If You Give a Mouse a Big Mac

Some animals have diets that are extremely strict, to the point where eating something outside of that diet could cause illness or death outright.

Some animals’ diets are a little looser, and they can essentially eat nearly anything that fits into their mouth and be just fine for it in the long run.

Disregarding moral objections, I think we can generally agree on a few natural dietary habits of animals in the wild. They are either Carnivores (meat eaters), Herbivores (plant eaters), or Omnivores (those who get pizzas with everything on it).  This is one of those long-standing rules of nature that we’ve been taught ever since our first biology class.

Sadly, pandas as a species never got the memo about bamboo
being a poor energy source for them...

There is one question, however, that our biology classes failed to answer:

What does an omnivore do when he has to write for a carnivore or an herbivore?

The answer varies quite a bit, in truth, but some of the results might surprise you. I’ve read stories where rabbits go with their lion friends to restaurants and get chicken fingers just like anybody else. I’ve also read stories where rabbits would get sick after eating red meat by accident, or about tigers who had to resist the urge to eat their smaller, fluffy, meat-filled friends.

To be honest, it can be rather hard sometimes to create believable diets for anthropomorphic animals. For one, these creatures don’t even exist in the real world, so all we have to go off of for their dietary constraints are the animals they’re based on.  If a species evolved enough to walk on two legs, talk, and drive a car, then who’s to say their diets didn’t evolve along with them? Aside from that, writing a character who can only eat one type of food can sometimes, frankly, be a bit boring and strange to think about.  Here in America, it’s almost a national iconic scene to picture farmers hard at work in the fields all day and coming inside at sundown for a hearty meal of meat and potatoes.  It would probably boggle the mind of some people to switch out ‘meat and potatoes’ for ‘lettuce and cucumbers’.

In the end, because humans tend to be the creatures writing our fiction, the protagonists in our fiction tend to think like humans do, and that includes eating like them as well.

I don’t have any answers for which way of writing is best. In my own writing, I’ve written animals that are against dietary type and animals that stick to it like a religion. However, for those who think that writing meals for carnivores and especially herbivores is boring and requires very sterile descriptions of salads, I would like to direct you to Mr. Brian Jacques, the writer of the Redwall series.

I loved Redwall when I first started reading it, and I fell out of love with it as the series went on and I started liking some of the ideas and plots less and less. No matter how I felt about the stories themselves, though, there always remained one constant:

Brian Jacques is a master of writing feasts.

I can’t recall a single meal of his that did not make me hungrier after reading it. His descriptions of all-berry pastries and wines and beautiful dishes of fruits and vegetables defy expectations. They are filled with so much flavor, scents, and colors, and the characters, usually mice and shrews, are enjoying themselves so much that it’s like a Thanksgiving dinner being experienced for the very first time.

Just read this excerpt about the spread laid out for a feast at Redwall Abbey from Mattimeo:

“Salads of twelve different types, ranging from beetroot to radish, right through many varieties of lettuce and including fennel, dandelion, tomato, young onion, carrot, leek, corn – every sort of vegetable imaginable, cut shredded, diced or whole. These were backed up with the cheeses, arranged in wedge patterns of red, yellow and white, studded with nuts, herbs and apple. Loaves were everywhere, small brown cobs with seeds on top, long white batons with glazed crusts, early harvest loaves shaped like cornstocks, teabread, nutbread, spicebread and soft flowerbread for infants. The drinks were set out in pitchers and ewers, some in open bowls with floating mint leaves, October ale, fresh milk, blackcurrant wine, strawberry cordial, nutbrown beer, raspberry fizz, elderberry wine, damson juice, herb tea and cold cider.”

It continues to go on to describe the cakes and desserts to follow, but I had to stop myself there as my very eyes were watering with desire for this food.

The feasts of Redwall sometimes include fish, shrimp, or other seafood (there are often a variety of animals present in Redwall), but they’re just as often like this, listing line after line of food that would please the pallet of any herbivore. It’s really a great show of what can be done when a writer treats the diets of his characters with respect and joy.

