Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Anthro Tropes in Furry Lit

General Writing Discussion
#1

For those who’ve read a lot of furry literature, it’s easier to list off the tropes, but for those who haven’t, they are sort of flying blind. Since TVtropes, that wonderful black hole, is such a useful resource, I thought it would be a good place to start listing the types of cliches we often find. For now I think just listing them will work. This list doesn’t need to be limited only to literature that has come out of the fandom, but keep it to tropes that generally apply.

I’ll give it a go.

The Origin of Anthros

Especially early on within the fandom (90s), a lot of furry lit dealt with where the anthros came from. So there were a lot of possible explanations.

I blame Darwin
Just evolution. They developed naturally, either alongside or instead of humans.

I’m not saying it was Aliens, but…
The anthros are aliens. Lots of various fiction has animal-people as aliens.

Sprang from Zeus’s head
Some diety, be it God, or just a god, created anthros. Were they created in this god’s image, or moerely a natural extension of animals? This is typically the explanation in fantasy settings with no humans.

A wizard did it
A magical catch-all of either a non-deific entity created them with magic, a spontaneous magic, magical accidents, or other mystical handwaving such as ‘it’s a fantasy realm, we aren’t told why there are gryphons an dthey talk, they just do’.

Corporations, man
Anthros were created through science, specifically by private companies (or occasionally the government) for a specific purpose of a type of owned property/slaves. Typically enhanced soldiers or sex slaves, but occasionally their intent is enhanced workers of various fields or a new kind of “pet”. Bipedial animals count, as do “uplifted” non-anthros.

Weird Science
A catch-all of either intentional creation for experimentation purposes (such as Pinkie and the Brain), or an accident other otherwise tech-explained randomness (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).

I want to be a stripey one
Humans are turned into anthros somehow. Typically this also means their children are anthros.

You just can’t hear them
Animals really are intelligent and talk, either only to themselves or humans. This is where most of your animated anthros exist - cats and dogs really do argue, humans just don’t see it, and such.

#2

So … are these things to be avoided?

In music, you can change some of the things… but if you change all of the things you’ll have trouble reaching your audience.

I’ve never really understood the callout of clichés—many of them are cliché because they work, because they’re basic devices, because they’re easy to accept and to understand and move on with. At what point does something move from ‘style’ through ‘convention’ to ‘cliche’? Just because something has been done before doesn’t mean that it can’t be done again.

Don’t misunderstand—I hate derivative stuff, such as most popular furry literature. However, recognize that there’s a reason everybody loves I V vi IV, and that few but snobby intellectual musicians with little inherent musicality actually ‘enjoy’ Schoenberg…

You can change some of the things, but you shouldn’t change all of the things.

I’ll grant that it doesn’t hurt to be aware of them, but seeing them is a ‘caution’ or a ‘warning’… not an error.

My opinion, anyway.

~Fox

#3

That’s TV Tropes’s attitude: some things are tropes because they work, although some have been so overused they’ve become a Dead Horse Trope. (check out http://tvtropes.org/ - actually an excellent writing resource!)

There are a fair number of species tropes in furry writing: your cunning coyotes, acquisitive raccoons, scary wolves, fat and lazy bears. Often inverted, these days.

Also, body language tropes: it’s all about the tails and ears. At worst, this can turn into All Animals Are Dogs.

#4

I dunno… I rather like it when Disney movies portray the horses like they’re dogs. It’s funny.

#5

wrinkles nose I don’t. I was just watching Tangled the other day and thinking how much Maximus’ character must annoy people who really love horses. The character was funny enough just as a cartoon horse, without having to give him such obvious dog mannerisms.

(Then again, I haven’t forgiven Disney for taking such a potentially beautiful and majestic creature like Pegasus and turning it into a ridiculous birdbrain in Hercules. They lost all the points they gained with me for Fantasia, and then some.)

#6

As a Classicist, I haven’t forgiven Disney for Hercules full stop :slight_smile:

#7

I can imagine. :slight_smile:

At any rate, so I don’t derail the thread completely, I think the origins list above pretty much covers all those that I can think of. Beyond that, it’s hard for me to think of too many obvious categories of tropes other than things that would probably come more under the umbrella of Mary Sue-ism.

#8

I think that a missing “origin story” for anthros can help the reader focus more on the tale itself and its characters. Otherwise it could lead to plot holes and unwanted distractions.

#9

Whether the tropes are used or not is a separate discussion from just listing those tropes, which is the point of the thread. I’m looking for a place to compile them.

#10

Are we considering “Talking animal because the author said so” a trope? Because that’s quite common.

#11

I’ve seen this one done multiple times:
Some underground weres/aliens/morphs discover there’s a group of humans who are friendly to their kind. These humans are known as “furries”.

#12

You might be able to subdivide this. There’s a difference between the “there never were any people” furry universes, which is a lot of modern furry fiction, and ones in which people either still exist or went extinct. Like you say, most furry fiction these days ignores the question of where their anthros came from, which pretty much implicitly makes their origin evolution. But, like, by the end of Simak’s City you’re talking about a post-human furry world.

