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overslept

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

(Edited the original post to include the bigger list)

For the Solstice: “Invictus”

In the dimness he woke and knew it was too late. Morning never came so late unless the world was ending.

Fortunately, he knew what to do about that.

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I truly hate the word "unalive." There are so many other euphemisms that fictional Italian mobsters worked so hard to provide you with and you just ignore them.

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.

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.

oh my god two words in that just UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

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,” 

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!