Trope Talk: Small Mammal on a Big Adventure

[@susieboo22]

The idea of some eldritch monster reading Lovecraftian horror and being scared for the spunky, fragile human protagonists is oddly adorable.

[@frozenchicken418]

I know, right? I really want to read a story with dramatic irony cosmic horror about humans.

[@tbotalpha8133]

@@frozenchicken418 Hmm... part of the problem is the "dramatic irony" element. The audience knows something that the characters don't. For this to work in a human-based Cosmic Horror story, the story would need to first firmly establish how its eldritch horrors work, and firmly ground the audience in the horrors' perspective, ahead of time. So that when the perspective flips to the humans, the audience firmly understands what they're dealing with, and what's likely to happen to these humans stumbling in the dark, playing with forces they don't understand. ...But in doing so, they'd arguably rob the eldritch horrors of their horror. Because if the cosmic beings are a known and familiar quantity, they're not going to be scary any more. Really, part of the appeal of Dramatic Irony Cosmic Horror is the irony that humanity - something every reader is already familiar with, and probably doesn't think is all that weird or scary - can appear baffling and terrifying to beings with vastly different perspectives. We don't associate humans with horror, like we do with Shoggoths. That's where the irony comes from. While fully-explained eldritch horrors would just be... alien-centric sci-fi, I guess.

[@floridaman6982]

Kinda reminds me of Deathnote in a way

[@kylienielsen6975]

​@frozenchicken418 in a way wings of fire is kinda like that, less cosmic horror but definitely small mammal

[@King_of_Clovers]

"When we sent down the monolith, we expected you to place flowers on it, not sacrifice people to it!" -Eldritch horror.

[@TetsuShima]

A minute of silence for those kids whose parents showed them "Watership Down" thinking it was just a typical Disney family movie...

[@billywarren007]

As a Brit I can confirm I have undergone the rite of passage known as Watership Down PTSD at an age below 10 🤣

[@greenhydra10]

I've only seen bits of it and I don't even wanna think about that.

[@TetsuShima]

@@billywarren007 My most humble condolences. I experienced the same when I casually discovered at the age of 12 a charming anime called "Barefoot Gen"

[@akisa7865]

Or Animal farm, the animated version (also made by brits)

[@michaelholtke4445]

​@@akisa7865i had that exact experience

[@Tfin]

My mother didn't assume Watership Down was child-friendly. She saw the name and thought it was about naval combat or some such, and bought it for my father.

[@marmyeater]

Probably better than the alternative.

[@williamchamberlain2263]

:)

[@claremiller9979]

Did he cry? That's the real question here

[@greenhydra10]

How the turns had tabled.

[@Tfin]

@@claremiller9979 I don't think he finished it. She gave it to me and I read it. No, I didn't cry, as far as I can remember.

[@unistrut]

There was an SCP story about a sentient, telepathic, but otherwise completely ordinary jumping spider suddenly realising it's place in the world. There's a very touching line where the agent talking to the spider says that he understands, he's dealt with things "as big and incomprehensible to me as I am to you."

[@measlyfurball37]

Which SCP is that, if you don't mind sharing?

[@Technodreamer]

SCP-1470 I believe, @@measlyfurball37

[@theapegod7668]

​​@@measlyfurball37 1470, be warned that the article is completely past tense and pretty sad

[@measlyfurball37]

@@theapegod7668 Thank you very much. That was an excellent read.

[@flameboi7104]

Imagine seeing an eldritch horror and expressing your immense sense of insignificance and the ginormous being responds "lol, same".

[@gus.smedstad]

“Silly human, only mice have souls” is my favorite background joke in this clip.

[@RainaRamsay]

I also enjoyed "If a human catches you, take off your pants!"

[@earnestbrown6524]

Have you come to accept Our Lord and Savior Mouse Jesus

[@krankarvolund7771]

My favourite is "Yeah it's a lot to take in. Is it a bad time to talk about Mouse Jesus?" XD

[@markchapman6800]

The human watching the mice battle with sorcery is also cute.

[@chrisgomez1262]

@@krankarvolund7771the purple person represents the viewer and brow/orange person with glasses is the author

[@kipofthemany2213]

"No little humans! Get out of there! The color pusegenta is very bad for organics!" Made me chuckle

[@DontObliteratetheCommenter]

I wonder how many times Red had to record that without laughing.

[@John_Weiss]

Timestamp for that part: 11:13

[@JunAoi]

I would've called it Stygian Blugenta, you know, for not existing, but yes, I marked out at pusgenta.

[@JimBob4233]

I imagine that's 'pucegenta', as puce is a colour and pus is very not

[@Joy-zz8wz]

​@@JunAoi that sounds like what the night sky during winter to a pentachromat

[@joaquinwaters1810]

Calling Aslan “God’s fursona” is one of the funniest and most correct things I’ve heard in a while

[@stevejakab274]

Check out "Lost in Adaptation" for the Narnia movies/books. The Dom is a very funny dude.

[@basharic3162]

I larfed hard at that.

[@phoebedarker]

It scarred me in the best way possible

[@Jemini4228]

Exactly. Where's the lie? XD

[@Jemini4228]

Exactly. Where's the lie? XD

[@adamgaucher6918]

'whimsically isekai'd to fairy land to kick it with god's fursona' is potentially the funniest sentence i have ever heard

[@johnj.spurgin7037]

Worse, it's completely accurate in the most laconic way.

[@freshbread4039]

arr slash new sentence

[@wendychavez5348]

​@@johnj.spurgin7037that's exactly why it's the best sentence I've heard this year!

[@ChimeraLotietheBunny]

XD

[@tasiashiraori]

​@marshalmarrs3269 Slime, Skeleton, Spider, Goblin

[@guggelguggel7491]

Reminds me of this post I saw on tumblr: "cosmic horror protagonists are so weak, my dog experiences at least five horrors beyond comprehension every day and is literally fine." "Well, maybe cosmic horror protagonist would fare better if the King in Yellow was there to reassure them and give them a little treat."

[@SimonClarkstone]

Horrors beyond comprehension aren't the problem. You go mad from the comprehensible horrors.

[@seanmcfadden3712]

"Who's a good mortal being? You are! Yes you are! Who almost went mad trying to comprehend another universe? You! Was it you! It was you! Have a treat."

[@Novenae_CCG]

I have thought about this in the benevolent sense. You see videos of humans picking a turtle out of the water to save it from plastic, and then put it back in the water. So imagine yourself just in your room, doing mundane stuff, then a a huge, 4-dimensional appendage breaks through reality itself, and drags you into a realm with colors and shapes you can't possibly comprehend, were entities that defy your very understanding do _something_ to you, then put you back in your room, leaving no trace of what happened, other than the fact that one thing that was bothering you (arthritis, tinnitus, near-sightedness, a broken leg, the flu, anxiety disorder, or whatever you have) is suddenly no longer bothering you.

[@DBArtsCreators]

Had a D&D campaign like that. The players had the aid of an eldritch patron who was giving them support via the overworked warlock. Supportive, but couldn't understand a single thing anyone was telling it, so it just tried to judge based off how everyone was looking/acting and spoke in its eldritch tongue in what was supposed to be comforting words (after dealing with the resulting terror & madness, the players were able to piece-out the intent).

[@lindafreeman7030]

Me! Take me and my chronic conditions! I volunteer!!

[@Kayclau]

"They are running out of food" Oh no "They haven't seen any humans lately" Oh no... "Winter is lasting longer than usual" Oh no! "Our scout went to the city and just died half way" OH NO!

[@ethanhinton4549]

Thats another one for Apocalypse bingo!

[@Leofwine]

“Winter lasting longer than usual.” Yup, nuclear boom.

[@insertnamehere9718]

As someone born post-Millenium, I didn’t realise this for AGES. And, when I did, my first thought was Chernobyl

[@petergao96]

​@@insertnamehere9718 eh, still nuclear so it passes

[@phyrath5]

​@insertnamehere9718 sad thing 'bout that: nature is doing better in the Chernobyl exclusion zone than surrounding Ukrane and Russia. Really gives you an idea how bad Human industry is

[@purplehaze2358]

"Stay off the thunderpath that's where the monsters with the big round paws live:((((" "You mean the fucking road?" I think my humor is broken on a very fundamental level. That nearly killed me.

[@crowbirdy]

I didn't even realize what monsters and thunder paths were till something like 7 books in

[@junoniathesilkwing4221]

Let’s be honest the rabbits in Watership Down would in fact say fuck if they could. Although would rabbits even consider it a curseword/a vile act? Because, you know. Rabbits.

[@strongrudder]

@@junoniathesilkwing4221 I mean... the book gently eases you into rabbit vocabulary until, at a major climax, one of our heroes gets to cuss out the big bad - "silflay hraka, u embleer rah!" - and by that point, the fact that there's no footnote isn't a problem :D

[@Steadyaim101]

@@junoniathesilkwing4221 They did though. In the books they use the word "hraka" like we would shit or fuck

[@rmsgrey]

@@strongrudder Yeah, even decades later, I have no problem translating that as "eat shit, stink-lord" - with the usual caveats about translation never being perfect.

[@nyxie2877]

“Talking animals are for kids” is what led thousands of third graders to read a cat disembowel another cat so hard with detached dog claws he lost all nine of his lives in quick succession

[@blackosprey2219]

Oh hey so I wasn't the only one, huh

[@tasiashiraori]

Beast Star? Anyone?

