Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Gods With Fur

Publishing and Marketing
#61

Zoroastrianism is still an active religion today, albeit a minor one. According to Wikipedia, “North America is thought to be home to 18,000–25,000 Zoroastrians of both South Asian and Iranian background.” I had known that, but I was surprised to learn just this July about the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran who have an active religion. Astronomers have named a newly-discovered dark region on Pluto Krun, after the Mandaean lord of the underworld. Krun manifests himself as a giant louse, so he’s fair game for an anthropomorphic story, if anyone wants to include a divine anthropomorphic giant louse in their story. Other Mandaean gods are Hagh, a giant scorpion; Gaf; a giant lion; Sargi, a giant hornet; and Ur, a giant snake/serpent.

According to the scientists or historians who trace the origins of folk tales, the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp began as an early Islamic folk tale, maybe a specific children’s tale created by a now-anonymous Islamic religious teacher, about an Islamic Chinese or Uyghur boy named Allah-ud-din. The Evil Magician was specifically a Zoroastrian priest; Zoroastrianism being a major rival religion to Islam at the time.

#62

Here is a press release about Lovecraft that may mystify us further. It’s dated this month, from Titan Books in London:

“The Madness of Cthulhu Anthology (Volume Two), edited by S. T. Joshi. Volume Two of Brand-New, Weird Stories from the Most Prominent Acolytes of Lovecraft’s Works!” Original short fiction, specifically sequels to HPL’s “At the Mountains of Madness”. “Sixteen all-new stories, original to this edition, spring from the concepts of doomed exploration, remote terror, and cosmic horror. A who’s-who lineup of authors instills new energy into the sub-genre that is Lovecraft.” The stories are by Greg Bear, Kevin J. Anderson, Alan Dean Foster, William F. Nolan, Steve Rastic Tem, and others whose names I don’t recognize. “Author Bio: S. T. Joshi is a leading authority on H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, and others. He has edited the definitive restored editions of the works of Lovecraft, several annotated editions of Bierce and Mencken, and has written such critical studies as The Modern Weird Tale. His biography ‘H. P. Lovecraft: A Life’ won the Horror Writer Association’s Stoker Award for best non-fiction.”

Okay. HPL died in 1937 and copyright has expired on his writing. I have not read this anthology, published on October 20, so I don’t know if the Cthulhu Mythos additions of anyone else are included, or if this anthology is licensed by or with the permission of the Lovecraft estate, or if there is such an estate. But there are enough original Cthulhu Mythos stories today by modern writers that a short story or novelette or two in an anthology of furry fiction should go relatively unnoticed.

#63

I’m working on Quetzalcoatl with superheroes in Mexico during NANO.

I promise I won’t go over 50k, Fred. :wink:

#64

Wikipedia has a featured article today on a museum in Turkey: “The most important objects of the museum are small sculptures of Eros made of painted terracotta and a cremation urn decorated with incarnation motif depicting destiny’s god Moirai, the soul of the dead person person, chthonic god of the underworld Hades, the judges of the underworld and the three-headed guard dog Cerberus of Hades.” Don’t forget Eros. What would the God of Love in an anthropomorphic world look like? And Moirai? That’s a new one on me.

#65

I’ve been thinking about writing a story about multiple gods from across various religions. I’m wondering if it would be okay to have a story using gods that several writers might use, e.i. Egyptian animal-headed gods, myths from norse mythology, etc… My only worry is that I’ll probably be submitting a story with gods featured in other parts of the anthology.

#66

This sounds like an excellent idea! So a single god idea or multiple god characters are permitted?

#67

Hmm,

what about totemic animals like Coyote, Raven, etc?

#68

While I don’t want an abundance of stories featuring the same god or goddess such as Bast, no authors have exclusive rights to any one god. I expect that there will be several stories featuring the Norse and Native American gods. (Or Native North American gods. Don’t forget the Mesoamerican gods like Zotz.) Surely; multiple gods in the same story are permitted, and totemic animals. It’s debatable to what extent one peoples’ totemic animal is another peoples’ god.

To use a non-divine comparison, the medieval Scottish nobility elected their king from among the thanes; a council of earls or dukes by another name. The medieval Irish nobility had a High King elected from among the kings of Dublin, Leinster, etc. Different names but basically the same thing. The Anglo-Saxon nobility of pre-Norman England had the same thing; read about the problem that they had when Edward the Confessor died in early 1066 and his natural heir was a barely-teenage boy. All the English nobility knew that both the Normans and the Norwegians would contest whoever they chose as Edward’s successor for the crown, and nobody wanted a young teenager to lead them; so they bypassed him and elected his adult uncle Harold as the new King of England. Harold beat the invading Norwegians in 1066 at Stamforth Bridge, but was killed by William and the Normans two weeks later at Hastings. The Anglo-Saxon nobility waiting in London hastily crowned the teenager as their new king, and beat it into Scotland as a government-in-exile before William arrived. The “English king in exile” eventually married into the Scottish nobility (or his heirs did – I forget the details), and that’s how the kings of Scotland came to be the heirs to the English throne when Elizabeth I died in 1603. Anyhow, does anyone want to recreate this medieval dynastic infighting among either one set of animal gods, or a war between the animal gods of different cultures?

#69

Hi Fred, have you alot of pitches for Greek/Roman mythical stories yet? I’ve been developing a Cold War allegory spy story with a satyr as the main character in an alternate historical take on the late Roman Empire where mythical creatures are real and God-like magic has been harnessed by opposing remnants of Rome and Constantinople. Is there somewhere somebody should send a synopsis for you to look at? I didn’t see contact stuff in the submission list. There’s a couple spoiler-y things in it that relate to how Gods are driving things…or merely being swept up in them.

