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Creepy Utopias
Jan. 13th, 2008 07:17 pm
I've read a bit of Name Brand Furry Fiction from a certain website. Consisting of idealized furs living in a Star Trek-based utopia, with a moderate dash of Evil Humans Oppress Innocent Furs dropped in. (The other standard furry literature trope, Gay Dog Goes to College and Has Lots of Sex, seems to be absent. But it might be there somewhere. I haven't read all the stories.)
The stories are well written, and they're all in good fun for the most part. There's nothing mean-spirited or preachy about them, unlike my own stuff. I hope I don't do mean-spirited, but gorm, I sure have a hard time writing more than a hundred words without getting preachy about something or other.
Anyway, the stories are pleasant. So I was feeling a little guilty that one small feature of this imagined society turned the whole utopia on its ear for me. It made the utopia creepy. No matter how bright the sunshine, there were monsters in the shadows, not quite seen, but... THERE.
I told Teph about this. She shrugged and said "I've never found a Utopia that wasn't at least a little creepy."
So maybe I'm not such a bad person after all.
Anyway, I've got a bit of that story done. I know how it's going to work out, so I'm sure I'll finish it.
I had hoped to write something for the FC conbook this year, but darned if I can think of a short-short to fit their theme. I haven't even checked to see what the AC theme is. I might have something to submit for the smaller con I also visit each year. They at least tend to acknowledge submissions; the big cons can't even be bothered to send you an autoresponder email or a "We got it, thanks for submitting" postcard. And they won't send you info on whether they accepted your story or not. The only way to find out is to look in the con book to see whether it is there.
In short, stories are just an annoyance to convention staff. They throw a few in because they think they must, I guess, but they don't care about them. Maybe they don't care about the drawings that get submitted to the conbooks either, but I think they do. Drawings are king. If one fan in a hundred reads so much as a line of the stories in the con books, I'd be surprised. I certainly don't have any evidence that they do.
I don't care. When I want to write, I'm going to write anyway.
The stories are well written, and they're all in good fun for the most part. There's nothing mean-spirited or preachy about them, unlike my own stuff. I hope I don't do mean-spirited, but gorm, I sure have a hard time writing more than a hundred words without getting preachy about something or other.
Anyway, the stories are pleasant. So I was feeling a little guilty that one small feature of this imagined society turned the whole utopia on its ear for me. It made the utopia creepy. No matter how bright the sunshine, there were monsters in the shadows, not quite seen, but... THERE.
I told Teph about this. She shrugged and said "I've never found a Utopia that wasn't at least a little creepy."
So maybe I'm not such a bad person after all.
Anyway, I've got a bit of that story done. I know how it's going to work out, so I'm sure I'll finish it.
I had hoped to write something for the FC conbook this year, but darned if I can think of a short-short to fit their theme. I haven't even checked to see what the AC theme is. I might have something to submit for the smaller con I also visit each year. They at least tend to acknowledge submissions; the big cons can't even be bothered to send you an autoresponder email or a "We got it, thanks for submitting" postcard. And they won't send you info on whether they accepted your story or not. The only way to find out is to look in the con book to see whether it is there.
In short, stories are just an annoyance to convention staff. They throw a few in because they think they must, I guess, but they don't care about them. Maybe they don't care about the drawings that get submitted to the conbooks either, but I think they do. Drawings are king. If one fan in a hundred reads so much as a line of the stories in the con books, I'd be surprised. I certainly don't have any evidence that they do.
I don't care. When I want to write, I'm going to write anyway.
