To Fur, or not to Fur.

[elfs]

As I was reviewing my work last night, I realized that I have been desperately, poorly remiss on one major aspect of my writing. It's such a glaring that problem that it's really starting to nag at me.

I haven't written a fur in a long time. Residents and Glass Reunion are very old stories that I polished up for recent publication. About the only recent "furry" story is A Place In History, which is a warped and depressing piece of work by Transhumanist standards. You have to go back to September 2004 to find a story I've written that features a furry character as the protagonist.

All of which leaves me with the Naked City [Edit: I swear, I did not look at the Music field before writing this post!] phenomenon: there are 250 stories to be told among the Sterlings on board the starship Einstein's Canvas, and I've only concentrated on three of them. All of the Pendorians who get involved (Saul, the Twins, Zoeya) are human. I've been canoodling with using other characters (an academic and a journalist) instead of my current stable of government, military, and office types and wondering if I should make the object of their affections furry.

My furry stories have usually been about metaphor: for being a different race, or a different sexuality, or being handicapped by one's shape, or so forth. They've been about seeing past the surface. I've resisted writing fur with Sterlings mostly because humans have gotten so weird for the near-standard Sterling characters that just seeing the surface is hard enough.

Just idly thinkin' here, that maybe some of my fans have been disappointed by the recent lack of catgirls and the like, and maybe I should strive to put a few more in.

Comments

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

please do.

Heck, with the humans all being so odd, tossing out some other species will both add variety, and maybe even a nice contrast. You've got all your current human characters fighting tooth and nail with their upbringing and environments to be human, and here's this cat/mouse/zebra/whatever who's doing a better job of it than they are.

It could be a good grounding for a character who's having a hard time 'finding' themselves, perhaps. Also, if this is well on into the future, after kennet's little terror has taken over in the engineering lab, i'd love to see what new species she's churned out to add to the mix.

[tehrasha.livejournal.com]

I have been wondering if Carrol ever took advantage of Ken giving her Donna's genecode. Seeing Ken's reaction to a Donna II would be very interesting, especially if Carrol never told him about it.

It may even be good outlet for your recently mentioned melancholy.

[athelstan.livejournal.com]

I love every thing you write, but if you want to write more furry I would love it. I know that for me the most interesting concept in your stories is The Great Hall. This idea that your body would be remade into a new form by this magical force that can see in you what shape your body should be... it's the mystical in your very technical world. It also is a fantasy that I find very appealing.

All that being said, just write your what muse gives you.

I've been behind on reading things...

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

...but I don't miss 'furry' characters when they're not around. Sure, a huge portion of your stories feature them, but they're not the only thing in that universe I enjoy reading about.

And on a side-note, I can so relate to that 'wait... only safe for 8 days?' mental hiccup you went through, I had a couple of similair situations when I was originally tooling around with your Pendor Clock code to make my LJ Style that showed dates in Pendorian. Er... is that the right term for their time structure? Or is there some more appropriate term buried in the stories somewhere I missed?

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

Generally, part of my experience of being a 'fan' is a willingness and trust in the arteur. I wouldn't consider myself a fan if I liked some of what the person had done but didn't trust them to continue to produce content that I liked and enjoyed. I don't like the thought that I demand that an artist who's work I enjoy follow my tastes rather than their muse.

That said, catgirls are nice.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I don't think "This story doesn't work for me" is incompatible with being a fan of a particular author. There's a couple of Cherryh novels I've had that experience with, way out in left field compared to her other work, in terms of style and content.

And we're talking about porn here: clear-quill smut. You're not going to turn on all your fans with every story.

So, more fur, please. I'm getting frustrated. :)

[(Anonymous)]

Yay! Catgirls!

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

Well, I certainly didn't mean to say that I expect to enjoy everything that someone I'm a fan of produces, but that I trust them to continue to make things that are interesting and enjoyable for me. I'm fans of lots of artists that I don't even necessarily enjoy all of what they do, but they consistently create new things that I enjoy, or what of theirs I do enjoy I really really enjoy.

In this case, inevitably not every story Elf writes will be great in my eyes, but I trust him and his muse to do right by me as a spender of my attention-currency on his continuing work.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

How about some more stories involving the bird people from Albedo One and First Contact?