#and loved to anthropomorphise

[writing-in-mermish]

The Elf of the Rose

So in the prettiest rose on the rose tree (I thought they were bushes but, whatever) lives an invisibly small elf (also very pretty though that seems rather unimportant). He lives a pretty charmed life in his pretty rose house in the pretty garden where the rose tree grows.

One day he decides to take a long ass walk on the vein of a leaf to count his steps (man was ahead of his time), but because he is the littlest of guys (invisibly so) and started to late in the day, night hits before he gets half way. Things are cold and the roses are closed, he is having a bad time. But he recalls an arbor with honeysuckle (which cannot close up) and plans to go there to sleep.

On his way he overhears to love birds (humans to be precise) complain the the girl's brother hates her beau and is making him go away for business. The girl is hella dramatic and cries and kisses a rose so hard it opens up before she passes it to her lover.

The elf said to himself

and ventures inside to rest. But this dumb lover's heart is beating so damn hard our littlest guy cannot sleep! Also, he (like his sweetheart) keeps violently mackn’ on this rose.

Judgy brother shows up, lookin’ gloomy and wicked as hell, and fuckin’ stabs the fool to death while he’s kissing the rose. He cuts off his head and buries the body and head under the linden tree (brutal). He conveniently explains that this was his plan all along, because everyone would assume he died or disappeared on his business trip and then his sister would move on (absolutely unhinged behavior).

Bro accidentally brings the littlest guy with him in a dried linden leaf on his hat, who is horrified and angy at this situation. They get to bro’s house early in the morn, which gives him the time to go creepily laugh over his sister (dreaming about her boo) like a freak and accidentally deposit the leaf on the window sill.

Our littlest guy goes to the girl while she sleeps with all his indignation and spills the beans and tells her if she thinks she’s simply dreaming a linden leaf will be on her bed as a sign when she wakes.

She sees and believes and is gut wrenched with no one to talk to. The elf sees the window is open but is too invested to leave, so he parks himself in the monthly rose bush (so this one's a bush, what's the difference?) in the window.

Bro keeps coming by without a glimmer of guilt, so when night rolls around she goes to investigate and finds her lover and considers pulling a Juliet, but instead chooses to take up man’s severed head, clean him off and kiss his dead lips (that’s some gothic ass shit if I’ve ever heard it) and then. Takes. Him. Home. (and some jasmine too)

Then she got a big old pot and hid his head inside and planted said jasmine. The elf felt like this was enough sadness for him and dipped, only to find that his rosebush was withered, leaving him melancholy as hell.

He found a new rose to live in but kept coming back to home girl's room, watching her waste away, seemingly giving her life force to her jasmine plant through her tears and kisses.

Her bro told her not to be so weird, not understanding why she cared so much about this stupid plant (her lovers head was rotting inside).

Our littlest guy takes pity on her sleeping one day and pulls up to talk about more positive things from his life, in hopes of improving her dreams. And it did, as she dreamed of her lover. And the jasmine grieved with her the only way it knew how, by blooming beautifully.

Her bro got weirdly possessive of the plant and stole it to put in his room by his bed (I am both sensing a pattern of concerning behavior and some dark irony here).

The elf decides this is the time to spill the tea to the new flower spirits who say "we already know. We are born of this tea. It came installed." Our boy didn't understand how they could be so calm about it, so he told the gossip to the bees, who responded much more satisfyingly by telling their queen, who decided the proper response was to murder the lout.

But before they could, gothic girly dies and that night the jasmine spirits armed with poison go to whisper nightmares in the murderers ears and stab his mouth with poison, claiming their revenge for the dead.

Our littlest guy, the queen bee, and bee army rush over the next morning, only to find people hanging around claiming the scent of the jasmine killed him (oddly not that far off). The elf figures out what happened and explaines to the queen, who instructs her army to tend to the plant.

The humans, not understanding, want to get rid of the bees and have some poor sap remove the plant, which inspires one bee to sting, causing the man to drop the pot and reveal the lover's skull, which in turn reveals the murder to all.

The bees rejoiced and sang of the flowers and the elf for taking revenge and uncovering a murderous plot.

TLDR: an invisible flower elf uncovers a murder of a girl's lover by her brother. He gives her the deets to find his body, retrieve his head, and bring it home to plant jasmine on top of.

