# No Offense, But I Have No Clue~!



## Iero (Apr 6, 2013)

Now, I've heard a lot of you get rather irritated when writers are unaware of any way to use anthros for stories other than erotica...

...But I myself am having that issue. I have always enjoyed writing stories, and I've been told I do it well. I often toss anthro characters into my stories because I feel they add diversity to the cast. However, I can't think of a single story I could write exclusively using anthro characters that is _not _erotica.

I know, I know: I'm a horrible, rotten person.

Now that we have that out of the way, I'll point out that a lot of my stories are heavily inspired by urban legends and world mythology. I'd like to use something like that, because it's simply how this one rolls. For reference, I have a story under the title of Vormund on FictionPress, though the only anthro characters involved have not yet appeared. Otherwise, the whole story is based upon the build of a shounen manga.

http://www.fictionpress.com/s/3088502/1/Vormund

...If you do read it, then please leave a review, if this one may be so bold to request such a thing.

...And if someone could inform me in the art of hyperlinking with this forum, I'd be very appreciative.


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## anothersacrifice (Apr 6, 2013)

Gonna get this in before the ragers get here.

You may want to go through and read some of the things said in This Thread since a lot of points were made on exactly this topic. 

If you would like to read some stories people do with anthro characters that don't contain sex you might try going to the mainsite, turning SFW on and looking through the stories that pop up. Any idea that can be written with human characters can be written with anthropomorphic characters... just saying.


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## Iero (Apr 6, 2013)

I'm fully aware of that, but I still have little ideas...

And like I said, I really don't mean to offend; I admire any who can manage to write a quality story, especially with characters so uncommon as these. I guess really I'm just looking for ideas.

...There's probably a thread for that, though, right? If so, I deeply apologize for wasting anyone's time.


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## anothersacrifice (Apr 6, 2013)

Actually there's a thread for ideas in general in the Art Exchange but most of the ones posted there are requests for drawings. When I can't think of anything to write about I ask friends for prompts or use a random generator to get my brain flowing.


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## Iero (Apr 6, 2013)

An interesting process... I don't ordinarily use idea generators, though. Perchance we could bounce a few ideas off each other? I'd certainly appreciate such gracious help.


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## sunandshadow (Apr 7, 2013)

Personally I see anthro fiction as being most closely related to science fiction.  There are plenty of science fiction novels which have no human characters, because they are about exploring what it's like to be an alien, or sometimes they have several kinds of aliens.  This can be done in fantasy too, although it is less common to have a fantasy world with no humans or part-humans (such as centaurs).  It's also true that there's no requirement to write furry fiction with a complete lack of human characters; it can still be a furry story if it is about first contact between a group of humans and a group of anthros, or a mixed group which has to work together to deal with being marooned or some other natural disaster.

The animality of anthro characters is symbolic.  For an extreme example, look at Maus where furry-ish appearances (I think they are animal masks) symbolize the different culture roles in WWII and the holocaust.  For a less extreme example, there is various prehistoric and native american fantasy where someone's personality type is represented by their totem animal.  It would be quite possible to construct a world where anthros aren't animalistic because of genetics inherited from their parents, but instead they are all born human and take on animal traits as they grow up until they settle into a species that matches their personality.  This would be kind of like the daemons in the golden compass trilogy, except it would be the humanoid characters themselves whose appearance expresses their 'soul', not a separate pet-like animal.  Or, another possibility, if you want to have gods in your setting, they could be animal gods, and people could take on the aspect of whichever god(s) they ally with.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 7, 2013)

