Concept: Xenofiction Sci-fi Where The Main Characters Are Different Alien Beings. It’s All Treated

Sonic can do crimes and still be a hero. Sonic can be a dad and still be faithful to his selfish love of freedom. It fleshes him out, you see, makes him a more nuanced and realized character.

Hi! I'm trying to write a fic where the main characters, who are normally human, are now animals. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to keep them in character though, since certain things they could do before, they can't now (ie. no hands, can't do certain things humans can, etc.) I'd very much welcome any advice, since I'm close to deciding this story idea is at a dead-end. Thanks!

Is this a fic where humans are suddenly turned into animals and now trying to deal with their new forms? Or is this an AU where the cast just are animals and that’s the world that they live in all the time? I’d write those in very different ways.

If this is an animal AU, and that’s a very doable thing. Just think about animated films. Even though the characters are animals doing very animal things, they also maintain personalities that are familiar to humans. 

If it’s a case of humans being transformed into animals, then they’ll need to spend time (and probably get frustrated) figuring out how to do things in their new bodies. No opposable thumbs means they’ll need to find another way to turn a doorknob, for example. No ability to talk means that they won’t be able to utter passwords for electronic locks. 

I haven’t written this kind of fic before, so I’ll open up the floor to see who else can add thoughts here. This could be a really interesting challenge for you, anon, so I hope you don’t give up!

Inspired by various tumblr posts.

Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetry alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.

Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.

You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.

That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?

You really want a human.

animal fantasy NEEDS to be gayer and transer so here are some of my queer xenofiction thoughts

attitudes towards homosexuality and/or transness differing from species to species, region to region; many opportunities to play with various cultural reactions when characters travel. there are some species where the concepts are well established in the culture (apes, dolphins, etc.) and are accepted, tolerated, considered completely normal, or even celebrated

“queer” means different things for different animals. for example, even though bisexuality is indisputably queer by human standards, it may not be by anthropomorphized bonobo standards since bisexuality is a cultural norm for them; meanwhile, exclusive homosexuality and maybe even heterosexuality probably would be considered queer for bonobos

sexually dimorphic species offer up many interesting concepts: transmasculine lion cubs dreaming of growing up to have manes; transfeminine deer experiencing gender euphoria when seasonally shedding their antlers; transmasculine birds gathering loose materials to cover their dull feathers with livelier colors

domesticated/tame animals, especially those that interact regularly with people, having a stronger concept of gender roles than other species do because of how much they’ve subconsciously absorbed from their human allies

please feel free to add on 🌈🐾✨

man yells at fish

love stories about monsters are THE BEST because the idea of conceptualizing love in a way that is not human and fundamentally cannot be human and is AN ENTIRELY SEPARATE LEVEL FROM THE HUMAN is so great. 

made better when one half of the relationship is human and suddenly we’re dealing with a) a human learning to love like a monster or b) a monster learning to translate their love into human terms and that’s

the best thing

to me.

which often goes hand in hand with MONSTER TRYING TO HUMANIZE THEMSELVES but that’s.. not necessary, don’t worry monster, you don’t need to do that. your capacity for love does not need to be whittled and softened into a human shape. it’s okay. your heart can be brutal and all consuming. you will learn to cope and you will learn to funnel it, pieces at a time, into something conceivable and measurable to the human mind. 

and i don’t strictly mean monster monsters because there’s room here for divinity (alpha and omega, first and last, holy terror OF THE HEART. apocalypses OF FEELING.) or ghosts, or non-human, non-monster outliers (superheroes, androids, idek), or even human beings who are self-made monsters and whose expression and understanding of love is two steps removed and two shades off. 

but, you know what i mean. 

love stories about monsters.

Ok, so, as most know hobbits LOVE mushrooms, but what if they love ALL mushrooms, even the poisonous ones. What if a hobbit’s body is able to handle more of the poison and it doesn’t affect them at all. And they love it!

You can only reblog this today.

So I am a really big fan of animal point-of-view fiction (or xenofiction as it's sometimes called), but I can't help feeling that the genre has so much wasted potential, and writers in this genre have fallen into so much laziness. Animal stories have been a part of human culture since pretty much the beginning of time, and the more you read of these old animal fables and tales, you realise how clever and unique a lot of these stories were. And even more recently, we've had stories such as Jungle Book, Call Of The Wild, Animal Farm.But it seems since the release of Watership Down in, that the animal fiction genre has fallen into a sort of generic mould that every story has to follow. Don't get me wrong, I ADORE wds and I've read it so many times that the pages are falling out of my copy, but I've lost count of how many books I've seen that have the same "animals live in a tribal society with their own language, culture, and religion have to escape the clutches of The Evil Humans" narrative. While there are a few recent books that don't follow this exact mould (Felidae for example) the genre has seemed so stagnant for the past 50 years or so. And one thing that bothers me about these kinds of stories is how easily they fall into these really disturbing ideas. (I don't know if "ecofascit" is the appropriate term here, but it sounds very similar) They just all seem to drone on and on about "all the humans are evil and cruel and destructive and only the animals and untouched nature are pure bla bla bla" in such an embarrassingly misanthropic way. I read Garry Kilworth's Hunters Moon (the one about foxes) last year, and I could take none of the plot seriously because the writer couldn't go a single chapter without having a laughable Humans Bad rant. I don't know. Animal stories have meant so much to global human culture throughout history, and it makes me slightly sad to see the genre become stagnant and unoriginal over the past few decades.

(and I'd love to hear any book recommendations if you have any)