Also the “everybody’s a furry now but they were born human.” I’ve seen that done with viruses before, I think.

In the universe of transformation you also have a) what they were originally and b) how they got there. The lesson from mainstream fiction is that you are just not supposed to uplift things that were born animals. Either they turn against you (like in NIMH or the execrable movie Deep Blue Sea) or you learn an Important Lesson About What Makes Us Human (Lives of the Monster Dogs; The Island of Doctor Moreau). Mad science never pays. Trying to mess with actual animals is like… coding a superintelligent military AI. Horrible idea.

(Accidents involving animals that result in Unintended Consequences when you weren’t setting out to pervert nature are more flexible; you get the gamut from horror to humor (Pinkie and the Brain, like you said))

Screwing around with things that were originally human is almost always safer although there I think you have a difference between elective transformation (which is just furry wish fulfillment) and being transformed against one’s will, whether that’s a Curse (or a punishment this also happens to gods sometimes) or an accident. I’m not sure how many anthro stories involve people who started out as people and then became furries accidentally?

(I drew you a picture, Rechan! Because I care!)

#13

I think a lot of people conflate trope and cliché and talk about tropes as something to be avoided, but they’re not. I know pulling out dictionary definitions is kind of clichéd in itself, but it might be worth doing this once.

trope

[ul][li]a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression[/li]
[li]a significant or current theme; a motif[/li][/ul]

cliché

[ul][li]a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought[/li]
[li]a very predictable or unoriginal thing or person[/li][/ul]

I think this is a neat list of tropes about How Furries Came To Be, but it’s also pretty encompassing, only really leaving off “because the author said so” (also known as “‘Shut up,’ she explained”). Cliché to me is more what you do with the trope. So furries created by corporations for specific purposes and then later given freedom is a trope; “oppressed recoms struggling to get legal personhood” is more likely to be clichéd. And even then it’s not a guarantee of badness – Naomi Kritzer’s “St. Ailbe’s Hall” is terrific and Malcolm Cross’s San Iadras stories do great things with the trope simply by reversing the standard perspective and exploring what it’s like to be a person engineered for a purpose taken away from you by being legally freed.

#14

Indeed; I wouldn’t have responded had ‘trope’ been used in isolation. Rechan’s single use of the word “cliché” seemed to me to change the tone from a listing of motifs to a call-out of cliché.

Apparently I’m the only one to take that literally. My apologies.

~Fox

#15

Nothing to apologize for – that mini-rant wasn’t really directed at anyone. I quoted you mostly because you were saying what I agreed with. :slight_smile:

I feel like I see “trope” and “cliché” used interchangeably a lot in writing contexts these days, for which I kind of blame “TV Tropes.” By cataloging these motifs we keep seeing and giving them clever names it’s easy to think, “Oh, well, this would fit this story, but I don’t want to do it because it’s another case of [Insert Witty Trope Name].” Maybe it is another case of [Insert Witty Trope Name] but that’s not intrinsically bad. Tropes are to fiction what design patterns are to software. “Well, everyone else is using the Factory pattern so I should too” is poor reasoning, but so is “everybody else is using the Factory pattern so I’d better not.”

#16

If you want to get super creative, mash those tropes together.

For example, Howard the Duck used Darwinism and Weird Science.

#17

It’s early morning and I’m being lazy, so I apologize if this has already been addressed but I only skimmed the comments (will edit this when I’m more awake).

Just in case though, I can’t read Rechan’s mind. However, since he mentioned tv tropes (I often find myself wiki-walking that site), I’m going to quote the tvtropes wiki directly for what tropes are and why they tend to be listed:

“What is this about? This wiki is a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction.
Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means “stereotyped and trite.” In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.
The wiki is called “TV Tropes” because TV is where we started. Over the course of a few years, our scope has crept out to include other media. Tropes transcend television. They reflect life. Since a lot of art, especially the popular arts, do their best to reflect life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere.
We are not a stuffy encyclopedic wiki. We’re a buttload more informal. We encourage breezy language and original thought. There Is No Such Thing As Notability, and no citations are needed. If your entry cannot gather any evidence by the Wiki Magic, it will just wither and die. Until then, though, it will be available through the Main Tropes Index.
We are also not a wiki for bashing things. Once again, we’re about celebrating fiction, not showing off how snide and sarcastic we can be…”

#18

I used the first trope (parallel evolution in a posthuman world) in “The Goldenlea” and “Basecraft Cirrostratus,” then subverted the hell out of it in the sequels. ;D

#19

If I can add one I’m pretty fond of using:

The Tweaked Shall Inherit The Earth

Post-humanity, we’ve left for the stars or our species has simply gone the way of the dodo, but before our departure we’ve passed on essential humanity to other species. Could be Greenpeace/PETA-esques trying to give exploited animals a leg up, or the last hope of a dying species passing on the gifts of intelligence to others. What matters is humans are gone, and anthropomorphic animals now rule the earth.