30+ greymuzzle yote new to and lost in the fediverse somewhere in the western US. - Social media dumbass. - Literally has no idea what they’re doing. - :asexual_flag: :agender_flag: - Mostly silent spectator/lurker. - Occasional and novice suiter. - Suit by Aeluromancy.

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  • 7 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 1st, 2023
  • CynderCoyote@pawb.socialtoFurry Writing, Worldbuilding, and Storytime@pawb.social•[Worldbuilding] Taxidermy in an anthro settingEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Ooh! That’s a neat approach to it! I honestly don’t think there’s any wrong way to go about it. Pixeas and Henry kinda shares a similar architecture, with the anthro characters having evolved from their feral forms into their anthro forms. I totally agree with you on the handwaving. I feel like it’s far too easy to get too far out in the weeds trying to settle minutiae, which can often distract from the story. I’m going to blaspheme and say that this was one of my difficulties when reading The Hobbit back in High School. I just got so damn bored with how richly described every little thing was. It’s the difference between drinking an entire jar of Alfredo sauce, versus drizzling it over your pasta.

  • CynderCoyote@pawb.socialtoFurry Writing, Worldbuilding, and Storytime@pawb.social•[Worldbuilding] Taxidermy in an anthro settingEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    It’s an interesting concept to explore. Certainly, it would probably be macabre for an anthro deer to see a deer mount on the wall, akin to visiting Buffalo Bill’s house in Silence of the Lambs and seeing his sewing room. Real life analogues do exist though. David Sedaris, the famed humorist, once wrote about trying to acquire a real human anatomy skeleton he found at a shop in France for his husband. That guy who died at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky was kept in a glass coffin for viewing (for a fee), as was Lenin’s body. I once personally encountered a shop in Hampden which centered itself upon the sale of the macabre, and while I don’t believe they were for sale (I honestly didn’t think to ask), did have several (allegedly) real human skulls on display in amongst the antique surgical tools and vintage taxidermy.

    At its core, its the “Goofy/Pluto” dichotomy. It’s Mae in Night in the Woods seeing a fat raccoon in the center of town, when she herself is a bipedal talking cat and bipedal talking raccoon characters exist in universe. I think it’s hard (if not impossible) to really fully imagine the mechanics of how an anthro world would be constructed from our vantage point as humans. Despite the fact that, at our core, we’re just smarter apes, we’ve so removed ourselves from the natural world that there’s us (“people,” who are intelligent, reasoning, and thinking…allegedly), and then there’s “animals,” which is every other living creature on the planet over which we hold dominion. Trying to create similar structures and analogues is hard because of how/where to draw the line. To us as “people” it seems rather clear. To us as imagined “animal-people,” it’s much more difficult.

    In my opinion, it’s also difficult to create settings that feel “alive” (for lack of a better term) without wildlife of some sort. I went the same direction you did with a story I wrote once where birds, fish, amphibians, ect. were a natural part of the environment as “animals,” and then most mammals (like canids, felidae, cervidae, mustelids, whatever possums are, ect.) were “animal-people.” In my head, those rules made sense based upon the relationship between those two “classes” (for lack of a better term) of animals, so that fish and birds could be guilt-free food and I could populate creeks and streams with crayfish, salamanders, ect to give some texture to my rural setting. I also felt like it was easier to write about critters with paws which could be used in an analogous manner to hands and with biologies similar to ours.

    An example that went the complete opposite direction would be Bojack Horseman, with critters of every kind being anthropomorphized in that show. It played with that concept to great comedic effect and handwaved the rest, which worked perfectly for the setting the show had created (at least in my opinion).

    I think either way works as long as there is some sort of framework or rules that doesn’t trip the “Goofy/Pluto” dichotomy. That’s my $0.02 worth.