# Realism vs. Anthropomorphism



## dietrc70 (Jun 3, 2008)

Hi,

I started this topic because I'm curious about what other furry fans and writers think about mixing animal realism with anthropomorphism.

Most of the furry fiction I've read features characters that are mostly human in their psychology and social behavior, but have physical qualities taken from animals.

Some, like *Watership Down* seem to start with the actual animal and then add some human qualities.

I created most of my characters during a period when I was fox-obsessed, and was reading all of the scientific literature I could find on fox behavior and books on Japanese fox folklore. I started trying to imagine what a fox would be like if it could develop human intelligence while still being a fox.

The actual result was very interesting, but sinister as well. My foxes are pretty asocial, and amoral. They think of human morality as a "human instinct" that is obviously important to humans but has no relevance for foxes. On the other hand, they don't make moral judgements about humans (they don't really understand the concept of moral judgement). Humans are just a particularly interesting fellow animal--a dangerous predator, but often a great source of amusement or free food.

What kinds of animal/human mixes do you like in the fiction you read (or write)?


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## Le_DÃ©mon_Sans_Visage (Jun 3, 2008)

I prefer reading what you describe, with the animal instincts underlaying the intelligence, especially since when you look at the behavior of other primates it's very obvious how much we're just chimps that speak.


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## TakeWalker (Jun 4, 2008)

It's a debate that reaches to the very core of furry. Some people only like real dog cocks on their furries; some refuse to have them; some don't care.

I fall into that second category, for what it's worth. I prefer to treat my anthros as humanly as possible. Granted, I love stories where the anthropomorphized aspect is integral to the plot, I simply do not strive to write them myself.


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## Stratelier (Jun 4, 2008)

It's easier to convey a character to the reader when they sare human qualities, thoughts or emotion.  Especially so for the protagonist, who generally shares thoughts with the reader as a rule, and for whom if the reader can't associate, the reader may generally drop the plot and leave for something else.


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## AuraTwilight (Jun 5, 2008)

My furry characters tend to have psychologies identical to the typical human with a few exceptions, in order to emphasize their "anthro" status.


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## Xipoid (Jun 5, 2008)

Mentally, my characters are all human. They might have a few behavioral quirks from having non-human bodies, but other than that it is nearly impossible to tell.


I usually try to work the anthropomorphic aspect in somehow so it's not "just because". Then again, sometimes I do get lazy.


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## AuraTwilight (Jun 5, 2008)

Right. In my stories, anthropomorphs either exist because the backstory had them develop instead of humans, the furries are some sort of supernal being, like a kitsune or a tanuki.


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## specopsangheili (Jun 6, 2008)

Well on my forum I have a description of how anthro's will act typically, say if you had a rabbit anthro then it will have powerful legs for running with and posses a bit of a nervous disposition.
Lion anthro will be very pack centred and will be quite strong all round plus have the aggressive tributes of the lion augmented into it mentally.


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## coracleboat (Jun 6, 2008)

This is a pretty hard thing of balance.  I try to keep them animals with human level intelligence rather than humans with animal quirks, but I really don't know enough about the behavioral patterns of animals to present it realistically, so I doubt it's as animal-weighted as I'd like.  Still, I'd really like to think that my furries are more than just humans with a few animal stereotypes slapped onto them.  (And, really, after a few thousand years, I'd imagine their cultures would be a little bit more than what they are for reals, what with the hunt-mate-sleep thing which isn't much fun to read about.)

I think it helps that the different species aren't just different cultures of the same species.  In my universe they really are different species, so when I play them off one another they seem like different species, which drives in that they aren't human.  This is basically cheating.  And cheating is awesome.


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## dietrc70 (Jun 6, 2008)

I'm glad to hear what other people think about this issue.

I also enjoy stories with more human-like anthro characters, because they can progress in a more normal way. Very realistic intelligent predator characters probably wouldn't trust each other, and would always be planning to kill or eat each other, which gives you fewer options...

Usually I get around this by having only one or two animal characters in a story, and then exploring their relationships with humans--say a forbidden romance between an young fox demon and a samurai woman who is frustrated by the social restraints of her life and is attracted to the wild qualities of her lover.

