Cruisinforabruising101 - 0-o

Concept: xenofiction sci-fi where the main characters are different alien beings. It’s all treated and framed as “normal” from both the audience’s and each other’s perspective, even when their behavior is obviously not something a human would do.

Eventually, we meet a human character, whose actual name appears to be “Smith the Human”, and who acts like aliens from mediocre pop sci-fi stories – like, someone goes “Oh, I’ve never met a human before!” and he responds by spouting random (technically-accurate-to-real-life) factoids about human culture and biology in a way that no real human being ever would, i.e. “Humans are social persitence hunters and apex predators – on our harsh homeworld of Terra, we evolved to form hierarchal hives or colonies, like your world’s Zoink-Ants or Frisk-Bees! We weren’t that fast over short distances, and so we caught our prey, not by ambush or by pursuit, but by simply walking, brisk jogging, and tracking our prey until the prey tired itself out, allowing us to catch it at our leisure!” He always maintains the same stilted but forceful tone of voice, devoid of any emotional content, and his facial expression never changes from “we didn’t bother to animate his face”-style dull surprise.

He wears American soldier gear and says “Humans are a Proud Warrior Race™!” without a trace of irony.

Now, one possible punchline would be that the protagonists eventually meet other humans, and it turns out that he’s the only human who’s Like That. However, I think that in order to commit to the whole “xenofiction” bit, you’d need to make every human completely identical, in exactly the same way that members of an alien species in pop sci-fi are identical. The way I personally would do it is,the loud-deadpan-weirdo routine is just an “unreliable narration” due to the perceptions of characters who aren’t familiar with humans; as a group, even if the nonhuman characters are like “Wow, they really are synchronized like a hive of Frisk-Bees!” or whatever, the humans behave exactly how an actual group of humans would behave in that kind of situation, if you read between the lines. (And, y'know, a squadron of uniformed soldiers with a CO in the background is inevitably going to act differently from a similarly-sized group of civilians; the nonhuman characters, and hence the audience, just don’t get to see how they are “normally”.)

The actual punchline is that after the “human” plot is resolved (maybe they’re antagonists, and the prior ramble about their biology proves to be a vital component?), there’s a scene where the viewpoint character is a human, and the whole situation is precisely reversed: humans look more diverse and talk like normal people, and all the nonhuman characters of each species are identical and do the loud-deadpan-weirdo thing.

Hi! I'm trying to write a fic where the main characters, who are normally human, are now animals. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to keep them in character though, since certain things they could do before, they can't now (ie. no hands, can't do certain things humans can, etc.) I'd very much welcome any advice, since I'm close to deciding this story idea is at a dead-end. Thanks!

Is this a fic where humans are suddenly turned into animals and now trying to deal with their new forms? Or is this an AU where the cast just are animals and that’s the world that they live in all the time? I’d write those in very different ways.

If this is an animal AU, and that’s a very doable thing. Just think about animated films. Even though the characters are animals doing very animal things, they also maintain personalities that are familiar to humans. 

If it’s a case of humans being transformed into animals, then they’ll need to spend time (and probably get frustrated) figuring out how to do things in their new bodies. No opposable thumbs means they’ll need to find another way to turn a doorknob, for example. No ability to talk means that they won’t be able to utter passwords for electronic locks. 

I haven’t written this kind of fic before, so I’ll open up the floor to see who else can add thoughts here. This could be a really interesting challenge for you, anon, so I hope you don’t give up!

also like, idk how to tell y'all this but…

dehumanizing *anyone* is bad. it doesn’t matter if they’re “the oppressor” or they have societal power over you. if you get to a point where you look at *anyone* and you don’t see a human being with thoughts and feelings and internal motivations, if you get to a point where you look at an individual person and see

“the oppressor” or someone that you feel 100% completely comfortable doing violence against without hesitation or consideration…

that’s actually bad. Social justice is not and should never be about trying to figure out who it’s okay to do violence against. Nor is it about “flipping the tables”.

i keep trying to phrase a post as like a helpful tip for people who like worldbuilding but. i have to be honest with myself. it is not a helpful tip because no one asked for it. i just want to rant about kinship terminologies.

We need more games where you play as animals.

Regular animals.

Cyborg animals.

Alien animals.

I don’t care. Just more animals please.

something i think about a lot is what if alien species have less biodiversity on their planets. like if they’ve got maybe 20, 25 species of bugs, total. so they come to earth and they’re like “whoa.” or they’ll like be like walking down the street and they’re like “ok what’s that” pointing at a st bernard and you’re like “oh that’s a dog” and they’re like “whoa, neat, i’ve heard about dogs.” 

and you walk for a while longer and then they point at a yorkie and they’re like “what’s that?” and you kind of have to be like “…that. that’s also a dog.” and they’re like “wait, really?” and you’re like “yeah.” and it takes them a while to absorb this but then you just keep walking.

and like you’re going for a while and somebody’s walking their bull terrier and you’re like trying to walk faster hoping your alien friend doesn’t see but no dice they’re like WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT and you’re like “that. that is a dog” and they let out an anguished wail

and like every time after that they see a weird four legged creature they’re like “that BETTER not be a goddamn dog” and half the time you gotta wince and be like “actually,” 

@bananaruntz i think what sucks the most about it with xenofiction in particular is that when you have characters that are simultaneously nonhuman and anthropomorphic, it creates this issue where you're forced to accept any misogyny at face value and assume that it's just scientific accuracy, because nature CAN be notoriously unfair. it can't be denied that the females of many species get the shorter end of the stick, but way too many xenofiction authors seem to operate on the idea that this is innately true for the entire animal kingdom when it's just not. even if you are writing about a species where male animals generally dominate the hierarchy, that still shouldn't preclude you from being able to write well-rounded female characters, especially ones that aren't bound by suspiciously human misogynistic tropes.

xenofiction presents so so so many fascinating opportunities to really examine things like sexism and identity and biological determinism but it feels like no one has properly taken advantage of that yet. i am being so fucking serious when i say that xenofiction desperately needs a queer, trans, feminist upheaval.

helloo

You, a lover of xenofiction/animal stories who is truly interested in proper research and natural representation, with projects of your own in mind.

Let me tell you, if you read this, that I love you and will be willing to sell my kidney in order to support you.

man imagine aliens w no concept of interspecies cooperation or pets

‘commander the scan of this shelter reveals three primary lifeforms’

‘excellent. elaborate please’

‘all mammals. two quadrupeds, one feline and one canine, as well as one biped sapien. they appear to be… relaxing and eating in a shared space’

‘what the fuck’