[@iridiumSerpent]

They were teeth but yes

[@nyxie2877]

@@iridiumSerpent That’s so much worse

[@Videogamefangirl]

You forgot about all the religious and political warfare, descriptions of cat childbirth and lots of cat death. So, so much cat death. All the time. Including but not limited to: death by rats, falling trees, drowning, falling off cliffs, and death by badger/fox/dog/eagles/mountain lion/cars. Warriors would not have been approved of if our parents knew what it was about lmao

[@Xidnaf]

there's a great tumblr post this reminded me of: "rabbits know and resent their place on the food chain. mice and rats also know they're prey animals, they just have such joy of living that it cancels out. guinea pigs have no concept of death but understand contextless fear. hamsters however do know the food chain, but they also know that attachment to the earth is the root of suffering and they wisely deny the faults of the ego"

[@anna_in_aotearoa3166]

That's great! 😆

[@theorixlux]

Can't wait for your next phoneme mixtape to drop! 🔥🔥

[@Castersvarog]

Tumblr and unexpectedly really hard quotes, name a more iconic duo

[@paris_2518]

YOURE ALİVE!!

[@Vinemaple]

This is so gloriously Tumblr

[@FreelanceCarmine]

"The colour pucegenta is very bad for organics!" Is such a great line. I love it.

[@aidennevada243]

Yes, it's beautiful!

[@lancelee338]

I love a caring eldritch horror

[@SsjRedneck]

Came looking for this comment😂

[@williamjones5334]

Mysterious Colours Unlike Any Seen On Ear-

[@williamchamberlain2263]

Which is a shame, because it accents pastel-grays really nicely.

[@JimmyAgent007]

To kids, the adult human world CAN be Cosmic Horror where everything is too big and the rules don't make sense.

[@Eshenaleros]

I do believe that's the intent behind Alice in Wonderland

[@pocketlint60]

Implying that stops being true when you become an adult

[@jojorose648]

Autism?

[@vicefandonna1575]

Alice in Wonderland enters the chat

[@ArceusDX]

Tbh, even as an adult, the adult human world is still an unexplainable cosmic horror

[@omegasavant]

I'm in vet school. I completely buy the idea of rabbits having anxiety so profound that it gives them visions of the future. Presumably this also happens to horses and that's why they occasionally freak out and run into the nearest fence. Scurry is also an incredible comic and everyone should read it. I'm getting the paper copy once I have an income again.

[@sherylcascadden4988]

I never heard of Scurry before, but the number of other comments including it made me curious, and your comment tipped the "I need to look into this" reaction. Thank you.

[@AngelFace.273]

I think the Cosmic-Horror-to-Dramatic-Irony thing is also what makes “Humans are Space Orcs” ideas fun and interesting; it recontextualizes our own biology and cultures that we see as utterly ordinary as something extraordinary and distinct of our species and maybe even terrifying

[@Ditidos]

I love the humans are space orcs. In a way, I kinda wished that was also true in fantasy works and humans weren't the generic, default species.

[@mirjam3553]

@@Ditidos I mean, that wish seems to be what originated the 'genre'

[@Hypogean7]

The one thing I dislike about those prompts is how blasé the humans are. The alien is freaking out, and the human is never equally freaking out about the alien.

[@theqracken4035]

​@Hypogean7 I mean to be fair, it is a VERY human response to acclimate to any situation pretty quickly. So if that's atypical or even if you just assume it's atypical, then of course the humans aren't freaking out. It's just another Tuesday. (Sure, the bombs are falling on London, and I might die tomorrow, but I'll just be over here watering my begonias.

[@iamthewalrus8391]

I actually find "mundane human behavior = cosmic horror" boring, but "extreme human behavior = cosmic horror" funny its not just drinking alcohol, its drinking it to the point of almost killing ourselves, bungie jumping not just once, but multiple times because its their new hobby. The aliens response is naturally "we might understand how this started, but this is stupid" and the joke is that most humans don't get it either, but it's not unprecedented.

[@thomasffrench3639]

Man I love that Watership Down is more violent than the uncut version of the original Friday the 13th yet it got a PG rating because it had animals and was animated.

[@alexanderharoldsen4178]

Which leaves the question: what would it take for an animated talking animal movie to get an R rating?

[@ethanstackhouse7274]

It's actually a U rating, which means available to all ages.... it is not

[@LexYeen]

​@@alexanderharoldsen4178Meet the Feebles is unrated and it was made with puppets, if that tells you anything.

[@-ZH]

@@alexanderharoldsen4178 And thats how we get creepypasta stories about lost episodes with images of real dead people or something. Maybe we can get it to 16 and up at that point.

[@lysanamcmillan7972]

@@ethanstackhouse7274 PG is for the American distribution. U is for that system's home country.

[@ckl9390]

In the "Small Mammals in a Scary World" scenario, a chicken coop would essentially be analagous to Jurassic Park. Our chickens used to actively hunt mice. Not just standing around by burrow entrances waiting for morcels to emerge, but even listening to the ground and digging several inches to bodily drag their quarry to the surface right when it thought it was safe. Just imagine a tyranasaur tearing the roof and upper storeys off your house just to get at you hiding in the basement.

[@w.mccartney431]

Used to? anyone with chickens can garuntee you they never have Rodent Problems, least of all in the coop, because they will STILL tear apart rodents to feast on. Birds remember they were dinosaurs, and are waiting for the day they are once again.

[@ckl9390]

@@w.mccartney431 I say "used to" because we ran out of mice. They were able to persist for some time because of the ramshackle nature of our coop, and we got new ones trying to move in every fall for a while. We also are keeping a lot less chickens at the moment.

[@szylaj]

99% of herbivores will eat smaller animals if given the chance, they are just not built to hunt.

[@kingsadvisor18]

​@@w.mccartney431"birds remember when they were dinosaurs, and wait for the day they are again" is a line tha goes hard

[@JimBob4233]

One of the things in the _Jurassic_ _Park_ book that Ian Malcolm brings up during the 'You have more dinosaurs than you thought and not all of them are in their enclosures' bit is that they stopped having a rodent problem on the island a couple of months into operations

[@PhiaPrevost]

There’s a great bit from Dimension 20 where Cinderella’s mice talk about being traumatized after being turned into people, another great example of cosmic horror for mice specifically XD

[@ellajohnny9885]

Wild you brought up D20 but not burrows end

[@hope1447]

A fan I see

[@PeregrineFalcon646]

@ellajohnny9885 Cause I feel like burrows end took the cosmic horror of watership down (which it was based on) and went, eh, let them just talk to humans! And uh, the children become Olympic stars! (Sorry, I’m still salty about the finale) But it introduced me to watership down so I can’t be mad

[@tortis6342]

Waddles unwillingly spending a day in Soos' body:

[@jamespryor5967]

@@PeregrineFalcon646 Yeah, it was quite disappointing.

[@theanimeunderworld8338]

It's all about perspective A sowing needle could be a sword A small pillow is a giant bed A crumb of cheese is an entire feast

[@Silverwind87]

And a nuclear hazard sign reading "THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR" can be a colossal monolith inscribed with an incomprehensible language, marking an area where reality falls apart.

[@JaredHight-g4e]

A shrew eats 90-300% of its body weight each day. As they weigh about 4 oz that’s 3.6 to 12 oz of food per day. Small mammal metabolisms are crazy. That would be like your average 180lbs 5’9 person eating over 500 apples every day just to not starve

[@robertlewis6915]

*sewing needle

[@scotginger4690]

"Eh, it's a matter of perspective."

[@pikeman777]

​@@JaredHight-g4e shrews suffer from an inability to make body fat. They have no way to store excess energy from what they eat. 1 of evolutions cruelest jokes.

[@midnightmatter2028]

Ever since I learned about this trope, I've been calling my friend's pet rat a Warlock. Little fella's basically got his own eldritch patron.

[@Penryck]

For the Rescuers, I always saw it as only the children could speak to the animals as a kind of showcase of their innocence and imagination or as a way of comforting them in key moments of stress or isolation.

[@crowickedone4037]

And then you grow up learing about corvids, cetaceans, squids and it turns out that the fiction wasnt so fictional afterall...

[@jj947]

Like the bell in Polar Express

[@RothAnim]

I somehow thought it was the same as in "All Dogs Go To Heaven", where those _specific_ kids could understand animals, but all animals could understand us.

[@phastinemoon]

Or that it’s like the weirdness filter from Discworld - everyone KNOWS that mice can’t talk, so if you see a mouse, and hear a voice… well, obviously it couldn’t be the MOUSE talking, right?

[@רוניבןעזרא-ו6ש]

What I love about the 'familiar world through alien eyes' is, that someone is going to relate to this supposedly unrelatable pov. A young child, an autistic person, an immigrant. not everyone is the same and in some situations, you are the alien.

[@Duiker36]

Yeah. Unrelatable protagonists are, like, Tuesday. I've long thought that I had too little trouble relating to every protagonist I ever read or see, because I could never understand people having that objection, but I think what's actually going on is that I relate to none of them. Yes, I enjoyed Watership Down.

[@geckovonparsley8200]

This is spot on, and made me realize that it's probably a big part of why I got so sucked into Watership Down as a (autistic) kid. I related really hard to those rabbits.

[@alexandredesbiens-brassard9109]

Yeah, I'm not sure there is such a thing as "relatable protagonist theory" like Red claims there is, at least not in a literary theory sense. It might be a misconception some people have, but I doubt anyone who writes or study writing for a living believe such a thing. And it is certainly not a structured theory.

[@AJJ129]

yes but also anyone can relate if you think about it enough and have empathy, the familiar truly is alien, simultaneously however i know what a train is

[@3nertia]

I feel like an alien under capitalism heh

[@Himax9]

One thing I always liked about the "magic, but for mice only" trope is the idea that it is a lesson in humility. What if magic is actually a common, everyday thing, and always has been, but we just haven't noticed it because of the character flaws that are inherent in being human. We are too busy paying bills, toiling our lives away, and being afraid of everything we see to notice the things that mice have already discovered and used for years.

