Animals that, as a writer, you avoid

Now stuff like that sounds cool, if done right. You can use the concept of a bipedal animal in ways other than "OHMYGODD a furry how kawaii and/or sexy".

Again, though, there's a difference between "bipedal" and "anthropomorphic" to my mind.

Out of curiosity, what would you call Yogi Bear? Because to me he is an anthropomorph, and he has a similar body-plan to the Canim I mentioned (though they are wolves and not bears).

edited 5th Dec '11 8:54:37 PM by MyGodItsFullofStars

A "cartoon animal". He's not played seriously enough to qualify as anything else, to my mind.

To be clear, I'm going by personal definitions, not the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism or any other actual trope.

Huh. Well, I don't think I have any specific species I avoid- I have a story/world on the back-burner that is a world of Funny Animals (I got a bad case of World Builder's disease, which is part of the reason it's on the back burner). Granted, it's more about vaguely superhero-ish military operations than the funny animal end of things, but... er, yeah, it's kind of an oddball plot.

Lesse; the lead characters are a snowshoe hare, a monkey (didn't really think about the particular species, probably a spider monkey by the build though), a beaver, a mouse, a sheep, and a mallard, along with a rabbit and chameleon that are... auxiliaries, for lack of a better term. I have no idea how stereotypical I was being or not- I tended to pun first and come up with justifications later when creating the characters, despite the actual tone of the series being relatively serious.

• Frozen Hare- team lead, powerset combining bits from Iron Fist, Iceman, and Cyclops. Yeah, I don't know either.
• Electric Monkey- Lightning powers, along with... Green-Lantern-esque solid-electric forms, albeit limited mostly to simple geometric shapes.
• Cyberbeaver- quasi-indestructible cyber-enhanced tech genius with a BFG and the ability to build just about anything really really fast (with a visual effect kind of like the Tazmanian Devil's spinning)
• Enormouse- Sizeshifter, from about six inches tall to something like a mile and a bit. The team strongman for obvious reasons, although him being a bodybuilder in civilian life helps with that as well.
• Lamb Chop- super-powered martial artist. Yeah, yeah, I know >.O
• The Ducktor- extremely powerful teleporter. I actually wasn't thinking of Doctor Who with this, and the character is nothing like the Doctor. Or the other Doctor.
• Gun Bunny- heavily armed rabbit with the 'secret' power of infinite ammo.
• TeChameleon- colour-changing lizard in Powered Armor with similar build-stuff powers to the beaver. Also my Author Avatar... kinda. Personality loosely based on my own, but that's about it. Also the reason why I decided to keep the character in a fairly minor role.

Oh, and two of these characters are female. Can you guess which ones (and no, Lamb Chop isn't one of them)?

Anyway, in the course of worldbuilding, I ended up with secondary and side characters from just about every species imaginable- just off the top of my head, a bunch of Australian critters (kangaroo, echidnas, kookaburras, wombat, emu, and I think a few others)- angelfish, anglerfish, barn owls, ostrich, badgers, elephants, coyote, ghost shark, collie, moose, cougars, cetaceans of a wide variety of types, alligator, weasels, raven, mutt-type-dog-pretending-to-be-wolf, spawning fish (had salmon in mind, mostly, but there's room for others), wolverine, bears (Chinese Golden and Grizzly, if memory serves), along with a bunch of mythological beasties (... yeah, pretty much the entire menagerie. If it wasn't of the 'a bit of a human stuck to a bit of something else' variety, it probably got at least a mention. There's even a Jabberwock).

Although, oddly enough... as far as I can remember, I don't have a single panda .

edited 5th Dec '11 9:06:20 PM by TeChameleon

One thing that trips me up though is deciding whether to make my "furries" (lol) shapeshifters or just hybrids. Sometimes I do one and other times I go with the other.

I always make my plant people hybrids, so I figure the animals should be treated in the same way. Any suggestions?