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Space foxes, and other things I'm dabbling in
12 years ago
At one of the furry conventions I attended last year, I was at a writing panel, where in a discussion about settings and world building, one of the panelists made a rather derisive comment about 'aliens who just happen to look like earth foxes'. This comment left me rather nonplussed, since I just happen to be working on an epic-length story that features an alien race who look like foxes.
Afterwards I thought about it some more. If C.J. Cherryh and Lisanne Norman can create a race of space aliens who resemble big cats, if K.D. Wentworth can create an alien race that resembles wolves, if Gordon R. Dickson can create an alien race that resembles bears, then why the hell not foxes? Besides, as the hosts of the Unsheathed podcast have said in answer to the question about what justification you need to make your characters furry, if making your characters furry helps you feel more motivated to write stories about them that you otherwise might not write, then what more justification do you need?
The story in question is one I've referred to as an epic story from time to time to at least some of you who may be reading this. A year ago I said it would be about now at the earliest before I'd have anything ready to post, and now that now has arrived, I'm going to say another half a year minimum, more likely a full year. Last fall I didn't get much done on it while I spent a couple of months cranking out a couple of new stories in the Private Heaven setting, in which I have several ideas for further stories when I'm ready to devote the time to writing them. I've been making good progress on the epic story in recent months. I think I've added more than 20k words to it just since Christmas. Given that I'd like to write some stories that get sold and published and not just posted online, I'm currently taking a detour with this setting to write a short story that I plan to submit for an upcoming anthology. I've discovered that when I keep my mind in the story universe it's easier to jump back and forth to the main story.
Keeping my head down and the momentum up...
Afterwards I thought about it some more. If C.J. Cherryh and Lisanne Norman can create a race of space aliens who resemble big cats, if K.D. Wentworth can create an alien race that resembles wolves, if Gordon R. Dickson can create an alien race that resembles bears, then why the hell not foxes? Besides, as the hosts of the Unsheathed podcast have said in answer to the question about what justification you need to make your characters furry, if making your characters furry helps you feel more motivated to write stories about them that you otherwise might not write, then what more justification do you need?
The story in question is one I've referred to as an epic story from time to time to at least some of you who may be reading this. A year ago I said it would be about now at the earliest before I'd have anything ready to post, and now that now has arrived, I'm going to say another half a year minimum, more likely a full year. Last fall I didn't get much done on it while I spent a couple of months cranking out a couple of new stories in the Private Heaven setting, in which I have several ideas for further stories when I'm ready to devote the time to writing them. I've been making good progress on the epic story in recent months. I think I've added more than 20k words to it just since Christmas. Given that I'd like to write some stories that get sold and published and not just posted online, I'm currently taking a detour with this setting to write a short story that I plan to submit for an upcoming anthology. I've discovered that when I keep my mind in the story universe it's easier to jump back and forth to the main story.
Keeping my head down and the momentum up...
In other words, wrong sub-genre.
I also believe their argument about your perfectly valid examples was 'They were written before that theory was disproved', in other words, pure hypocrisy, and pay it no mind.
Eh, everyone has their own 'verse. Some don't even *have* aliens. Some do. Some have anthropomorphic aliens. The only person who can definitively state what is and is not 'real' is the author, every one else can go suck a donkey dildo.
And thank you for the vote of confidence. While I do strive to keep a fair degree of scientific veracity in my stories, I'm not one to get all pedantic about it at the expense of telling a good story.
If your alien has fur, a long snout, two erect ears and a bushy tail, people will call them "foxes."
Chlorophyll might not be necessary, though -- there's probably any number of chemicals which can serve more or less the same purpose.