# Furry for the sake of being furry?



## FanaticRat (Mar 25, 2009)

Dunno if it's been brought up before--probably has--but I sometimes have to wonder when I write something I'm making it furry for the sake of it being furry and whether or not this is a bad thing. I mean, it often seems like that unless the story has to do explicitly with the fact that the characters are furries or there is some real symbolism in the animal chosen for the character (and I don't mean anything lame like, "Well he's a wolf 'cause he's brave and cool and stuff!!). Is this something I should worry about? Can using furries be appropriate for situations besides the two stated above?


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## M. LeRenard (Mar 25, 2009)

Yeah... it's been brought up.  Somewhere.  Maybe a few places.
But anyway, you say 'whether or not this is a bad thing'.  That all depends on your target audience, right?  Generally, people outside of the fandom don't much get why you'd just make your characters into animals if it has no bearing on the story.  Well... Shigeru Miyamoto did fine with Star Fox, but that's because the games are/were fun.  But for mainstream fiction, it doesn't seem to work so well.
As for situations besides the two stated above, a lot of us here (I say a lot... I think actually it's me, ScottyDM, and maybe three or four others) tend to write anthrofiction as a means to experiment with non-human points of view.  See how well we can portray life from the perspective of a creature with different senses, behaviors, and the like.  So that's another.  Or you could write things like White Fang, where you use the animal perspective to demonstrate something about humankind.  That's another one.  And of course you could always write kid's books using animals for apparently no reason, because kids like animals.  That's good enough for them, right?  It's also good enough for the furry fandom, apparently, which is why it's not exactly inappropriate to write things like that.
I mean... it's really a fairly versatile medium, if you think hard about it.  If you're worried about falling into the generic basket, just give it some more thought and try to keep yourself out, I guess.  Otherwise, meh.  That would be my advice.


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## Poetigress (Mar 26, 2009)

I think MLR covered it, but yeah, it's a matter of taste and audience.  Generally speaking, most readers in the fandom have no problem with "furry for furry's sake," but there are exceptions. (For example, _New Fables_ is fairly strict on wanting some reason for the animal characters, even though it's published within the fandom.)

I'm pretty squarely in the "characters should have some reason to be anthro" camp as well, but I also admit that sometimes the anthro element is more there for atmosphere or sense of wonder, instead of being essential to the actual machinations of the plot.  So for my taste, the more crucial it is to the story, the better -- but that's my taste as a reader, and my preference as a writer.  Yours may vary on both counts.  (I do make exceptions for visual media like comics, as I think that's a bit of a different dynamic than regular prose.)

Overall, as far as whether it's appropriate, that depends on your goals.  If you're writing just for yourself and an audience within the fandom, just as fun recreation, then write whatever you like and enjoy it.  If you're aiming toward writing for a larger or more mainstream audience, though, it's never a bad idea to give some thought to why your characters are what they are -- whether that's human, alien, anthro, artificial intelligence, or something else.


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## ScottyDM (Mar 27, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> Yeah... it's been brought up.  Somewhere.  Maybe a few places.


Gee, ya think?  You made me LOL, sir.



M. Le Renard said:


> And of course you could always write kid's books using animals for apparently no reason, because kids like animals.


Actually, there's a terrific reason to use anthropomorphic animals in children's books, especially picture books. Because a particular species of animal represents no human race, they can each represent all human races. As an author you also get to mock the tapir kid as being kinda slow because he represents no human race. I mean, everyone knows tapirs are not as smart as hedgehogs, right? :grin:



Poetigress said:


> Overall, as far as whether it's appropriate, that depends on your goals.  If you're writing just for yourself and an audience within the fandom, just as fun recreation, then write whatever you like and enjoy it.  If you're aiming toward writing for a larger or more mainstream audience, though, it's never a bad idea to give some thought to why your characters are what they are -- whether that's human, alien, anthro, artificial intelligence, or something else.


Exactly!

BTW, my first story featured an artificial intelligence living in virtual reality who was an anthro-skunk. She meets a boy who claims to be an anthro-fox in reality (although he can't afford a custom avatar, so he's stuck wearing a human avatar while in VR). The kid is lying. There are no anthro-foxes in that storyworld's reality.

Normally, I agonize over my choices. It doesn't matter if I create the character first then go looking for the right story to fit. Or come up with the story idea first then go looking for the right species to use as characters. For one story the characters _wanted_ to be stone-age humans. I had to invent a species before I came up with something that fit the story, and better than stone-age humans did.