Of course, not every story needs to spend a crazy amount of time talking about the food the characters eat. Still, having some level of consistency and respect to the idea that these are very different creatures that we are following is always appreciated and helps to make the world feel more real and complete.

What do you readers think? Do you prefer anthropomorphic animal characters who eat strictly like their real life counterparts, or is having a bit more open of a diet more fun to read about?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go look up what ‘white batons with glazed crusts’ are and how I can get my hands on one…

Happy reading, all!

-Chammy

Currently Reading:

The Last Wild by Piers Torday

Yep. There's a List for That.

Of the few websites that I visit in my daily life, there is one that I make a habit of visiting at least once or twice every few months. That may not sound much, but I only visit this site in order to keep up on my obvious interest in anthropomorphic literature.

You see, finding good books centered around anthropomorphic animals is not nearly as easy as it might sound. What was once nearly everywhere one could look is now surprisingly niche. Redwall and the Warriors series are the only recent anthropomorphic books of large public note that I can easily recall. We’re far removed from the days of the Wind in the Willows, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and The Jungle Book, where such books were just titles that everybody knew as they grew up. These days, we have far more choices for literature than we’ve ever had before, and it’s led to a sort of dilution of content. With so many books out there and so many ways to access and find them, it’s surprisingly more difficult to discover those treasures like the stories that made up our elementary school library days.  Also, with the rise of self-publishing, especially in the e-book realm, finding books that are not only good stories, but also well-edited and written is harder than it ever has been.

What is a seeker of literature to do?

If you said: “Suck it up, pick a book, and get reading.” You would be right!

Raccoons don't hibernate. We just get kinda sleepy!

However, another handy option is to look online for recommendations and reading lists, and one of my favorite public reading lists is one known as the “Recommended Anthropomorphics List”, held and curated by the Ursa Major Awards.

The Ursa Major Awards is an awesome website that collects various examples of new anthropomorphic media and arranges them by year for easy browsing. Every year, they hold a world-wide vote for the best anthropomorphic works of that year. The works are categorized by Film, Dramatic Work, Novel, Short Story, Graphic Story, Comic Strip, Magazine, Website, Published Illustration, and Video Game.

Of course, it may not be considered as prestigious as an Oscar or Newberry Award, but seeing such works recognized in fields where they would otherwise be ignored by the majority of folks is quite wonderful.

The Anthropomorphics List that they produce each year is what I really go there for. Specifically the Novel category. Every year, I find some true gems in places where I never would have looked previously. In fact, the Gamma World novel that I mentioned in my last post was a novel that I discovered through these lists. I would strongly suggest that you take a look through the list as well if you have any interest in anthropomorphic characters in the media!

I should, however, put a disclaimer about this list. While it’s a wonderful website that has a wide net of content listed, not all of that content is for readers of all ages. With a smaller pool of new media to choose from, offensive content does come up. It’s not unlike any library, however. The purpose of this list, like libraries themselves, is not to censor or bar content from readers, but to give an open and free place for authors and creators to be seen or heard. Thankfully, for those of us that don’t want to have to dive in to a book or author website just to learn about its content rating, the UMA website gives a handy Mature Audiences tag at the end of any entry that qualifies.

In the future, once the nominations for the Ursa Major Novel Awards of 2014 are made public (Nominations open on January 15), I would really like to list them here on the website and read as many of them as possible. That way, when voting begins in March, all of us here can give some educated votes and maybe even discussion over which novels are most deserving.

Considering my reading pace is normally rather slow, this might end up being quite the challenge, but hopefully a lot of fun at the same time. I do hope you all join me for it!

Until next time, happy reading!

Currently Reading:

The Last Wild by Piers Torday

A Trip Down Memory Lane

12-28-14: Down Memory Lane

Hello again, all!

I realize there’s been a bit of a break here since December started. I suppose I should have put something like this up:

Raccoons don't hibernate during the Winter!
We just get kinda sleepy and lazy...

However, moving beyond that, let’s wrap up the end of 2014 with a happy trip down memory lane! How do we do that and stay with the theme of literature and anthropomorphics here? Well, remembering our very first encounter with an anthropomorphic animal would be a good way to start.

