I am going to start writing journals that focus on the analysis of a topic that I have been mulling over. They may or may not be related to me personally and may be more akin to academic writing as a result. Even then, as a discussion of thought I do not know if a medium of this kind is best fit for journals or as submitted essays.

Also this may have spoilers.

Zootopia's Reminder on Anthropomorphism:

As it is obligatory for every Furry to have something to say about Zootopia, I do have my own words on the subject. Zootopia was a good movie and really gave background to a world that is inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. Because Zootopia didn't have any humans influencing the world, I would say that it is one of the few absolutely anthropomorphic piece of media to be produced.

One thing Zootopia reminded me of was the importance of keeping animal characteristics when writing and creating anthropomorphic characters and worlds. Who you are and the world you live in greatly influences you as a person and Zootopia made sure that each character was impacted by their species. Because the animals kept a past knowledge of their previously "savage" position in nature, this also molded their place in a civilized world.

When writing worlds with anthropomorphic worlds, one should remember to keep true to the roots of what is being anthropomorphized and as such when performing this administration of human-like qualities to animals, one should not remove the fact that they still have their roots as animals.

Seeing it in other furry stories as well in mine, the worlds are not truly anthropomorphic. In that I mean that things not human are given human characteristics. Rather I would say that we are giving humans non-human characteristics but they are still mainly human. This may still be a form of anthropomorphism but most times the species of the character or species in a world do not matter. What is being done is giving the characters a different visual aesthetic as opposed to characterizing them based on their differences.

Zootopia also makes use of many animal stereotypes, which helps to paint its world as diverse. However I was straying away from these stereotypes since they may feel overworked and smelled like animal cliches. Even then, ignoring the base traits of a anthropomorphic character's animal is throwing away characterization which is much more important than how the character is visualized lest that look has caused the character to be excluded or exalted which can be done with non-animal related mechanisms.

This is what Zootopia reminded me of and as a result I am going to try to shift universes around to include some animal stereotypes or have characters represent an animal more truly based on size and ability. This brings us to the next topic from Zootopia.



Zootopia's Micro/Macro World: (Lineup of species sizes)

Zootopia's world has people at a size that reflects their base animal's sizes. Mice are really small while elephants are really big. Zootopia as a result is indeed a piece of Micro/Macro media and it paints a world where micros and macros live together.

Size, while clumped into the attribute of a species, did largely dictate the stereotypes in Zootopia. If you take away the size difference between most characters and put them at around equal heights then you will remove a lot of the differences between the species. The differences in size placed the different species in different positions of society. The rodents were largely powerless in any form of brute force while larger animals such as wolves, bears, and buffalo are rather powerful.

In general I would say that predators are taller than the general populace (of which is 90% prey-animals)(the prey-animals were the biggest however). Even then the prey discriminate against the predators. In contrast of most macro/macro stories and media we see the macro's having power over the micros. Given the prey population has their larger members which may balance out the two bi-sectioned populace, the view of predators as preying on the prey is still held, even when the prey in the end have more power than the predators.

If you think about the 90% prey population, the predators would have to conform to prey-society as opposed to trying to institute themselves as the rulers since technology essentially nullifies their power.

Now back to the size difference qualms. Size plays a huge role in defining the different species of Zootopia. If everyone was the same size, then the drama of Judy wanting to become a police officer would be lackluster and less of a feat that she achieved. Bringing back how Zootopia depicts anthropomorphism, size very well affects a character and is also part of how one deals with anthropomorphism when creating a world. Size offers contrast of strength and when one overcomes the limit of size or power it makes for a good story (see "David and Goliath" and most underdog stories).

Zootopia also depicts a functional macro/micro world. There are other works that depict a disfunctional macro/micro world where generally one side is not on a level playing field with the other. Generally micro characters are second class or in hiding or macro characters are demonized and killed. Zootopia is functional in that a micro character is on equal grounds of person-hood as a macro character. This can be seen with Judy's relationship with Fru Fru as well as many other character interactions. Furthermore, micros are in positions of power (Mr.Big) and often have white collar jobs (which is expected from their position).

This has made me kind of want to visualize a functional macro/micro world or transform existing worlds to fit this.
In any matter, Macro/Micro is more of a fetish, but I also am a fan of size difference as a literary device and seeing a functional world of macro/micros living together was interesting and fun.



Thanks for reading, this is a long journal.
In any regard I may attempt to push myself to post more journals on basically anything, possibly using them as an actual journal. We'll see.