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Putting this in your thread, since it's your concept lol

Okay, just a few things I've observed so far.

As we know, multiple tails. One, five, seven, and nine are the most common in the stories. Some folk stories say the kitsune only grows additional tails after it has reached 100 years of age. When they get their ninth tail their fur turns white or gold. Some tales say they can see and hear anything happening anywhere in the world, others attribute them with infinite wisdom.

There are two common types of kitsune. Zenko are benevolent, celestial foxes associated with the god Inari. Yako, or nogitsune, are mischievous or even malicious. There are other types that depend on local legend. I'm looking into something I saw, where they are classified into thirteen types depending on their magical abilities.

Kitsune shape-shifting. That might be a tricky slope we want to avoid, but the legends say it's a skill they acquire at either 50 or 100, depending on which legend you read. The prerequisite to shape-shifting is to place reeds, a broad leaf, or a skull over their head, and that usually they transform into young girls, beautiful women, or old men, regardless of their actual age or gender.

Rain falling from a clear sky, sunshower, is said to represent a kitsune marriage. Just an interesting tidbit, not sure what we could do with it.

Here's my thoughts on the matter of elemental/emotional bases. I might ramble a little, but I'll try to keep my thoughts straight.

As far as I can tell and from all the books I've read, I've never seen emotions assigned an element. Mostly because emotions themselves are so fluid, and no two people feel the exact same way or even for the exact reasons. I'll cite anger as one example. Most people feel hot when angry because of the flush of blood, but some people actually feel cold when angry. Happiness is another emotion I could attempt to cite for how ridiculously complicated it would be to slap an element label on it. Happiness comes in so many different forms from so many different causes, not to mention gauging the level of the emotion. I mean it's one thing to say I'm happy cause it's a pleasant day, another thing to say I'm happy because I won a new car.

I'm not sure how far into planning the shop you are, whether you're still in the story-mode and working out all the kinks of the pets or if you've also given thought to how people will acquire their pets? I've got an idea that I think will be easiest on us and make people a bit more happy.

• Contests
This is probably the most common way anyone gets a pet in any shop. Without contests I would have no Soqs and probably a handful of Noodles and most likely only half my Modifoxes. This is the one thing we could make a list for. We pretty much just sit down, chat, figure which elements we want to include and what combinations with which emotions we want to use, then right it down to draw on when making a non-custom kitsune. Then when we put the pets up for winning, we just list what element and emotion the kitsune is attached to and let the owner decide the story.

• Customs
You remember how in Sleepless you have to get a character form approved before you could quest a character? Well I'm thinking something similar, though not as strict. In my head what I see is your usual custom form, but with specific slots to list the element and emotion the person wants for their kitsune. I also think it would be good to add a "why" slot, for some of the odd combinations so we can be sure there's nothing clashing, but that's optional. We can more or less negate a combo we disapprove of by just sitting down and making another list of element/emotion combos that are not allowed. My thinking is that this gives people more flexibility for different kinds of personalities and will introduce a much larger variety than if we tried to enforce a "only this with that" policy.

• Breeding
I assume we're going to have breedings with this shop. The main question is do the parents have any input on what the baby will become? Element-wise it makes sense to me that the kids would inherit from the parents. Emotionally-speaking, how do you decide that? Emotions play a big part in how we play our characters. Deciding the emotion for a winnable kitsune is one thing, because people have the option to enter or not. Babies though... I'm going to make an example tomorrow, because I'm too tired to think straight right now, but children don't always inherit their parents mood and us randomly selecting moods for offspring sounds like a lot of unhappiness in the making.

I don't know if you agree, but when I picture this shop I see it being roleplay- and/or participation-based. Like the bottle is the infant stage, the kit stage has only one tail, then the adult stage has five tails. Or three, if you want five tails to be an extra step along the way to the final nine-tailed form. I don't know if you want to do multiple Metas, or just have one main Meta and then we can make monthly or semi-monthly elaborate story games, but that can be a way to earn participation points. Roleplays can be another way. In an old shop I used to be in, long ago, we needed so many roleplays with other pets, solo entries in our journals that was usually an adventure or introspection, and a solo describing how they reacted to growing before they could reach the next stage of growth. We could do something similar, make some sort of requirement(s) that have to be met before the kitsune can grow more tails. More tails would get them certain extra perks, as an incentive to be active. Given how much power a nine-tailed fox is credited with, I think we should make it highly challenging to achieve that rank. So I guess born as a bottle, start with one tail, mature with three tails, then go through challenges to meet the requirements in order to advance first to five tails, then to seven, and lastly to nine. Maybe five tails should be slightly easier to achieve, so people who don't have a ton of time in their lives but wish they could be more active can manage to attain that rank, while seven tails will take a lot more time and nine tails means lots and lots of devotion. That's my thought, anyway.