[@basharic3162]

The show the Dragon Prince kind of hits on this. Fantasy setting where magic is real, yet for some reason humans can only use dark magic with great effort. It is consumptive, corruptive, and destructive, think in terms a lot like how we use natural resources in real life. It is in contrast the natural magic of all the other creatures in the world who look at humans in horror for using it. It's a huge deal when one of the human MCs starts being able to use regular magic with even greater effort and he's constantly tempted to revert to relatively easier dark magic. I haven't watched all the seasons and can't even honestly recommend it. The last season (the fourth) I watched the writing hit idiot ball levels that have put me off watching the fifth season.

[@nightfall3605]

You are basically discussing Nature Magick. And since humanity has done its level best to level all of nature, we have forgotten our connection to that force.

[@3nertia]

@@basharic3162 "Consumptive, corruptive, and destructive" - pretty analogous to capitalism ...

[@nightfuryrevenge1825]

Fun fact: the Tinkerbell movies from the 2000s technically fit into this trope

[@Shellybean9105]

YES

[@drunkennoodle2523]

Holy ship, you're right! Give this person a raise!

[@morinomajou]

The Borrowers too!

[@pRahvi0]

I mean... technically they are fantastic creatures... but then again, technically so are (most) talking animals.

[@soren3569]

As would Ferngully, at least at the opening, before one of the humans gets shrunk down and goes native.

[@purplehaze2358]

I never thought I'd see someone compare xenofiction to cosmic horror if the reader _was_ the eldritch being, but now that I have, it makes a lot of sense.

[@dwell7315]

The fact that i saw Red comment on a Dimension 20 Burrow's End youtube short about how she should do this trope talk a few months ago and now she's actually done it feels a tiny bit like Dorothy seeing behind the Wizard's curtain

[@LasagnaTheArtist]

I came back to this video after watching Burrows End and discussing it with a friend. It's very gratifying to know she had the same thought, just inverted.

[@kevingluys3063]

The Silverwing trilogy has the most unhinged escalation. Silverwing: A little bat goes on an adventure trying to get back to his colony. Sunwing: A little bat goes up against a cannibal cult and the Department Of Defense. Firewing: A little bat literally breaks out of hell.

[@InRealTime769]

This sounds like someone tried to make a Furry - JRPG

[@daviddaugherty2816]

You could say he's a... "bat out of hell"? I apologize for nothing.

[@tomfoolery-4444]

Darkwing: An almost-bat takes on dinosaurs, the granddaddy of carnivores, and THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION ITSELF

[@cloudGremlin]

Silverwing series was SUCH a wild ride for my 14 year old self

[@josephkoester3217]

I loved the Silverwing books

[@CatherineKimport]

"childhood as a necessary prerequisite for getting whimsically isekai'd into fairyland to kick it with God's fursona" OH MY FUCKING GOD RED YOU ALMOST MADE ME CHOKE TO DEATH ON MY BAGEL LAUGHING

[@geckovonparsley8200]

I was less caught off guard only because Dom Noble has been making a "Aslan is Jesus' fursona" joke for a while :'D (i think he even has merch with it, if youd find that fun, actually) I really like the idea of this becoming, like, a running thing x3

[@Blue-Maned_Hawk]

At least bagels have a hole you can breathe through!

[@tricky9131]

“No little human! Get out of there! The color pucegenta is very bad for organics!” That’s a t-shirt right there

[@thetux459]

I want that merch!

[@Red-in-Green]

Interacting to boost this so it becomes a t-shirt

[@Kumimono]

Buut, what color is the t-shirt?

[@geofff.3343]

​Pucegenta @@Kumimono

[@Ishma3l]

100%

[@megadog9305]

I think the only other time I've seen dramatic irony cosmic horror is watching the first episode of ~~Chenobal~~ Chernobyl as someone who already knew what happened there. Watching people make mistakes like "touching the door" and "looking to their left" and "picking up a dark brick" and "ignoring the taste of metal in the air" is absolutely horrifying and a perfect start to the series.

[@JimBob4233]

Atomic physics seems to be the perfect blend of weird and prevalent for that. One of the most annoyingly good stories I've read is a fanfiction in this genre about the rediscovery of Yucca Mountain. The annoying part is that the archaeologists are goddamn My Little Ponies.

[@Mcdt2]

@@JimBob4233 ...screw it, I can revisit my brony phase. what's the fic called, if you remember?

[@geckovonparsley8200]

​​@@Mcdt2pretty sure it's "The Writing on the Wall" by Horse Voice!

[@JimBob4233]

@@geckovonparsley8200 That's the one

[@alexandredesbiens-brassard9109]

Honestly, any story where the incoming doom is a known quantity - either because it is a historical event that really happened (colonialism, genocide, the Titanic), or because it is a fictionnal threat the audience knows (vampires, Godzilla, the Death Star) can feel like that if written well.

[@snosibsnob3930]

“Everybody thinks that if you see talking animals, it’s probably-“ *For furries* “For kids.” Oh.

[@noahkarpinski1824]

Why not both?

[@ibrahim5463]

​@@noahkarpinski1824......no.

[@BjornIdiottsonn]

@@ibrahim5463 Yes......

[@jojorose648]

Zootopia?

[@purplepedantry]

​@@ibrahim5463 Pourquoi pas les deux? C'est plus amusant!

[@itz_ringlot9168]

What I expected: haha, Ratatouille is such a fun movie. Following remi on his adventure really is quite captivating. What I got: the little critters dread existence and know that everything out there will kill them but they don't know nor understand what it is, how every it is and maybe not even what the out there is

[@rhymebeat1142]

The movie also got to have it's cake and eat it too with the "supernatural elements" because Remy is explicitly hallucinating Gusteau, there's no real human ghost that only a rat can see, just a genius rat with an overactive imagination.

[@TheMewtata]

Honestly Ratatouille dabbles in this. Remy is confronted with the reality that the humans he idolizes are essentially trying to genocide his entire race. And most of the rats can’t understand the knowledge that Remy accesses about cooking.

[@mckayleepugmire9947]

I was fortunate enough to avoid getting traumatized by Watership Down because my dad read the book. He has discussed the plot with me though, because he loved it and neither of us fear spoilers, and this one time he discussed the parallels with the Odyssey, specifically the Lotus Eater episode in which the "lotus eaters" are a small colony of extremely well fed rabbits living near a field of vegetables ruled by an unusually kind human who leaves food out all the time. Members of the colony disappear sometimes but no one talks about it. They are very welcoming, and offer to let the heroes join their colony, but after a while the leader decides they should move on. I have never heard a more disturbing take on the lotus eaters.

[@chiblast100x]

As I recall, and I unfortunately don't have my copy near at hand to check, that chapter has a bit from that section of the Odyssey as it's opening quote.

[@FlyingBunnycorn]

Ah yes, the Warren of Shining Wires. Aptly and disturbingly named indeed. God, the creeping dread I felt while reading that chapter (I didn't read Watership Down until I was a full-grown adult. I knew full well what I was getting into, and I was still taken aback...)

[@newsaxonyproductions7871]

A similar thing happens in the book Fire Bringer by David Clement-Davies. The main character comes across a group of deer which have a really disturbing, Stockholm syndrome- or religion-esque relationship with the nearby humans, who come around once a year and "take some of them away". The main character is tempted stay with them in their life where they don't have to worry about food or predators as much, but the way they talk about everything just puts him (and you, as the reader) off of their whole little society I never realized that it is a form of the lotus thing from the Odyssey, though. That's pretty neat!

[@MilloSpiegel]

Ignorance can be bliss

[@mindstalk]

@@newsaxonyproductions7871 I think the book more tracks the Aeneid. The divinely guided escape from destruction (Troy); stopping in a tempting false home (Carthage); founding a new home (Rome); the quest for women for the new home; the great battle; reconciliation.

[@jimjames4875]

Also my favourite part of Watership Down is when one of the rabbits swims and it absolutely blows the minds of some of the other rabbits that they effectively just block it out and forget it happened because it is so bewildering what just happened.

[@UrpleSquirrel]

That seems like a particularly silly thing for rabbits to be bewildered by, because rabbits (like most mammals) are decent at swimming. Not for long distances or in rough water, but crossing a stream or getting out if they fall in a pond? Rabbits can do that, no problem.

[@inkylynx2777]

@@UrpleSquirrel The littler rabbits Fiver and Pipkin were at risk of getting washed away by the current, both were exhausted and on the cusp of paralyzing fear, and Pipkin was harboring a wound in his foot. The time pressure was that one of them had smelled a dog not far away. The wanderers worried about having to leave them behind to cross the river, but Hazel wouldn't have it and Blackberry devised the plan.

[@happyslapsgiving5421]

I read *Watership Down* as a child. I assume my parents made the same mistake as everybody else and just assumed it was a children book. It scarred me. I also loved it. So, naturally, when my much younger sister wanted a book for her birthday, I went to buy it for her. Me: "Do you have a children's book called ?" The clerk: "Brah... yes, we do have it, but... it's not a children's book." *Only then* I realized that the hanged little rabbit as a metaphor of capitalism maybe wasn't targeted to children.

[@obansrinathan]

The thing is it actually is written for children. It began as a story told aloud to the authors children, who told him he had to write it down.

[@rachaelj7865]

@@obansrinathan That’s really interesting! It’s not the worst thing to read as a child, but I think some kids are too sensitive for it. I was one of those kids and couldn’t get myself to re-read it again until very recently. It wasn’t scarring or anything, but I would have been able to appreciate it more if I had waited. I still benefited from it, though. It’s an excellent lesson in considering the world from other perspectives and just an incredible book overall.

[@turtleofpride4572]

I have the hanged rabbit as a tattoo :) tho i never read it as a kid lt really resonated with me as a teen/young adult.

[@jeshirekitenkatt1212]

not with that attitude it isn't! fr tho kids love horror. coraline was widely considered too scary for it's target audience, but the the author had his publicist read it to her child. the publicists child liked it so much that she lied and claimed not to be scared because she knew if she admitted she was, she'd never get to finish it. i feel like people who grow up reading books like these ironically turn out to be more well rounded adults. it's a safe way to get familiar with fear as an emotion.

