Creating Furry Worlds

[AshleyAshes]

This should be less controversial but hopefully just as interesting as some previous threads.

Namely I was looking for a discussion on differnet peoples approaches to creating 'furry worlds' (For lack of a better term) or for those that don't, which variations of furry worlds they appreciate as a reader/fan.

Myself?  Well l tend to take a far more grounded approach than others but many go the same route too.  I like my furries in contemporary worlds pretty much just like our own only occupied by fuzzy tailed things instead of fleashy tailless things.  Many would leave it at this but I like to theorize and muse over the rammifications of such things and how a society would work.

How such a society originated is probably the biggest issue and I've personally found best to just gloss over.  There are plenty of ways how to explain a modern, contemporary society grew out of anthropomorphic animals, somehow probably having the four legged 'wild' versions of the animals exist so as not having the entire ecosystem not COLLAPSE in on itself.  ...So I just avoid this issue all together and go 'La la la la, on with the story!'  Why?  Cause there really is no way to explain it that isn't chock filled with scientific plot holes and it's easier to just skip it.  This is an easier question to deal with with non-contemporary worlds like fantasy settings or if you're not basicly reworking the population of the real world we know.

Well skipping the hard question is on to one of my favorite issues!  Interspecies breeding!  Ever notice in most furry works we see most pairings of mixed species yet all those characters come from generally purely breed families?  It seems to me that if the species mixed and paired and successfully bread as we see, it wouldn't take many generations untill there were so many mixed species that it would be hard to differentiate them.  That is, no more foxes or wolves or cats or otters, just a world full of mutts.  Kinda boring in my mind.

In the kind of world I've still been formalizing in my head I've been toying with the idea that inter-species breeding presents issues during pregnancy with the further departed the species are the greater the risk of misscarraige or physical or mental deformity.  The rules I've been considdering is that within the same species is obviously safe with even genus or family presenting minimal risks, but it depends on which species are crossbreeding.  It's when when you begin breeding between taxonomic families where things get risky and medically speaking it's discouraged and it results in a minimum of crossbreeds outside of the taxonomic family with mixed species pairings generally childless or adopting.

I'm thinking of using this as the basis for a story about a couple that accidently becomes pregnant dispite one being of felidae and the other canidae and chronicaling the fret, worry, distress and drama that their life takes as a result.

While keeping it mostly in the background I touch on occasional inter-species social issus as well that run similar to interracial issues we see in real life.  A simple example would be a character taking the 'Interspecies Conflicts Of The 20th Centutry' class and mentions of similar things mentioned in the world's history.  Interspecies dating discouraged, more so in certian social classes or amongst other species (Mainly related around species purity, since excessive crossbreeding could essentually wipe a species from the face of the earth as it is amalgamated with other species).  I'm considdering even pointing at trans-species issues, maybe more just cause I think it would be funny, but characters making mention of a background character, a Lion that shaves his mane and regularly dyes himself every 4-6 months to black to appear like a panther instead.

There are other ideas in my mind but I'd like to save some for later discussion in this thread.  But I would like to say I'm a fan of Jay Naylor's works and how he represents specific races and cultures with different species in Better Days or dividing nations as their own races in his (woefully under-updated) comic New Worlds.

[Aaeden]

If I'm reading correctly, the social aspect is something of an enigma for you as far as designing a furry world goes, so you refer to existing social aspects of our human society as an influence on your own writing.

I personally get my rocks off on creating social structures that are so much unlike our current society that they become believable and unbelievable at the same time.

Drop patriarchy and monotheism and monogamous relationships by the wayside. I want to try something new. ^^

[AshleyAshes]

If I'm reading correctly, the social aspect is something of an enigma for you as far as designing a furry world goes, so you refer to existing social aspects of our human society as an influence on your own writing.

Wow, that's harsh.  Would you say the same thing to anyone who writes standard fiction with humans in our modern world?  Or is it just because my characters are furry you think I shouldn't be allowed to use a furry version of our world and I have to make it different or otherwise social aspects are 'an enigma' to me?

[Aaeden]

Um... ok... I specifically wrote "If I'm reading correctly" at the beginning of that statement for a reason. I was looking at your content and I was perceiving, apparently incorrectly, that you stick with a more grounded and modern-world focused social structure in order to focus more specifically on the things you DO wish to be creative with.

I'm sorry I didn't word my post more carefully, as you seem to assume the worst from me from what I was trying to say. You can be creative however you wish to be, and farbeit from me to imply that I'm directing your creative style to satisfy my own preferences.

[AshleyAshes]

Um... ok... I specifically wrote "If I'm reading correctly" at the beginning of that statement for a reason. I was looking at your content and I was perceiving, apparently incorrectly, that you stick with a more grounded and modern-world focused social structure in order to focus more specifically on the things you DO wish to be creative with.

I just like contemporary settings and if you look at a lot of works, so do many in the fandom.  I prefer realistic character dramas.  But I was just expressing my methods and ideas in creating furry worlds and wanted to hear others, ranging from contemporary to science fiction to fantasy.  I was kinda upset you didn't go into more details with your own infact.  It could have been interesting.

[Morgan]

A furry world is what you make of it, and what you need for a story.

