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Species in Furry Writing, Part 1: Conflict
15 years ago
General
This is the first post in a few on the topic of species. When it comes to the topic of anthro species and fiction, the discussion is usually limited to either the physiological or the personality. I want to offer a few things for consideration. Primarily these relate if you feel like taking a world building approach, if you want to tinker with the more global elements of furry in your fiction as a backdrop, but Part 3 will deal with personality in a way you likely haven't seen discussed in furry circles. So with that said, Rechan, get to the damn point.
There's one thing that I find really odd about most furry fiction.
Aside from the rare work, all species get along.
All the species have no strife, conflict or prejudice against one another. Not a second thought about being near any other species.
Compare this with human behavior. The "Us vs. Them" and willingness to divide into groups is a huge factor in human psychology. People will do it at the drop of the hat for trivial reasons. Humans distrust and are prejudiced against other people for multitudes of reasons: nationality, religion, ethnicity, social status, and other labels that people attribute to (sports teams, etc). Purely because "That person is different".
The only source of absolving a person from those prejudices is 1) learning from an early age, 2) excessive exposure, to those types of people: i.e. a cosmopolitan/multi-cultural upbringing, or 3) a unifying goal that brings everyone together for a single purpose.
If you know about Evolutionary Psychology, it says that this is purely behavior from hunter/gatherer lifestyles. And that the human brain has not changed those behaviors - that we as humans have not managed to get over the fact that we are no longer living in small tribes, but instead are in huge communities well beyond our ancestral tendencies and have food in abundance with very little physical threats to ourselves.
Now imagine a world where things are different species. And those species' ancestors are at odds, likely for predator/prey purposes. Hell, not even for Predatory purposes - in the wild, wolves kill coyotes, coyotes kill foxes. It's a territorial gesture. Hyena and lions compete for the same food. Rats who have been raised for multiple generations in cages, never exposed to a cat before, will become afraid when exposed to cat urine; a purely instinctive response.
Even if the various species do not eat one another, and no longer must fight over resources, those instinctive issues would likely still be there. Because if evolution is anything like how it is with humans, it takes a long time to fundamentally change things.
Instead there is a huge kumbaya feeling from almost all furry work. And while I understand that part of the appeal is all of those species mingling together, there's not any thought put to the matter. Here we have been talking about behavior and sensory information and how that's different for the character, but what about on the societal level?
There's one thing that I find really odd about most furry fiction.
Aside from the rare work, all species get along.
All the species have no strife, conflict or prejudice against one another. Not a second thought about being near any other species.
Compare this with human behavior. The "Us vs. Them" and willingness to divide into groups is a huge factor in human psychology. People will do it at the drop of the hat for trivial reasons. Humans distrust and are prejudiced against other people for multitudes of reasons: nationality, religion, ethnicity, social status, and other labels that people attribute to (sports teams, etc). Purely because "That person is different".
The only source of absolving a person from those prejudices is 1) learning from an early age, 2) excessive exposure, to those types of people: i.e. a cosmopolitan/multi-cultural upbringing, or 3) a unifying goal that brings everyone together for a single purpose.
If you know about Evolutionary Psychology, it says that this is purely behavior from hunter/gatherer lifestyles. And that the human brain has not changed those behaviors - that we as humans have not managed to get over the fact that we are no longer living in small tribes, but instead are in huge communities well beyond our ancestral tendencies and have food in abundance with very little physical threats to ourselves.
Now imagine a world where things are different species. And those species' ancestors are at odds, likely for predator/prey purposes. Hell, not even for Predatory purposes - in the wild, wolves kill coyotes, coyotes kill foxes. It's a territorial gesture. Hyena and lions compete for the same food. Rats who have been raised for multiple generations in cages, never exposed to a cat before, will become afraid when exposed to cat urine; a purely instinctive response.
Even if the various species do not eat one another, and no longer must fight over resources, those instinctive issues would likely still be there. Because if evolution is anything like how it is with humans, it takes a long time to fundamentally change things.
Instead there is a huge kumbaya feeling from almost all furry work. And while I understand that part of the appeal is all of those species mingling together, there's not any thought put to the matter. Here we have been talking about behavior and sensory information and how that's different for the character, but what about on the societal level?
Eh. I figure predation of actual sentient anthros wouldn't get very far. Raiding enemy tribes to eat them is a lot of risky behavior for so little gain. Also, if furry gestation periods are comparable with humans, then there's no way prey species could sustain predator species. That's partly why mice and rabbits are eaten by so many animals: they breed like roaches.