[@dawnfallon6812]

@@jeshirekitenkatt1212 That is a good point.

[@titadogelo5090]

Small Saga is a game that takes this trope with a combination of the common “Kill God” trope in RPGs: A small rodent kingdom exist beneath London. The story’s prologue has the protagonist, Verm, and his brother Lance breaking into a “Gods’ food hoard”, which is just a grocery store. While they’re getting the goods, a “Yellow God of Death” (an exterminator) walks in and causes Verm to lose his tail and his brother. From there, the story is about a small mouse seeking revenge against a God as he travels around a questionable kingdom and I absolutely love it

[@sabotabby3372]

also theres a trans-coded anarchist rat that does bonus damage to cops

[@titadogelo5090]

@@sabotabby3372 oh yeah, I could’ve mentioned about the gay squirrel, the fascist squirrels, the rat who wants to bomb parliament and all these other quirky characters but I didn’t want to drag on

[@Hupfen]

And, no spoilers, but it ends up in an interesting spot on that "cosmic horror" scale, between the themes of humanity it explores and what goes down during the climax and ending. Like, it all makes sense as we've been pulled through the story's world for several hours (maybe a little suspension of disbelief at the final boss for the sake of anime), but you _know_ that guy at the end is very confused and scared by what he just saw happen.

[@Aaa-vp6ug]

Ight I’m going to play this now

[@sabotabby3372]

Absolutely love the one rat understanding the meaning of "anthropocene epoch" and immediately going off the deep end as they realize how royally (heh) boned their entire civilization is and how they never had a chance from the start

[@mdccxcii6340]

Aslan being described as "God's fursona" is something I didn't expect to hear in my lifetime.

[@CortexNewsService]

but is it wrong?

[@liamjamesharris]

I was not anticipating that and it hit me like a brick

[@captanblue]

Same. I can't even be mad since it's not THE God but a version in a book, so it's whatever.

[@mdccxcii6340]

​@@CortexNewsServiceI'm just disturbed by the sheer *accuracy* of the statement.

[@kestreldomann2787]

Clearly you have never spent time on Dominic Noble's channel 😂

[@Vince_ible]

I love how in Guardians of Ga'hoole, the humans are missing for some reason, and the owls are piecing together the artifacts they left behind.

[@THATGuy5654]

You deserve some kind of award for that Color Out of Space example, both for being a good way to explain it, and for being the most absurd possible way to explain it.

[@peterstorm8089]

On anthropomorphizing, Watership Down is even more interesting. Because I recurring theme in the book is that the villainous rabbits are actually the ones that are more "human" or rather have abandoned their Rabbitiness. Clowslip's warren is marked as odd for the rabbits have concepts like visual art and laughter, and that they resign themselves to their fate rather than fight tooth and nail to live another day. Woundwort meanwhile runs his warren like a military dictatorship, with units of organization and military ranks, and is completely unafraid of the various elil of the world. Both of these are demonstrated to be a problem. Clowslip's warren is one of sloth and complicity, and Woundwort ignores the growing unsustainability of his warren and refuses to give up even a modicum of control. Tying into the point of perspective cosmic horror, it portrays these way of thinking and living as unnatural, even though to us as humans we recognize them as how many humans live their lives. Comparable almost to something like Innsmouth in Lovecraft, humans who have forsaken a human way of living and it is seen as unnatural and wrong.

[@raye-raphaelsashay8521]

This is an awesome point.

[@ViewingChaos]

Such a good insight into the book, I really need to go and read it

[@DanGamingFan2406]

What I love most about this genre is the creative ways the animals see the world and interact with it. Mice useing buttons as dinner plates and Sewing needles as swords, the religious beliefs of the rabbits in Watership Down, wheter these animals see humans as gods or monsters, it's all such fascinating world building.

[@watershipup7101]

Very much agreed.

[@waterbullstudios9195]

It's always so creative.

[@CountofBleck]

In Small Saga, the main character wields a Pocketknife like a Buster Sword, a mole uses a lighter as cannon, a pair of knight mice uses 2 halves of a pair of scissors...its great

[@abigailbaldwin4224]

The redwall books have long been my favorites, in part because death *means* something. Nobody that dies comes back. And everybody that dies hurts everybody around them in a very real way, and are never forgotten. I don't think i remember a single after climax victory scene that *didn't* involve one or more of the main cast struggling with their greif that another of the main cast died in resolving the plot. It's sad, majestic, and incredibly beautiful.

[@richardhollis3783]

Interesting how important death and grief are. I remember reading The Wolves of Time series (which is very much on the Watership Down end of anthropomorphication, fyi) which is basically about a pack of wolves - a family unit. A particular character - who certainly has some antipathy with our heroes, but never tips over into full villain - is killed and NO-ONE EVEN NOTICES! None of them comments on it or mourns or anything, and they are her FAMILY. I've never been turned off my protagonists so completely.

[@darkfool2000]

The one that hit me the hardest was Martin the Warrior, a prequel book before Redwall, but after Mossflower, and the death at the end felt especially sad, not only because the lost happy ever after future, but because it was canonically too painful for the Hero Martin to ever speak of it again (I know that it's because the whole story is basically a retcon, but that doesn't make it less sad.)

[@nerdyvids1]

@@darkfool2000 Isn't Martin the Warrior before Mossflower, and ends with him beginning his wandering journey that sees him stumble into the wildcats' patrol at the start of Mossflower?

[@Inucroft]

Also... the first book- it is set within a human world. The cart the rats arrive in, the scale of the barn....

[@Foxpawed]

I understand that he was like "Children like when the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad" but I still wish we got more complex characters anyways as I otherwise adore the series, I just resent that he started with "well foxes are neutral but untrustworthy [cough and kinda romani coded cough] but these two we focus on are bad guys" and then every single character with like four exceptions in all 23 books, most of them non-vermin, fall strictly along that species binary.

[@ems4456]

“A certain book series I never got into” Frankly I am SHOCKED by this information and am suspicious that it’s sarcasm sailing over my head at light speed

[@Soveliss74]

There's one that I just remembered. Ravenspell. A kid buys a mouse as a pet, only to discover that it's really a mouse used to feed reptiles. The mouse uses magic to turn the kid into a mouse and they go off and have adventures

[@crowickedone4037]

​@@Soveliss74 Transformation stories are always *the ones*. It got me, and condemn it all now i'll never see the life as i used to.

[@arsenthehumanfirehazard]

Thank you for putting into words what I was thinking 😂

[@9nikola]

Especially considering how many times in this video I was thinking "huh Warrior Cats would be a great example for this" and have to be shocked by the reminder of the former revelation _again_

[@MrSubejio]

I can believe your theory about hares being cursed with knowledge of how they're going to die, but I also like the theory that hamsters see a little silvery cord connecting them to whatever horrific death they're going to endure, and they march toward it like good little soldiers. They are the bravest of the small mammals; they know no fear. They see goliaths that are basically nice to them and they choose to scream at them because their lettuce is a bit wilty.

[@tbotalpha8133]

brave little meat-potatoes

[@samuelpierce2.088]

Nature’s favorite little maniacs. c:

[@lagggoat7170]

I didnt know Hamsters also scream at their human staff - but Im very used to it from my three judgy large potatoes (aka guinea pigs). Its so funny, because the loudest is also the shyest. She doesnt like me petting her but she still makes eye contact while screaming full force for the arrival of veggies. And then she constinues screaming if I dared to not bring cucumber (variety is healthy, but in their opinion everything pales next to cucumber).

[@jchoward487]

Never has a hamster met a peaceful death.

[@mindstalk]

@@jchoward487 Especially if it lived with another hamster. Hammibal the Cannibal.

[@jackielinde7568]

The funny thing about Brian Jacques's Redwall series is that he wrote novels. These were definitely stories aimed at adult readers, not just children. But they ended up being rewritten into children's books and a PBS animated special aimed at children. But the original works were 300-to-500-page novels for adults to enjoy. But they were tame enough a parent could read them to their kids. Another thing about the Redwall series is that Brian Jacques grew up during WWII and experienced the food rationing that happened after the war. He was so surprised that a lot of books he read around that time would mention feasts and meals, but never described the food in those feasts and meals. That is why his books do go into detail (maybe too much?) about the foods his writing subjects had (or didn't in famines. He didn't hold back.)

[@MusesWhim]

While the Redwall series can be enjoyed by adults, it was written for children. Specifically, for the children of the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind in Liverpool. Jacques was working as a milkman and the school was one of his stops. He began volunteering to read to the children, and that evolved to him making up his own stories to tell them, and then eventually writing them down. His extremely descriptive writing style developed because instead of focusing how a scene looked, he described the other senses so it was accessible to the blind. He didn't focus on the details of what the Great Tapestry looked like, but the history and the feelings it evoked. The abbey isn't just a space for things to happen in, he describes where the areas are in relationship to one another, the feeling of the stone and where it comes from. And then he really lets loose when describing the food, making sure that the scents, taste, and texture are all properly conveyed. Just because a book is long, doesn't mean it wasn't written for children. And just because a book was written for children doesn't mean it's juvenile. Redwall gets into some shit like war, gruesome deaths, parental loss, abuse, slavery; but it's all framed in a fairly black and white morality where good will win in the end, which gives a child security to start learning how to deal with that shit.

[@jaspersagem9469]

​@MusesWhim I did a school project on Braine Jacques, and I was gonna leave a reply like this, but you nailed it already

[@lmc689]

I think it's also worth noting that the first novel described the world the mice live in as a human sized world. Cluny menacing the horse pulling the human sized cart, for example. It was only in the other books he wrote that had everything be smaller and more mouse sized.

