Watching Lion Xenofiction And, Why The Most Are Literally Copycats Of The Other? There's A Lot Of Interesting

Concept: xenofiction sci-fi where the main characters are different alien beings. It’s all treated and framed as “normal” from both the audience’s and each other’s perspective, even when their behavior is obviously not something a human would do.

Eventually, we meet a human character, whose actual name appears to be “Smith the Human”, and who acts like aliens from mediocre pop sci-fi stories – like, someone goes “Oh, I’ve never met a human before!” and he responds by spouting random (technically-accurate-to-real-life) factoids about human culture and biology in a way that no real human being ever would, i.e. “Humans are social persitence hunters and apex predators – on our harsh homeworld of Terra, we evolved to form hierarchal hives or colonies, like your world’s Zoink-Ants or Frisk-Bees! We weren’t that fast over short distances, and so we caught our prey, not by ambush or by pursuit, but by simply walking, brisk jogging, and tracking our prey until the prey tired itself out, allowing us to catch it at our leisure!” He always maintains the same stilted but forceful tone of voice, devoid of any emotional content, and his facial expression never changes from “we didn’t bother to animate his face”-style dull surprise.

He wears American soldier gear and says “Humans are a Proud Warrior Race™!” without a trace of irony.

Now, one possible punchline would be that the protagonists eventually meet other humans, and it turns out that he’s the only human who’s Like That. However, I think that in order to commit to the whole “xenofiction” bit, you’d need to make every human completely identical, in exactly the same way that members of an alien species in pop sci-fi are identical. The way I personally would do it is,the loud-deadpan-weirdo routine is just an “unreliable narration” due to the perceptions of characters who aren’t familiar with humans; as a group, even if the nonhuman characters are like “Wow, they really are synchronized like a hive of Frisk-Bees!” or whatever, the humans behave exactly how an actual group of humans would behave in that kind of situation, if you read between the lines. (And, y'know, a squadron of uniformed soldiers with a CO in the background is inevitably going to act differently from a similarly-sized group of civilians; the nonhuman characters, and hence the audience, just don’t get to see how they are “normally”.)

The actual punchline is that after the “human” plot is resolved (maybe they’re antagonists, and the prior ramble about their biology proves to be a vital component?), there’s a scene where the viewpoint character is a human, and the whole situation is precisely reversed: humans look more diverse and talk like normal people, and all the nonhuman characters of each species are identical and do the loud-deadpan-weirdo thing.

We need more games where you play as animals.

Regular animals.

Cyborg animals.

Alien animals.

I don’t care. Just more animals please.

Happy May Day all. Solidarity and all that jazz.  For your brain, some history on May Day and how it came to be: 1. The Zinn Education Project:  May 4, 1886: Haymarket Tragedy

2. IWW Historical Archives:  The Brief Origins of May Day

3. NPR : What is May Day? For the most part, the opposite of capitalism

You’re a mimic. You were disguised as a chair in a dungeon when an adventurer decided to take you as loot. You’ve actually enjoyed your life ever since as furniture in a jolly tavern. So when some ruffians try to rob the now-elderly adventurer’s business, you finally reveal yourself.

Eve figuring out how to communicate with The Autumn Man. Magic can translate language quite well, but The Autumn Man has a hard time with mimicking, so speech doesn’t come naturally to him. But poking things? Sure, he can do that.

Pokemon Fanfic Is Xenofiction

Okay that's a bit clickbaity but hear me out.

By "They", I mean "Pokemon" as in the magical animals that make up pokefics pokecomics, etc:

They (usually) naturally love battling

They (usually) love pairing up with humans (usually) in a platonic way

They (usually) don't mind Pokeballs

They (usually) cannot talk to humans using human language

They may have certain traits which makes certain environments hard for them.

Examples:

Frosmoth might have a harder time in summer.

Don't leave your Charmander out in the storm.

Joltiks need to feed off of static

We need more fanfic from the Pokemon POV which emphasizes and treats pokemon biology with the weight they deserve.

Also going to finally make a pinned post for all my stuff:

BOGLEECH - my tumblr blog is named after this website I created around 2002 and still update. Thousands of pages worth of content focusing on creature design as well as real biology. My review of the original Legend of Zelda monsters might be the most straightforward example of my articles. Links to some of the most popular content:

POKEMON REVIEW ARCHIVE: - I rate and review each and every single Pokemon, in Pokedex order, on its merits as a creature design. I also do so as someone whose favorite animals are all parasites.

DIGIMON REVIEW ARCHIVE - same, but more chaotic.

CREEPYPASTA COOKOFF ARCHIVE - for several years I hosted a yearly writing contest before it grew too big for me to keep up with. There are over a thousand user submitted horror, fantasy, sci fi and surrealist stories here emphasizing unconventional, original ideas you seldom see from the "creepypasta" community!

The original "MORTASHEEN" Monster Archive - since the early 2000's I've created and illustrated more than 800 creatures and counting for my own monster-catching world, now set for release as a tabletop RPG setting.

AWFUL HOSPITAL: SERIOUSLY THE WORST EVER (page one): an interactive comedy-horror-sci-fi webcomic I started in 2014 about a medical facility that could maybe be better.

Some of my other internet stuff:

PATREON - constant work makes my patreon updates inconsistent, but the content backlog goes back years with a huge amount of exclusive art and writing. I try to put up new exclusive stuff whenever I can.

ETSY - I design all sorts of original enamel pins like these, plus I sell zero-maintenance terrarium plants (just leave them in a jar!), original books and other things!

COLOR THE ABYSS (available on the above etsy!) - a 30 page educational deep sea coloring book! Includes a few famous favorites like giant isopods and hagfish, but mostly focuses on less popular, often much weirder animals.

UNBELIEVABLE BUGS - also regularly restocked in the etsy store, 30 of the strangest and most surprising arthropods most people have likely never heard of, illustrated by myself and @revretch, written for even the youngest kids to understand (but will likely teach you something new at any age)

My Itch.io and Ko-fi - both sell digital versions of my books, including some creepypasta collections and my first novel, "Return of the Living," about a world of entirely ghosts suddenly dealing with the appearance of ghost-hunting monsters.

TWITCH CHANNEL - I now try to stream something at least monthly, sometimes weekly when possible, from horror games to books and art.

YOUTUBE CHANNEL - archives my twitch streams and other little things.

INSTAGRAM - look at pictures of my huge weird collection of toys and Halloween collectibles

BLUESKY - I'm going to put mainly just updates to my stuff on here. SEE ALSO:

HUMANS-B-GONE - a science fiction animated series by my partner @revretch, about a world of kaiju-size, technologically advanced insects and arachnids to whom vertebrates like us are just pesky little "gubs." Also has a tumblr account @humansbgone

You, a lover of xenofiction/animal stories who is truly interested in proper research and natural representation, with projects of your own in mind.

Let me tell you, if you read this, that I love you and will be willing to sell my kidney in order to support you.