At this point, I think it’s getting a bit tiresome to keep pushing the narrative in animal xenofiction where humans are treated as if they were some incomprehensible Lovecraftian entity—far removed from what is naturally “good”—or, failing that, some kind of god. Although, well, many people these days prefer to just create post-apocalyptic or fantasy scenarios where humans are extinct or simply don’t exist, to spare themselves the “trouble” of including them in the story.
And I get the whole “humanity destroys nature and blah blah blah” thing—it’s as simple as saying the sky is blue and that nature can be immoral. In fact, based on that last point, why do you suddenly create a narrative where nature is just nature, but the moment it involves humans, it’s immediately synonymous with “evil” or something different?
Humans ARE animals too. One that has certainly distanced itself from the others, but they are still animals.
There’s also this idea that when animals become smarter or mimic human behavior, it’s suddenly synonymous with “something bad” just because it’s “different.” In real life, many animals have learned and evolved by imitating us; it’s not a bad thing, it’s also a natural part of the process of adaptation. Moreover, human “wisdom” didn’t come out of nowhere either; it was also a result of “natural adaptation.”
I don’t want sentient animals to become copies of humans and their knowledge; ...that's incredibly boring. But I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that they do it.
Besides, couldn't we have more stories where animals understand or view humans as just another animal that exists? A very eccentric one, perhaps, but an animal nonetheless.
One where a species views humans as strange, just as they might view another species—like a lizard or an insect—as strange.
Because another thing about these works is that they try to make all animals “equal” by excluding humans, but other species like fish, insects, or reptiles are also treated as something different—and that’s not considered a “problem” at all. Then it fall into hypocresy
I don’t know, I just wish for more narratives that approach the subject of humanity with greater objectivity—showing good humans, those who try to make a difference, the positive and negative sides of our interactions with nature, and ultimately demonstrating that humanity is just as animal as everyone else who shared the same earth