But as MLR and PT said, do what you feel like doing. If you target the furry fandom it's hard to go wrong.

Scotty


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## Yorokonde2 (Mar 27, 2009)

I can't really say anything here that the much better writers above me have already said much better then I can.

Most of my stories (so far) seem to have little to no reason behind having furry characters in them. But there is one. I write them in because they're a different race, much like there are a whole book of them for Dungeons and Dragons. In my opinion, they're not /really/ anthromorphic, not in the way most people mean the work. Most of them are more human then anything else, they just evolved a little differently. 

*thinks* I'm not really getting myself across well, am I? *thinks again*

All I'm really trying to say is that sometimes there is a reason where there doesn't appear to be one. And I'm of the opinion that being of a certain Anthro-type shouldn't limit the character to adopting all the normal personality quirks attached to that Anthro-type. That depends more on the psychology of the character itself. 

<.< >.> *leaves before he says anything else*


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## ScottyDM (Mar 27, 2009)

There are two issues here: Furry for the sake of furry, and furry that is no different from being human.

The first is fine, and I happily read such stories. I even write them on occasion.

The second is lame. If your main character is a snow leopard, then give me a snow leopard. Sure, he can eat a small salad on rare occasion, but snow leopards are strict carnivores and the bulk of their diet is meat, not potatoes. Also, I'd expect a degree of athleticism, physical grace, stealth without really trying to be stealthy, and a quiet watchfulness. I expect senses like sight and sound to be heightened from what we humans experience. And I also expect some physical differences such as he gets over-hot in the summer and runs the air conditioner all the time. You don't have to explain this stuff to me--just have your character do it.

But all this is just me and there are plenty of people within the fandom who don't give a flip if your eland eats a steak or your snow leopard makes a meal of a Caesar salad.

Scotty


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## Shouden (Mar 27, 2009)

but what if that's the point of the story? like my story "Cityscape" has anthros that behave a lot like humans, even with wolves and other carnivores eating meet and such. I did this 'cause I wanted to add to the symbolism of the series.

My main character even explains, once that this is because once the humans were kicked off the planet, the animals felt a need, an urge to become like the humans, as if to fill a void. But, with their appearance, came their habits and their sins. This was to drive home the fact that the world had really been quite thoroughly corrupted.

I would agree that, for the most part, furry stories are written for the sake of being furry, and most of the time, I'd write anthro-characters behaving like what they are, but for Cityscape, I wanted to go a different route completely.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Mar 27, 2009)

My story's more or less, as has been said, humans wearing fur coats.  My characters merely refer to themselves as what they are and certain expressions have been altered to meet the needs of certain species, but other than that there aren't too many references to the fact that these characters aren't human.  You could probably read one of my chapters and not realize that one of the characters is a black kite and the other is a hyena.  Also, my story takes place in the real world.  Real landmarks, real cities, real people, except the people happen to be anthros.

If I ever thought of wanting to publish the story, I could just as easily swap the anthro aspect out and give my characters human descriptions.  It's just that for whatever reason I've pictured these characters in this way and that's the reason why I'm writing it as such.

I realize I'm facing issues on several fronts by posting my stories.  A) It's featuring anthro characters, B) There's nothing immediately special about them other on an anthro standpoint than what role they play in the plot, C) It's a modern day crime drama.  From what I've seen on here, to get a few reads your story either needs to be in a fantasy setting, futuristic, or if it is a modern story, it better be porn.  Not trying to have a holier than thou attitude or anything, just my observations.

But I digress, basically I don't care what kind of characters your story features as long as its somewhat coherent and interesting.


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## TakeWalker (Mar 27, 2009)

I think one thing that gets overlooked is that, sometimes, humans in fur coats are entirely acceptable. It just depends on who you're writing for.


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## Shouden (Mar 28, 2009)

I think it's also important to note that sometimes people just get so used to writing furries that they stop being furries for the sake of furries and become humans in sheep's clothing so-to-speak. Anyway, just thought I would point that out. It sucks when it happens too. Although, sometimes the stories get better.

I try to mention that my furry characters are furries in the stories they're in, but it doesn't always work out that way.


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## Stratelier (Mar 28, 2009)

ScottyDM said:


> The second is lame. If your main character is a snow leopard, then give me a snow leopard. Sure, he can eat a small salad on rare occasion, but snow leopards are strict carnivores and the bulk of their diet is meat, not potatoes.