It also makes my sex scenes a little more edgy...as in the case of someone who meets a handsome Japanese boy at a dance...one thing leads to another, and she wakes up with a large, fluffy male fox in her bed.  [cue scream]


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## Furthlingam (Jun 7, 2008)

Hi guys. N00b to these forums.

Good question the OP raises. The thing about therianthropic figures is that there are almost always more items on a list of possible anthropomorphize/not traits, than you think there are. Even accounting for this rule. ^_^

I tried to make my own list of the "biggies" as I see them, a while back. You can read it if you like at:

http://furthling.livejournal.com/3216.html

Hardly an exhaustive list, but includes the stuff that seemed to matter to me at the time.

For my purposes, furry characters absolutely need to be as much like the animal species they resemble, as they possibly can WITHOUT interrupting the fictional dream-- that is, without making the reader go: "Duh-wuh?" That's the basic rationale.

(What drives me crazy BTW is folks who say, of furry fic, drawings, etc, that it's "all just fantasy, so I don't worry about it." Which makes me beat my head on the desk. Fantasy by its nature has to try harder than anything else to be self consistent and lucid-- least of all can it afford to play at "anything goes.")

Not to say that what interrupts the fictional dream doesn't differs somewhat from person to person. If one person's spent their entire life around horses, and one has never seen one except at the state fair a couple times, those two people will have very different expectations about what an anthro horse should be, do, and look like.

So, what happens if you... you know, describe something horselike about a horse anthro in graphic detail, to somebody who doesn't know about horses? The person who doesn't know about them learns something-- which can usually made a positive, intriguing element of the description. Meanwhile, a more knowledgable reader is reassured about the lucidity of the description. That outcome, to me, is better than the other way around, where nothing intriguing is revealed about the species AND some of the horse afficionados are left wondering how plausible this all is, or worse, are confronted with a horse-as-person doing or being something that makes NO sense for a horse.

So, anyhow, the core thing for a therianthropic character, across the spectrum from Fiver, Bigwig, and the Farm Cat, to Neko Catgirls, is that they all have sympathetic, comprehensible, communicable points of view. And all other decisions about anthropomorphizing them depend from that.

To have a sympathetic, comprehensible, communicable point of view, a creature HAS to have recognizably humanlike intelligence, and language.

If it has recognizable intelligence, IMO tool use is inevitable; without it, the situation verges on the absurd.  Moreover, if it uses tools, it has to have anthropomorphized front feet (and at least semi-binocular vision). And if it has anthropomorphized front feet, it has to have an upright stance. Upright stance, in turn, necessitates a few other things-- certainly NOT plantigrade stance, but probably humanlike (chest level, everpresent) boobs and a few other detailey things like that (e.g., the saying "Oh, my achin' back!" to express reluctance to work.)

Also, if it's intelligent and has language (unless it's a unique or artificial creature) it HAS to have built-in instincts for dealing with-- and cooperating with-- other intelligent creatures. The hard-wired instincts for recognizing and 'modeling' other intelligences (guessing what others are thinking) and which grant an impulse toward fair trade and kin preference-- just like humans have-- are absolutely necessary. The idea of a smart, talking being fitting in among other smart, talking beings without social instincts-- and full-fledged ethics, too, in combination with reason-- is absurd and would alienate any intelligent reader.

So that's my short list: intelligence, language, upright stance, thumbs, and social instincts. And I only give those up because I feel like I HAVE to. I do not want anthropomorphic fiction to be about everyday neotenic primates in cat suits. I've never seen the point of that. Even kids pretending to be dogs pant, chase birds, scratch their ears with their feet, and so on.

Other fun things to deal with include breeding patterns (humans are very unlike most mammals, so, what do you do? Happy medium? Completely like most mammals?), senses (color vision? different olfactory senses and reactions to smells and tastes-- that can be FUN and challenging to describe), ability to climb and swim or not (doing kids things on the playground I grew up on requires VERY DEFINITE answers about whether you can do stuff like... brachiate)... and then there's the whole how-you-react-to-other-species, especially across the predator/prey divide... but that's a whole other can of worms.