She is sad, her brother's mad and steals her bloomed pot of jasmine away. Elf spills the tea to the flowers (who already be knowing) and then bees, who want to murder.

Sister dies, flowers take revenge, bees and elf come by and see some people at the aftermath. Bees sting some dude for removing flowers, revealing skull which tips humans off to the plot, bees rejoice and praise the jasmine and elf for their good deeds.

[squidsploitation]

a compilation.

[lucaswarmhotchocolate]

I fuck with magic trees so hard. If your world building has a magic tree I love you. If your fic adds a magic tree I love you. If your fic expands upon a magic tree I love you. If you are a magic tree I love you.

[monty-glasses-roxy]

Do you have any evidence of Roxy playing with the plushes in her room? Mostly because I would like to see it

Okay so I don't have like. The most concrete evidence in the world here, I'm mostly just looking at the environment and thinking about what it says about the characters and stuff. With that said, I'm also not the only one that noticed this (can't remember where I've seen people mention it before but I know I've seen this around a few times in fics and posts and stuff) so I dunno take this as you will

The idea Roxy plays with her plushies comes maingly from how the plushies in her room are arranged and a little from how her plushies are in the most random ass places sometimes. I don't know if there's more locations than the ones I'm about to show you because I don't have the game and can't just wander around looking for them, but here's what I know for sure!

First, Roxy's room!

Roxy's room is the only one of all four rooms on Rockstar Row to have the plushies arranged somewhat properly and not just left strewn about the place. Most importantly though, some of them are placed in ways that make it look like they're doing something. Here's the screenshots of all the ones in there:

So there's two sat nicely against the base of the kids motorbike ride, with one looking out the window and one looking towards the vanity table. Then there's one sat at a racing arcade cabinet as if it's playing it. There's two laid on the couch like they're taking a nap or just relaxing. There's one on the table either watching the one playing the game or maybe doing some imaginary other thing. There's another on the table, lying face up with a bunch of wrenches, a little shampoo bottle and a helmet so small it's the perfect size for the plushie next to it. Then you have one plushie driving the go-kart and running over another plushie from behind.

Yeah, the ones on the couch might be a little bit of a stretch, but some of these just kinda make it look like Roxy intentionally put them there to display them or to set a scene up. Like the table could be a pretend parts and services or something, hence why ones lying on its back with all the wrenches and stuff. They all just seem a lot less randomly placed, ya know? I think it's pretty cute ngl!

And then you have the Roxy plushies in weird places! Here are the ones I noticed (again, I don't have the game so these are screenshotted from videos I found):

Gonna quickly explain this one by saying I misremembered it a little bit, but it's still relevant. This random little room in the loading docks area, with nothing but a Sunnydrop poster, a staffbot staring at the door and two wet floor bots, has the Glam Roxy plush collectible in it. Bit of a weird placement given Roxy is literally never in this area to my knowledge and this is typically Chica's territory, so it makes me wonder what the hell it's doing in this werid ass room. An old idea was that Chica was playing with the plushies one day and stuck her in Gay Baby Jail or something.

Though, now I'm looking at it, if Roxy put it there, you could see it as leaving a plush down there to keep these guys company or for them to protect her or somethig? I dunno. A bit sad if she put herself in Gay Baby Jail though lmao but anyway...

This one is located in the Kid's Cove boat! I'm pretty sure that aside from the Golden Sunny plush and regular Moon plushie collectibles, this is the only plushie in Kid's Cove. Which is to say this is the only plushie I noticed that was actually visible. Given the light from the left is from a TV screen playing nothing but static (what's up with that??), this plushie was having a movie night or something. Or someone's living in the Cove. Or Roxy's made herself a secret hideout in the Cove. I dunno, but you see how the little drinks can is within the plushie's reach and all the... maybe sweets near its feet? I dunno whats going on with the shoes and the tiny Roxy mask, maybe there was a dress-up thing going on, who knows? I dunno if this is Cassie's secret hideout and she was playing with a Roxy plushie but regardless! This is a weird ass place for a Roxy plushie when everything else around there is Sunny and Moon themed!