A story about a vegan snow leopard could actually be quite funny . . . *if it's done well*.


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## ScottyDM (Mar 31, 2009)

A few quarters ago in the contest someone submitted a story with no mention that the characters were _not_ human. I've seen plenty of stories where the author will write "Josh was a snow leopard" and then fail to make anything about Josh particularly snow leopardish. But in that story there was _nothing_. There was a group of teenagers and an adult and a natural disaster they had to work though, but nothing to suggest any character was anything but human. The story did fit the theme.

I had to reject the story and wrote the author to say why. Unfortunately the entry deadline passed before the author was able to get a changed story resubmitted and they did not e-mail me back about my comments.

S-


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## Stratelier (Mar 31, 2009)

ScottyDM said:


> A few quarters ago in the contest someone submitted a story with no mention that the characters were _not_ human. I've seen plenty of stories where the author will write "Josh was a snow leopard" and then fail to make anything about Josh particularly snow leopardish. But in that story there was _nothing_. There was a group of teenagers and an adult and a natural disaster they had to work though, but nothing to suggest any character was anything but human. The story did fit the theme.



But did the story involve elements of them being/acting non-human?  Reminds me of the one chapter in my 2008 Nano-novel where I turned my MC into a fox and kept it a secret from the reader for about 3,000 words.


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## Xipoid (Mar 31, 2009)

I've been outed. Nearly all of my stories can work with either human or anthropomorphic characters. It stems from how I see anthropomorphic creatures and how they work in the universe they occupy, becoming highly situational very quickly.


I think I've maybe written one story ever that had characters who were principally defined by their animal likeness, but I felt so corny writing it.


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## M. LeRenard (Mar 31, 2009)

Xipoid said:
			
		

> I think I've maybe written one story ever that had characters who were principally defined by their animal likeness, but I felt so corny writing it.


Well, that's where subtlety comes in handy.  You treat it like it's completely normal, and it comes out sounding normal (most of the time).
I see a lot of stories where people reference a person's tail or sharp teeth or pads on hands or whatever about six times a paragraph, and while it does in some ways keep it from being 'furry for the sake of being furry', it's about twenty times more obnoxious than if they'd have just left the reader to believe nothing was different.  You just have to work these things in so that they're noticeable but unobtrusive.


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## Xipoid (Mar 31, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> Well, that's where subtlety comes in handy.  You treat it like it's completely normal, and it comes out sounding normal (most of the time).
> I see a lot of stories where people reference a person's tail or sharp teeth or pads on hands or whatever about six times a paragraph, and while it does in some ways keep it from being 'furry for the sake of being furry', it's about twenty times more obnoxious than if they'd have just left the reader to believe nothing was different.  You just have to work these things in so that they're noticeable but unobtrusive.




My problem is that when I try to do it subtly, I think I overdo it. I tend to fabricate some behavioral patterns that mimic human ones (like rubbing your chin in thought) and parallel body language (or new ones entirely), but that does not appear as enough to convince me that the character is indeed a sentient animal as opposed to just a human mind in a different body.


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## M. LeRenard (Mar 31, 2009)

Well, then just watch animals and try to figure out a reasonable substitute.  Like if you have a dog character, instead of rubbing a chin in thought, you could have him tilt his head slightly to the side.  Or if it's a cat, maybe his tail will start to flick around behind him and his ears will perk forward, or his pupils dilate or something.  If you have to, write it like it's a human and then go back and change everything that needs to be changed to bring the quirks out.
I guess I'm saying there's no reason to treat it any differently than, say, a person with weird tics and habits.  If anything, doing it that way will just help you make your characters more colorful, human or otherwise.  And the trick just becomes, are you reminding your audience often enough that these tics are present?  (Or too often.)


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## Xipoid (Mar 31, 2009)

Hm... maybe I'm just being insecure. The chin thing for example, I changed to the character absentmindedly playing with his whiskers, but I still thought it was too human. Then I thought it might not be given how the character was integrated into a human society, but then I went over how his species developed along side humans and thus might be more unique than simply a mimicry, and then I thought I was thinking about it too much.


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## ScottyDM (Apr 1, 2009)

Stratadrake said:


> But did the story involve elements of them being/acting non-human?  Reminds me of the one chapter in my 2008 Nano-novel where I turned my MC into a fox and kept it a secret from the reader for about 3,000 words.