[@alanherlan3429]

@@MusesWhim taking that angle of for the blind even further there was a Badger Lady from Salamandastron named Cregga Rose Eyes because her eyes always shown just a little red from bloodwrath and would shine even more red when she went completely rage-mode but during one of her battles she not only lost her eyes but became a Resident of Redwall abbey (a peaceful resident at that) meaning a blind person could project themself into one of the characters easily (especially because Cregga Rose Eyes was a reoccurring character across many books)

[@Vinemaple]

Tame? The values dissonance in Redwall made my head hurt. I can't imagine trying to explain it to a child.

[@nerdygamergeek4291]

I think Animal Farm deserves a mention here, even if it's not exactly an adventure story. Not only are humans these all-powerful, god-like entities, but by the end of the book (spoilers for a book from 1945) the pigs have become anthropomorphised (walking on two legs, wearing clothes, drinking alcohol, etc.) and this is clearly framed as a sort of monstrous transformation. The increasing anthropomorphisation IS the horror, akin to, say, the way Chihiro's parents turn into pigs in Spirited Away. Animal Farm isn't just dramatic irony cosmic horror, it's dramatic irony _body_ horror.

[@umapessoa240]

Is it though? I always saw the human-like pigs as a metaphor for becoming the monster you once fought

[@Stray7]

@@umapessoa240 That's the great thing, it can be both!

[@GrumpyLoco6]

I think it's meant to be more of an allegory for political corruption than it is some cosmic horror. I love Animal Farm, but it's not exactly subtle. lol

[@KlaxontheImpailr]

More like a political horror story, since the story is an allegory for the rise of communism.

[@panlis6243]

@@GrumpyLoco6 Ye, the animals getting rid of the farmer is very clearly an alegory for overthrowing the goverment

[@Punaparta]

After you talked so much about dangers that humans can comprehend but animals can't, and then started describing the plot of Scurry, the moment you said "winter has lasted kinda longer than usual", I immediately thought "Oh. Oooh nooo."

[@RainaRamsay]

Saaaaame

[@Ciara_Turner]

"Dramatic irony cosmic horror" is why the stoat season of Dimension 20 is one of my favourites. Highly, highly recommend if you're even somewhat interested

[@tamarawiggin7888]

Man I had to scroll real far to find a Burrow's End mention, love that series

[@RussanoGreenstripe]

I was waiting for the Burrow's End drop as well, since OSP commented on one of their shorts and mentioned the seed of this idea. Touches on a lot of the themes at play here - the dramatic irony, the "magic only for mice," the eldritch horror, all of it.

[@williamchamberlain2263]

Cheers

[@logicaloverdrive8197]

@@RussanoGreenstripe Just, truly, the *ENTIRE* 9 yards, especially the eldritch horrors part, Aabria worked the art team to the fuckin BONE. Outside of the excellent character work and normal D20 shenanigans, it's a pretty straightforward version of this trope. But they take it to extremes in places that still take you off guard, even after you pretty much figure out the first big twist pretty fast.

[@TitaniaBird]

It's also a good example of a story on the extreme end of anthropomorphization that still plays with elements of the lesser-end of the anthro continuum in order to build the world for the players and watchers. Like, even though they don't wear clothes (for most of the show), the Stupendous Stoats are ridiculously human-like in all the best ways. The appearance and trappings of low-anthro with the mechanics of high-anthro, making for a great synthesis.

[@dragonbretheren]

I feel like "Small Mammal" can be expanded to "Small Critter". It's not too uncommon to get the same trope from the perspective of bugs, birds, reptiles, etc. Thus, excluding this to mammals seems to artificially narrow the potential genre a bit.

[@katerocks82196]

Right! And surely "The Borrowers," fairies, or any other Lilliputian-type beings could fit into this category, as well.

[@Gloomdrake]

It also excludes Olimar from Pikmin. Despite superficially resembling a a tiny human, he’s extraterrestrial, and therefore cannot be classified accurately as a mammal

[@yesbutactually909]

shout out to Minuscule, the movie that made me go, why do i relate so much to a non verbal ladybug?

[@Gloomdrake]

@@yesbutactually909 you good?

[@BJGvideos]

Inko Colors does it with budgies. Domestic budgies no less, who go home to their humans at the end of the day.

[@Jemini4228]

Then there are stories like Thumbelina and Honey I Shrunk the Kids where the main characters are functionally the Small Mammal but with human insights and sensibilities. Antz and A Bug's Life are also pretty cool examples of this from the perspective of minibeasts. I think Bambi could also fit into this trope too. He is not a particularly small mammal but the way in which he experiences the existence of humans as this malevolent, nebulous force rather than as other creatures is fascinating.

[@pRahvi0]

As an animal baby and youngling, he's by definition small enough to fit this trope most of the movie.

[@liseturner1019]

I loved Watership Down as a child. Thankfully, both my parents had read it in full so we read it as a family with proper follow up. Including an age-appropriate discussion of fascism and sexual violence. Now, as the owner of 4 gorgeous pet rats, I love being able to see my living space through their eyes. The laundry drying rack is an adventure jungle gym. My storage boxes are little cozy spots to take a nap. The dishwasher is a terrifyingly loud and incomprehensible source of fear. I even get to spend a few weeks using treats to teach new baby rats that I'm not actually an eldritch horror.

[@LiaEA]

Oh you are, but you have treats :)

[@geckovonparsley8200]

​@@LiaEAthis made me laugh so hard. it's as if I came face to face with Cthulhu and as I stand there paralyzed by fear, mind reeling trying to even take in what I'm seeing, one of his enormous tentacles descends to my level and offers me a pizza 🤣

[@tarniabook3076]

@@geckovonparsley8200 The quickest way to someone's heart, regardless of species, is food.

[@Darker7]

@@tarniabook3076 Regardless of whether you're talking metaphorically or literally. Mmmmm, poison :Ü™

[@JuanMunzerAsakura]

The dramatic irony existencial horror of Watership Down, is also hilariously prevalent in warrior cats. especially in arc 2 but it's definitely present in arc 1

[@lagggoat7170]

I always wished they had done more with the Trap idea. I still have a fanfiction idea way back in my brain about the Clans struggling with most of them having been TNR-ed, it could have themes of family being chosen and not having to be made by blood (which Warriors struggles with as a series, just look at how Squirrels adopted Nephews stopped being seen as her kids by the narrative) and how Star Clan would react to it (= less cats -> less believers -> less power? It would have been very critical of organized religion)

[@FirstLast-cg2nk]

Small Saga, a game that came out in 2023 on Steam, is the tale of a young warrior wielding an oversized sword who seeks to kill the god who slew his brother. It's also the story of a mouse wielding a pocket knife seeking to slay an exterminator. The fact that the main character is basically Guts in mouse form is honestly hilarious to me, and it was a fun game to play.

[@marmyeater]

"An enormous slab of iron" hits a bit differently when it's actually 3" long.

[@cantrip7]

+ Was gonna mention Small Saga myself.

[@soundskiesart]

and the "mage" character wields a modified bic lighter that spews fire at enemies. its great and a really fun way to incorporate "magic" into the rodent world

[@OreoRanger2210]

Leaving a reply so I can find this game when the time comes

[@mothmanisthebest7404]

Wow, I also thought of bringing up Small Saga for this video. It is good and charming game.

[@Madalovin]

The Jocat gobbo goblin fella being added in near the beginning was a nice little detail that made me smile. c:

[@vincentleonard3797]

You mean at 1:39? Didn't even notice until you pointed it out.

[@Madalovin]

@@vincentleonard3797 Yep Yep! Love that lil guy, I got myself a wizard one sitting with my mountain of sheep plushies.

[@arcadiaberger9204]

One of my favorite "it's the small mammals' world" scenarios I ever ran into was in a comic book story which opened with a small mammal piloting his flying machine over a vast widerness, spotting what is obviously a human skeleton. S/he gasps at it, saying, "What a monster! It must have stood more than 150 centimeters tall!" Beautifully laying out that this is a future world in which humans are extinct and the dominant species (multiple species as it turns out) is much smaller than us, so that we are regarded as "dinosaurs" by them. Very concise worldbuilding done with a single image in passing.

[@kjarakravik4837]

That sounds cool! Do you maybe remember the name of that story?

[@-FFFridge]

commenting here in case you remember the name

[@KlaxontheImpailr]

@@-FFFridge same

[@mrs-m1024]

Sounds to me like "Last of the sandwalkers?" But I don't know for certain. That story is amazing though, Highly reccomend.

[@arcadiaberger9204]

@@kjarakravik4837 I do not remember the name of the story. It was in a black and white anthology comic of multiple talking-animal stories by different artists and writers. This was at least thirty years ago, since I can recall the shop I was standing in, and when it closed, so the likelihood of my being able to remember the title of the book or the name of the writer, much less the title of the story/series is pretty minute. Quite memorable, though (as y'all can see). I'm definitely going to have to check out this *_Last of the Sandwalkers._*

[@LilypadPanda]

I just realised something: In many 'Small Mammal Scary World' stories, the Small Mammals are basically stand-ins for children. Children too are small, fragile, and unfamiliar with the world. So to kids, the stories resonate since the characters see the world as intimidating and unknowable as they do. And to adults, the stories become akin to watching children try to navigate and comprehend a situation they have no context for. The retelling of the Nuclear War in "Scurry" reminds me a bit of the manga 'Barefoot Gen' - a story about the Hiroshima Bombing, as viewed through the eyes of a six-year-old, and written by an actual survivor of the events. When the protagonist (shielded from the majority of the intense heat and light of the initial blast by the sheer luck of crouching down behind a stone wall to pick up a rock) sees the horrifically burnt, melting bodies of the dead and half-dead people around him, he doesn't recognise them as humans at first, instead running in fear from the "monsters". Because, after all, what else would a 6-year-old conclude upon seeing that?

