Xenofiction - Blog Posts

The fundamental dilemma of trying to avoid humanocentric writing in fantasy and sci-fi settings is that, while the old Humans Are Special trope is undeniably humanocentric, so is the opposite.

If your non-human species are good at exactly the set of things that humans are good at, and they have their own stuff going on besides, they’re effectively “human+”. You’re still positioning humans as the baseline against which all others are measured.

Paradoxically, non-humanocentric writing demands that humans be special in some respects, since the alternative is treating humanity’s exact set of capabilities and aptitudes as the bar you need to be taller than in order to ride. The trick is that you have to make humans special without making them Special - and that’s not an easy trick to pull off!

Trope of the Week: Aliens are Blue-Skinned Humans

There are two types of aliens in science-fiction: the monstrous of mind and body who only wish to destroy, and the incredibly human who are sentient and sly. Rarely do we find a race that is somewhere between. Sentience and intelligence is almost a guarantee of a human-like body, and the lady aliens? They will definitely have boobs.

Why this can be bad: There are several things at work here when we’re crafting an alien species. We have a tendency to think ourselves the top of the food chain and therefore the most intelligent species. Anything on par with or superior to us must therefore look similar to ourselves. As species of organisms on earth grow more advanced in neurology, they come to have a very specific pattern: major sense organs all located around the brain and in the head, two arms, two legs, tendency for bipedalism, et cetera. And, of course, there are the influences of pop culture such as earlier seasons of Star Trek, which lacked the budget and technology to create intricate unhuman characters capable of being on screen for more than a couple minutes.

Put this all together and it culminates in many uninspired alien designs. The sentient beings end up closely resembling us, if not being nearly identical. Some of this can amount to laziness, but a lot of it has to do with the factors I listed above. While we can’t exactly argue whether or not this is realistic, it nevertheless becomes tiresome when aliens devolve into humans with strange skin colors and maybe a few other “exotic” features. While fantasy can have this issue (dwarves, elves, and humans are all pretty much the same as far as special variation go), they at least tend to exist on the same planet and therefore go through the same evolutionary process. Aliens do not have this excuse.

How you can fix it: To ask you to create a dozen completely unique alien species for your science-fiction novel/game/movie would be insane. It’s very hard for us to think of creatures uninspired by ourselves or the world we see, and similarities to humans make it easier for the audience to envision or connect. However, I would challenge you to make your sentient aliens more diverse. Octavia Butler does a fantastic job in her Lilith’s Brood series. The oankali, a sentient and highly-advanced alien race, only resemble humans because they take on the traits of the species they are preparing to make first contact with it. In truth, they’re covered in sensory tentacles, have three reproductive sexes, and have a greater range of perception than humans. While similar to humans, they are also highly different and incredibly unique, which makes them much more interesting to read about than most other aliens I’ve seen.

Creating an unparalleled alien race is not easy, and it’s hard to expect a writer to make each species he or she creates entirely unique. Nevertheless, there is still a want for more diversity and otherness to our aliens. It shows a real effort has been put in to the world building, rather than the writer slapping on some black eyes and hooves in an attempt to make them different.

Bottom Line: Not every sentient alien has to be incredibly unique, but put a concerted effort into your world building to avoid making boring human clones.

You’re a mimic. You were disguised as a chair in a dungeon when an adventurer decided to take you as loot. You’ve actually enjoyed your life ever since as furniture in a jolly tavern. So when some ruffians try to rob the now-elderly adventurer’s business, you finally reveal yourself.

Ok, so, as most know hobbits LOVE mushrooms, but what if they love ALL mushrooms, even the poisonous ones. What if a hobbit’s body is able to handle more of the poison and it doesn’t affect them at all. And they love it!

id wreak mayhem for a really good scifi where sight was considered as exotic and numinous as telepathy by the protag species

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,” 

I bet octopuses think bones are horrific. I bet all their cosmic horror stories involve rigid-limbs and hinged joints.

I know I’m being an insufferable worldbuilding nerd here, but my basic metric for evaluating media with very inhuman protagonists is “how easily can one offer a complete and coherent account of this media’s plot without ever mentioning the fact that the protagonist is, for example, a talking car?”. The harder it is, the higher it scores.

non-human character: *moves their ears/wings/tail to indicate their emotional state and for emphasis when communicating*

me:

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’

Whenever I see a post on tumblr suggesting aliens don’t have gender, I always think–‘but what if also the reverse. What if aliens also have some fundamental social construct we don’t’.

Like, they come and meet us and they’re like ‘hey this is an awkward question but what’s your gooblebygark?’

And we’re like what.