Oh yeah and there's also another itty bitty helmet off screen to the right. Maybe the story is that this Roxy was driving the boat but it sunk or something? I dunno. I'm convinced those tiny helmets are for the plushies or some other toy cause there's a height limit on the go-karts they are not letting babies drive go-karts lmao

These two are in the dressing room style area thing of the Superstar Theatre. There's a good few plushies dotted around here but look! The one on the right is keeping the endo company! :)

Anyway, I don't know where the others are. I know there's a good few of her plushies just fucking everywhere in weird places and someone had to put them there, right? Her room having them all arranged like that is the only reason I would think Roxy's putting her own plushies everywhere though. I just think it's kinda cute that they usually seem very deliberately placed there by someone and given the whole murder scene going on in her room, Roxy seems the most likely culprit lmao

[healingheartdogs]

Quickest way to start fights in animal related ares of the internet is to say simple factual statements that people don't want to admit to themselves like

"your dog is not displaying guilt and does not know what it did wrong, dogs do not feel guilt or make connections between actions and delayed consequences like that, you're just attempting to rationalize wanting to punish your dog out of anger or frustration"

or

"your pet is not doing this thing you find annoying or hurtful out of spite, animals are not spiteful, you are projecting your own feelings on them because you're upset and want to feel justified for your upset reactions"

or

"handling your exotic animals is for your own enjoyment and benefit, not theirs, your spider/snake/mantid/gecko/whatever is not asking you for 'uppies' because it loves you and wants you to hold it, it just recognizes you as the warm creature that gives it food sometimes if even that, that behavior you're definitely misinterpreting is probably just them seeking warmth, seeking food, or even actually a threat display because you are a giant potential danger to them"

[misterradio]

your honour it is the inherent autism of robots

[neoncaptor]

the struggle of being someone who loves hyenas but doesn’t like how furry art looks 😭

[inbarfink]

So let’s go through this one-by-one, shall we?

Red Guy

Flat affect in voice, not very expressive 

Or from the perspective of other Red Guy, he is far too expressive and tend to smile at inappropriate situations

Express emotions either ‘too little’ or ‘too much’ in terms of volume, very little in-between

Speaks very bluntly 

Feels physically uncomfortable with bright colors

"Well, this isn't that fun, is it? can't make out where I am in the room like this. What if I'm standing in an embarrassing area?" "I actually don't mind it. Kind of a nice break from all of those... garish colors"

Duck

Loves cataloging and organizing things as a recreational activity

Anthropomorphise inanimate objects (like ACTUALLY inanimate, not teachers)

"You have to jab it hard or it won't respect your choices!"

Has a hard time fitting in in ‘normative’ social groups

Odd sensory sensitivities

"You're supposed to say that the floor is too loud or the window is disrespecting you"

Yellow Guy

Relies on a heavy amount of social mimicry in unfamiliar social situations

"I'm making bits and parts, although sometimes I feel a bit like the bits and parts are, eh, making me."

Tends to understand metaphors and turns of phrases very literally

Which is actually a trait that he displays even in his hyper-intelligent ‘Charged’ mode

"Oh there he is, it's about time." "Yeah, what have you been doing?" "Um, okay, let me see... We were learning about electricity... I completed a crossword puzzle..."

Who is also very sensitive to sounds when two or more people are speaking at once

He also seems to have ‘clumsy’ motor functions in both ‘forms’

In conclusion:

[ljsbugblog]

a wonderful encounter with a Spiny Grass Mantis. mantids are really something special, it feels like there's a lot of intelligence and awareness about them (or perhaps I'm just anthropomorphising lol).

at any rate, she* was very patient with us as we fawned over her and took a ton of photos, before gently returning her to the fence to continue her prowl.

I especially love this photo of her foreleg, such wonderfully intense spines!

*I don't actually know how to sex mantids, my guess is based entirely on their short wings and generally large size. I welcome any corrections or tips on determining mantis sex!

Spiny Grass Mantis, female(?) (Archimantis armata).

[fujosh33p]

Been reading Watership Down.

It's strange to say but I love how unmistakably about rabbits it is. Characters are anthropomorphised but clearly are not human, they're always confused and scared, they immediately forget anything they don't quite understand, it's normal for them to get so frightened they can't move.

