This abstract has been submitted to British DiGRA for their 2024 conference, based on the slides I have previously posted on this topic that formed part of a talk in November 2023. If accepted, this will become a paper for this conference, and is proposing an initial examination of furry characters as potentially the “new humanity” in narratives.
Post-apocalyptic fictions have an arguable tendency to focus on the ‘portrayal of the tenacity and continuity of humanity amidst […] extreme challenges’ (Patra, 2021: 744) and as such, center stories of human survival in these new environs, such as Horizon Zero Dawn (Guerilla Games, 2017) or Fallout 4 (Bethesda Softworks, 2015). These narratives are set outside the geological era of human influence on planet Earth, what is referred to as the post-Anthropocene (Ruffino, 2020; Wallin, 2022). However, my interest lies in the post-Anthropocene narratives in media that decenter the human experience and use the cataclysmic events that proceed or involve them to foreground ideas of worlds where nature or non-human creatures thrive anew in the absence of human influence.
One such narrative is that of FUGA: Melodies of Steel (CyberConnect2, 2021), in which nature itself has reclaimed the world in the absence of humankind, and anthropomorphised canine and feline creatures – the Caninu and Felineko – have become the “new humanity” on Earth. These races have then taken over the human worlds in this post-apocalyptic imaginary in a similar, but less antagonistic, fashion as that of mutants or zombies in other fictional narratives (Baishya, 2011: 2). This isn’t to say that post-apocalyptic fictions such as FUGA or those discussed by Baishya forgo the examination of humanity entirely, but these texts instead focus on the arguable “humanity” of non-human characters in the narrative via the anthropomorphic protagonists and antagonists.
This paper seeks to initially examine the world of FUGA as a post-Anthropocene fictional narrative, which will bring in the additional context of the wider narrative that this text is placed within – that of the Little Tail Bronx video game series (CyberConnect2, 1998-Present). Next, I will explore these ideas of the reclamation of Earth by nature in a post-Anthropocene environment, especially in relation to nature being symbolic of hope and the promise of building new societies (Pérez-Latorre, et al., 2019: 890) in these narratives. Finally, I will discuss the extent to which “humanity” remains represented in these examples of post-apocalyptic fictions through the Caninu and Felineko.
Bibliography
Baishya, A.K. 2011. Trauma, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction & The Post-Human, Wide Screen, 3(1). Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anirban-Baishya/publication/307963852_TRAUMA_POST-APOCALYPTIC_SCIENCE_FICTION_THE_POST-HUMAN/links/57d3aba608ae0c0081e27b57/TRAUMA-POST-APOCALYPTIC-SCIENCE-FICTION-THE-POST-HUMAN.pdf> [Accessed 4th December 2023].
Bethesda Game Studios. 2015. Fallout 4 [Video game], Bethesda Softworks.
CyberConnect2. 2021. FUGA: Melodies of Steel [Video game], CyberConnect2.
Guerrilla Games. 2017. Horizon: Zero Dawn [Video game], Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Patra, I. 2021. Of surviving humans and apocalyptic machines: Studying the themes of human continuity and posthuman proliferation in the post-apocalyptic world building in Alastair Reynolds’s inhibitor phase, Linguistics and Culture Review, 5(S3), pp.734-749.
Pérez-Latorre, Ó., Navarro-Remesal, V., Planells de la Maza, A.J., and Sánchez-Serradilla, C. 2019. Recessionary games: Video games and the social imaginary of the Great Recession (2009-2015), Convergence, 25(5-6), pp. 884-900. DOI: 10.1177/1354856517744489.
Ruffino, P. 2020. Nonhuman Games: Playing in the Post-Anthropocene, Death, Culture & Leisure: Playing Dead, Emerald, pp. 11-25. DOI: 10.1108/978-1-83909-037-020201008.
Wallin, J. 2022. Game Preserves: Digital Animals at the Brink of the Post-Anthropocene, Green Letters, 26(1), pp. 102-115. DOI: 10.1080/14688417.2021.2023607.
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