Furries, Anthros, Avatar, and muppets - Manimals

 Hello again, it has been a while.

 For you today I have a one-shot concept that I had been thinking about. The idea came to me when I noticed that both the Na'vi of Avatar, and the Gelfling of The Dark Crystal, are a humanoid race but descended from more typically animalistic ancestors.

This brought me to briefly consider the characters of the furry fandom. I have disdain for the general lack of creativity inherent in these characters. The formula seems to always be - the cutest aspects of a popular animal, plus the sexy aspects of a human (male or female generally), given original and sometimes poorly chosen colors and backstory. My disdain for this stuff is purely on a creative basis, people are free to create what they want and find community spirit as they like.

But the two aforementioned subjects sort of galvanized an idea in my mind, a vaguely anthropomorphic sapient species, that evolved from an ancestor that would give it more of an "animal" appearance. Then I thought of a remark by an anthro artist whose work I do in fact like, Lew Viergacht, who said "Lemurs are basically real-life furries, as close as we will get". The result is this guy, he is descended from Lemurs in a parallel timeline where African Lemurs did not go extinct, and inhabits the same habitat our immediate ancestors did.

 

These sophonts live in mosaic habitats of plains and forest, where they build large dwellings out of cane and branches, fortified with baked mud. They are omnivores with a mastery of fire, and a preference for fruit in their diet. They mostly walk bipedally, although they often climb when gathering food. Tool use includes mortar and pestle, bone-tipped spears, clubs and sharpened bones. Clothes are habitually worn by all but the very youngest, and as a result, fur only remains around the shoulders, crotch, ankles and wrists, as a visual signal. Another visual signal is their prominent, tufted tail. They communicate using words and syntax, but some of their phonics and syllabic structure are unique.

I think creative differences should result in more creativity to that end, not with negative comments and hate. As such, my complex opinions about the furry fandom will continue.

-

All images, designs and writing on this site are the property of Timothy Donald Morris, do not use, reproduce, or copy them without my permission.
© Timothy Donald Morris 2026

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Cryptozoologicon Response - Re-post

Image
 Hello again,   After ill-advisedly deleting some of my old project-websites as a sort of spring-cleaning a few months ago, I promised to re-post them here. So here we are.   I am posting below all of the portraits of different cryptids I did for my Cryptozoologicon responses project. The text always felt superfluous so I will only do small captions now.   -     The Clawed Pygmy Goat, shown here as a relative of the American Mountain-Goat.   The Kappa, shown here as a sparse-furred, aquatic kind of Macaque.   Father of All the Turtles, portrayed as an enormous pelagic Protostegid Turtle. Ahuizotl, here portrayed as a leopard-sized semi-aquatic Opossum.   Iraq Anfish, shown here as a species of Perch that is notable for a coating of fleshy filaments.   The Southern Narwhal, portrayed as a tusked Monodontid Whale.   Auli or Water-Calf, portrayed here as a freshwater kind of Protosirenidae.   Bis-Cobra, portrayed here as a venom-s...
Read more

The many Sophonts of "Fellow Tetrapod"...

Image
 For a couple of years now, I have been collaborating with the fantastic Sci-fi author, Daniel Bensen. We have been working to assemble a sci-fi story about a scenario in which man has been contacted by a convention that spans the many alternate timelines of earth, those that have produced Sapient, civilization-building species, ones with advanced technology, ones like us. We call this story "Fellow Tetrapod". It was a long and arduous process, but it turned out that we collaborated very well. I provided my services as a conceptualist and creature designer, along with Dan who is also very proficient at this. I was also the main illustrator of chapter-headers. In order to promote this work of fiction, I am posting a rogues gallery of the many and varied persons which we meet in this book. Each species that we see is part of the  Convention of Sophonts, which is very exclusive, divisive, weird, and potentially teetering ever on the verge of an inter-timeline war. Those who wish...
Read more

After Man After Man - A one-off scenario.

Image
 Hello again, I have been a little quiet on here, from putting my backlog of Aion stuff and other things together into some coherent shapes in order to make them into project-websites. But I'm back in order to share with you a fun idea I recently had, that could go without being drawn.' A much maligned but classic book in Speculative Evolution as a genre is Dougal Dixon's "Man After Man". Criticized as being rather unfeasible, and often downright uncanny, it is nevertheless influential in the genre of post humans, following in the footsteps of Olaf Stapleton, and inspiring the likes of Memo Kosemen. It was dogged by some issues of theft of intellectual property, of which there is some backstory that remains a closely guarded confidence among some people in this profession. Regardless of that, it was an influential book in my upbringing as a child, an aspiring speculative-zoologist and creature designer. Thanks to my boyfriend I eventually got my own copy in good s...
Read more