidified his appearance with a bit of careful tracing and combination between a few pictures– the old, dark, lineless portrait of Lith from behind you may see here and there.

I believe it was this practice of refinement to better match my and others’ interests that slowly shaped his personality, and I actually find it an interesting and somewhat unfortunate development, but as with all the innocent little choices and coincidences I’ve described before it, it had much larger, further-reaching consequences than I expected. Many of the people I played with enjoyed taunting and teasing my character as we played, purely to enjoy an aspect of psychological degradation to flavor the sex, accusing him of being obsessed with cock, of living off their produce, and generally implying he was a colossal slut, which of course he was.

But what fun is it to tease someone by calling them a slut and have them eagerly respond, “yeah, I am!” before gargling your cock some more? A certain morbid satisfaction might be found, but it’s terribly one-dimensional, and I found it made for a more enjoyable experience if Lith became rather shy when teased about his appetites, both for the inherent humor in his actions and words clashing so vehemently and because it prompted Lith’s partner to take a more aggressive approach, both to press their interests and to force Lith to admit his pleasure by overwhelming him with it. This shyness gradually became an integral part of his personality, as I found it made the virtual sex a little more of an emotional and psychologically involved experience, lending more meaning to everything done, which I’ve often found to be an important part of making sex feel significant, rather than simply an exercise in tabs, slots, and flesh slapping together.

Another pressure, I believe, was a certain measure of “slut shaming” that was gradually becoming evident in that community. There was a common area for everyone to chat, and it was common enough to see a happy couple thrown together by whimsy alone to yiff it out where everyone could see, but some members, for various fairly valid reasons, began to grow irritated with this. So snide or passive-aggressive comments were made, or some simply left or formed a private room as soon as it became clear what was happening, speaking rather loudly through silence. Additionally, some of the most significantly proactive and sexual figures were actively mocked by a few bitter members of the community, though whether this was out of some personal emotional turmoil or some underlying conflict between the parties involved I do not know.

The point is, it became fashionable to hide one’s desires to a degree– as with the rise of the Victorian age, as I’m led to believe, it became common practice to pretend we were all rather proper and friendly and talk about nonsexual things, and keep our fervent rutting behind closed doors. The irony that this odd little twist in a furry community, a bastion of open sexuality in a stifled world, is exactly the transformation that Western society undertook centuries ago and is still struggling to reverse today, has proven just a bit maddening to me.

The more interesting aspect of this parallel, actually, is that it has given me unexpected perspective into a mindset and set of behaviors I once found mystifying. Allow me something of a tangent to discuss Lith’s personality and put it in the context of the real world. To put it simply, Lith has a strong sex drive, but he really, really doesn’t want to be called a slut. Socially, he wants to be accepted as a polite and proper person, acceptable at any formal occasion and quite friendly with children and the elderly. Behind closed doors, he wants to be fucked until he cannot sit, stand, or even crawl away, and then perhaps some more. But one of these is an unstoppable, instinctual drive, a lust, a need, a bodily behavior, and the other is an extremely complicated and difficult process to be maintained constantly with concentrated upper-mind functions. One is inherently stronger, and the other is so important that it cannot be allowed to slip up even once in polite company or his life, in a sense, would surely be over. So what does he do?

Why, he develops a devastating complex, of course. One could say Lith has a deathly phobia of actually acting like a sexual being, and it’s only when he’s forced into the situation that he can be free to act as he truly desires, sometimes by simply not acting at all. This is the rather extreme interpretation of his needs and desires, but as I’ve explored his personality, his past, and his reasoning more, I’ve found it rewarding to press the envelope somewhat.

So! What perspective did this give me? Well, I realized at some point along the way that Lith’s behavior is actually stunningly similar to that of some young women today. You may or may not have encountered these particular personalities before, but there are some women (and a few men) in existence that, while they enjoy sex and want it just as much as everyone else, will rarely if ever actually give any signal to that effect. They’ll simply make themselves available and hope for the best, and sometimes, maddeningly enough, they will later make reference to how unfortunate it is that you did not partake when they apparently expected you to.

This can be a disturbing way to behave, as it implies a few things. It implies that the woman expects you not only to make the first move, but to make it without provocation, and in many cases, to then make the second and third move without any particular signal from the woman that your advances are welcome. Distressingly enough, some women may even expect you to keep going as they protest. I assure you that I am not making this up, though I rather wish I was. At what point precisely you are supposed to be certain that you are not, in fact, raping this young woman is unclear, which is horrifying, but they seem to orchestrate their own subtle system of signals such as “not violently assaulting you” or “grinding back just a little” or “not screaming for help.”

I should note that this is not to be confused with controlled sexual interaction with someone with whom you have a lengthy and comfortable history. If you know someone that is interested in playing this sort of role in an encounter, and you’re certain you can distinguish if and when this person is not interested, then by all means, have fun. Many women have rape fetishes that can be interesting, if a little chilling, to indulge in the right circumstances. But it is now my belief that some women have, through whatever means, developed a complex remarkably similar to that which I have created for Lith: they have strong sex drives, but above all else do not want to be seen as “easy” or “slutty.” Our culture as it stands actually encourages this to a degree, and this behavior can be common in small amounts among women of all ages, but it is my (admittedly somewhat anecdotal) opinion that it has become a disturbingly common mindset in children of the 80’s and 90’s as our culture becomes more and more openly double-faced in our views of sexuality.

