Story Guide: BOVERSE
2018 © 'qoo123'
This version of the text is released under the 'Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)' license.
The author reserves the right to re-release updated/re-written versions of the text under different license conditions. This version remains unchanged and freely available in such an instance.
"Boverse"
i.e. "Bovine Parents Universe"
SEE 'ALL STORIES' SECTION AT THE BOTTOM FOR LINKS
This document lays out a basic framework and reference for the setting of some of my furry stories. I originally wanted to set the first story I wrote (Bovine Parents) on Earth, i.e. our Earth, with all the trends and facts and stuff that people know about. Damn people, always inconveniently getting in the way with their...knowledge...grr...
But seeing as I'm a lazy bastard and didn't want to spend ages on research and notes to make sure my place names etc... made sense based on real-world geography (and other such concerns), I decided to throw caution to the wind and just make up a sort-of pseudo-Earthlike setting instead.
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I see you are already confused.
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Good.
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I think.
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Sorry, I should use the correct term: an "anachronistic near-future alternate Earth". Near-future because it's basically the century after ours, and anachronistic and alternate because its almost the same as (but not quite) our own world.
"And why is that?" says the person who accidentally wandered into the room.
"Well," says I, "let me tell you..."
SETTING
I called this setting/universe the "Boverse" because (obviously) it's a silly play on words (the first story was BOVINE Parents). This also helps in regards to story visibility and searching, as the term is a fairly unique-sounding tag.
The planet/world is Earth (unimaginative I know, and after all that build-up about anachronismatic quantum manifolds...I mean anarcho-syndicalist neoclassical futurism...uhh...arglebargalorg flnorplegerp...I, uh...I'll stop now and be a bit more serious).
The earliest any chapters go is the late 21st century, 2089 to be exact. But the majority of future stories I have in mind for this setting all take place solidly in the 22nd centry (2100 and onwards). Technology is much like ours currently, following a general trend of advancement, so most things will be familiar, like phones, TVs, computers etc... The world is populated solely by humans, at least in the beginning. Yes, this is why it's set in the future, because of the sci-fi concept of...
GENE THERAPY
In this world, major scientific and technological breakthroughs are helmed by corporations and much larger international megacorporations. The most groundbreaking of all of these is called 'gene therapy' in-universe. Basically the splicing of animal DNA with humans, creating hybrids (who are sexy anthro furries of all kinds, goes without saying really given what sites I'm posting these stories on!). Obviously they're not all going to be uber-attractive super-sluts 'n' super-studs, most people in the real world aren't, and I'm assuming a similar distribition (but not strictly) as a general rule of grounded storytelling and characterisation.
Still though, plenty of them are hawt hawt hawt!
;-D
Ahem...excuse me...said I'd be more serious...
So genetic modification to transform humans to animal hybrids was first pioneered by 'agri-genetics' corporations. These are businesses that deal with agriculture and environmental/ecological concerns: animal husbandry, food production, conservation and such. One of the key companies in this field is Bovinex, which primarily concerns itself with cattle and dairy production. Although there could be others that could concievably do it first or around the same time, Bovinex is the first to achieve a successful transformation, from human (male and female) to their respective bovine hybrid counterparts (bull and cow). All previous efforts were either non-starters, or complete and gruesome failures, leading to lots of bribes, hush-ups, and extrajudicial murders to keep the public in the dark. Gene therapry technologies are a closely-guarded secret for most of the late 21st and early 22nd centuries.
Later on in the 22nd century, gene therapy is employed in other industries and in a police and military capacity. Sometime during the middle of that century the corporations go public with the technology, leading to a) people learning they can undergo genetic transformations into anthro animal-people, and b) a great deal of upheaval and consternation among folks about the impact and ramifications of this technology, and the lives of those who've already transformed. I've deliberately left this bit vague, you can fill in the blanks yourself on how well some/all people take it. That being said, by the mid-22nd century its all out in the open. Hybrids and humans coexist in many places. Not so much in others.
