Forgettable Furries

[Munchkin]

Once more agree with Voice in it being very well-said. I do want to point just one thing out though. The exclusion of a nice deep furry aspect might not have anything to do with laziness and everything to do with a preference of the writer prefering to spend time, energy, and thought on other aspects of the character or storyline, or the concern of the author that too much focus on the furry aspect could take away from other points they’re trying to put more focus on.

If you’re writing a first draft or writing something to post for free on a website, sure, I can see focusing on other areas and not others. But for published work or something you’re wanting people to pay money for, you should be giving all areas the focus and attention they deserve. Whether or not a writer succeeds on giving all areas the proper treatment is a different story, but he damn sure better put in the effort. If not, why expect the reader to put in the effort of reading it?

Put it this way, if you only focus on certain areas of a published story or novel and just leave others passable, it’s like cleaning up the backyard for a family and friend bbq. You clean out the pool, pick up trash, wash off the deck, mow the lawn and spruce up the flower beds, but don’t pick up the dog poop all over the backyard. Somebody’s gonna notice.

Here-in lies the problem with that point. Who’s to say how much attention each area should get? How much each one deserves? For example, there were many fans of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles who loved how much attention she gave to detail, while a lot of other readers couldn’t stand reading her works because she would devote a full page or three just on the buttons on Lestat’s jacket. There are also folks who declare Stephen King was and is one of the greatest horror authors around, while others struggle just to get through his novellas because they feel so dragged out and dry. Before the movie, there were folks who loved The Great Gatsby because instead of devoting entire chapters into details and easily becoming three times as long as it was, it summed up said details in a way to give the reader a feel without going all out. Yet it’s this very reason that other readers simply couldn’t get into it- because it lacked the detail they needed to feel truly immersed in the story.

If we were talking about bad grammar or wretched sentence structure or something of the such, I’d agree with you. It doesn’t matter how you spin it, that’s a whole heaping pile of dog poo. Yet we’re talking about things that come down to personal taste. What you might be likening to dog poo could be the equalivalent of sprucing up the flower beds for another person, or washing off the deck. Just as for others, your mowing the lawn might be their dog poo. Everyone has different things they look for in a story. It’s why even before the days of self pub, such a wide variety of books existed. It’s why you have just as much a right to your opinion on the matter as the next person who prefers less emphasis on the animal aspects in their stories.

[Chipotle]

Here-in lies the problem with that point. Who’s to say how much attention each area should get? How much each one deserves? […] It’s why you have just as much a right to your opinion on the matter as the next person who prefers less emphasis on the animal aspects in their stories.

Yes, this.

I want animal aspects in my furry stories. All I’ve been really trying to champion is the notion that a story can still be very much furry, not “humans in fursuits,” even when those aspects are subtle.

[Munchkin]

Here-in lies the problem with that point. Who’s to say how much attention each area should get? How much each one deserves? […] It’s why you have just as much a right to your opinion on the matter as the next person who prefers less emphasis on the animal aspects in their stories.

Yes, this.

I want animal aspects in my furry stories. All I’ve been really trying to champion is the notion that a story can still be very much furry, not “humans in fursuits,” even when those aspects are subtle.

That is fully respectable and understandable

[Georgesquares]

I think the notion is interesting that sometimes a furry story can work without the presence of animal-people at all, so it’s cool to think about the reason you might want to have animal characters in a story. My reasoning would be “animal people are cute,” and I cringe hard when people put in things like, a scratching posts in an office if a cat works there and the genre isn’t comedy. But I also want to think about things like “what would make an otter’s experience in a human society different from a dog’s” and I don’t think that always comes down to reliance on what the animals do in nature. A human-like dog would be very different from a wild dog than from a domestic dog than from an ancestor of a dog-- much how people, bonobos, and chimps and australopithecus all act very different from one another.

I like to measure in the human aspect of an anthro along with the animal aspect so I’m not using the animal for gags or an over-complicated world building. I might say “more badgers work in labor jobs because they have wider frames” or “these kinds of animals have developed this kind of subculture for this reason.” Otters might be more interested in mariculture or fishing boats than, say, a weasel might.