Oh, wait, this is coming off as sarcastic, isn't it?
Well, crap, that backfired.
For the record, the entire premise of "let's make talking animals the main characters and leave that completely unexplained in way that offers nothing to the story" is a flawed premise, and also makes people wonder why you'd do that (we suspect the writer has some sort of freaky weird animal people fetish, and, you know what, we'd probably right in this case).
If you're a fantasy writer and you can't come up with some sort of symbolic or thematic elements to the animal thing, or maybe some cool little sci-fi or fantasy explanation, or have the characters do something they could only do as anthropomorphic animals, or just freaking something to justify your decision, you should maybe not be a fantasy writer. It shouldn't be hard at all, but apparently it is.
Anthropomorphic animals characters are interesting because they open up so many possibilities; by not using any of these possibilities, and telling a story that does abso-fricking-lutely nothing with these characters' interesting attributes, is just boring and weird and stupid.
Oh, thank you!
Sarcasm is kind of my thing, so glad you noticed.
Oh, wait, this is coming off as sarcastic, isn't it?
Well, crap, that backfired.
For the record, the entire premise of "let's make talking animals the main characters and leave that completely unexplained in way that offers nothing to the story" is a flawed premise, and also makes people wonder why you'd do that (we suspect the writer has some sort of freaky weird animal people fetish, and, you know what, we'd probably right in this case).
If you're a fantasy writer and you can't come up with some sort of symbolic or thematic elements to the animal thing, or maybe some cool little sci-fi or fantasy explanation, or have the characters do something they could only do as anthropomorphic animals, or just freaking something to justify your decision, you should maybe not be a fantasy writer. It shouldn't be hard at all, but apparently it is.
Anthropomorphic animals characters are interesting because they open up so many possibilities; by not using any of these possibilities, and telling a story that does abso-fricking-lutely nothing with these characters' interesting attributes, is just boring and weird and stupid.