# Romantic Senses:  Kissing.  What's It Like To Kiss Anthro/Furry/Alien Lips



## Guilrel (Jan 27, 2015)

There's something I've been noticing lately when it comes romance stories, it's just that hardly anyone writes more than one sentence when it comes to two characters kissing each other, and if it does it just goes straight to the tongue play.  I'm not saying there's something wrong with that, it's alright I guess, it's just that when it happens the authors overlook the one feature that brought these tongues together:  The Lips.  Apparently most authors think that they aren't that big of a deal when it comes to writing them and in some situations they're right.  But when it comes between two characters in the moment they're supposed to share their love for each other, or a big moment of their declaration of their love, or that it's something unexpected to one of them but important to the other, it kinda is.  It's somewhat of a pet peeve of mine when authors of romantic fics just generally gloss over this important feature of the characters.  Now I'm not trying to say that "you have to do it or else I'll keep nagging you about it," I'm just trying to make you aware of something that could potentially enhance your experience as well as the readers whenever you write a kissing scene between two, especially if its important to them.

Now before I continue, I have to tell you that I'm an avid fan of human with anthro couples.  Now don't close the window or go back just yet, what I want you read about it could be just as helpful for you with your anthro couples, I just ask that you take a long moment of your time to read out what I wanted to write out to you.  Anyway, one of the reasons I like human with anthro couples is that I can see great romantic chemistry between such couples and because of that, most of my explanation about an anthro character's lips will be compared with a human's and why I'm trying to make you aware that your anthro character has, or should have, a different mouth when compared to a human and you should use the differences to your advantage. Especially if both of your anthro characters are of different species or race.  
Also, I'll be going over the fantastical side of the anthro character since they're pretty much fictional characters in the first place not to mention they should be different from their animal/feral counterparts in the first place.   No offense to the people who want things to be "realistic" for your anthro character, it's just that... I _think _I understand why you might want to gloss over a kissing part between two characters or omit it altogether, or not use that on a human.  Though it's your choice if you want your characters to have "realistic animal features," it's just that I'll still be focusing more on the fantasy side of things about this topic and I don't have much info on the realistic side anyway.  But if you want you can input your info on that, since this is an awareness/discussion thread anyway and not the "tell you what to do thread."

What's next will be an edited version of a message that I wrote to a friend to make him aware of such an important and overlooked feature and I got his permission to share what I wrote to him to you.  The edited parts will mostly change to reflect you instead, and his character's name will be changed and gone so without further ado:

One of the facts that you should be aware of some of your anthro characters, if you wrote them like that, is that they different shaped mouths and lips compared to humans such as my friend's anthro rat character having "thin rodent lips" for example.  However it's pretty vague in the "sensual" side of things for a romance fiction.  Basically I believe there should be more to kissing than just "and then they kiss," it should be just as sensual as one character giving a foot rub or any other massage.  One of the things I want to tell you about is that kissing is also more than just tongue play, it is the rubbing of two different lips together like how a hand massages a body part.  Writing down the differences between the two different bodies is the key here even if it's one sided from the human's or anthro's perspective.  Another thing I want to tell you about kissing is how different an anthro lips should be when compared to a human, especially if that anthro character gets to have a cleft, the crease between the anthro's top lip to their nose.  Now then I don't exactly mean that you should imagine what an actual animal's top lip should really feel like since we're dealing with fictional and fantastical character, so their lips should be fantastical as well.  However it is up to you if want to do something like that, like I heard a cat's lips are pretty sticky somewhere, which in my opinion, doesn't sound all that pleasant to me, especially if that anthro character should be a mix of human and cat, so I'm focusing on the more human part.