I'm not opinionated or anything. 

FIRST POST!


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## Beastcub (Jun 7, 2008)

i will use watership down and pompoko as examples of what i like in an anthro story. both take a new view on the human world through animal eyes and relly like the kind of enlightenment they offered.

by the way if you have not seen pompoko you NEED TO its about a group of tanukis trying to stop their forest from being turned into a huge housing development and its a Ghibli film (that alone means go see it!!!)


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## Le_DÃ©mon_Sans_Visage (Jun 7, 2008)

Awesome post, Furthlingam.
There doesn't really seem much point to making characters furry if they think and react exactly like human beings.


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## Stratelier (Jun 7, 2008)

> To have a sympathetic, comprehensible, communicable point of view, a creature HAS to have recognizably humanlike intelligence, and language.


^^ Basic rule about all fiction.  When I wrote my nanowrimo novel back in November, with a cast primarily of quadropeds, the characters were 'mentally' humanlike -- but I did notice that as I wrote on I placed a greater emphasis on scents and trails than appearances.  I never 'itemized' anything about a character's appearance, whereas whenever there was a sound or scent to pick up, a few characters would certainly go into detail about it.



> There doesn't really seem much point to making characters furry if they think and react exactly like human beings.


A lot of classical anthropomorphism does exactly that:  Animal metaphors for human behavior.  Disney's version of Robin Hood for example.


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## Le_DÃ©mon_Sans_Visage (Jun 7, 2008)

Stratadrake said:


> A lot of classical anthropomorphism does exactly that:  Animal metaphors for human behavior.  Disney's version of Robin Hood for example.




Oh, Aesop's fables and all that, I know. But why bother? Masking effect, I suppose, but let's face it, most of us are not Speigelman and we're not writing Maus. I've gotten to the point where that sort of "people in costumes" style of anthro fiction bores me. It even comes across as childish, like I'm reading an Arthur book. If I want to read about people and their problems, I'll read about people. If an author wants me to suspend my disbelief and accept talking wolf-people, I want there to be a reason for them to have tails and fangs besides the author just thinking it is cool.


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## Furthlingam (Jun 7, 2008)

And, much as I 1) genuinely enjoyed Maus just for reading, and 2) am happy it exists, as a confluence of two favorite things of mine that are still considered fringe, into a result that effortlessly commands respect, it's still sorta weak. Much as I adored Disney's Robin Hood and acknowledge that it is the springboard of imagination that probably brought a LARGE number of people with actual brain activity to the fandom... at least in my generation... it's also sorta weak. Even Animal Farm and Watsrhip Down.

Of those, Watership Down is the one that reveals its weakness most. Because it's such a discursive examination of rabbits thinking, communicating, and acting, and because Tales from Watership Down was written.

The secret truth is, I never wanted to just write or read fiction, and it's not by accident that I'm a RPer foremost; a broadly, thoroughly, intimately coherent setting is a joy all unto itself. The above are ultimately shorts, and depend rather desperately not showing us parts of the setting.

I can't believe I just said something bad about Orwell, Adams, Spiegelman, Disney, et al, in one breath.

>_<

Maybe you're right. AFAIK furry fic has yet to find its Herbert/Niven/LeGuin/Moorcock/Tolkein/[insert favorite massive setting architecture fanatic here]


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## Le_DÃ©mon_Sans_Visage (Jun 8, 2008)

Furthlingam said:


> Maybe you're right. AFAIK furry fic has yet to find its Herbert/Niven/LeGuin/Moorcock/Tolkein/[insert favorite massive setting architecture fanatic here]



There are some damn good authors, though, my favorite being Clare Bell and her intelligent sabre-toothed cats in the Ratha series. They're as smart as human beings but she doesn't shy away from depicting their animal natures. 

