General Discussion

@Xionahri

RE: Rewriting non-xeno as xeno.

It just so happened that my Final Fantasy 7 hyperfixation converged with my xenofiction brainrot. So I decided to create an alternate universe where all the protagonists and some of the antagonists are forest animals, and Midgar is either a forest being cut down to build a mako plant or a city encroaching on the edge of a forest. But I haven't even written anything for it yet because it's rapidly taking a nosedive into This Is Just Farthing Wood territory

@LoversMasque

I know little about Final Fantasy as a whole (have played a few games here and there, but not many), but that sounds interesting. You had me especially at This Is Just Farthing Wood, because I really liked Farthing Wood and having more of a similar flavour is not necessary a bad thing.
If you were to write it, I'd read it, despite not having any clue about FF7. Would probably look at TVTropes beforehand, to get at leawst a rough idea.

One amll idea about it, because I find the mental image hilarious: Just real woodland animals, except for some inexplicable reason chocobos just exist there too and nobody thinks twice about that.

And yeah, I get it, having two fandoms at once on the brain and sudddenly overlap starts happening.

[quote name="LoversMasque" date="2022-06-28 16:12:51" ] @/Xionahri RE: Rewriting non-xeno as xeno. It just so happened that my Final Fantasy 7 hyperfixation converged with my xenofiction brainrot. So I decided to create an alternate universe where all the protagonists and some of the antagonists are forest animals, and Midgar is either a forest being cut down to build a mako plant or a city encroaching on the edge of a forest. But I haven't even written anything for it yet because it's rapidly taking a nosedive into This Is Just Farthing Wood territory [/quote] I'd still read it. I love those kinds of AUs. That reminds me, there's a Watership Down AU of Hannibal on AO3. They're all rabbits.

I have a couple of additions for you!

Quintaglio Ascention is a science fiction trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer. The Wikipedia description says it best: The books depict an Earth-like world on a moon which orbits a gas giant, inhabited by a species of highly evolved, sentient Tyrannosaurs, among various other creatures from the late Cretaceous period, imported to this moon by aliens 65 million years prior to the story. I'm currently halfway through the first book, Far-Seer, and it's extremely good for how campy the premise is.

Empire of the Ants by Bernard Werber is about a hidden civilization of intelligent ants, and one in particular who must go on a journey to save her colony. I haven't read this one yet, but it sounds like it's told at least partly from the perspective of the human characters who stumble upon the colony.

Edit: I just remembered The Hermux Tantamoq Adventures by Michael Hoeye, which are about a watchmaker mouse who becomes a detective. I've only read the first book, Time Waits for No Mouse, and it was pretty good. If we want to get into it there's a ton of children's books that fit this genre...

I just started work on my first piece of xenofiction! Any advice?

Updated the thread.


@LoversMasque

If you're writing about real animals, first thing you want to do is read up on their biology and behaviour. Wikipedia is always a good starting point. And not just that animal, it's also good to look into taxonomic ranks below the species rank (eg. if you want to write about a house sparrow, look also into sparrows in general, songbirds, neoaves, birds and if you're really feeling it maybe theropods too. Compare and contrast what you read on each level to figure out what traits your sparrow may or may not have.
In a real example, I'm currently working on a Splatoon fanfic from a salmonid's POV, and I found that this character would have lateral lines by looking at the wikipedia page for ray-finned fish. That organ has not been mentioned on any pages regarding salmon.)

It's good to know how the animals percieve the world to help your writing. For example, in the Silverwing novels, colours outside of the greyscale spectrum are never mentioned, since while bats have surprisingly good eyesight, they're entirely colourblind.

Watch videos about the animal you want to write about. While watching, imagine yourself in that position. What would you see, hear, smell and feel, and how would that make you feel in turn? Even if you write about sapient beings, this could help getting you in that nonhuman mindset.

If you want to write about aliens or fantastical creatures, there's a good chance that somewhere is something like them on this planet. Not exactly, of course, but you can still look into animals with traits of these beings and maybe understand a little more how they work and what niche they're in.


That's all I can think of for now, but I might get back to you if I can think of more.