The rabbits' mythologies and Lapine language help a lot with this, like how they can't count past 4, or have specific words for bits of rabbit culture that humans lack.

[planefood]

something I don't see talked about a lot in objectum spaces but people have agreed with me when I've brought it up is how difficult it is to draw objects in a way that feels true to its beauty and essence. At least without doing a 1:1 replication of an image. But I don't like doing art that way. My objectum artwork is a constant battle between trying to make art that's creative and enjoyable to me while keeping the same energy of the object I'm portraying in the piece. I've gotten some (mean) criticism in the past for putting my anthropomorphic object drawings in the objectum tag but that's just the easiest way I can convey how an object makes me feel in artwork. It's hard to portray how much an object feels like its bursting with life and personality to me by just drawing the object as it is, as gorgeous as I might find the object in particular. Not because I don't find objects beautiful on their own I just really want to really show how the object makes me feel in the art I make. I consider myself a cartoonist first and foremost.

I will admit though, sometimes adding too much character to an object can make it lose its "objectness" and when it comes to a sexuality surronding objects that's, kinda important... For example a plane looks quite a lot different once you add a face to it:

(and I'd be lying if I said I didn't find the regular plane 100x more appealing than the disney one, despite there being relatively minimal changes)

At the same time though, I could happily draw regular planes, computers, cars and whatever all day with zero added features. I love them after all. But me and a lot of other people can really connect to an object seeing it portrayed more anthropomorphised. I've had a lot of people come to me saying that specific brand of my objectum art introduced them to object sexuality because it showed objects in a different light than say, a still life could to an uninformed observer.

Either way that being said, I put a lot of thought into making my object art appealing to objectum people as an objectum person myself, it's not going to be to everyone's taste because I'm not them. But I hope one day I can really find that perfect balance for myself of object and anthropomorhisation that doesn't take away from the regular object itself.

[sparkylurkdragon]

A detail I really love in the Watership Down comic is how every rabbit in Cowslip's warren is almost constantly smiling widely. It is incredibly unsettling, given the characters usually have minimally anthropomorphised expressions.

Like, here's a smile from (I think) Pipkin. Note how it still reads as a small little bunny mouth and is just barely enough to tell he's smiling.

And then there's THESE SHADY MOTHERFUCKERS.

Like, here's some with Strawberry side-by-side with Hazel and Bigwig so you can see the contrast.

It's a wonderful tell that Something Ain't Right.

[canisalbus]

Ough, it is a shame that your setting is strictly dog-people because I absolutely would've loved to indulge in some un/just retribution-fantasy upon Giordano by the means of a polite and swift "Kind Regards, Kept your teachings in mind" message delivered by my own anthropomorphised-creature character, followed by an impolite and equally swift 'unkind regards' delivered by a heavy, blunt object.

Like, yeah, I've been following your fantastic art and blog for a while and whilst my heart aches (In a good way) for a good tragedy, every piece of tragic history sparks another part of me that yearns for a 'good ending', where these two lovers can be happy and safe from the misery they've endured.

I guess what I'd like to say is that it's not often that I'm moved to such feelings over fictional characters, and that I hope to continue to enjoy your work for as long as you create it. :o

.

[dimetrodone]

As a fellow Alive House liker: how do you feel about Casita from enchanto?

I honestly was kinda surprised to see an Alive House not presented as actively hostile, and I don't really care for enchanto all that much but Casita is my favorite

Glad to spur the interest of Alive House Enjoyers and the search for a benevolant house

The character of the sapient house in Encanto is pretty decent, I like that they didnt feel the need to blatantly anthropomorphise it. Just a really cool house and omnipresent being. I probably would of attempted to draw the floorplans of it as a kid cause little me liked trying to figure out the layoutof cartoon houses lmao. The house is the best character.

I dont care for Encanto that much but i get the appeal of it. It and the popularity of Frozen and to an extent Moana(with her ocean stuff) is making it very apparent little girls love the fantasy of having unnatural superhuman power without nessesarily the need to use it to bring justice like a superhero. Little girls want to shoot laser beams form their eyes for their own evil purposes while living in a castle.

Encanto has a fun premise and character ideas and one or two decent songs but as a movie it feels like a boneless blob of Lin-Manuel Miranda music. It would probably make for a better animated series then movie.

