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Dalmatian vs Dingo: Discussion of Furry Worlds
12 years ago
This is something I've been thinking about constantly today: what species actually work in a world of furries. There are a lot of different versions of peoples' worlds that they use in their writing, ranging from with humans to without, with birds to without, etc.
A lot of my thoughts regarding these differences can be summed up nicely: to each his own.
For me, I prefer worlds without humans where all anthros are mammals. Reptiles, fish, birds, insects aren't anthropomorphic. That is not to say I dislike anthros from nonmammals, but to say that in my own writing, when I'm doing world building, I have them as ferals.
There are, however, problems with just mammals. The simple fact is that anthro worlds are based off of our human world, and so much of our society is dependent on animal products. Ranging from meat to eggs to milk to clothing to transportation to pets to service animals and so on.
There are only really three options to solve this problem: 1) certain mammals are feral; 2) society is not dependent on animal products; 3) mammals can be anthro or feral.
I'll come right out and say that I find option #3 to be just blatantly awkward. This solution does work if you don't delve into it, though, but I can't ignore some of the more obvious issues. Would a bull anthro eat a steak? Presumably at least some anthro cattle would take an active interest in that their feral counterparts not be slaughtered, and I imagine that species-based special interest groups would develop in ways for worse than PETA ever could. Even if you can somehow get around the cultural implications, it still fails to answer an even bigger problem: why are some anthro and some not?
The only answers that consistently work are ones that require some sort of intervention into the world's development. Alien mutations, some virus that turns all humans into anthros, etc, etc, etc. I don't like any of those because they inherently make the world less believable. I welcome someone to explain how or why evolution would have caused the differences to occur naturally.
Solution 2 is the only one that I think works completely, but it isn't without it's own problems. What do carnivores eat? Or do they have similar digestive systems to ourselves? And finally, what the hell would society look like without milk? Technology can replace some of these, but lets jump back five hundred years. How would have society looked without horses? No beef farming? Sheep for clothing? That's a lot of chicken.
Solution 1 is the one I generally go with, but I can't decide where to draw lines? And dogs provide a big problem. If you look at the fandom, they're everywhere, but it's hard to imagine an actual population of furries to have such a robust set of dog breeds. Deciding which breeds made it and which ones didn't requires arbitrary decisions, and I don't really care for that because it's, well, arbitrary.
So far, the best line I've came up with is just to say domesticated animals are feral. Bovines and equines are feral. No dogs or cats, period. I don't mind sacrificing dogs and cats, but horses make good anthros and so do bulls. Maybe a necessary sacrifice.
Could do predators are anthros and prey aren't. But again, you lose quite a bit of interesting species to work with and those lines aren't clear.
What are your thoughts?
A lot of my thoughts regarding these differences can be summed up nicely: to each his own.
For me, I prefer worlds without humans where all anthros are mammals. Reptiles, fish, birds, insects aren't anthropomorphic. That is not to say I dislike anthros from nonmammals, but to say that in my own writing, when I'm doing world building, I have them as ferals.
There are, however, problems with just mammals. The simple fact is that anthro worlds are based off of our human world, and so much of our society is dependent on animal products. Ranging from meat to eggs to milk to clothing to transportation to pets to service animals and so on.
There are only really three options to solve this problem: 1) certain mammals are feral; 2) society is not dependent on animal products; 3) mammals can be anthro or feral.
I'll come right out and say that I find option #3 to be just blatantly awkward. This solution does work if you don't delve into it, though, but I can't ignore some of the more obvious issues. Would a bull anthro eat a steak? Presumably at least some anthro cattle would take an active interest in that their feral counterparts not be slaughtered, and I imagine that species-based special interest groups would develop in ways for worse than PETA ever could. Even if you can somehow get around the cultural implications, it still fails to answer an even bigger problem: why are some anthro and some not?
The only answers that consistently work are ones that require some sort of intervention into the world's development. Alien mutations, some virus that turns all humans into anthros, etc, etc, etc. I don't like any of those because they inherently make the world less believable. I welcome someone to explain how or why evolution would have caused the differences to occur naturally.
Solution 2 is the only one that I think works completely, but it isn't without it's own problems. What do carnivores eat? Or do they have similar digestive systems to ourselves? And finally, what the hell would society look like without milk? Technology can replace some of these, but lets jump back five hundred years. How would have society looked without horses? No beef farming? Sheep for clothing? That's a lot of chicken.
Solution 1 is the one I generally go with, but I can't decide where to draw lines? And dogs provide a big problem. If you look at the fandom, they're everywhere, but it's hard to imagine an actual population of furries to have such a robust set of dog breeds. Deciding which breeds made it and which ones didn't requires arbitrary decisions, and I don't really care for that because it's, well, arbitrary.
So far, the best line I've came up with is just to say domesticated animals are feral. Bovines and equines are feral. No dogs or cats, period. I don't mind sacrificing dogs and cats, but horses make good anthros and so do bulls. Maybe a necessary sacrifice.
Could do predators are anthros and prey aren't. But again, you lose quite a bit of interesting species to work with and those lines aren't clear.
What are your thoughts?
In short, a good topic for thought, Sheppie.