This basically splits the setting into two distinct halves. The first is the 'secret' half, where people's transformations are kept hidden and they live in isolated communities or work directly for the corporations that changed them. People go missing or fall out of touch with those still human, companies buy and seize land to house secret communities of hybrids...hell, even some governments get in on the action, so there's plenty of story opportunities for me to explore in future writings.
The second half is the 'not-so-secret' half. So gene therapy is made public, advertised, offered as a thing you can do etc... At this point I think they market it with a trendy term, like 'anthromorphing' or some such, but I don't know if I'll stick with one single term to use across stories. Anyway, tales set in this time deal more with interpersonal and slice-of-life topics, relying less on the corporate or government conspiracy angle. Also plenty of different ideas one can write about here.
As for the gene therapy itself? It's originally administered in a variety of forms, from drinkable serums to intravenous drips. As time passes and technology advances, however, doctors settle on a special hypospray-like device known as a_Grayson-Trimble Applicator._ Early methods were not guaranteed to use anasthetic either, so horrendous pain and nausea could happen. Also hallucination/delirium. Bovinex's first successful test cases were transformed in a couple of secure reinforced rooms, in case they hybrids went wild/feral and overpowered any attempts to contain them (also a real concern in the beginning). Sounds lovely!
Hybrids (or anthros, though they're less often referred to as that in-universe) come in many shapes and sizes, but all retain the humanoid form, as most furry-style characters do. Larger source animals (like bulls/cows, horses etc...) end up being around 8-16 feet tall, and suitably bulky. Smaller animals (like various cats, dogs, deer, etc...) end up 5-9 feet, depending on species. Very small source animals (e.g. mice) stand around 4-6 feet. These are all broad approximations but I'm using those ranges as a guide when writing. When it comes to anatomy, it's largely left up to the reader's imagination as to the exact particulars (unless explicitly mentioned), i.e. plantigrade vs. digitigrade feet, human vs. anatomically-correct genitalia or a compromise between them, and so on...
Like I said, broad strokes here people! I don't dwell on particular anatomical details a huge amount (hopefully), so even if you disagree with my interpretation of a species' anthro-ness, go ahead and rewrite/fill in the blanks with your imagination when reading.
GEOGRAPHY/MISC. NOTES
As it's a slightly-made-up future Earth (God I'm going to need a better way of summarising it!), countries, cities, and all manner of places have different names (if they exist) or are simply not there or replaced with different geography. Again, this is all very vague and high-level. Going into detail is something I reserve for a particular story, but I still think it'll be fairly hand-wavey when it comes to visualising an atlas of Boverse's Earth. Same with languages, vague and not-clearly-defined, with some invented terms sprinkled in.
Below are major countries, along with any notes I've come up with so far about them. Their real-world counterpart is listed too.
(this list is obviously incomplete, if I mention new countries/places/adjectives in a story I'll add it here)
Unimerica [United States/America]
Adjective:Unimerican Similar government structure to real-world U.S. Federal structure (i.e. states). States differ from real-world and have made-up names (e.g. Barson, Centrassia). You can assume geography is similar to actual mainland U.S., but malformed, with state border and city placement different etc... Similar economic, social, and political landscape, exaggerated for the purposes of storytelling if/where needed (though knowing Americans even I can't compete with the real world sometimes ;-D).
Qina [China]
Adjective:Qinese
Allemania [Germany]
Adjective:Alleman
Britannia [United Kingdom/Britain]
Adjective:Britannic
Anciennais [France]
Adjective:Ancien Capital:Risien
Nihonna [Japan]
Adjective:Nihonni
Vindus [India]
Adjective:Vindic
Espania [Spain]
Adjective:Espanian
Romanicum [Italy]
Adjective:Roman
ALL STORIES
Current list of stories set in the Boverse, links for the first chapter of each in release order below. A lot of these stories are marked 'adult' so you need to appropriate content settings enabled on your accounts to read them in full!
(will be updated as new ones are added)
"Bovine Parents"
https://www.sofurry.com/view/1094012
"The Interim"