Journal Submission

Commentary on Betty Heavy

By Fred Brown.
www.furaffinity.net/user/fwbrown61/

Posted to Furaffinity on Aug 10/2011
Located here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2613329/

Copyright 2011 All rights reserved, all commercial infringements prosecuted, website display permission available upon request. Non-personal distro is infringement.

(The story, Betty Heavy, is located here:  http://www.furaffinity.net/view/6258950/  )

 
	Thank you for coming here. I’ll make it worth your visit.

	To open, about the military history thing.

	This story took its main inspiration from a gorgeous poster in my living room. It shows a Lancaster bomber in flight. Ocean is in the background, farmland underneath. The afternoon sun is putting silver gleams on the water.

	The plane itself is painted dark, dark, as befits the role the Lancaster played in WWII: night bomber. Death from above at 1:00 AM. Unless a searchlight could catch one no German ever saw one.

	It’s far and away one of my favourite posters. You can almost hear that rumbling sound (to paraphrase Steve Earle).

	Now, WWII was a highly multinational thing. The Canadian military was in the thick of it along with everybody else. This was especially true of the air war. Including bombers.

	The Canadian RCAF 419 Squadron flew Lancasters. I’ll quote from the text on the poster:

	"On the night of June 12, 1944, Pilot Officer Andrew Charles Mynarski of the RCAF 419 Squadron showed selfless heroism as he attempted to free the trapped rear gunner while their flaming Lancaster  fell out of the sky near Cambrai, France.

“Leaping from the crippled bomber with his clothes and parachute afire, Mynarski later died from his wounds. He was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously. (Author’s note: that’s one of the big ones.)

“In 1977 the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum acquired a Lancaster bomber and the largest aircraft restoration project in Canadian history began. Eleven long years and thousands upon thousands of volunteer hours later, the lovingly restored Lancaster made her maiden flight—proudly painted in the colours of the 419—in a salute to Andy Mynarski and his heroism.”
 
	The kicker? I saw this Lanc when it came to visit the Fredericton airport in 1990. (Where do y’think I got the poster?)

	And I *definitely* heard that rumbling sound, as it did a flypast. It’s not that I dwell much on war, but on that day I surely did.

	Nor should I say that the story is dedicated to Mynarksi, but I can’t let the opportunity go past to acknowledge him. 

	I have a feeling I’ll never write another story like Betty Heavy again.

	Yes, and what was that about the date on the story? 2002? Whuffo does that matter?

	Notice that I’ve said that 2007 was when I officially tripped over matters furry. An image of Bernal’s Champagne grabbed me by the throat and demanded, ‘Write me!’ 

	Full disclosure: other things were grabbed too. That pic with her sliding down the stripper pole, the purple thing on the floor, ‘nuff said. :-) 

	So how did a fur story get written at a time when I didn’t even know what a fur was? Oooo, a mystery...

	 Not. Betty Heavy was actually a *science fiction* story, told straight, not a tail or muzzle or ears in sight. Got submitted for publication a few times too. Nobody bit. 

	No prob. Anthology fodder for sure. You gotta look at rejection letters like that or you’ll go mad, mad.

	But 2002, 2002. Nearly ten years ago. That would have made Betty Heavy…

	Yup. The first official SF short story written. Meaning to say, written for publication. This was the first story to hit that standard; a watershed.

	Oh, the mid-late 90’s saw quite a bit of writing effort. The ‘training wheels’ were still on, so to speak. Takes a while to polish one’s craftsmanship.

Some half-assed flailing around was done on some novel ideas (sound ideas, just bogged down by lack of skill). Much more work went into a long-running erotica project, kinda dark, and aimed at a kinda dark newsgroup. Remember newsgroups? 

	Humour was also involved. One awfully weird niche, in hindsight. But the writing skills got honed to a much sharper level.

	Then came changes in the life situation and the decision to buckle down and DO SOME REAL SF, GODDAMMIT!! Stop pissing around, Mr. Brown.