[@spookybookworm3063]

Who else got traumatised as a little hatchling when their source(s) gave them "The Collected Cthulhu Mythos"? No one was expecting *this* from a book with cute little humans on the cover

[@nathancarter8239]

I actually avoided it as a little Deep One because I can't stand to see humans die. 😞

[@kamikazelemming1552]

Probably my favorite version of this is "The Guardians of Ga'Hoole." The story takes place long after the death of humanity, where the only things left of them are a handful of stone structures like church's and castles. Animals have long since evolved to the point of forming their own cultures, with some, namely the owls, even going so far as to discovering how to write books and forge weapons. There is also a slight magical element, namely with stuff like the Ember of Hoole, a magical McGuffin introduced during the second half the series, the hagsfiends, and a mysterious pool of black liquid that mutates the wolves who drink from it. The story also isn't afraid to shy away from just how monstrous these animals, despite being more civilized, can be. The first book introduced multiple villains that cannibalize other owls, including one who gleefully devours chicks and eggs.

[@dawnfallon6812]

I remember picking up _Watership Down_ a few years back. I started reading, and I initially thought it would be great to share with my nieces and nephews. Then you meet Cowslip and the strange rabbits, and I began to rethink it. Then Holly and Bluebell caught up to Hazel. Yeah. Funnily, my brother asked me a year later about it. Evidently his wife had seen it on a list of "kid friendly novels". My answer was colorful and energetic, and could be best summarized as "NO!!!"

[@rmsgrey]

The book isn't as kid-unfriendly as the Narnia series (particularly The Last Battle). The movie ups the trauma value by stripping away a layer of interpretation. Of course, it's possible I was permanently warped by reading both before I turned ten...

[@Vinemaple]

I loved Watership Down as a child, the horror and suspense seemed to make it more thrilling, I reread it myself probably by age six or seven (I was an early reader, late in most other ways), and loved it again, although the chase out of Efrafa did force me to put it down for a day or so.

[@katerocks82196]

My 4th grade teacher read "Watership Down" to us in class but I think he stopped halfway through when realized "NO! This isn't kid-appropriate AT ALL!!!"

[@MySerpentine]

Who wrote that list and why did they hate children so much LOL

[@AzhreiVep]

@@Vinemaple Same here! At least the movie. I didn't learn about the book for an embarrassingly long time. But as a wee lil' kid, it was one of my favorites.

[@crimsonchaos7224]

A subset of the "secret society" version of this trope that I like (or at least fine interesting) is the one where the animals consider it taboo or at least a really bad idea to directly interact with humans, meanwhile the protagonist basically says "but what if I do anyways?" and maybe causes a domino effect that heavily changes both the human and animal societies (see Ratatouille or The Bee Movie).

[@williamchamberlain2263]

Yeah, but bee movie is more of a furry Mills & Boon

[@soundskiesart]

another good example is the game Small Saga. pretty much every species in the rodent kingdom follows the "Old Way" (basically: dont fuck with humans). except for the protag who, of course, fucks with humans after an exterminator kills his brother and he vows to kill the human. mild spoiler but the actions of some rodents cause the destruction of big ben. im not kidding

[@francesleones4973]

Don't forget Despeareaux

[@haflaen]

Something I’m surprised didn’t get a mention is Terry Pratchett’s “The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents”. In true Pratchett fashion, it’s a satire of its chosen subgenre (in this case, the Small Mammal on a Big Adventure story) whilst also being one of the best examples of that subgenre out there. It occupies a really nice middle ground on the anthropomorphism spectrum, featuring a clan of rats who have only recently become sentient due to eating the cast-offs from the Unseen University, and are still coming to terms with this newfangled “thinking” business. The centrepiece of their nascent culture, their “Bible” as it were, is a children’s book called “Mr Bunnsy has an Adventure”, which presents a utopian vision of animals wearing clothes and talking to humans, who treat them just like smaller humans. The rats believe this must be real somehow, because “surely even humans wouldn’t make a book about Ratty Rupert the rat who wore a hat, and poison the rats under the floorboards at the same time. Would they?” There’s also an immensely satisfying scene where the book’s two human protagonists trick a pair of duplicitous rat-catchers into thinking they’ve eaten rat poison. Whilst they’re having the poison’s effects painstakingly described to them, one of the rat-catchers exclaims, “This is inhuman!” To which one of the protagonists replies, “No it isn’t. It’s extremely human. There isn’t a beast alive that would do it to another living thing, but your poisons do it to rats every day.”

[@anna_in_aotearoa3166]

Yeah, was just leaving a comment wondering how effective all these endless tales of animal intelligence & unique cultures have been in inculcating empathy towards actual animal species in their readers...! 🤔 Our cultures as a whole seem to have very confused ideas in that space, esp. when it comes to various types of animal exploitation. Although it does seem as if voracious readers are generally less likely to participate in the "let's chuck rocks at cats" type of mindless cruelty...? What do you reckon?

[@antoine8649]

to be fair, the rats-relating black plague of the middle age seems to have left quite a trauma on occidental civilisation as a whole. plus the whole "rodents eats our lifeblood grain stocks" the rat seems to have left a weird print on human psyche and imagination since a few hundred years. looks quite unique in that way.

[@WhiteRose2002]

@@antoine8649and that makes sense that we generally have a negative reaction towards them. Most of human history has just been about us getting food from the stone age to the golden age of piracy, almost every action has had the basis of we need food to live. Rodents eat our food stores and chew through our homes it makes sense that for most of history rats and other rodents are viewed as this greedy nebulous thing that we have to stop. And it’s only recently that we have stopped worrying about food, at least in the west, and as such rodents have been viewed under a much more sympathetic light, with us making movies and books that anthropomorphize them and even keeping them as pets.

[@lucykoelle6602]

apparently the plague was more human the human than rat to human@@WhiteRose2002

[@Brasswatchman]

​@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 On the other hand, such ideas tend to run headlong into the brutal realities of real rodents. Like, say, infant cannibalization.

[@rincamilia752]

your drawing of the two mice having magic battle with a human watching them is probably the funniest thing i've seen in a still image

[@Elholz]

The "magic, but only for mice" thing has to be done right to work. I once read a beautiful series called Foxcraft, that was about magical canines. Different canines were capable of different kinds of magic, but they also lived in an explicitly human populated world. The main character is a fox, and starts out living an ordinary fox life at the edge of a city. The animals don't live like humana do, and they don't magically understand the way we live. For the most part they are ordinary animals and perceive the world as such. They have their own words and explanations for human things like roads and cars, and even the domesticated dogs don't fully understand it. I think, that it was a very well done series, especially since human civilization wasn't the actual villain of the story, it was treated more like an environmental hazard, that they had to deal with.

[@relativelystable9328]

YES FOXCRAFT OMG!!! I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYONE TALK ABOUT THAT SERIES!!! Part of the reason it kind of worked was that none of the magic was necessarily fully undeniable MAGIC, it was foxes using their natural strengths in trickery to a point they PERCEIVED as magic, like adopting someone's mannerisms so well other's perceived you as that person, rather than just straight up shapeshifting.

[@Elholz]

@@relativelystable9328 I'm pretty sure, that not all of the instances of magic being used were deniable, but overall that was one of the things that made it work so well, yes.

[@encryptidarchivist]

FOXCRAFT!! i haven't thought about that series in years. yeah, those books are a fantastic example of animals having magic being done well.

[@ianyoder2537]

Question though, if the story is focused on animals rather than humans, how do you know the humans don't have magic of their own? Kinda a logical fallacy.

[@GonsalvoDeCordova]

I mean, talking mice, so the step to only magic for them is a relatively small one, eh?

[@SirGrimly]

I really want Red to highlight more webcomics in her trope talk series now... it's always super cool when she breaks out of the norm to discuss stories that would otherwise go unnoticed by the people watching these videos.♥

[@Internetresident0451]

18:08 A tumblr quote that this reminded me of: "If you don't know the difference between a hare and a rabbit, you've never gazed into the cold, wild eyes of a hare and known that if it spoke, it would speak backwards."

[@DelphinusZero]

I’ve been reading some old children’s stories for my daughter’s bedtime, and man are they all over the place with them. Beatrix Potter’s (Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny) world has bunnies that wear clothes and sneak into gardens to eat vegetables, and one of the humans makes a scarecrow with discarded bunny clothes but they appear to not be able to communicate with each other at all. The Wind in the Willows ends up just casually having humans who are the same size as the anthropomorphic animals? But also has some kind of weasel militants take over Mr. Toad’s manor when he goes to jail.

[@ShiftyMcGoggles]

I always thought the animals were animal-sized, and humans were just 'ye, that'd be Mr Rat. Live's ov'er there by t'river. Nice chap, pays 'is taxes, bit 'airy though.'

[@kjj26k]

​@@ShiftyMcGoggles Depends on the adaptation. Wind in the Willows has just a ton of adaptive works and all of them have different takes on the fiction.

[@ShiftyMcGoggles]

@@kjj26k I have realised that I've, sort of, learnt about the entirety of it through cultural osmosis from being British... I probably should read the actual book sometime.

[@PantherCat64]

I was laughing way too hard at the “magic but only for mice” illustration.

[@zackolsen]

My wife and I just realized the roughly 1980-1995 mouse craze last night , so I was so excited to see this. It’s serendipitous to see this pop up today! 1977- Rescuers 1982 - The Secrets of Nimh 1986 - An American Tail 1986 - The Great Mouse Detective 1990 - Rescuers Down Under 1991 - An American Tail Fievel Goes West

[@DDlambchop43]

omg, I forgot about American Tail! I used to sing Somewhere Out There at the top of my lungs

[@peterwindhorst5775]

Don't forget Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers. Some fans put it as part of the Rescuers universe.

[@WilliamSteelheart]

​@@peterwindhorst5775Ooh, I hadn't heard that one before, but it actually kind of works, doesn't it?

[@jadedragon1406]

​@peterwindhorst5775 Rescue Rangers was my favorite show as a kid. And I wasn't even born when it released! We just had a couple CDs of it that I watched on repeat! Hahaha

[@neighslayer768]

If you count live action, there was also Mouse Trap and Stuart Little.