While that may sound like a strange thing to focus on, let’s really put this into perspective. Anthropomorphic animals are often part of our very first memories of stories. Not only do they make up a large portion of characters in fairy tales and fables, but how many children’s movies and cartoons feature animal protagonists or sidekicks? Even Disney’s recent hit of Frozen, which has been massive hit this past year with the very young, rivaling the success of the Lion King, had a moose and a talking snowman as part of the main cast.

Granted, these days, there are surprisingly fewer anthro characters in children’s films than there have been in the past, but the amount of children’s BOOKS with animal characters has only increased. While I usually like to focus on how these talking animals are great for people of all ages, it really is fun for me to think about which characters started it all. Feel free to make a journey of you own while I share a bit of mine!

For me, the first animal story that I remember consistently was a book called “Ketchup, Catch up!” My father used to read that book to me all the time, mostly because his favorite animals were monkeys and I suspect he wanted to expose me to them as much as possible to instill that same fascination. Heck, I used to even have a monkey as one of my first stuffed animals. Anyways, I remember this book so much for several reasons. Firstly, it was because I loved putting ketchup on stuff, so the book felt just right for me! Secondly, even at that toddler age, I adored the word play. Something about saying the same collection of sounds twice but having it mean two completely different things brought a smile to my face. Finally, it was because my father read the book to me so darned much. It really did feel like our own personal book to share, and that made it fun and exciting to hear over and over again. Also, I’m certain that I was one of those kids that always asked to have the same book read to him over and over again at bed time. As a result of that, I believe it also became the first book that I learned how to read. I say ‘read’, but really it was just memorizing the words that my dad would say to me as he had the book open. I’m told that I used to flip open that book and just start saying the story aloud while not even looking at the page. Heh, I guess putting letters to the sounds came later, but it was still a start!

His brother Mustard wasn't quite as popular.

The other book that I remember with fondness from my childhood was one called “Timmy Tiger and the Elephant”. It’s weird, though… I remember so very little about the story of the book (to be fair, “Ketchup, Catch Up!” kind of gives the plot away in the title), but I remember absolutely loving the art. Timmy Tiger was SO darned cute and the art was so vibrant and bright. I remember spending many nights just looking through the book at all the illustrations. Looking at it again now, it very well might have been the first step towards my artistic inclinations.

Goodness, seeing this cover brings memories flooding back...

If you can find a copy of either of these books, I highly recommend them! Especially if you have kids or young relatives that you want to share the joy of reading and animal characters with.

How about you readers? Who were some of your first animal characters that you encountered and loved as a child? Go ahead and let us know so that we can walk down memory lane together!

As a final note, I would like to take the opportunity to wish each and every person reading here a very happy New Year’s!

Here’s to a great upcoming year of happy reading!

-Chammy

Currently Reading:

The Last Wild by Piers Torday

Welcome to the Season!

I'm currently working on some graphic projects, so no major write up this week. Just a fun little picture instead :) I hope everybody has a wonderful holiday season and treasures all that we have in life!

A likely story!

Currently Reading:
The Last Wild by Piers Torday

The End of It All!

Well, I wanted to talk about something cheerful this time around, so how about the apocalypse?

I’m constantly fascinated by society’s interest in the End Times and dystopian futures, especially when it comes to literature and media. One would think that folks would be more interested in blissful escapism than delving into the dangerous realms of ‘what-if’ scenarios for when the world ends. However, an argument could be made that viewing such things in fiction IS escapism, as it gives us a safe place to speculate and observe the ultimate ends of concerns that we all might have about the world.

Plus, it’s a great way to see really cool-looking mutants!

Beast is WAY cooler anyways.

Er... Not that kind...

In all honesty, fascination with the end of the world or the fall of society is not new in the slightest. Mankind has long held an interest in the afterlife, dark prophecies of the future, and essentially with death and decay. It comes from that natural question a healthy inquisitive mind has: “What’s next?”