	Betty Heavy was the result. Another thirty or so short stories clattered off the keyboard in quick succession. Having upgraded the short story chops I then began thinking novels again…

	Then a certain white-haired vixen entered my life. Among other equally lovely fur females. Novels? Did somebody say novels? (with sex scenes) Hello…

	 Four fun years later, and it could be said that my fur story chops are in reasonable shape. But much more work to go, IMHO. This was already well-known well before I came to FA.  

	I’ll say out loud that I see furfic as a meta-genre, which ain’t news to those who know, and means that I got a bitch of a lot of work to do before I’ll label myself skilled.  

	(The nature of this meta-genre will be saved for another Journal or I’m not gonna get through this one.)

	Still, that mystery. How did Betty Heavy go from SF to Fur?

	Sort of simple. I looked at the stockpile and realized that I did have a few stories that were sorta furry. The most obvious was Ah-Wooo! (located here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/6039320/). The others, well, look at them a bit sideways and they could be posted to FA without objection.

	Then I reread Betty Heavy. For my first, it’s still one of my faves. Not a furry story in the slightest. Can’t be posted. Drat.

	But… what if I *had* written this as a fur story? This was the question that launched me down the road to sin.

	What would this story look like? (as a fur story?) What would need to be changed? Or added? Or taken out?

	So I set myself a private writer’s challenge: rewrite this one, using what I now know about fur stories, and try and make it work. As in, don’t damage the core story. 

	I think it took me about twenty minutes. 

	Then I sat back and stared at the screen.

	Now just hold on here!!! It was *that* easy? To ‘furrify’ this piece? Ye Gods, I barely even glossed the thing! Not that the story devotes much ink to characterization, but come on!!

 	And from all accounts I pulled it off. The core story is intact, and the reviews have been quite positive (the war buffs like it; that’s a real positive vote).

	But, but, but… in a certain sense, as a fur story it’s completely bogus (or am I taking honesty as a writer a little too far here?) 

	Or does this matter? The story still connects with a fur readership. Furrify the rest of the stockpile the same way and those stories could do the same as BH. Any pickiness about provenance perhaps ought best be kept between me and the keyboard.

	Oops: blown that. This for me raises questions. Just what *is* a fur story, then? On one level, an easy answer: whatever fur fans will read and label as a fur story. BH seems to pass the test. 

	On another level, this wee literary experiment suggests that there is a minimum standard of ‘furness’ that a story has to meet. Ergo, in theory any ‘mundane’ story could be run through the Furrifier Machine with equally good results. In theory.

The lightning crackles, the gears clank, the steam hisses, and the required amounts of the Secret Fur Elixir™ are injected. Then the story shambles off down to the village to entertain the kiddies. ‘Igor, we’re running low on tails.’ ‘You can’t have mine, Marthter.’

	The irony here is pungent. A couple of months back, a conversation with another writer took place, about fur stories. I suggested a quality test for a fur story. Go through the text and remove all the fur elements you can find. Cut, cut, cut.

	Then reread the story. If it’s a total hash, that’s a clue to how much the story depends on those fur elements. As in a lot, which is good. If the story is still readable, however, then you may have something of a mundane story ‘in a fursuit,’ so to speak. 

This is to say, it might be entertaining if done as a fur story, but it would also work just as well with purely human characters. So it could be worth the work to figure out how to take it to the next level (ie., more strongly furry). 

	Now here I am going in the opposite direction with BH. A story in a fursuit? Arguably yes. Wearing a helmet. What do I make of this? (even as much as I still really like the story)

. . .

	‘Igor!! Start lining ‘em up, adjust the formatting engine, and lube everything that doesn’t get out of your way fast enough! We’re going into full production!!’ ‘About my overtime, Marthter?’ ‘What?’

	(Give the readers what they want? Why sure, I can get behind that. :- ) )

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