Tell me your gripes or pseudo-problems with your comics/novels

[Hexigate]

Like, do you have an aspect about your story that you're split on? Perhaps you don't know how to solve it, if it's even an issue? Honestly speaking, I just want to see if I'm not alone in having aspects of my series that I'm uncomfortable with, but not sure how to solve or if it's even a problem.

Here's my gripe:
The big series I work on has three different intelligent species coexisting (with caveats), and they're all supposed to have evolutionary roots to other animals. One has evolved from fish, one has evolved from cats, and one has evolved from apes. (You can probably guess which species is human.) This is the reasoning I use to design each species' traits, and they're perpetually evolving throughout the comic because I'm so indecisive.

But these species designs are giving me a hard time cus almost everybody who sees these comics think it's a furry comic, and/or that I'm a furry. I'm not though, and I never intended the designs to give that vibe. But everybody automatically assumes that and it seems to be taking away from what I want people to think/feel when they read my stuff.

So I want to change the species designs to, you know, not give off that vibe anymore. But I also don't want these species designs to be so similar to humans because everybody else is already doing that. And that's where I'm torn on this.

(So I just ranted. Great. I hope I don't have to regret posting this on here. Is this oversharing?)

[joannekwan]

Perhaps if you made them more alien and disparate from the original species base you've used they won't be mistaken for furries?
Like Turians from Mass Effect are an avian race (article about them), but they don't look like birds at first glance at all.

[punkarsenic]

looking at your comic, id say the problem is your animmalian characters look too much like humans. furries, a lot of the time, just put a dog head and some fur on a mostly human body. but if cats evolved in the way humans do, would they become bipeds? i imagine theres tonnes of speculative evolution stuff out there about cats that you could draw from. the answer: research!

also, dont be afraid of just changing up your designs now and then. you dont have to answer to anyone, and its important that you enjoy and are satisfied with your comic.

---

i think my little gripe w my comic (i have. BIG gripes. i started it when i was 16 so ofc i do) is that my villain is very... villain-y. ive tried to shift him away from that by giving him a bit of a motive and that, but he still got this queercoded disney-ass villain's intro, which totally goes against my comics themes. but hey ho, live and learn.

[DiegoPalacios]

cats and other mammals are often assumed as furry bait......even when they are not.

"behold the first furries"

maybe you can rely on nonmammal species as the origin of one of them.....reptiles?, bugs?, starfish? birds?, jellyfish?....more than one species as a source??? (you already got fish so....no need to add it to the list)

[djwaglmuffin]

The bigger bad in my comic was original an abomination inspired by the Lovecraftian line of storytelling but I spent SO MUCH TIME trying to figure out what it looked like.

It wasn't until just recently I learned that I don't have to show it at all and if I do, nothing about it has to make any sense. I was ultimately inspired by the mandelbulb alien creature from Annihilation:

I was also stuck on things like...designs for angels and some demons when...I could explain them the same way. A more formless type creature/structure that defies what our conscious mind can conceive.

[unknown_user]

Ask for advice in this subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding
There are a lot of people here, who like to discuss all aspects of depicting and developing fictional races.

[NanettesClouds]

I have vry similar gripes of my comic as with aislinn's cuz I started it when I was 15 (current version was started when I was 17) and I'm 21 now. Because of that - thematically it's SUPER muddy and also pretty problematic in some ways. I keep trying to mull over how to fix it while still sticking with the direction I'm going but as I get closer to the end I just keep realizing that I kinda gotta live with the mistakes and move on.

Which uh - is kinda the theme of the comic in itself, and so I'm trying to twist all of that into a weird meta thing but who knows if that will land.

[irene_addler]

I have the same struggle with any story I write. I don't know how to end it. I've only have what I'd call a decent ending for one story I've ever written, and I've written A LOT of stories.