You, A Lover Of Xenofiction/animal Stories Who Is Truly Interested In Proper Research And Natural Representation,

Why do the peoples draw mermaids with knee bends in their fishy tails

“Why are non-human characters always your favourites?”

Also going to finally make a pinned post for all my stuff:

BOGLEECH - my tumblr blog is named after this website I created around 2002 and still update. Thousands of pages worth of content focusing on creature design as well as real biology. My review of the original Legend of Zelda monsters might be the most straightforward example of my articles. Links to some of the most popular content:

POKEMON REVIEW ARCHIVE: - I rate and review each and every single Pokemon, in Pokedex order, on its merits as a creature design. I also do so as someone whose favorite animals are all parasites.

DIGIMON REVIEW ARCHIVE - same, but more chaotic.

CREEPYPASTA COOKOFF ARCHIVE - for several years I hosted a yearly writing contest before it grew too big for me to keep up with. There are over a thousand user submitted horror, fantasy, sci fi and surrealist stories here emphasizing unconventional, original ideas you seldom see from the "creepypasta" community!

The original "MORTASHEEN" Monster Archive - since the early 2000's I've created and illustrated more than 800 creatures and counting for my own monster-catching world, now set for release as a tabletop RPG setting.

AWFUL HOSPITAL: SERIOUSLY THE WORST EVER (page one): an interactive comedy-horror-sci-fi webcomic I started in 2014 about a medical facility that could maybe be better.

Some of my other internet stuff:

PATREON - constant work makes my patreon updates inconsistent, but the content backlog goes back years with a huge amount of exclusive art and writing. I try to put up new exclusive stuff whenever I can.

ETSY - I design all sorts of original enamel pins like these, plus I sell zero-maintenance terrarium plants (just leave them in a jar!), original books and other things!

COLOR THE ABYSS (available on the above etsy!) - a 30 page educational deep sea coloring book! Includes a few famous favorites like giant isopods and hagfish, but mostly focuses on less popular, often much weirder animals.

UNBELIEVABLE BUGS - also regularly restocked in the etsy store, 30 of the strangest and most surprising arthropods most people have likely never heard of, illustrated by myself and @revretch, written for even the youngest kids to understand (but will likely teach you something new at any age)

My Itch.io and Ko-fi - both sell digital versions of my books, including some creepypasta collections and my first novel, "Return of the Living," about a world of entirely ghosts suddenly dealing with the appearance of ghost-hunting monsters.

TWITCH CHANNEL - I now try to stream something at least monthly, sometimes weekly when possible, from horror games to books and art.

YOUTUBE CHANNEL - archives my twitch streams and other little things.

INSTAGRAM - look at pictures of my huge weird collection of toys and Halloween collectibles

BLUESKY - I'm going to put mainly just updates to my stuff on here. SEE ALSO:

HUMANS-B-GONE - a science fiction animated series by my partner @revretch, about a world of kaiju-size, technologically advanced insects and arachnids to whom vertebrates like us are just pesky little "gubs." Also has a tumblr account @humansbgone

using non-human limbs to show a character’s expression is fantastic— fur bristling to show anger, big elf ears drooping to show sadness, tails swishing to show joy— but using non-human limbs as the only way to show a character’s expression is even better. a calm, stoic facade, their anger betrayed only by bristling fur. insisting they’re fine, but their ears are drooping. pretending they don’t care for hugs, but their tail is swishing madly.

Hmmm I've seen a lot of crow and raven people in fantasy settings but sci-fi 'uplift' premises tend to focus on dolphins and chimps and other reasonable targets.

Want a sci-fi story that's set long after some unwise scientist CRISPRed a be-much-smarter tweak into at least two species each of corvids and cephalopods.

so we've got established society of crows, who absolutely picked up human languages fast and use them routinely to interact with human beings, and maybe don't have citizenship in human countries where they reside because they have their own political units that aren't based on terrain, but they are recognized as people by law

(but like, i want to emphasize they are crows that are physically the same as crows have always been)

and the much more mysterious and retiring underwater society of the octopuses.

What is Xenofiction?

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)

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. 

Humans Are Weird: Growing Up

You know how must animals don’t look that different when they are infants to adults? Yeah, that. But then we get to animals such as insects and frogs. As you may (or may not) know, bugs start out as these worm-like things called larvae and when there’re adults, they become what we know them as. Same with frogs, but instead of being worm-like, they start as the fish-like tadpoles. What if the aliens we encounter work just like that? What if they start out as puffballs, worm-like, or something else and become a humanoid or something. And when we show them out young, they might be surprised (Assuming all life on their planet works that way).

So a xeno and a human male where in a bar talking about their species and looking at each other‘s photos.

Human: “And that’s my niece, Holly.” 

Xeno: “She’s pretty small for an adult.” “Never knew your kind can get so small.”

Human: “No, no, no, she’s still a baby.”

Xeno: “Really?”

Human: “Yes.”

Xeno: “Well, that’s interesting, I thought your kids looked way different.” “Just look at my kids.”

The xeno then showed a picture of two light green, round, fluffy orb-like cretures with no showed facial features.

Xeno: “These two are my children, aren’t they cute?”

The human then looks surprised. 

Human: “Ah… I guess…” “Can’t believe your kind looks like that.” 

Xeno: “I’m just as surprised as you are.” “Now can I show you more of ‘em?”

Human: “Sure, why not…?”

(Yeah, I know the “Xeno and human talking and stuff” part isn’t the best example of writing, but hey, I tried. Please give me feedback so I can improve.)

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.