I'd have to reread it very carefully (if I even still have it), but what I remember is there was nothing. No tail wagging, no ear twitching, no acute sense of smell, I don't recall anyone ate anything so there was no use of nonhuman diet, and no physical description of any character beyond "he" or "she" and that one of them was an adult and the rest were in high school.


I have a story were the characters are anthros just because. It reads a lot like kid-lit, except with an adult sensibility. My main character is a naked mole rat/monkey hybrid (inspired by _Fur Will Fly_) just because that combination sounded so delightfully silly. Of course his name is "Wee Mr. Winkle" to add to the silliness. He goes on an around-the-world trip and mostly concerns himself with cheeses and females, after all, what else in life is there?  

For the other characters I tried to make the species fit the nationality and/or role. Girls in Amsterdam are pussy cats, Germans are wolves, British are hedgehogs, French are deer, and Italians are horses. He gets on the wrong flight and ends up in Iraq where he discovers Iraqis are camels, foreign terrorists are jackals, and American soldiers are dogs. I ran out of steam in Iraq and haven't finished the story. 

Not my usual fare.

Scotty


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## RedNumberIX (Apr 10, 2009)

Huh...man I wish I had stayed for that panel in FWA. (And pardon me if I'm doing this thing wrong this is my first post to the boards)

Pardon me for quoting Bill in asking my fellow board members to give me what there "definition of is, is," but I think it's important for this discussion f we really want to go deep into the issue. A lot of people in this post have said: 



> That all depends on your target audience, right? Generally, people outside of the fandom don't much get why you'd just make your characters into animals if it has no bearing on the story.



And this has been used quite frequently, but lets be real just because you write a story in the furry fandom that doesn't exactly mean ever furry fan is going to rush out to read it.



> If your main character is a snow leopard, then give me a snow leopard. Sure, he can eat a small salad on rare occasion, but snow leopards are strict carnivores and the bulk of their diet is meat, not potatoes. Also, I'd expect a degree of athleticism, physical grace, stealth without really trying to be stealthy, and a quiet watchfulness. I expect senses like sight and sound to be heightened from what we humans experience.



But this is difficult to quantify because no matter how deep into the furry fandom we are, our audience will always be humans who will perceive things from a humanistic perspective. 

Yes, there are hundreds of times in which Anthros have been seamlessly integrated into stories. But for every success there is an awkward failure (and even though I love that game to death Anthros really had nothing to do with why Star Fox is a good game. If it was Star Boy it would have been just as good...one could speculate.)

It seems as always the question is, if we're writing stories about CHARACTERS or we're just masturbating onto a page (which Freud would say is typical of all writers.) Is there any reason to call a young furry a cub, or a boy, or to just use a boy from the start? We can fight all day about it but it's really not a fair assessment unless given on a point by point basis.


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## ScottyDM (Apr 11, 2009)

RedNumberIX said:


> But this is difficult to quantify because no matter how deep into the furry fandom we are, our audience will always be humans who will perceive things from a humanistic perspective.


True, but few crime authors know what it's like to murder someone and Anne Rice cannot know what it's like to be a vampire. *But they, and we, can imagine.*

IMO if a fiction author is not using their imagination then what's the point? Maybe he or she should write nonfiction. It pays a lot better than fiction and their readers will be happier.




ScottyDM said:


> There are two issues here: Furry for the sake of furry, and furry that is no different from being human.
> 
> The first is fine, and I happily read such stories. I even write them on occasion.
> 
> The second is lame. If your main character is a snow leopard, then give me a snow leopard. Sure, he can eat a small salad on rare occasion, but snow leopards are strict carnivores and the bulk of their diet is meat, not potatoes. Also, I'd expect a degree of athleticism, physical grace, stealth without really trying to be stealthy, and a quiet watchfulness. I expect senses like sight and sound to be heightened from what we humans experience. And I also expect some physical differences such as he gets over-hot in the summer and runs the air conditioner all the time. You don't have to explain this stuff to me--just have your character do it.


Quoting myself...  :roll: 

But I did it to point out an example of *easy, minimal, species characterization*. The example is an incomplete story that is *furry for the sake of furry*, but despite that there is some species characterization. See _'Round the World With Wee Mr. Winkle_. These characters are not all that different from humans.

This stuff isn't hard, people. I'd written that story fragment in early 2006 and it's only my first pass. I'll admit to a touch of editing to fix some small-scale writing issues, but I didn't touch the species characterization.

Scotty


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