What DOES seem to be a little new to me is the number of works featuring anthropomorphic characters in these settings. I’ve seen a couple of books and games that depict a ruined Earth where humankind has almost entirely died out and, in their place, other animals became the dominant species, developing culture, language, technology, and so forth. It’s an interesting idea because it almost presents anthropomorphic animals as a logical and sensible thing. Some species has to fill the gap that man has left behind, right?

I do find it kind of amusing that, oftentimes, these newly dominant species end up becoming extremely human in appearance and mannerisms as well. One might think that’s a commentary on how sentient beings and society tend to operate in an immutable pattern, but I’m sure it’s also done because of the ease of relatability for readers, and because it’s simply a fun idea for the writers.

But, going back to what I said earlier, these settings are also fun because they allow the writer to play with mutants, or hybrids, as some might see them. In terms of anthropomorphic animals, the sky is nearly the limit here, with winged cats and talking, blood-red dogs being the more tame varieties. I’ve seen four-foot tall anthropomorphic mice with antennae for ears, king-sized slugs with crowns to match, and cheetah with the legs of a grasshopper. These mutations allow for all sorts of new ideas for how characters can move and perceive the world, and they can be extremely exciting for that reason alone. I think the most fun this line of writing gets is when it just fully embraces its weirdness.

Perhaps one of the best examples of this I’ve seen in writing is a Dungeons and Dragons novel called ‘Red Sails in the Fallout’. It is part of a series of novels written about the DnD setting known as Gamma World, and few things get stranger than that. For those of you who do not know, the Gamma World setting is a game type that is characterized primarily by its randomness and anything-goes mentality. It’s essentially a setting where the world has gone to pot and mutations are everywhere, both in the monsters and the player characters and even the world itself. As an example of how silly and awesome the game can get, a friend of mine once played a session where they were assigned and acquired random mutations as the game went on. By the end of the game, he was a swarm of sentient bees that all operated with one consciousness and had telepathic powers along with shooting laser beams out of his many eyes.

I’m told he was one of the more normal cases in his game.

The book is a fine read even for those who have never played a single game of Dungeons and Dragons. I won’t do a proper Book Talk on this one as I did not read it critically and it’s been a long time since I picked it up, but it has some of the marks of what I described above, where the main anthropomorphic characters travel across a radiation drenched world, fending off mutated creatures and the land itself and dealing with the understandably crazy inhabitants and their own mutations as they come. It has a very tongue-in-cheek flavor to its writing as it knows full well how weird the setting is, and is definitely written for the purposes of entertainment over science.

So, yeah, when it comes to the apocalypse and those terrifying dystopian futures, I think they’re all well and good to explore and give us some great insights into human culture. However, I also love how they’re great starting points for looking at how the world could be different if given half a chance and a nuclear fallout or two.

Though I do wonder which animals really would rise to dominance after the humans have gone… I want to say it would be raccoons, with our dexterous hands and intelligence, but the end of human society means we would lose one of our primary food sources!

I see you there, Mr. Artist!
Don't you dare give me six arms or nine tails...
I'm already mutant enough, being blue.

Speaking of food, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving, if you celebrate it. I am extremely thankful for a great many things, including the folks who've read my words here and shared their opinion and thoughts with me as a result.

Until next time, happy reading all!

Currently Reading:

The Last Wild by Piers Torday

Impartiality

This might be a bit rambly and a touch personal, so I do apologize in advance.

Here we go...

A little while back, a good friend of mine asked a question about my own personal writing that I thought I was prepared for:

“Why ARE your characters anthropomorphic animals instead of humans?”

Really, it’s an extremely fair question that many writers of anthropomorphic animal fiction have no doubt run into. I’ve seen it posted up on webcomic and author FAQs at least several times. Yet somehow, that day, it tripped me up a little more than I was expecting. My knee-jerk response was probably the one that was the most true, as I responded “Well, my characters are animals because that’s what they are.”

It’s a bit circular in logic, but I feel it is true enough. Why are any characters in some novels human? Their species doesn’t have to be their primary identity, right? Honestly, I feel some old-fashioned fantasy fiction is kind of mocked for having Dwarves always ‘act like Dwarves’ and Elves always ‘acting like Elves’. Typically the characters that break from the molds created for their races are celebrated and memorable. Why else does the culturally unheard of friendship of Gimli and Legolas feel so strong and honest by the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy?