‘You know, the… the thing. Your goobledygark. The thing that dictates whether you’re gnarfgnoovles or brubledoopes’

What. What. What the fuck, those words don’t even mean anything??? What are you talking about?

‘Look, your ridiculous human languages don’t seem to have the words for these! But they’re totally a thing, they’re like, fundamental aspects of social life for our species, just… just let us lick you so we can know what verb tense to use when we speak to you.’

What does one thing have to do with the other??? That makes no–

‘UGH, nevermind, you’re totally brubledoopes, I can just tell, I don’t even need to taste your bacterial skin colonies.’

And then another alien overhears and is like ‘holy shit, you can’t stereotype like that, that’s SO NOT COOL’

‘yeaH BUT THEY WON’T LET ME LICK THEM’

I think for me, the hardest part of writing xenofiction is striking the perfect balance between sapience and animality.

Because really nature is so variable and so strange in its "rules", but many times we are not aware of it. Sometimes we see animals and their worlds as one thing and ignore all their capabilities, all that can be and will be.

The type of story you want to make can also enter a little bit, realism doesn't matter too much if your story doesn't pretend to be one (or in any case go for a more fantastic side than real). On the one hand you have stories of not entirely sapient animals (White Fang, Wild Animals I Have Know, Bambi etc), on the other hand stories that are already entirely fantastic and/or anthropomorphized (Warriors, Redwall, The Jungle Book etc) and those that try to mix both concepts (Watership Down, Gahoole in its beginnings, among others).

For my part, although I have in mind a couple of more fantastic and "cheesy" ideas, my xenofiction is mostly based on the real side of things, I strongly believe that animals themselves create thousands of amazing stories, stories that happen in front of our noses but that we are missing.

So, what I'm referring to with this. It's that we are usually left with only one idea of what animals do. We have those who believe that animals are like in fairy tales where they are all friends where there is peace and love, and then there are those who see nature as a gore horror movie where there is someone dying every second and everything is infinitely horrible and morbid.

And, it is not like that. Animals may not be complete friends all the time, but neither are they machines programmed to just follow an order and be devoid of feelings. It goes far beyond all of this that we as humans have learned. That's why it's so wonderful.

For example, many people know that Capybaras are incredibly calm animals that seem to get along with a lot of wildlife, and they do. But also, among them there is also aggression, male Capybaras fight even to the death just to dominate a territory. They are also hunted by other animals such as pumas, jaguars and crocodiles.

And even with all that, you can see a Capybara enjoying life with his species, passing through the territory of crocodiles without any of them being interested in killing him and even climbing on the back of one to cross streams.

So, you really don't always need to give animals human values or morals in order for them to "get along" or "have peace". They are much more than harems, infanticide and reproduction. They are beings that in their own way feel and think, can fight and at the same time, have peace.

That is all.

I bet octopuses think bones are horrific. I bet all their cosmic horror stories involve rigid-limbs and hinged joints.

As someone who grew up with and loved and adored The Land Before Time (1988) and experienced quite a few of its sequels, too, it's amazing how similar the Ice Age series became to it as well - meaning sequels wise. Though in my opinion, Ice Age (2002) is leaps and bounds better than Land Before Time (1988) though I do deeply love BOTH of their original movies.

Both The Land Before Time and Ice Age (2002)'s original movies are gritty and dark, with a sense of "realism" grounding their events with migrations underpinning the journeys of the original narratives and with a greater xenofictional factor since in IA1, the Ice Age megafauna are treated like majestic creatures who growl and rumble (see Manny and Diego mostly) like they might've done so and with the threat of humans being a major conflict factor within IA1 itself with Manny's choice to return baby Roshan despite the knowledge that in doing so, the child has a chance to become a hunter one day.

However, just like its predecessor The Land Before Time, when it came for Ice Age to get continuations, the realistic underpinnings of IA1 were thrown out the window as its series went Lighter and Softer, just like Land Before Time before it.

And yes, in one of The Land Before Time's many direct-to-DVD/VHS sequels, aliens and an asteroid and end of the world themes (like Ice Age's much reviled IA5) become major plot points!

The Land Before Time sequel where Littlefoot reunites with his father involves Longnecks pushing back the sky to save everyone (because of a solar eclipse which was treated in-universe as an "end of the world" event) and the Stone of Cold Fire teased alien dinosaurs. .-. It was around those sequels that I put away keeping up with the TLBT sequels though when I was young I enjoyed them and it saddens me the Ice Age sequels followed the same route.

My hopes for the Ice Age sequels, even as a young (12/13 year old) child was that they'd buck the trend and remain dark and xenofictional and not devolve into silly Lighter and Softer-ness and Dense and Wackier plots like The Land Before Time did years before. In short, the Ice Age sequels deserved better - they deserved to not basically become a modern, theatrically-released "Land Before Time" sequels-redux!

