fchan

I have a pretty bad eyesight problem which makes my reading speed pretty crippled if i can't have OMG giant words, and simply don't have the patience to read books anymore. {furry fandom has little to do with it, i'm not exactly in it anymore} To get around this problem, i listen to books on tape alot. Not quite the same as doing it yourself, but its a very good alternative.

I read books for one reason, and enjoy furry art/fiction for another.

I do understand what you mean when you say that literature is becoming more and more generic. I'd recommend going to your local bookstore or library (not some chain store like Borders) and actually asking what they like. I came across some of my favorite books and authors that way.

Literature is not dead, it has just (sadly) become more commercial. Harry Potter made millions, so there are now hundreds of "childrens' fantasy." The DaVinci Code did well, there's now hundreds of "historical mystery" novels. This same thing has been happening with movies (superheroes, epic fantasy, 3D kids' movies) and video games (futuristic FPS, fantasy RPGs). It pains me to admit it, but originality has been put on the back burner in our culture in favor of media that will turn a profit.

I for one just can't really understand how you can pit one thing versus the other. It's like comparing brand A of oranges against and brand B of condoms.

After all what do books have to do with, the example you used and all, furry art? One thing is literature, the other is a direct depicted image.
I mean, do you find that "instant gratification" on seeing a furry image of some kind? Then you have to compare it versus non-furry images, not something of "opposite ends".

That said, I read books and look at furry things like ever before, because one thing was never competing with the other.

I never got the thing with "furry stories" - I mean, I read a few and they weren't anything special. I  most cases, they're generic fantasy/cyberpunk/sci-fi stories from some eager hobby author which aren't any good. The only difference to these shitty one-dollar-novels which lie in huge piles in your local supermarket are that in every third or fourth sentence it is mentioned that the characters are anthromorphic animals. It's like the reader has to be reminded of that constantly. I'd had more of it if I read something and just imagined the characters were anthros, if I really were into it. That's what imagination is for.

It's, of course, a matter of personal taste. But what I read so far reached from "generic" to "pathetic", it's the same with the art. Most people drawing furry images aren't really "good" (a matter of taste, again). The only thing furries get off on them is because they draw anthros and that's so "rare" that every shitty image is a masterpiece worth it's ridiculous price (In what other fandom you can earn 40 dollars for a bloody sketch you did while you're at the phone?)

These scripts are no match for my favourite books, if this thread intends to link these two. Otherwise I don't get the point how furrstuff is related two reading. If you just wanted to point out that you lose your interest in reading without any reason, it could be that television and computergames destroyed your fantasy. Maybe it has become work to imagine things, it's much easier when you get shown what you should think of.

>>8
I didn't say that quality furry stuff was easy to find, mind you, be it stories or images. And, actually, I do sometimes imagine that the characters in non-furry works are anthropomorphic animals. The thing is, the good furry authors (as you said, a matter of taste) have characters that are more than basically just humans in fursuits -- species actually means something. That's something you don't get just by giving the characters a different appearance in your head.

>>11

Do we maybe need a list of furry literature that -isn't- gay drama or adult material?  There must be -some- out there somewhere.

>>13
LLLLLLogalogalogaloga

>>15

I was assuming the subject was about prose fiction rather than comics.

>>14
Gossim gossim womp-womp-womp!

I read a news story recently where a group of zookeepers were cleaning an elephants enclosure and were pushing this really heavy cart around. The elephant saw they were having a hard time and walked up without any training whatsoever and started to help them push it. Animals are more complex than you think.

>>19
I know that rabbits can get pissed. I spend part of every day watching the cottontails that live around my house. My point was that I have hard time believing a rabbit would voluntarily start some shit with a predator. Now, if the rabbit's life were in danger or its young were being threatened or something, that's a different story.

Tigers may sulk, and I never said that bothered me. What I said was a tiger going *emo*. There's a difference. A strong, fierce predator constantly wailing about how everything sucks and how terrible his life is... again, it just seems not right, somehow.

...You've got me curious as to what intimidated the bear. :)

That being said, it may indeed just be a taste thing. I'm not saying that all characters of a species should behave exactly the same, but I look at humans and see very different characteristics between the populaces of different regions/countries -- and we're the same species. Considering that, I just have a hard time believing that members of completely different species would consistently behave just like us.

>>23 Whoah thats impressive.

>>22

What intimidated the bear was a girl yelling and waving her backpack over her head. It was some "survival" show years back.
It was a blackbear, but a grissley would have been intimidated just as easily if something bigger than it came stomping along.

Or if the bear were a humanoid with opposable thumbs and human vocals and a social life and the bunny intimidating it had a more forceful personality or something to threaten the bear with (legal threats, humiliation, a weapon, or even the bunny's own disapproval if he's someone the bear looks up to)? Yea, that would be completely different.

Anthros aren't humans, but they aren't animals either, and you're treating them like animals. A normal bear anthro isn't doing to kill and eat a rabbit anthro in any developed country; he has no more leverage to intimidate the bunny than a big man intimidating a small man. And while many bunnies will be meek or flighty in personality, the odd exceptions could easily be napoleonic terrors to their friends or neighbors (assuming he's even that small; in a lot of art rabbits or hares are drawn average size).

"Fierce predator"? That has nothing to do with a tigers personality. I could go out with a riffle and be a "fierce predator" and then come home and mope about the house all day long. And as far as cats go, tigers are very moody and emotional. In that case you aren't even expecting it to act like the animal, you're expecting it to act like... I don't know, the zodiac.


Now, tigers also have a lot of testosterone and a bad temper. This doesn't mean he won't mope around talking about how life sucks, it means that his moping might occassionaly be punctuated by roaring temper-tantrems or him snapping (perhaps frighteningly) at his friends.
Your expectations for anthros appear to be mostly exclusive ("An anthro wouldn't. . ."), which makes them unrealisticly restrictive. There is very little that any intelligent creature wouldn't do in -some- context.