Of course, me being the type of fellow that I am, I couldn’t just let such a simple statement be the end of my answer to my friend’s question. I actually quickly backed up on my statement and tried to make a more solid and professional one that took on a different angle. My response was something of a mix of an answer I’d heard before from an author I can’t quite recall at the moment:

“My characters are animals so as to bypass racial stereotypes and to focus on how different types of people can get together despite their obvious differences. I can use my characters to make a statement about diversity and racism without calling out specific races and maybe make people think differently about the issues.”

Before some of the more cynical of my reader mutter “Yeah right…” on my somewhat canned statement, I actually feel there is a modicum of truth to what I said, though I wasn’t quite honest with my feelings on the matter and what really irks me about such a question sometimes.

I’m tired of race as being ‘a point’ in fiction.

After my answer, I was told a bit about how many publishers in the industry are looking for more diversity in literature, looking for stories about minority cultures and races that aren’t often represented in popular literature. While looking at publishers to contact for my own work, I actually saw something like this pop up several times where publishers were looking for works primarily focusing on ‘minority culture’ and a rather amusing statement I heard from that angle was ‘aliens don’t count as diverse cultures!’

It actually makes me a little angry that publishers and much of the media is clamoring for minority representation. This is not because I want women and people of color to continue to be under-represented and wrongfully stereotyped, but rather because I don’t think the people who publish and ask for this sort of focus really know what they’re asking for or how offensive it really is when they say they want something with a clear focus on ‘minority culture’.

When people are asking for stories about African Americans, they’re not really asking for stories about people who are black. They’re asking for stories about people who SHOW they’re black. They don’t want a black young black man named Jonathan Reed with a successful mother and father who live comfortably in upper-middle class America with dreams, problems, and ambitions of their own that have no bearing on their race. They want a story about a boy named Miles “Hoops” Jordan who struggles in a poverty-ridden neighborhood with his divorced mother as he fights to rise against the gang and drug culture and the ‘walls’ created by the color of his skin as he tries to prove what he can do.

I’m so tired of reading stories telling me that my race is the only major identity I have. Good at music, good at art, honors student, professional public speaker… all of these are subcategories that go under the heading of “He’s black, but…” and it seems to be all folks want to see when they want to read about ‘minority culture’. In fact, I remember a book called ‘Anansi Boys’ I read where the race of the character actually shocked me. He didn’t have a stereotypical ‘black’ name, he was successful and spoke well and never once was his race an ‘issue’. I only realized he was black when someone commented on his African heritage as it related to the mythology that was being referenced at various points in the story.

It actually shocked me that this well-spoken man I was reading about was black, and I feel like that’s a BAD thing. You know what’s also funny about it? Anansi Boys is not labelled in any fashion to suggest it’s primarily focused on characters of color, and yet I see publishers and readers looking for ‘black fiction’ and ‘minority fiction’ and putting lovely labels on them like ‘urban fiction’ and ‘urban romance’, just so folks don’t get confused about what they might pick up.

When I hear that publishers are looking for more ‘diversity’ in their books, I get the feeling they just want to pad out the ‘urban’ genre or the ‘women’s fiction’ genre. I do not get the feeling that they want to see new and interesting characters or strong, unique stories, but rather that they want stories they can put into their box in order to draw certain attention to themselves.

I don’t think that’s right to do to readers, and I feel like it’s poisoning our literary culture and culture in general. Rather than focusing on people, stories, and ideas, we’re focusing on covers and categories. We don’t need more stories about ‘black people’, we need more stories about ‘people, who also happen to be black.’

Of course, I don’t mean to undermine the wealth of wonderful literature about civil struggles. I feel they’re incredibly important, especially for historical purposes and showing the evils of society and how we can stand against them. In a way, such stories are fantastic accounts of what it really means to be ‘human’ in the fullest sense, and that’s really the idea that anthropomorphic literature was meant to bring into focus too. I’ve loved reading many stories about civil rights and I feel like they are still relevant and can be written about issues facing us today.

