Animals as characters

[CheertheSecond]

Just recently realised that I could use the pattern and style of certain animals as base for my character personality and behaviour traits.

For example, I can make an obedient, seductive, adorkable wife with characteristics I collected from a snake. She could coil around her husband like a snake in need of heat during a cold day. Her seemingly moments where she was in her own world can be made through inspiration of the snake's lack of facial expression and less-reactive to things unattractive around her.

Or I can make a hyperactive girlfriend from the many dogs I saw. Loved to be praised, loved to play, loved to be around her owner etc. Loved to be patted, to have a belly rub, to have a cuddle, etc.


Or a lazy pet cat that rubs her body around object to mark them as her territories by sticking her fur on it.

 

[Nolff]

You've discovered it just now?

Oh, boy. You haven't seen this lil furry yet.

@Stealthy_Enigma

 

[LilRora]

This is a very good idea and it's actually pretty common. It's similar to how it's much easier to write a believable world based on an existing one than trying to come up with all of it. It's just not particularly obvious in most cases, since most authors don't tell the readers what a character was based on.

I did that with a panther once, with a wolf/dog (debatable) twice, and probably a few more I don't remember.

It's extremely obvious though in many stories featuring beastmen or any variation of that concept.

 

[Tempokai]

Chinese do it all the time, especially GL and that other genre. So much that I look at it in NU and go "ugh, not again" and just skip it