#70

Anything that anyone wants to keep private can be sent to my e-mail: fredpatten@earthlink.net. There haven’t been many pitches for anything so far. I hope that this is because the deadline is still so far in the future that people are concentrating on stuff due sooner, and that there will be more interest and pitches as the deadline looms closer.

#71

Wonderful, thanks so much:)
Fired off an email to you.

#72

I’m going to expand the scope of “Gods With Fur” to include new stories featuring animals that are specifically mentioned in religions and mythology, as well as gods. Several people have already mentioned animals in Germanic and Norse mythology, such as Odin’s ravens Hugin and Munin, and the squirrel Ratatoskr. In Christianity there’s Balaam’s ass. According to the Bible, God gives the ass the power to speak to Balaam, which could mean that only Balaam could understand the ass’/donkey’s speech; but what if it meant that the ass could speak to everyone? Or what if the ass gained a soul along with intelligence and speech? Would the ass have gone to an animal heaven when it died?

Or Guinefort, the 13th-century French pet greyhound that was such a loyal dog that he was considered by the local peasantry to have become a Catholic saint after his death. Wikipedia says, “It was alleged by contemporary commentators that locals left their babies at the site to be healed by the dog, and sometimes the babies would be harmed or killed by the rituals involved. […] The cult of this dog saint persisted for several centuries, until the 1930s, despite the repeated prohibitions of the Catholic Church.”

For story purposes, what if God has created an animal heaven for those animals who have been faithful servants of men? Loyal dogs like the Japanese Hachikō; cats who have brought dead vermin to their humans throughout their lifetimes; horses and elephants who have uncomplainingly worked for humans for all their lives. What would that heaven be like?

In Finnish pre-Christian mythology, there is the Black Swan of Death living in Tuonela, the realm of the dead; best-known through Sibelius’ 1895 tone poem. Finnish mythology doesn’t describe the Swan as anthropomorphic; it just swims around – in its major legend, it is just the goal of the epic hero Lemminkäinen, who is assigned by the Witch-Queen Louhi to kill it to win Louhi’s beautiful daughter as his bride. Lemminkäinen drowns in Tuonela in the attempt. The description of the Swan is so vague that it could be anthropomorphic.

Anyhow, this may give authors more scope. There are still 3 1/2 months until the May 1st deadline.

#73

The caipora aren’t gods, but what can be done with them in furry fiction? A character or characters with the bodies of humans, the heads of foxes, and feet on backwards?

#74

Let’s not forget Brian Lumley, who’s still living. He had a whole series of Titus Crow, set in the “Cthulhu Mythos” universe.

#75

This BBC news story about a Singaporean theme park says that its dioramas include one showing “Hu Fa Shi Zhe [who] is a mythological creature who upholds the law in the ten courts of hell.”

“Gods With Fur” has broadened its scope from anthro divinities to include all anthro mythological characters with divine or semi-divine powers. Gods will be given first priority, but if you have a well-written story featuring, for example, one of the myriad Shinto gods of just about everything, as long as it’s an anthro god (did you know that the Japanese “Kamichu” TV cartoon for Shinto believers introduced, apparently semi-seriously, rival gods of Betamax and VHS video cassettes?), or any of the animal Trickster spirits like Coyote or Raven or Nanabozo the giant rabbit who may not be gods but certainly do have greater-than-mortal abilities … well, I’d like to see them.

#76

Hello! I was directed here by Mary Lowd after I submitted a story to ROAR 7. She thought it would fit better here, but after reading through this thread I might have something even more appropriate.

I’ve spent a lot of time (maybe too much time :stuck_out_tongue: ) coming up with my own fantasy world, which included its own pantheon. At first I just chose gods at random from earthly mythologies (that seemed to work for R. E. Howard), but it didn’t seem believable. “Hey,” I said to myself at last, “you took linguistics and the history of language in college – you know how words change over centuries. And this is supposed to take place during the last Ice Age – come up with names that might have evolved into ones known millennia later! Make an authentic-sounding pantheon!” So I made notes on this “lost” mythos (supposedly written by a college professor who knows this stuff somehow), such as this about Tira-K’hessst, the Dragon Goddess:

“The first elements of ‘Tira-K’hessst’ probably evolved into the Indo-European tirak, through drak into the Latin draco. Meaning, of course, ‘dragon’. ‘Hessst’ appears to be onomatopoeia, the hiss of a dragon. Also the name is reminiscent of Tiamat, the multi-headed Babylonian dragon that personified Chaos, Creation, and the Ocean.”

At the very least I won’t overlap with anyone wanting to use Anubis, Tezcatlipoca, Coyote, or the like!

#77

Welcome! I touched on linguistics at university - it’s a fascinating subject, though I was never very good at it.

#78

It sounds good. Let’s see it.

#79

Can obsolete astronomical zodiac animals be considered anthro gods? The camelopardalis, the tarandus, the draco, the hydra, the owl, the lynx, others? These old star charts don’t show them as anthropomorphic, but who knows? Diana Wynne Jones wrote a novel about how the constellation Canis Major came to Earth as a mortal dog. Be imaginative.

#80

I’m afraid to ask this (and my idea thwarted–and that’s a joke)

but would/could the Easter Rabbit be considered a god or mythological creature enough to pass muster for this anthology?