Not to mention that if you're eating your neighbors (and they don't eat you), it's very likely they will band together and stomp you out because holy shit you're eating them. Predation on sentient anthros just doesn't pan out unless you do a lot of work.
So predator/prey relationships in a contemporary (or even medieval!) setting I can buy. Now, I imagine there might be some instinctive issues going on there. But problems of 'he's going to EAT ME' probably went out when ancestors figured out they could get food by easier means.
One interesting avenue would be something like a prey species might feel, instinctively, towards a predator the same way women feel about men in terms of threatening. Women know that men are stronger than they are. So that's 50% of the population that could overpower the other 50%, on average. Take into consideration the percentage of women that are sexually assaulted, or abused, and basically, men are an inherent potential threat to women. Now, it may not register, this is a very conscious thing, but the notion is for a prey species that 'this guy could take me if he wanted to' on a subconscious level.
In my "storyland" predation, or even killing with fangs/claws is viewed upon the same way canibalisim is with us. All of the anthro residents in my story-universe are canines, so eating each other is not really an issue. There is definently a lot of racial tension if you could call it that, especially between the Latranian and Lupine residents. I like to compare it to a combination of 1930's Germany and the civil rights movement in America, depending on where you are in the country depends on the level of racisim that exists. You don't want to be a coyote in an area with a heavy wolf populaton and vice-versa. Even though they have been integrated in some more progressive areas on the country, there is still a lot of underlying tension and distrust.
Anyway, sorry for going off on a tangent, but this is an interesting topic :P
PS, I finished the book, and I loved it. Great work man, I envy your writing skills.
The underlying theme is that the creatures in the world of my stories had only made peace with each other for about 1500 years or so, until the rise of a great empire. The provincial lands are still divided largely along species lines, and some species are more clannish than others even if they now serve a common liege.
It's also worth noting that humans still exist in my books, as a secondary species that is dying out from hardship, habitat loss, and occasionally from being hunted for sport. The general opinion of humans varies from neutral to highly unfavorable, and society is disturbingly indifferent to their fate.
Consider how many different species are generally found in a furry setting. There's both predatory races and prey races, mixed in with wild abandon. Governmental bodies are formed with people of different species. Specism would literally threaten to shatter the very foundations of society, shatter the governmental body itself, shatter everything.
Something which a disenfranchised anarchistic and angered minority might wish to accomplish...
Therefore, an interesting plot point would be a situation in which an angry minority would try to stir up racism (meant in a more literal term than we use in the real world), and spell out the worries and concerns that this attitude might cause for the entirety of society.
Hmm... I think I found the plotline for my next writing project. Thank you.
I do agree with what you are saying about it making more sense from an EB standpoint for the different races to be generally suspicious of each other. However, from a storytelling standpoint, this sort of setup would result in foxes interacting mostly with other foxes, rabbits with other rabbits, et cetera. One of the core features of furry literature for me is the interaction of different species together as an analog for different temperaments and backgrounds in humanity. It can be tough to show this if your coyotes only spend time with other coyotes.
An excellent journal entry. I look forward to reading the rest.
I agree! In fact I think the multi-species scenarios are the more interesting.
On the other hand, as fiction writers we get to write about the exception too. Exceptions are what's interesting after all. If it's NORMALLY that a species only interacts with its own species, then the case where that does not occur for whatever reason is more unique. For instance where everyone depends on one another for a goal that is larger than themselves, or there are just not enough of their fellow species to permit that cliquishness from forming.
For instance the circumstances in a slum, or a crisis. Many people like the show Lost; great reason for people of many backgrounds to be forced to work together or at least trust one another. The military may not group people based on species - there may be benefits for having certain species in certain roles (a keen-sighted species as snipers, social species as commanders, etc) and by mixing these you get the best unit out of performance. You just have to drill them until the unit trusts each other.
And there's also the matter of how much or how little you want to use this sort of thing. It could be purely subconscious distrust or discomfort. It could be something like subtle racism, like what we have today (rather than what we had twenty, thirty, forty years ago). Or it could be as full blown as what you have in Sixes Wild, where the cats just recently stopped preying on other people. If it's in the subconscious part, then you don't have as many hurdles to jump than if it's at the extreme of the spectrum.