COMMENTARY ON THE BIG BIRD
SANTA CLAUS

Submission file version

Date posted: Aug 16/2011

© 2011 Fred Brown


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>>>>> Commentary On The Big Bird Santa Claus <<<<<


By Fred Brown, Aug 16/2011
www.furaffinity.net/user/fwbrown61/

Copyright 2011 All rights reserved, all commercial
infringements prosecuted, website display permission
available upon request. Non-personal distro is infringement.



(The story is located here: The Big Bird Santa Claus )

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       I've will say, a number of things really please me about this story.
It's probably one of the downright cleanest short stories I've written to
date.

       Meaning to say I can't see where anything really needs to be added.
To make it work better, that is. And there's probably nothing that can be
taken out, or not without hurting it. The Goldilocks story: just right.

       One comment I got--that it could be longer--I'll interpret as a
compliment. All short stories have to draw big pictures in the reader's
mind, but can use only the barest minimum of words to do it. One reader
wanted more words so he could see more? Says something good about the
picture I did draw. I'll take it.

       More pleasing, though, is the snap ending. Pain in the butt, trying
to make a short story end properly. Much more than in novels, you gotta
know how a short story will end before you write word one of the beginning.
The plot has no room or time to be 'finessed' towards an ending. Must
go straight like Charlie Sheen for a cheerleader.

       This time I did know my ending. It paid off. Maybe not all short
stories can or should do it this way, but I think it should be the goal to
shoot for. Short stories are short, and even the best written aren't likely to
really stick in the reader's mind for very long.

       When the reader goes 'Woof!!' on that last para, however, *now*
the piece gets remembered. I can honestly say I've only done it a few
times.

       The Ximerfell-Captain is another point of pride, in part because
he's a small exercise in character recycling. A novel project got bogged
down, possibly terminally, and among the [large] cast of very diverse
aliens was Ximerfell-Captain. That story went into much greater detail
about the starship he and the rest of the Ximerfell drove into the solar
system.

       Deeply x-rated detail, I might add. Humans can too have sex with
aliens (I wrote in lots of them), much to the surprise of the aliens. We are
the horny primates, y'know. This was one reason why it got bogged down;
wasn't ready to write that story.

       De nada. Ximerfell-Captain worked perfectly here. And looking at
him through the lens of fur writing, I think know why too. Even though
he's an alien, not a classic fur character.

       Before that, though, small mention of another first. Upon gearing
up more vigourously as a writer (and noting my relative poverty), it did
occur to me that I could 'roll my own'Christmas presents in the form of
stories. But SF Christmas presents? Why not? If they really schmeck, go
for it. Sure as hell not something you can buy at WalMart.

       Added up, I think I've written at least twelve of 'em, one with some
fur content that should go over well (wait for December). As for the two
I've written for SexyFur, and a third planned, let's just say if Santa and the
reindeer drop in on a certain married deer fur couple--who like orgies--
somebody's delivery schedule could get badly disrupted. Ho ho ho.
Rudolph, don't eat the mistletoe, please.

       De nada again. BB Santa Claus represents the first Xmas pressie
written, and to some success. Anthology, anthology, think anthology.

       It'll be a thick one too.

       So what's so special about an alien ersatz emu starship captain?
Who looks like Big Bird? (and I hope everybody picked up on the icon I
made for the story)

       Well, consider Big Bird for a moment. Is he an anthro character? A
fur character? In the sense that everybody reading this understands when I
say 'fur character.'

       Of course. He's probably the most instantly identifiable fur character
in history, not counting a certain jealous bear or mouse, and a factor in
why all of us are fur fans period. The folks at Sesame Street would look
blank if I suggested this to them (then maybe sue my tail off to shut me
up), but there's perhaps 300,000 people on FA who'd say, sure. It's
obvious, isn't it?

       Is it?

       Thought experiment: The Sesame Street creators run short of cash.
They can't pay Guild rates to the actor inside for a speaking role. All Big
Bird can do is cheep and tweet and chirp, and another actor gets the 'Big
Bird said.' translation job.

       For Sesame Street purposes this would have been much less
effective, of course. Would we still consider this overgrown canary on
steroids an anthro/fur character?

       Not likely. Or perhaps not much. We would recognize that Big Bird
has a quality of sentience, and can communicate. But it's an avian
sentience for the most part. We would also recognize the gulf between
human and bird, that bird is different from human. And that we are not
well able to form a human relationship with a feathered being like this
one.