However, and bringing this back to the question that started this, I am tired of civil rights being the only place we see racial diversity.  I don’t write and draw stories about anthropomorphic animal characters in order to subvert or attack racial ideas.  I write about these characters because I love the worlds and ideas that they bring to the table, and also because I want to bring the focus away from the color of skin and towards who these people are as characters.

Yeah, folks may always associate raccoons with thievery and cats with wanting to take over the world, but I feel like, once readers see traits in these characters that they can identify with, they’ll more readily take to them and their stories and won’t be afraid of whether or not these characters are appropriately representing their race.

I do apologize if I went on a bit of ramble here, but I actually felt this was pretty relevant to the topics we’ve covered in this blog. Next week I’ll try to hop into something a bit more light-hearted, I promise!

For those who want a bit more 'cute' with their rant!
This is what I get for starting trouble...

Until then, happy reading, all!

-Chammy

Here Be Dragons

Dragons are interesting creatures when it comes to anthropomorphic fiction. Really, of all the anthro beasts available, dragons are perhaps one of the most common to see in fiction, even if those stories have no other talking animals outside of the dragon. They hold a ready spot in fantasy and fairy tales and are easily accepted as sages, monsters, and even sidekicks to the heroes. In rare instances, they even get to be heroes themselves! If anyone would like to see probably the best and most renowned book series with dragon characters, you don’t need to look any further than the “Dragonriders of Pern” series by Anne McAffrey.

However, and this may seem like an odd question, but: What exactly IS an anthropomorphic dragon?

I don’t think there’s any doubt that dragons are highly anthropomorphized. They’re known for telling riddles, hoarding treasure, and kidnapping beautiful women. Even at their most monstrous, dragons are still considered beasts under the domain of good or evil. It’s extremely rare for a dragon in literature to be treated like wild cattle, without any real rhyme or reason for what it does. With that in mind, though, there are also clearly different ‘levels’ of anthropomorphic dragons.

In recent years, the Dungeons and Dragons franchise has popularized a race called ‘Dragonborn’, who are basically wingless human-dragon hybrids. They look like the dragons in that universe, having scale patterns and most facial features to match, but they’re also still clearly human-like by standing upright and with plantigrade feet. They speak and move not unlike humans do and are regarded as odd in that universe, but not unheard of. Despite the name given, I think we could easily get away with calling this race an anthropomorphic dragon race.

Definitely an awesome race, but I wish they didn't always look so angry...

Then there are the more direct anthro dragons, seen less in every day literature and much more in proper furry literature. These dragons are essentially like D&D’s Dragonborn race, but they have wings, tails of varying lengths, and usually look a little less monstrous by design. Of course, they stand upright and have hands designed for manipulating objects, and their height varies. While these dragons ARE uncommon to see in everyday media, they’re still around in some places. One of my most favorite examples is Llewellyn, from the Ozy & Millie comic strip, and Lazarus, a dragon from SEGA’s Shining Wind series. When it comes to purely written and published works, however, I’m afraid I can’t think of any off the top of my head.

The real question here is: who's playing black?

When we look at these characters, I’m wondering, is it fair to call them ‘anthro’ dragons? Dragons are already plenty anthropomorphized in terms of speech and personality, and all these types of characters are adding to the human element is an opportunity for them to wear more clothes. I’ve seen some folks calling these types of characters ‘dragonkin’, but I think that just makes them feel like an entirely different race. Oddly enough, I feel the most comfortable just calling these characters ‘dragons’. Dragons are so varied in design already, and I feel like there’s little confusion about the animals anthro dragons are based upon if you were to present them to folks who know little of anthropomorphic characters.

What do you readers think? How would you name a difference between anthro and normal dragons? Dragonkin, dragonborn, dragonmen… no change in terminology at all?

Also, if anyone out there has any mainstream literature with such dragons featured prominently, please share it in the comments below! I’d love to get a better look at how these characters are dealt with in writing, and books about dragons are just fun in general.

One of the many reasons raccoons have short lifespans.

Until next time, happy reading, all!

-Chammy

Currently Reading:

The Unlikely Ones by Mary Brown