 Now that the barebones that I want to tell you is done, I want to get in more detail about a human kissing an anthro.  First off we have to consider the shape of the anthros' mouth, on some stories an anthro's lips is basically the same as a human, which is not really that much of a big deal and it makes sense for the simple "kissing" sentence to be there, especially if you're the type of person who could care less about this sort of thing, which it makes it easier to get away with.  However you can't (actually you still can it's just omitting a sensual side anyway) get away with it if the anthro in question has a cleft on their top which brings a whole lot of things into perspective and things that should've been thought about when it comes to between kissing an anthro and a human.  The shape of the character's mouth is very important and which you need to include when describing a kiss so you have to ask yourself these questions about your characters and decide whether or not they should be included in a kiss:  What is the shape of their mouth?  Do they have fur on the lips? How thick is the fur on them?  How thick are their lips; is it thin, plump, or somewhere in between?  How strong are their lips (got that from someone telling me that horse lips are strong, which I didn't know there was such a thing as strong lips between anybody or anything until then, which leads to the next question)?  What features from their animal half are carried over to their lips or lost when compared to them?  How often is it for the character's race to kiss?  Is this their first time kissing and how new is it to them if it's true?  
 While you don't really have to answer all of these questions, but I have to ask you, don't you have to think about this many or a couple of questions like these when you considered features of the anthro character you'll include when you create them or have them embrace another?  Now for the next part.

 When anthro characters have a cleft you really should take a bit of time to include it when they kiss someone.  Personally, I think there's no way that their lips can be the same as a human when they're clearly shaped differently, especially if the human is the one sharing that kiss and it's first time making out with an anthro.  Suffice to say, simply saying "They kissed" does not do a romantic story justice.  As I wrote earlier, it's only justified if their lips are exactly like a human's... but it's also justified if it's a kiss between two anthros as well since it should be normal for them anyway, unless they're two different species or race that is.  The point is, if an anthro has a cleft you should include it in the kiss because they have a crease in their lips, which should bring on an entirely different feeling on the human lips.  When the human feels that for the first time I want to know the feeling of how their lips felt on the cleft like:  Is it like a snug feeling, pinchy, feels like something is missing, or does it feel like that the guy is the final piece of a puzzle finally finding it's rightful place on the kisser lips?  Thanks to some pictures by hattonslayden, I got a more appreciation for kissing as well, since the kisses go in different ways as in, someone wraps their lips on their lover's top lip while the lover kisses that person's bottom lip and vice versa. So there's a lot more room to describe the feeling between the two kissers even if it's short one.  
 Well actually now that I think about it, short one to two second kisses are also justified in the "they just kissed" part, it's just that if it's for a first time for character a brief detail of the anthro lips would help out like my friend's character's of their "thin rodent lips" part help out...  It's just that if it's longer than that's when you need more detail.

 The last thing is the fur on the lips, especially when concerning the top lip of the anthro.  I always imagine the anthros having very thin fur like a blanket when the fur gets to the mouth, especially if both lips are covered in fur that you never know that its true or not, unless they wear lipstick, like a Sonic character for example.  The fur on the lip should brush the human's lips for the sensual kissing.  However how much fur on the lips still largely depends on the author, like you, about how much fur should be there on the lip or mouth, just like everything else. Anyway,  I feel like that thin fur is what will give kissing an anthro a more pleasurable and relaxing experience for the human.  Though an extremely furry lip would be a very odd feeling for the human as I think it'll feel like kissing a beard, but then again there are people who enjoy kissing that and making out with a furry person would still be very fuzzy anyway.

And that's the gist of what I told my friend about what it should feel like when a human kisses a furry character.  After reading about my passion for the subject and reading an example paragraph I showed him, he's now inspired to give a kissing scene at least more than one sentence dedicated to that scene.  I think that's it for an opener now, there are other things that I'd liked to talk about when concerning other types of anthro characters, such as an anthro bird or an anthro reptile.  I'll talk about those some other time in this thread.  But for now I just hope this "essay" I wrote inspired you to at least write a bit more detail when anthro characters  kissing besides "and then they kissed."


----------



## Ursa Maximus (Jan 27, 2015)

I'm not sure of how big or underserved the lip cleft fetish audience is. When I include kissing, I gloss over it a bit because, honestly, I imagine it wouldn't work all that well! Human kissing relies on the way we can articulate our lips really well and the way our faces fit flat together (once you tilt a little to take the nose out of the equation). Once you start to push the jaw out into a muzzle, both of those things break down. Two open muzzles only really fit together 90 degrees rotated and the lips only have a pretty small point of contact.