[@thaddeushamlet]

There's a VR game I still need to finish called Moss that's a bit of an interesting take on this genre. You ARE the cosmic entity helping the small mouse in a big world as it goes on a fantasy adventure. If I recall, you're supposed to just be reading a story but then the main character sees you and soon encounters obstacles that only you can overcome, mainly by manipulating objects in the environment. Also you can high five the mouse after beating some sections and it's adorable. 10/10 Added bonus of no motion sickness since you're essentially watching the adventure from a 2.5D platformer perspective.

[@hyenaedits3460]

I love it but I struggle so hard with the brambles. I kept feeling bad about killing the mouse so I stopped playing 😢

[@cameronpearce5943]

Humans being the cosmic horrors is such a vibe, but also makes me think about how I put spiders outside and stuff instead of killing them. Like if a cosmic horror translocating you to another continent was just them taking you out of the shower so you don’t get washed away. Comic horror, comics empathy?

[@kylajensen1957]

I once spent a bunch of time fishing drowning bugs out of a swimming pool at a water park and then leaving them in a sunny spot for their wings to dry out, and about halfway through I started considering how freaking trippy that would be for the BUG.

[@Organman2410]

“Sorry, only mice have souls. I know this is a lot to take in, but is it a bad time to tell you about Mouse Jesus?” Someone should make an entire movie out of those sentences.

[@XaviusNight]

My immediate thought is that all creatures have the same amount of magic soul-stuff, but this means only mice and other rodents can actually use magic spells and such because they're the only creatures small enough proportionate to their souls, but also still clever/smart enough to use it. Humans grew too big for magic use.

[@DancingTiger]

Could imagine if we discovered definite proof of souls but they only existed in things like squirrels.

[@demetriajones3231]

May I suggest: The Star

[@sarascarpati887]

Don't give pure Flix movies any ideas!

[@mathnerd97]

Well, now that Mickey is in public domain ...

[@youdontgetaname2904]

One of the things i always loved about those redwall Abbey books was the dichotomies between cute bri'ish woodland creatures, wonderful feasts and actual fucking war crime.

[@Deceitful_Jester]

I fucking LOVE Redwall it's SO GOOD. Highly recommend the audiobooks if you've only ever read the stories and never listened, the author reads the narrator pieces and there is an entire cast that reads the lines for all of the characters and all of the musical bits have cute little instrumentals to go along with them and everything, it's a delight.

[@johnedwards1559]

Yes, wait until the rats are almost finished tunneling into the abbey, then use the silly whimsical abbey chef's MASSIVE CAULDRONS OF BOILING WATER to flood the tunnel and give the villain PTSD nightmares about his lieutenants ghosts begging him to help them. The first Redwall book in particular is rife with this dichotomy.

[@jongray9879]

I didn't realize it at the time. But a character that kidnapped children and sold them into slavery might have been a bit much to learn about at 8 years old

[@macaronsncheese9835]

Redwall: "our protagonists are largely peaceful abbey residents who just want to live their lives and eat good food" Also Redwall: "ways our protagonists have killed antagonists include on-screen beheading, drowning villain soldiers in boiling porridge, leaving them to die by snake bite (which btw happened to a child who survived and was horrifically mutilated, but it's cool because he grew up and got into kidnapping children to be slaves), deliberately torturing one with the sound of running water for months until she went crazy and drowned herself trying to escape a fight, and dropping a big ol' bell on a dude. What the fuck is a 'Geneva Convention'?" Somehow, PBS was cool with adapting this into a kids show and my parents were cool with me watching that but not SpongeBob. Like that was too mature, but the big snake getting its head cut off among other onscreen deaths were totally fine no notes.

[@youdontgetaname2904]

@@jongray9879 good God that fucked me up as a kid

[@LinguaPhiliax]

I am loving the fact that calling Aslan "Jesus' fursona" is catching on.

[@charlieboone1298]

Genuinely cackled.

[@blizzardgaming7070]

By the way, that's cannon to Narnia.

[@kathleenfullin6098]

I appreciated seeing the thumbnail to Dominic Noble's review of the series, always fun when my favorite KZbin channels mention each other

[@johnathanmonsen6567]

As others have noted, it's pretty much canon. C. S. Lewis was very explicit in discussions that no, Aslan was not a for Jesus, he Jesus, just using a more appropriate form for that world.

[@VictoriaStarratt]

@@kathleenfullin6098He’s been on the podcast at least once, and he’s had Indigo, Blue and Red on his (Reginald’s, iykyk) podcast

[@origaminosferatu3357]

Watership Down is unapologetically one of my fave books and absolutely my fave animated film. Thanks Red for doing it justice. Duncton Wood and Plague Dogs are also fabby examples of the same genre.

[@richardhollis3783]

Woof! Some love for Duncton Wood! Don't see that every day... 😀

[@drewforchic9083]

The Borrowers books, which were adapted into the movie "The Secret World of Arrietty" by Studio Ghibli, is another great example of this trope, except that the small mammals are just tiny mouse sized people.

[@harryeast95]

There's also a live action Borrowers, too. It stars John Goodman, Tom Felton and Mr Weasly's actor (probably others but they're the ones I remember... actually was Jim Broadbent the dad?... yes! Also Celia Imrie and Hugh Laurie). There's also a TV movie with Christopher Eccleston and Stephen Fry... not to be confused with either an earlier American TV movie (starring no-one I've ever heard of) and an earlier TV series featuring Ian Holm and Penelope Wilton. But I didn't know about those.

[@brianedwards7142]

I often cite The Borrowers as the first science fiction I ever read back in about 1974. Last year I read The Complete Borrowers. Still great stuff. I loved the descriptions of how Pod made things from borrowings.

[@alexandredesbiens-brassard9109]

I remember The Borrowers as a TV show... and I remember dislinking it, though I'm not sure why.

[@tesssc1409]

Now I can’t stop thinking is Toy Story technically fits this trope with the obvious exception of the mamal part 🤔

[@CTHD13]

It fits into the “hidden magical world” genre, but doesn’t fit into the “ironic cosmic horror” genre. The toys basically know everything we do about the world and then some.

[@FrankHghTwr]

Toy Story is basically The Borrowers but the humans know they're there

[@sillyness4096]

Would Pikmin technically also work? Although they don't really dive into the "dramatic irony cosmic horror" aspect

[@BookWyrmOnAString]

​@@sillyness4096pikmin feels too distant to properly fit, but its similar

[@mullman89]

I was a Redwall addict as a child. I would regularly visit the library to see if they had translated another book to my native tongue, and when they had one I would devour it. Many years later I still love this trope, and the forest critter fantasy aesthetic, to bits. Excellent take on the entire thing.

[@ItBePatYo]

I'm currently 36 and have a few of them on my bookshelf! I really need to complete the collection.

[@JaySwag77]

I'm hoping I can get my kids into redwall soon! My younger siblings completely skipped it in favor of warriors, but it was such a part of my childhood.

[@dragoncrescent]

Ohhh!! 'Small Mammal on Big Adventure' has to be my favorite trope! Stuff like Redwall, the Great Mouse Detective, and Rescuers are absolutely how I love to imagine the world! More recently, I've also been delighted by Zootopia, Cottons - The Secret of the Wind and a VR game called Moss. Thanks, by the way, for pointing me in the direction of Scurry! I had never heard of it before!

[@michaelscott6022]

"Talking animals are just for kids. There's nothing scary or 'adult-like' content that can be conveyed with them." *_Watership Down_** has entered the chat.*

[@merlintitouan6949]

Maus has entered the chat

[@1Euan]

Animals of Farthing Wood was another traumatic "kids cartoon"

[@LexYeen]

*Meet the Feebles has entered the chat*

[@dragonfire5000]

"The Deptford Mice" books would also like to enter the chat.

[@jadethenidoran]

Warriors. It can get pretty violent and grim.

[@emilyhelms-tippit4053]

This is why toasters in literature often count as mammals. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[@Stray7]

You're not wrong. The Brave Little Toaster is exactly this kind of story.

[@sunnybloom7272]

If anyone wants to see this topic explored through dnd roleplay and with a strong focus on the family dynamic I strongly recommend getting Dropout and watching Burrows End, DMed by the incomparable Aabria Iyengar. The first episode is on KZbin and it takes a lot of those Watership Down/Secret of Nihm ideas, keeps the magic and science connected in a plausible way for their universe, mixes it with some fascinating ideas on religious organizations and the struggles of familyhood and has a terrific cast (Brennan Lee Mulligan, Erika Ishii, Izzy Roland the list goes on!) it is one of the best seasons of D20 I’ve ever seen and I super recommend it for anyone who likes this trope and the ideas established in this video. Great video as always Red just wanted to spread some solid future recommendations!

[@Enforcer6k]

I can't help but imagine that this video is the result of Red watching that series.

[@bulbasa9r753]

100% agree on this recommendation, I was half expecting Red to use Burrows End as an example since D20 is always very genre savvy and plays with these tropes in a fun way

[@juliejames6322]

Ye gods, yes. Burrow’s End is transfixing, horrifying, hilarious, heart-rending, all the feels, and I, too, immediately thought of it. Kind of surprised Red didn’t mention it, because it belongs in this discussion. My second favorite season of D20 after Court of Fae and Flowers.

[@GrimmDelightsDice]

​@@Enforcer6kShe actually answered on tumblr that this was a result of an aside in her comic focusing on a mouse! :>

[@Al_-cf1dj]

​@@juliejames6322 ah, a fellow character driven story enthusiast, I see

[@MalloonTarka]

Watership Down is an amazing book. I'm in a "The Stone Age is absolutely fascinating. Just think how many adventures, stories and tragedies happened that were forgotten in the largest time-period of the human past." phase, and it scratches the same itch. It's a story which is insignificant to the humans surrounding it, but is _monumental_ to its protagonists - and just a few years later, they're dead and the story has passed on into myth, which is about as great an impact as such adventures could have in their world.