@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.

@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.

If you guys have an hour or two to kill, I highly recommend these two videos by Cardinal West on the Xenofiction genre. I have a far greater appreciation and understanding of the genre and it’s sub-categories thanks to him and his videos. These and his other xenofiction video essays are all so well written and entertaining and such a great resource for people wanting to get into reading or writing the genre.

I've been watching some videos about xenofiction for... reasons... *glances at my recent writing projects* AHEM yeah and this guy mentioned something that... vaguely got me to understand my friends more.

I'm (unfortunately) friends with lots of people who think a lot of the things I'm interested in are "too weird" for them. They can't watch The Last Unicorn because they find the unicorn as well as the art style creepy. They can't watch Watership Down because they can't wrap their head around talking rabbits who haven't advanced to Wind in the Willows levels of society yet. Or maybe they can't watch or read animal xenofiction or consume anthro art whatsoever because animals don't talk or do those things and they think that it could have been as good with human characters. It's like their brain does all of these gymnastics that I haven't in all my life considered. I just liked these pieces of media as a kid because I thought they were... cool... I've never found it hard to understand that the rabbits in this story talk, even though they don't in real life. That objective/subjective concept has never crossed my mind whatsoever.

This guy talked about verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief. Verisimilitude is pretty much just continuity and rules in a story. Firebenders in The Last Airbender cannot bend water. Rabbits in Watership down can talk to each other, vaguely understand other animals, and cannot understand humans. They're fabricated rules of reality that exist within a narrative.

Suspension of disbelief is basically your capacity to understand and believe those fabricated rules. This can swing wildly in two directions. You can either be just wholely unconvinced of anything that doesn't follow normal rules of life or be totally gullible to the point of disregarding plot holes and crappy deux ex machina. I feel like I lean more toward disregarding plot holes lmao.

Not sure where I was going with this post but it felt sorta nice to hear another fan of xenofiction describe this... weird thing when you read a book or watch a movie that changes your life and you recommend it to a friend and their first reaction is "uh... how is she able to understand the wolf?" and that stuff is too weird for them to even consider picking up a masterpiece of art. I guess it makes me feel less like my friends are intentionally withholding understanding to be mean to me and more that this is just... how some people are and some people just seem incapable of understanding certain stories and media.

So I am a really big fan of animal point-of-view fiction (or xenofiction as it's sometimes called), but I can't help feeling that the genre has so much wasted potential, and writers in this genre have fallen into so much laziness. Animal stories have been a part of human culture since pretty much the beginning of time, and the more you read of these old animal fables and tales, you realise how clever and unique a lot of these stories were. And even more recently, we've had stories such as Jungle Book, Call Of The Wild, Animal Farm.But it seems since the release of Watership Down in, that the animal fiction genre has fallen into a sort of generic mould that every story has to follow. Don't get me wrong, I ADORE wds and I've read it so many times that the pages are falling out of my copy, but I've lost count of how many books I've seen that have the same "animals live in a tribal society with their own language, culture, and religion have to escape the clutches of The Evil Humans" narrative. While there are a few recent books that don't follow this exact mould (Felidae for example) the genre has seemed so stagnant for the past 50 years or so. And one thing that bothers me about these kinds of stories is how easily they fall into these really disturbing ideas. (I don't know if "ecofascit" is the appropriate term here, but it sounds very similar) They just all seem to drone on and on about "all the humans are evil and cruel and destructive and only the animals and untouched nature are pure bla bla bla" in such an embarrassingly misanthropic way. I read Garry Kilworth's Hunters Moon (the one about foxes) last year, and I could take none of the plot seriously because the writer couldn't go a single chapter without having a laughable Humans Bad rant. I don't know. Animal stories have meant so much to global human culture throughout history, and it makes me slightly sad to see the genre become stagnant and unoriginal over the past few decades.

(and I'd love to hear any book recommendations if you have any)

New Letterboxd list.

Xenofiction stories that add the negative impact of invasive introduced species and how native animals react and deal with them are an absolute Top Tier for me.

So, after watching a couple of videos about writing xenofiction.

Really rabbits are underappreciated animals in the aspect of how very exploitable their stories can be.

Yes, the most famous book in this genre has them as main characters and does a very good job of representing them correctly (Though not entirely, there are a couple of scientific flaws sprinkled in there but never mind). But the rest of the other rabbit stories out there are kind of uhhhhhhhh.

Because first we have the attempts to copy the first one, and well, they don't give too much by themselves. It's just reading the same thing but made up to look different and without all that sparkle.

