Hmm. I'm not sure I understand your example, but I get your point.
I guess the thing I'm trying to get at here is that we're a mature-enough fandom that we should start striving to make high-quality genre fiction, especially in magazines and periodicals that offer to showcase our work to a wider audience. And in good genre fiction, the setting is generally used to enrich the story, provide flavor for the characters and highlight a certain aspect of our natures or some deeper truth. In science-fiction and fantasy, people aren't astronauts "just because". You don't have magic "just because". There aren't aliens "just because". And you shouldn't use furries "just because".
This isn't being rigid. No one's saying that you have to use anthropomorphic animals in one specific way. But it should mean something, even if it just influences character or changes the way your protagonist interacts with the world around him. You don't even have to have a character's "furriness" be the main point of the story. It just has to be something more than "He's just a regular guy, only he has ears and a tail."
I would even venture to say that people like stories better when a character's anthropomorphism is called out in a deeper way. It's actually fun to think about how a world with furries would be different from our own. Little touches that show the author has thought about that goes a long way towards establishing a well-rounded setting, and makes the story feel more real. It deepens and enriches your writing in a way that we should be striving towards.
If you're a genre writer who wants to improve his craft, then this is the kind of thing you should be thinking about. A craftsman never uses a tool mindlessly, or just because. There's a reason.
Hmm. I'm not sure I understand your example, but I get your point.
I guess the thing I'm trying to get at here is that we're a mature-enough fandom that we should start striving to make high-quality genre fiction, especially in magazines and periodicals that offer to showcase our work to a wider audience. And in good genre fiction, the setting is generally used to enrich the story, provide flavor for the characters and highlight a certain aspect of our natures or some deeper truth. In science-fiction and fantasy, people aren't astronauts "just because". You don't have magic "just because". There aren't aliens "just because". And you shouldn't use furries "just because".
This isn't being rigid. No one's saying that you have to use anthropomorphic animals in one specific way. But it should mean something, even if it just influences character or changes the way your protagonist interacts with the world around him. You don't even have to have a character's "furriness" be the main point of the story. It just has to be something more than "He's just a regular guy, only he has ears and a tail."
I would even venture to say that people like stories better when a character's anthropomorphism is called out in a deeper way. It's actually fun to think about how a world with furries would be different from our own. Little touches that show the author has thought about that goes a long way towards establishing a well-rounded setting, and makes the story feel more real. It deepens and enriches your writing in a way that we should be striving towards.
If you're a genre writer who wants to improve his craft, then this is the kind of thing you should be thinking about. A craftsman never uses a tool mindlessly, or just because. There's a reason.