[bat-connoisseur]

I turned your Baldurs Gate 3 characters into furries. Sorry. Actually no I'm not I won't pretend anymore.

General notes and specific species under the cut.

Astarion: He is a Ghost Bat! I like to think him being a vampire and being a bat are entirely unrelated, it's just a coincidence and he's honestly pretty mad about it. Ever since I first started playing bg3 I had him assigned as a Ghost Bat or a Spectral Bat in my brain, just arbitrarily, and I went for the former just because the colours work.

Gale: He's a Eurasian Lynx! I had to make him a cat. I just had to. And I trawled through the wikipedia pages for pretty much every type of cat and Lynx was about the only one that fit in my brain. The fluff kinda evokes his beard and hair I think, and I almost didn't have him have proper hair, just the fur, but in the end I wanted to be consistent about it so he got it. Peep the greying muzzle because mans is stressed and dying.

Karlach: She's a Bongo Antelope! I knew I wanted her to be some kind of large hooved mammal, because of the horns but also because their builds and general sturdiness really suit her I think. It was a tough pick, there's so many cool ones, and when sketching I was actually going to have her be a Mountain Nyala, but I changed my mind last minute just because the colours of the Bongo fit SO well. They're also my favourite antelope. Let me have this. She's so cool and she gets to be one of my favourite animals.

Lae'zel: She is a Pterosaur! My specific reference was Dorygnathus, but I was fairly loose on the details and so she doesn't super resemble them beyond the teeth and tail. I wanted her to be something prehistoric since the Gith are aliens or something (i dont know dnd lore that well), and so I wanted her to be in her own sort of category apart from the rest so, prehistoric! I considered making her a dinosaur but the idea of a Pterosaur just really appealed for whatever reason. Kind of parallels their dragon riding if they can fly, I suppose? And their Enhanced 10 Foot Vertical Leap.

Shadowheart: She's a Hare! Very specifically a Hare rather than a rabbit. Hopefully that comes across. I wasn't super sure what to do for her honestly, but in several scenes she has these big scared eyes, and she's generally just kind of having an awful time and being harmed by the gods for the whole game and I was like 'hey I know an animal that looks like it's been personally slighted by the gods' and so Shadowhare was born. There is a part of me that wishes I'd made her a cat for the warrior cats joke though.

Wyll: He's a Pine Marten! I just kind of got it in my head he should be a Mustelid of some kind, I'm not sure why, he just has that kind of vibe to me? Maybe it's the way he moves, maybe it's his skill at killing, maybe I'm just biassed because I love him and I love mustelids, who knows. I looked through em all and I didn't want one of the bigger sturdier ones like a Wolverine because. Strength stat of 8. So I went for one of my smaller favourites, the Pine Marten. The reason he's not an animal with horns naturally like Karlach is because I still wanted them to look out of place on him! I toyed with giving him wings (because they're cool) but ultimately didn't wanna stray toooo far from Pine Marten.

And that's all! Perhaps I'll get around to anthropomorphising the non origin characters, but who even knows. Halsin would almost be too easy. I could make Jaheria a cool ass fox or something though. Much to consider. If I do them then I'm gonna be doing my Tav Deimos and my Durge Lethe though. That's da law.

[mammalsofaction]

I know I've once posted a whole outline of events concerning Perry the Platypus Human Lore but like, the fun part of anthropomorphising cartoon characters is how hes partly EVERYONE'S OC and I adore reading all of everyone's headcanons about him.

Recently ive been watching Father's Day and Flying Fishmonger and I've been having just an absolute hoot with the realisation that the people headcanon-ing Perry was a Fletcher are really starting to make sense because like....apparently Fletchers were Just Like That? They jumped 50 foot deep death drop gorges in DIY fish themed motorbikes and performed death defying circus tricks in barely belted biplanes. Reginald still skateboards.

Apparently Fletchers are just fucking buckwild thrillseekers who love performing???? Apparently???? If Perry was Fletcher by blood no WONDER he became a secret agent, the need for thrill was in his blood. Thats CRAZY. Ive been spending the last couple of hours thinking about this and having so much fun putting the Fletchers in Situations and Hijinks in my head.