Honestly, I don't think a work or world with characters who are authentically nonhuman in their behavior would ever catch on, because people have the mental quirk of anthropomomizing, and a creature with a genuinely different worldview would strike human readers as repellant. I remember reading in an old GURPS manual that if you can RP and alien who would say, "You want me to skip my lunch?!" with the same passion as a human would say, "You want me to abandon my baby?!" then you know you're doing a good job modeling an alien psyche. People really do want characters they can identify with, which is why writers will take a character like Dr. House who has some off-putting characteristic sna and then shoehorn in identifiable emotions, such as giving him a (yawn) love interest.


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## Gren (Jun 8, 2008)

I like characters to be very human-like mentally with a few behavioral oddities or quirks, myself. That said, there should be more to a character's nonhumanity than a brief note when they're introduced that they're a fox, or whatever. Even just a few scattered subtle reminders now and then can make their nonhumanity seem more a part of the story.

Furthlingam's list is interesting and, while I think that its largely accurate for any naturally occurring species, I also think that stories involving characters with familiarly human thought process who do not possess some of these traits can be quite interesting as well.


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## dietrc70 (Jun 8, 2008)

I also really liked Furthlingam's analysis.

I have very mixed feelings about Disney.  I'm in awe of their animation, but I can't stand the way they use it.  I get so tired of Disney cliches:  nature is pure and innocent, everyone gets along (unless they're bad guys), carnivores never have to eat (LOL!), any humans that appear are usually bad, the supporting cast made up of singing sidekicks and ethnic stereotypes.

I was very enthusiastic about the direction the Watership Down movie took.  You had rabbits who had religious visions of rabbit gods and impending mass-murder, villians who were scary but had admirable qualities, and a real sense of beauty mixed in with the constant threat of danger.  I know a lot of people showed that movie to their kids, thinking it was going to be Disney-esque, and then were completely horrified by its realism.

It's interesting that the "less-anthropomorphized" rabbits of Watership Down actually act a lot more like real humans than do the animals in a Disney movie.


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## Furthlingam (Jun 12, 2008)

Le_DÃ©mon_Sans_Visage said:


> Honestly, I don't think a work or world with characters who are authentically nonhuman in their behavior would ever catch on, because people have the mental quirk of anthropomomizing, and a creature with a genuinely different worldview would strike human readers as repellant. I remember reading in an old GURPS manual that if you can RP and alien who would say, "You want me to skip my lunch?!" with the same passion as a human would say, "You want me to abandon my baby?!" then you know you're doing a good job modeling an alien psyche. People really do want characters they can identify with, which is why writers will take a character like Dr. House who has some off-putting characteristic sna and then shoehorn in identifiable emotions, such as giving him a (yawn) love interest.


 
Heh! I don't remember reading that in GURPS, but the supplements for that game sure were full of insight!

Anyhow... you're right of course, there's no perfect synthetic animal-but-identify-with-able point of view. I think consciously picking and choosing with a really good idea of what all the _distinct_ things you _could_ anthropomorphize, or not, is really rewarding, is all I'm saying, I guess.

I think that if you secure the cognitive essentials and the physical stuff they immediately demand, every other way a therianthropic beasty could resemble the animal would at worst be neutral. Except for rabbit hind-gut fermentation. I can do without that. >_<


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## Le_DÃ©mon_Sans_Visage (Jun 12, 2008)

Furthlingam said:


> Heh! I don't remember reading that in GURPS, but the supplements for that game sure were full of insight!
> 
> Anyhow... you're right of course, there's no perfect synthetic animal-but-identify-with-able point of view. I think consciously picking and choosing with a really good idea of what all the _distinct_ things you _could_ anthropomorphize, or not, is really rewarding, is all I'm saying, I guess.
> 
> I think that if you secure the cognitive essentials and the physical stuff they immediately demand, every other way a therianthropic beasty could resemble the animal would at worst be neutral. Except for rabbit hind-gut fermentation. I can do without that. >_<



You know what's really amusing is how human characters are unconsciously driven by basic human instinctual behavior. We just don't see it, because we expect it. After reading so much evolutionary psychology, for me it's so bleedingly obvious it's become hilarious. I suppose the real trick is determining which behaviors are likely to be universal to all sentient creatures (or all mammals, or all social creatures) and which are the result of being descended from omnivorous social primates.


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