And then we have the stories about rabbits that are already on the more traditional side. They are portrayed as calm, gentle, uwu cute or whatever, sometimes very shy, sometimes silly, they are present in the day, they mate like rabbits (ironic), everything kills them, etc. (well maybe some of them are not so bad). And let's not mention attributing the same behavior to all rabbits, no matter the species, it will be the same.

And well, that's not entirely how they work. They are animals that can be really complex in themselves, they are adaptable, variable, stop putting them in the same idea please.

If we are talking about European rabbits, why the hell do we only have stories that occur in areas where they were introduced? Why is there nothing about rabbits in their natural habitat, the Iberian Peninsula? Although it may not seem like it, there are many things that work differently there.

We have the "prince of a thousand enemies" although well, in reality many of those thousand enemies are not very interested in the predation of the rabbits because they were not used to them. That's why they managed to proliferate and become a long-term problem. (And let's mention when in Australia they introduced foxes to hunt the rabbits, but the foxes passed them by and preferred to go for the native fauna that was easier to catch and equally nutritive for them).

But, in their natural habitat, we even have animals that actively eats rabbits. There's also two species that literally LIVE off hunting rabbits, to the point that if these diminish they will too (The Iberian imperial eagle and the Iberian lynx). Just look at that potential with just that idea of predator-prey relationship. How the rabbits see these rabbit-killers and how they see their prey as their source of life.

(To give an example, and in parallel Canada lynx are almost entirely dependent on the American Hare in their diet, so much so, that if the hares disappear the lynx go with them. Not only that, but the hares are actually declining in population because of fear of the lynx. The lynx hunts them so much that the females reach a point where they even refuse to reproduce due to the stress of being hunted by the lynx. This does not happen with ANY other predator. Now transfer that to Europe and WOW).

And if we go to America, ok there are a couple of things with the common cottontail rabbit. But they ignore that there are over 28 species of rabbits throughout America, and even though they are related, each lives in a different environment and behaves differently.

We have rabbits that inhabit deserts and feed on cactus, others that live in cold mountain areas. And even rabbits that build burrows in the middle of swamps as a means of protection, these rabbits are basically aquatic. Why doesn't anyone notice this? Look at all that potential (and let alone the rest of the rabbits in other parts of the world).

I have realized that ironically, while the cat is one of the most known and loved animals/pets. The Wildcat still lingers in the shadows and is a very little noticed animal. Especially in the popular media.

We need more wild cat media, not just domestic cats, because those are all I see.

(And I'm referring to the "Felis silvestris", the others at least people can spot them).

And it seems that people have forgotten or do not realize that the cats we know are domestic animals, that have little or nothing to do in nature (I include stray/feral cats, because they are still domestic cats) and that their wild relative/ancestor exists and is still alive.

It's not like with dogs, there are dog media and there are wolf media, people know how to differentiate one from the other. But what about cats, can you locate any popular stories where wild cats are even in the wild (TRULY wild, not feral domesticated ones)?

And it's kind of sad, wild cats deserve to be noticed and recognized. Sadly many of them are in a vulnerable state and are disappearing.

I would like to see a xenofiction story with wild cats living their lives, hunting hares, taking on lynx, living in wild territory, doing things of their species that emphasize how they are different from their domesticated descendants.

Although I doubt that something like this will happen for a long time, it is one of those cases where you just have to say "If I don't do it, no one else will".

Another brilliant video.

I may save some of those cultural/society ideas he included as blueprints for some future stories I may write someday.

This guy nails it right on the head.

Check out his content, folks! He does incredible work and it is criminal he has so few subscribers. 

For aspiring writers of Xenofiction, I IMPLORE you, do NOT write like this. Note Cardinal’s SAGE advice, read from the best writers (Subjective of course, but still) and take a leaf out of their books. 

The “talking animals that have culture/societies” genre of books

(Edited the original post to include the bigger list)

Watching lion xenofiction and, why the most are literally copycats of the other? There's a lot of interesting things on lions life just to make the same thing over and over. And some of the "realistic behaviour" is not really realistic, is just a lot of misconceptions and stereotypes.

Just, Holy hell, i heard the entire story of the Mapogo lions coalition and why anybody writtes an story based on it? It's perfect, is HOLY SHIT like a xenofiction story actually happened. These lion coalitions have a LOT of potential to writte an story about it.

Ok but, imagine a xenofiction story where the main characters are "feral" domestic animals (that have run away from home to live in the wild for some reason), but instead of romanticizing their experience (demonizing captivity in the process) they show all the shit they have to deal with because they are not animals designed to live "free" and how there is no place for them in the nature anymore.

Or I don't know if there is already a story like that, btw.

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.