As odd as this sounds, I think this has got to be a problem that only furries would have.  Two really basic examples: Disney and Warner Bros.  These two companies made century-long careers out of telling stories with anthro animals in them, and I'm pretty damn sure neither one of them made a single porn using those characters.
Or let's go back to the 80's and 90's.  Ever hear of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?  What about Usagi Yojimbo?  Swat Katz?  Street Sharks, Biker Mice From Mars, Extreme Dinosaurs?
How about newspaper comics, like Garfield, Calvin and Hobbs, or the Grizzwells, all of which feature at least one anthropomorphized animal in a leading role?
Books, some of which are actual literature: Watership Down, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, all of the Ratha books?  Maybe Jack London's White Fang even works as an example.
I guess I don't understand why some of you folks are finding it so difficult to imagine how to do this, when our culture is bloody well inundated with examples.  I mean, shit, no one outside of the fandom would even consider doing a furry porn, for fear that it would come too close to bestiality for your standard audience.  So I'm not entirely sure why, within the fandom, the first and apparently only thing people can think to do with furries is to have them star in a porn.

So I would try to help you out here, but in order to help you, I would have to understand where the hell the source of this problem is.  I just can't see it, myself.  So I wonder, can you maybe explain why the only thing you can think to do with anthros is sex?  And then we can work from there.



Maybe this issue is more common than I thought.


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## Poetigress (Apr 7, 2013)

This may be a case where the mainstream stuff isn't considered "furry" (with "furry" being defined as "having been created for or by the furry fandom"), and all people are (unfortunately) aware of in terms of what's coming out of the fandom are adult works. So they assume "furry fandom" has to mean "sex."

Really, I wonder if the biggest issue of this thread and the other one is that new furry writers haven't read enough (or any) good furry fiction to know what's possible with it. Granted, it's not always easy to find, particularly when slogging through websites like FA, but any of the general published anthologies/magazines (I tend to recommend Furry! and the Different Worlds, Different Skins anthologies) would make for a good starting point to show what can be done with anthro characters.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 7, 2013)

You think it's just a definition thing?  I mean, the OP said this:


> However, I can't think of a single story I could write exclusively using anthro characters that is not erotica.


So maybe the problem comes about from what you take the word 'anthro' to mean.  I take it to mean 'animals or plants or objects given human characteristics, such as a human-like mind, capability of speech, general body form (i.e. bipedal and upright), and so on'.  If this is the source of the problem, then, I would suggest to the OP to use my definition as a starting point and just go from there.  If it helps, write a story about an anthro coffee table or something else you wouldn't even begin to know how to make erotic.  If you can do that, use it as a stepping off point to get back into animals.
The Brave Little Toaster comes to mind...


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## Poetigress (Apr 7, 2013)

I can't speak for the OP's intent, of course, but I have seen plenty of people use "anthro" to just mean "bipedal furries" instead of the broader definition.


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## sunandshadow (Apr 7, 2013)

For an amusing contrast, my interpretation was, "I can't think of a story that I feel like writing which is not erotica" since, being an erotica writer myself, I don't come up with too many story ideas that aren't erotica (or at least romance).


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## Iero (Apr 8, 2013)

I'll admit that a lot of your posts (and I refer to everyone) filled me with the urge to slam my head into a desk and scream, "Idiot! How did that NOT hit you?!" As much as I hate to leave such a short post to dismiss my issue, I'm afraid I'll have to. Thanks to all of you for your suggestions, especially Renard; I'll take each and every idea here and use it. Hell, maybe if I try, I might write something people of your caliber might flip through. Thank you all, again.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 8, 2013)

Just out of curiosity, what ended up clicking for you?
I mean, you're the second person to have this problem in recent days, so I'm wondering what the source of it is.


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## Iero (Apr 8, 2013)

Well... I think it was your suggestion to think of something totally non-erotic, then see what I could do with that. I started mentally anthropomorphizing teacups, celing fans, couches... and realized that though they weren't quite characters I would normally use, I could write with them. I slowly changed each ridiculous character into one of my earliest anthro OCs, the ones I really couldn't imagine engaging in something so amorous. I simply let the characters evolve into different forms, and I realized I could really do anything with any sort of character. So yes, the Brave Little Toaster solved this problem.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 9, 2013)

Hooray for the Brave Little Toaster!


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