Well. To put it short, Lith gave me a more direct and up-close insight into some of the emotional issues and conflicts that women (and people that take what might usually be considered a woman’s role in sexual situations) experience than I’d ever expected to have. It’s certainly been an interesting experience, and I’m happy to have expanded my own horizons in such a strange way. But that’s all to one side. The point is, Lith developed what I would argue was a rather strong and realistic personality for a being created solely to fulfill sexual fantasies. And this would prove a strong foundation for the next stage in his existence.

In February of 2010, I found myself with the drive, the will, and the lack of time to finally push myself to write something. I had no idea what I was doing, honestly– I’d long aspired to be a proper storyteller, and I’d scribbled a few short things trying to make something happen, but this time I was determined. I had to write something. Anything!

So I took the character I was most comfortable with, and I opened the scene as I would have in a forum, establishing the setting, the character, his current emotions and such, as if I was getting ready to pass the pen over to whomever I was roleplaying with. But I just pushed myself to keep going, and ended up writing out a silly little solo scene with Lith. I worked up my nerve, and posted it on FurAffinity and SoFurry. And I found… it felt good to make something that was my own, solely my own creation, and that some people, at least a couple, seemed to enjoy it. So I carried on with this silly little story, though it was less a story and more a series of contrivances focused on getting things put in Lith. And it felt nice to have people reading it, and telling me they liked it, or pointing out where I could improve.

And that’s how I started as a writer. For a long time, I even managed to write semi-regularly, sticking to a schedule of averaging 2500 words a week, mostly by putting out 5000 words every other week. And I was… proud. I was establishing a body of work, and every word written was an established piece that people could enjoy for years to come. I came to appreciate the art of storytelling more thoroughly, and experimented with its many aspects using a variety of characters.

I did come back to Lith a fair deal, of course. And as I tried to write him into an actual world instead of just a chat room, I developed him as an actual person, giving him background, little details to try and make for a more robust set of options in writing. In mid-2011, I sat down and appraised the whole of Lith as I knew him, and slowly put the final pieces into place to give him a past that explained how he came to be the character we know today. The entirety of that story isn’t yet written out, but perhaps the most interesting and significant portion of it was published in full detail as I established many of Lith’s “firsts.” I created characters solely to be forces in his life that led him to where he is now.

And finally, at the beginning of 2012, I began work on something new. I had been writing on and off for two years, pouring myself into writing stories that I believed would earn me fame and fortune based on their quality alone. Reading back over some of these stories, of course, I’m a little embarrassed at my presumption at the time, but I do feel they were at least above-average fare. Still, I had not been gathering an audience on the scale that I wanted, and while I had earned myself a steady stream of commissions, I was not exactly overwhelmed with my garnered wealth. So, being a man of some small ambition, I realized that I had the combination of skills necessary to create something a little more unique and attention-grabbing. People are not terribly interested in reading any old pile of text you throw at them, but make it a game? Oh, now we have a market!

But what could I make a game about? My obvious inspiration was Corruption of Champions, but I knew that there would be little point in making another RPG in that vein, as there were several similar, smaller games out there, and I wanted something that stood out a little. Further, one thing I didn’t like as much about CoC was the system for swapping out descriptors and pieces at random. I believed a game with a little more carefully sculpted an experience and more precisely written prose would be a distinctive and worthwhile alternative, and one more suited to my abilities and habits. So it had to be something more focused– something less about variety and more about depth. I played with a few different ideas, but somehow the idea that stuck was to, once again, lead with my strongest character. I thought that if I mixed the old Tamagotchi experience with a little bit of an H-dating sim sensibility and put Lith in the center of it, it could at least make a decent little starting game to get my feet wet before I moved on to something more serious. And, well, it ended up going a bit better than I first expected, though also taking a lot longer.

So in a month of what I now consider astonishing productivity, I slammed out the basic groundwork of My Very Own Lith, cobbled together from bits of code I found online and salvaged from Fenoxo’s old UTG file. It was ugly, and there was little content, but it was a start. And part of me wishes I’d held back, that I’d just kept working and developing it without letting anyone see it until it was nearly done. I’ve come to believe that both the praise and the criticism that comes from releasing a game partway done can actually do many things to delay the further development of the game. Of course, the cat cannot be stuffed back in the bag now, or whatever the phrase is, and I will admit that it’s done a fair deal to raise my profile on the internet.

To a degree, MVOL has brought me the things I hoped for, although many of my players do not even know I have stories “on the side,” let alone have read any of them. It has become a more rewarding project in a way, and has come to occupy as much of my time as my other writing, if not more. I’ve dedicated myself to completing the game– it’s expanded well past its original silly little scope already, and I hope that when we finally reach the distant resolution of this story, you will all feel as satisfied with the game as I’m sure I will.

Lith has come much, much further than I ever anticipated, and I’m proud to have found so many friends for him. I’m not sure I dare to imagine what his future might hold.