Except for Warrior Cats and Fantastic Mr. Fox, I don’t see or hear about really popular animal MC stories (or maybe I’m in the dark?). Animals include mythical as well, but not humanoid like mermaids or fairies or orcs.
Thoughts?
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I know this isn’t a novel, but it does have animals in it.
What about that Zootopia movie? That was pretty popular I suppose.
Animal Farm is considered some type of American Classic or something.
I guess people don’t prefer talking animals because it is weird or some type of reason. I am not sure what to think.
Am I making sense?
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It’s a longstanding literary tradition, but most people don’t talk about White Fang or Watership Down much on the book side if the internet.
I did find a very good video on the subject!
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No, because people can accept fae but not talking foxes.
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I guess because people find talking humanoid or non-humanoid animal strange.
Fae creatures are mostly humanoid, are they not? Don’t they look human enough or not?
I am not all that familiar with fae folk or whatever.
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People associate it with furries and everything that goes with that, even if it’s something completely different.
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Yeah, because fae and vampire fetishists are completely normal and accepted!
These days, because not a lot of people are into dragonfly wings.
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Oh, I see.
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Tis true…to me at least.
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Most media I’ve seen with an animal MC is usually targetted for a child audience. I think Disney dug their heels so far into that trend that if anyone else does it, it’s automatically assumed that it’s made for children, and if it’s not, it’s going to be harder for people to take it seriously.
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I think that stories with humans turned into animals by a curse are interesting. The problem for me is that it’s not typically treated like a curse, and the character that’s transformed is usually a little too happy about it.
Otherwise, there’s a lot of potential to highlight what it means to be human, what it means to be less, and to reflect on our individual stations in life and the things we can’t change about ourselves. But I rarely if ever see any of that. It’s more along the lines of, “Well, he probably only turned into a cat because that was his fursona since he was 12.”
I mean, I’m writing a story with an animal as a main character, and I’m well aware that it’s going to have this stigma attached to it. It sucks, but what can you do?
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Scifi and fantasy cover it frequently. The Catteni from Anne McCaffrey? Male lead right there, with a human woman. IE, right there.
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Or Winnie the Pooh? 
I think there are a lot of movies with talking animals, but not many popular books.
I think that might be a pretty big reason 
True When I’ve shown some of my animal MC stories’ book covers in writing groups on Facebook, many people said they thought it was middle grade because it had a feline on it.
The Catteni are animals?
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Yeah. Uplifted cat species. Mid-level slavers for a higher entity and humans are slaves. So it’s a mutual slaves running off together and a relaxed master/slave relationship at the immediate beginning, but they become the resistance after that. Something like 3-4 books in the series. The premise is based off a softcore short story she wrote (because you could get published in smut mags back then), that dropped the worst of that to become something worth reading.
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I think she might get a pass since she was writing about this stuff way before furries and dragonkin were a thing.
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To be pedantic, the first furry convention happened in 1986. Furries as a concept have existed since the beginning of time. Dragonkin can be seen as a type of totem animal or spiritual belief.
True.
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Yeah. I read the short. It’s nothing like what is put out now. … it’s not bad writing, but she’s a science fiction writer that was playing around in what was erotica, and it’s “so not her”. But then, I had a lifetime of romances–smut or not–to compare it to.
And most the trashy stuff now comes from trashy romances of my childhood. Very similar writing.
I mean, I read the short, and if I had to ask myself if I found it titilating? No, no it’s not. Her own forward on the story made it pretty clear that she was uncomfortable with doing it, but early on, you’re trying to make a living in a tight field.
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Fabel’s are still rather popular, although many of them are ANCIENT, but it seems like TV and movies play off an animal protagonist more than any books written for adults. There are stories like white fang, call of the wild, etc. that focus on the narrative of an animal, and they’re both quite good–if not extremely emotional and gritty. Certainly not for the faint of heart.
Overall, it seems as if animal protagonists seem to more for children, then adults. Not saying they can’t be, but in modern society that is how they are used. I mean, who wouldn’t want to see a movie about a talking animal going on weird adventures?
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