        Fortunately, Sesame Street's creators coughed up the dough and
Big Bird can in fact speak. More important, he can tell us who he is: he's a
bird, yes, but he's also a child, and very young. An animal cannot do this,
cannot offer us a self-definition. Ergo, Big Bird is not quite an animal. But
still not human. By his own words he falls somewhere in between.
(Sounds fur-like? Oh yah.)

       Nor is his sentience that of the pure bird. And we *can* form
human relationships with him. Or rather, all the other characters on
Sesame Street can do so.

       All of these characteristics apply to Ximerfell-Captain. The quality
of sentience he displays is fully human, not alien, and this was deliberate.
Certainly he can speak and define himself. Not human, but like BB neither
totally alien: in between. And the characters in the story are demonstrably
able to form human relationships with him.

       Was I aware of all this when I wrote it? Nope. But I can see it now.
Ximerfell-Captain had to be this way or it would not have been plausible
for him and Cindy to end up in her bedroom. A 'pure-laine' SF story
might have played on his alienness for effect. Wouldn't have worked. We
would have lost the sense that he possessed empathy for the other
characters.

       What this could add up to is a broad definition of what a fur character
is. Or perhaps a broad outline of the parameters within which we can say,
yes, that's an anthro/fur character. And that is not.

       1) Sentience. Doesn't have to be a human sentience, but symbolic
sentience of a kind has to be there.

       2) The power of self-definition. The second your dog says, 'Look,
my name is Rex, not Mr. Fluffy,' he's not a dog anymore he's a fur.

       3) Communication skills. Speech is the ideal. There are other ways
to communicate. Get creative.

       4) This sense of 'inbetween-ness.' Physically, the classic fur character
has a human-like body with animal attributes. That was easy, wasn't it?

       5) The quality of relationship(s) that are possible with this character.
Ie., human relationships. This too is fairly easy to achieve by having the
clothes fall off for some reason. Yep, lookin' pretty human to me. Neat
trick with that trapeze there, too.

       Now, this little list could be considered a tad. . . um. . . theoretical.
The average fur writer is not very likely to consult it when designing a fur
character. Furs are creatures of fantasy, meaning what a writer comes up
with is governed by the logic of the story, the conventions and tropes of
the genre, and what the writer feels-in-gut about what the readership will
accept or reject. 'Designing' isn't a helpful word to use here.

       Still, it's worth noticing that these five points do not, by any
stretch, constrain us. Give these points some good stretching, start
juggling combinations, and you get a *huge* range of possible types that
could be considered fur characters. True, most fur writers cleave to the
'standard model' character, the humaniform type that earned Disney
several gazillion buckadingdongs. But so many more fur characters are
possible. This is good news, I think.

       We've also got a critical framework here, with which to think
about the fur characters in a story. You drop in on any other type of
literature on the planet, you'll find unique critical tools that people can use
to evaluate and study the stuff, specialized to the genre. Mystery fiction
readers, for example, will give methodical scrutiny to how well a writer
deployed the clues that the MC deciphers (but everybody else is blind).
Don't need this in studying Western fiction.

       Well, fur fiction is *intensely* dependent on the nature of the
characters. Get 'em right so the readers relate to 'em, and you can tell
virtually any kind of story you like. Interesting how much creative
freedom this gives a writer, hmmm? Being able to think critically about
characters therefore strikes me as important.

       It also allows the Ximerfell-Captain to fall into a category of furs
that takes a touch of relativity to grasp, shall we say? On the Ximerfell
world, this is a species of sentient avians who started out as birds, but then
evolution added a few bits here and there, just like what happened to us.
So their 'fur fiction' would have characters that are a blend of the avian
and the animal (feathered fiction?).

       But we'd still be able to read it. Those are still fur characters, in the
sense that we can recognize all of these five points in operation. Ximerfell
writers just start with an avian model, not a hominid.

       The Ximerfell are the aliens to us, yes. But we are the aliens to
them. Seen from a fur viewpoint, however, we aren't that different. We
both started out from animal roots. Then changed, and in common ways.
We might be able to look upon the Ximerfell as a type of avian fur-the
idea isn't unfamiliar to us-but they're just as able to see us as a type of
hominid fur.

       This drives an M1-A2 at high speed though the cherished SF concept
that the aliens are The Other, the strange, the exotic (and highly allegorical
to boot). Not necessarily so in a fur SF story. A fur's a fur's a fur. What
planet they were born on doesn't really have to matter, does it?

       To the degree that the aliens are different, sure, the story has to
work with that. But of more importance is the degree to which the aliens
are the same as us. This can be done in straight SF. It may be much easier
to do in a fur story.

       We'll call The Big Bird Santa Claus a twofer and stop here.

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