So I have my characters go in from the side, press their muzzles together, and then kind of skip to the tongue play and hope the reader doesn't try too hard to imagine the logistics (Porn 101). 

As for the lips, what do you mean by furry lips? Humans and animals alike have no hair on their lips.


----------



## Guilrel (Jan 27, 2015)

I don't know where you got that whole "lip cleft fetish" thing from or even see that as a fetish in the first place, but I advise you to stop trying to see everything you think is strange as a fetish.  This is more about trying to get people to notice more about how a kiss should feel to one another when the action is performed.  Not everyone actually knows how a kiss a actually feels like when characters make out, so I'm trying to tell you that there's an option of letting your reader know that feeling along with emotion that goes with it.  I understand that technically its nearly impossible when it comes to anthro characters, but yet in many works, especially art, it's very possible, so it becomes more of matter explaining how does it feel for the characters to the reader.  Much like trying to explain how a moderately furry anthro character feels when hugging a really fluffy one, or how it feels when a character with scales touch the fur or skin of another.

What you wrote about how characters go for the kiss is alright, but then I have to ask what does it feel for them.  While I really have to thank you for letting me know that realistically that animals have no hair on their lips, I'm still compelled to ask out of curiosity what's it like for them to kiss depending on whether or not their muzzles are shaped differently from each other.

Writing about the fur on the lips:  there are a lot of depictions of artwork show characters that do have fur on their lips, but considering what you said earlier, it's more of case that they _look like_ they do.  So in the end it really depends on the author that it looks it's true or not and how they depict their anthro characters.  Take the Sonic characters (which are sometimes called Mobians depending on the world the author sets them in) Sally, Blaze, and Rouge for instance (and just for a quick reference here's a link of all them together with the other girls made by someone that made it close as their actual canon look as possible http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9015984/ ).  All of those girls have the same kind of mouth but for Sally and Blaze it's practically impossible to tell at first glance to tell if their lips are the same as a human's or an animal's, which is to say it's impossible to tell that they DON'T have fur on their lips.  Rouge on the other hand has lipstick, which could make someone think that their lips are probably the same as a human's but if they consider the other girls besides her, they'll probably think that they have fur under there anyway.  Unless you already looked up on how animal lips work already by the time you see them, you'll just assume that their lips are pretty fuzzy anyway.  
So when someone uses a character that is shaped like them or belong in the same "species" as these characters kisses a human or another being that doesn't look like them, someone out there will be asking "How does that feel?  Isn't that a weird feeling kissing these kinds of people?"  But because the author doesn't explore any further than "they simply kiss" the reader will be left with idle curiosity.  Which is actually this whole thing is about:  fulfilling that idle curiosity when it comes for two different type of characters making out with each other, which in the end depends largely on how the author depicts the characters. 

Also as a side note, the anthro characters don't need to use their entire muzzles, they can use their tips of their muzzles to kiss or the author can use that to describe the feeling before moving on to the next scene, which still depends on how they depict their characters.


----------



## BadRoy (Jan 27, 2015)

I typically prefer alternate animal affection because A. It reminds the viewer that we are dealing with anthropomorphic animals. And B. It avoids this entire awkwardness of kissing issue.

You seem to be giving a minor quirk an excessive amount of thought OP.


----------



## Guilrel (Jan 27, 2015)

But kisses deserve attention too and sometimes they're more than just "two lips meet and that's it."  I can't think of any other way to phrase this, but it's also way for the reader to least see the experience of something that's not entirely human.  I mean what if the anthropomorphic animal is actually a person with animal features, an alien that looks like an animal with a human like body but really isn't and is their own species just like how an alien looks exactly like a human, but they're really not and it's not a "human form."   I'm getting too ahead of myself and that's a discussion for another thread.

The point is that there should be at least a couple more sentences when characters kiss each other and even more so if one of the characters, or both, isn't human, but a mix of both human and animal.  How far on one side of the mix that the character is leaning, is still pretty much up to on how you make your character.


----------