For the mating, I would assume that all "racial genes" are recessive.  I.e. everybody carries the "tag" of all races in their genetic code.  Thus, when two furs breed, the species of their offspring is random.  You could go for completely random or play with it.  Have the "race genes" be only what the parents carry.  Thus a wolf marrying a wolf would hve wolf cubs as both parents are wolves, even though the wolf gene is recessive.  Assuming that both wolves were "pure" wolves.  If  tiger mated a wolf, then half their children would be tigers, and half wolves.  Assuming both purebred.  If a tigerwolf mated a horsesheep, then out of four children there would be one tiger, one wolf, one horse and one sheep.  (NOTE: "tigerwolf" would be a tiger, but would also contain a wolf recessive in their DNA that may only be expressed in their offspring).  You get the idea.

As to how I create furry worlds, I try to stay away from "contemporary western" as that seems, to me anyway, cliched.  But, as stated, do what you need to as a writer.  Generally I have a rough idea, and then flesh out bits as I need them as I write.  Some stories I set in old RP worlds where there are some notes of various levels of details I can sneak in.  Other stories are spinoffs of other stories where I take a just mentioned bit of societal flavour and poke it to see how it works.

Take what works for you.

[PyroVulpes]

While I'm not a writer by any means, I like fictional worlds that are either as scientifically accurate as possible or completely toss science aside in favour of a magical fantasy world. Envisioning how we might create a furry society in the near or distant future, and the possible eventual outcomes of such, has always been somewhat of a personal fascination. I usually find that fiction (furry or otherwise) that uses present day society bores me.

[AshleyAshes]

For the mating, I would assume that all "racial genes" are recessive.  I.e. everybody carries the "tag" of all races in their genetic code.  Thus, when two furs breed, the species of their offspring is random.  You could go for completely random or play with it.  Have the "race genes" be only what the parents carry.  Thus a wolf marrying a wolf would hve wolf cubs as both parents are wolves, even though the wolf gene is recessive.  Assuming that both wolves were "pure" wolves.  If  tiger mated a wolf, then half their children would be tigers, and half wolves.  Assuming both purebred.  If a tigerwolf mated a horsesheep, then out of four children there would be one tiger, one wolf, one horse and one sheep.  (NOTE: "tigerwolf" would be a tiger, but would also contain a wolf recessive in their DNA that may only be expressed in their offspring).  You get the idea.

That's cute.  Potentially humorious even as child birth becomes more like a Kinder Suprise Egg. @_@

[Wotan]

As a long-term writer myself, as well as a biologist (I hold a M.Sc. in reproductive immunology), I will admit that I have a hard time forgetting about certain rules of biology and other sciences when I'm writing.  Hence, in stories where I have had more than one sentient species (such as the 'Insularis' novels I have been working on for the past few years), in the instances where there is cross-specific mating encounters, the species generally cannot produce hybrid offspring between one another.
 (and for those of you who are curious, when both species in question are known to be sentient, the term is 'xenophilia' ).
  I always think of the old Star Trek series where it seemed like every episode, Captain Kirk was going to bed with some alien princess.
  Anyway, I get seriously off-topic.
 
  In the world of Insularis, there are three sentient species: a humanoid species, with some similarities to Terran humans, but not exactly the same; a sentient lupine race, which controls the church, and a large felid species known as sun-trophs, who are a slave class.  I could tell lots more about this, but at this point, it would be much easier to simply read the stories. (hint hint! )

[Morgan]

Same with the science from me, but more from the physics side.  For the recessive gene to work, the "furries" would have to be the same species, just with a highly variable appearance. 

And yes, sadly, I find contempory unchanged world furries boring.

[Aurifer]

Wouldn't someone who has sex with a different sentient life be called xenosexual?

Anyway, Morgan's gene idea is interesting.
Myself, I'd go with a view that different species just can't procreate (unless you get something like a mule, which is sterile).

Also, I find current-world can only be about the characters themselves. I'd prefer to add an element of tech of magic in there, but not too strongly.

As a 'furry world', you're looking at something more primal, though, and so tribal sorts of voodoo rituals and shamanistic magic would work really well.

[Amorphous]

Post-apocalyptic steam-thrash furrypunk, what. God help us.

[Wotan]

Post-apocalyptic steam-thrash furrypunk, what. God help us.

  Post-apocalyptic steam-thrash furrypunk... Took me a while to wrap my head around that concept, but the closest I could envision is a version of Tank Girl, where more focus is placed on Booga and his friends, rather than Tank Girl, Jet Girl, and the human characters.
  Gives me a bit of a headache just thinking about it.  I'm certainly not that ambitious!
  Best I can brag about is that the genre of Insularis would fall more under alternate-world dystopian with a furry slant.
  Kinda sounds rather boring and uninspired when put that way.

[blindsight]

That's an interesting question, on many levels.  My worlds (I've worked on 3 so far, with one a trial run, one abandoned due to complex factors including a personality shift that left the characters lifeless, and one going well), seems to focus on a more stone-age to medieval type civilization.  The vast majority of the members of all species, especially breeding pairs, are same-species.  Only the occasional adventerous  person (read misfit/outcast) will have interspecies relationships.  After all, the story is about them and not the bulk of their boring peers.  Interspecies relationships are also safe, less chance of unwanted side effects like pregnancy.   

Now some of that may come from my own orientation, I'm not denying it.  I'll never form a breeding pair, and I'm more adventurous.  If you look at adult furry litereture and art , the bulk of it is the same way.  So that may already support this idea.