[@Rachel-fi4sc]

My next novel manuscript idea is about this very topic - early humans coming up with religion as a way to explain all this natural phenomena they don't have the accumulated knowledge to understand yet.

[@daviddaugherty2816]

I've written a book like this. Straight-up first person perspective from a cave man.

[@kammieceleek5113]

Warriors: The New Prophecy has a fascinating case of Dramatic Irony Cosmic Horror as the inciting incident is literally land development. There's a portion of the books where the clan of cats that largely depends on rabbits for food winds up poisoned, they warn the others, and an old lady cat winds up eating a poisoned rabbit to make a point and dies. There's also a situation in a later book where humans bring beavers to a stream to observe them and a group of six cats go to investigate becausethe lake they live by has dried up, one of them dies because of the beavers and the others are traumatized. Also one of them eats a sausage because the humans did not give two shits about the wild cats coming their way.

[@kylajensen1957]

0:05 This is why a book series where the main characters witness horrifically gory death on the regular that explores themes of honor, forbidden love, laws, and religion and oh yeah a bad guy gets disembowled and due to being partly immortal has to bleed out nine times on-screen before he dies is in the kid's section of most libraries because the characters are cute talking kitties. RIP my 10 year old cat loving innocence...

[@_JustAnotherGhost_]

Warriors?

[@the-dragon-invasion-is-near]

I read tigerstar's death when i was like, 12 during a spanish class or something, and in that class i had NO ONE who i could talk about it, so i just, ended up staring at the pages in silent horror, hoping the teacher wouldn't call me out for reading in class in that moment. If i had a nickle for everytime this happened to me i'd had two nickles, which isn't much but i should've stop reading warriors in class (first nickle was yellowfang's death) Anyway, the warriors books are fun

[@kylajensen1957]

I heard a few years back they were making a warriors movie. My literal first thought was, "I'm positive this is gonna be R rated. "

[@lagggoat7170]

Early Warriors had some fucked up shit. Ravenpaws Trauma and the constant intimidation he was under, Kitten Soldiers, Yellowfang poisoning her own son (who was training the kitty child army), Graystripes forbidden love dying in child birth, anything about the Dog Pack, Bluestar loosing her mind at Tigerstars Betrayal, Firehearts guilt and fear around an innocent Baby who looks like his worst enemy, Stonefur being murdered because he refused to kill half trained Kids... I was slightly older than the "target demographic" and Tigerstars Death still haunted me. (And I wish new Warriors would go as hard again. Bad stuff still happens but the story glosses over the impact of that so much, and the characters are defined much less)

[@Creature_of_Knight]

Tigerstars death changed me on a fundamental level and NO ONE ELSE I KNEW had read those books so I was left alone to process that scene. Another scene that fucked me up was I think one of the special edition books. They end up in this canyon and find old evidence of cats living there but it's completely abandoned for seeming no reason now. It's later revealed that those past cats were driven out by Hoards of Rats that were so numerous they defeated grown cats and Killed All the Kittens. I don't think I ever recovered.

[@Sigmund_Froid]

It's so cool seeing a Cosmic Horror Story from the perspective of the Cosmic Horror, and the beautiful thing about this trope is that we don't even need to give up our PoV for that! Neat!

[@wanderinglizzy]

I'm SO GLAD you talked about Mrs Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH because that was one of my favourite books as a kid, and I could never explain why I liked it so much, cause it wasn't explicitly fantasy like so many of the other books I read, but it had a fantasy flavour to it. I haven't thought about it in over a decade, and within the first 20 seconds of this video I was like, "man I should read the Rats of NIMH again".

[@hyenaedits3460]

This is one of my favorite tropes. As an autistic person, i often relate more to animals than people. Their nonverbal cues are simple and straightforward with almost no deception or hidden meaning. I also think humans are much closer to animals than most people want to admit, a topic i could go on for hours about. I also love the idea of small infinities. There are millions if not billions of microorganisms in a drop of water and all that. Ive also owned mice and rats as pets and they are way more intelligent than people give them credit for. They are not to be underestimated. I also love when authors create unique cultures for animals based on the animals own biology and psychology. Thats something im doing in my current project. The second sidebar just made me realize that either i havent read enough fantasy or there needs to be more fantasy where animals can use the same magic system as humans and its not just humans who have magic powers. That would be so fun.

[@happmacdonald]

Here's your next book cover. A tardigrade wearing a wizard hat and carrying a gnarled staff. I'll let you figure out what those accessories are actually made out of at that scale though. 😁

[@americanidiot41]

We literally are animals, more specifically we are in the Great Apes family, characterized by our large brain and distinctive molars

[@Spark_Chaser]

The description of "Scurry" reminded me of a Marlon Brando story. Stella Adler used to recount that when teaching Brando, she had instructed the class to act like chickens, and added that a nuclear bomb was about to fall on them. Most of the class clucked and ran around wildly, but Brando sat calmly and pretended to lay an egg. Asked by Adler why he had chosen to react this way, he said, "I'm a chicken-what do I know about bombs?" From the POV of a mouse, a post-nuclear apocalypse would be incomprehensible. What does a mouse know of bombs?

[@Duiker36]

You can also consider the steps of inference that the other students took: they extrapolated that the "correct" interpretation would be to take the human emotional reaction and express it as a chicken, without explaining where that emotion came from. Brando simply connected the dots. A lot of people like to say emotions are illogical, but that's just because they're ignoring the logical connections.

[@themogget8808]

I love the plug for Scurry. That graphic novel is beautiful, amazing, and seems to strike the right balance on your scale. Oh and the furry Furies are reminiscent of Macbeth and are hilarious. Graphic novels can have better writing and storytelling power than they get credit for.

[@RebekahHarris-if7is]

Honorable mention of Hollow Kingdom: a very non-anthropomorphized zombie apocalypse from the perspective of the animals left behind. VERY MUCH not for kids!

[@zaphodbeeblebrox7893]

I absolutely loved the Redwall series as a kid. My dad and I read all 20 something books, taking turns voicing the characters with different voices and accents. I'm so happy to here it get a mention. While it primarily a normal fantasy setting with animals instead of elves, the books frequently portray larger predatory animals as straight up monsters. The snake Asmodeus is just a normal snake, but reading about him from a mouse's perspective is absolutely fucking terrifying

[@NemesisTWarlock]

To this day I still call any ship I sail/fly in a video game that I have the opportunity to name the "Salamandastron".

[@roguewolven]

@@NemesisTWarlock My admiration for boxing hares still flavors my decisions in character building to this day, and whenever the rare occurance I need a warcry comes around the first thing in my thoughts is Eulalia! And yet I hadn't thought of naming a vessel after the mountain. Thanks for the idea, that is definitely happening next chance I get.

[@renegadeleader1]

Logalogalogalogalogalogalog!!!!

[@Foxpawed]

The thing with the Redwall series is the first book does seem to take place in more human world; The rats come from Portugal on a human sized cart towed by a horse, stories about them killing chickens, a farmer's dog is mentioned, and even if its technically a mouse sized abbey by dint of them being able to climb the stairs and operate the doors, the descriptions of it when Mattias is climbing towards the roof make it seem too big for them to have built themselves. But all of those sorts of details, any creature that would have come from human domestication and any real world locations are scrubbed from future entries, and the mythical aspects get a little stronger, with the spirit of Martin often interceding in varying degrees between vague hints and visions and full blown ghostly intercession, seers are sometimes quacks but sometimes genuine, aaaaand 'vermin' animals are, with maybe three exceptions tops, ALWAYS evil in every single case across every single book despite the first book suggesting foxes were neutral. (Blaggut, Veil really does not count but people will argue he does anyways, and then a couple you could maybe argue for like Trauman Clog who was, you know, a murderous pirate, but we only see fighting against other pirates in the book)

[@josephd.5524]

The Mouse Guard comic series is absolutely worth a read; gorgeously drawn and well written, they're stories about what being a hero means. They are set in a mouse civilization; a collection of a couple dozen cities and settlements rendered almost safe for mice to live in a world of things that eat them. The main characters are the eponymous Mouse Guard who patrol the trails, see to the borders, and hunt/drive off predators who would threaten the place. It's mice at a medieval technology level with no trace of humans save for a very early appearance of a man-sized fishhook which could be understood in different ways.

[@willw6504]

I know you have problems with the magic red amulet, but as a kid who grew up with that movie... Mrs. Brisby (movie version) was an incredibly formative character for me. I absolutely loved her. I wanted to be her. And I managed to get my hands on a reproduction of that magic red amulet. I still own it.

[@johnathanmonsen6567]

I love the dramatic irony cosmic horror angle, so much; especially with regards to what you said about relatability. I'm a sucker for the idea of the supposedly alien and incomprehensible turns out to be surprisingly relatable, or becomes such because Humanity Is Contagious. I personally theorize that, if there's other intelligent life out there, it's going to be more human than Lovecraft would have you expect--if just not morphologically. So, having characters that are fully removed from human context, yet are fundamentally relatable even as they see the familiar as the eldritch scratches that itch something fierce.

[@holyrod2001]

I just rewatched Secret of NIMH, I loved it, including the magic amulet, which I assumed was actually a focus for psionics, and I wondered if that's what the National Institute of Mental Health was actually trying to unlock, and that's why the animals got so smart.

[@inkylynx2777]

I read the original book a while ago, and the way the Rats helped Mrs Frisby move her home was through traditional engineering. They rigged it up with strings and pulleys and hauled it to the spot the Owl had advised her to put it.

[@holyrod2001]

@@inkylynx2777 yeah, that was stated in the video. I'm talking about the movie adaptation. I think in the adaptation psionics was unlocked.

[@jonribeiro266]

There was a time where we all gave Don Bluth too much power and he not only knew that, but damn well took advantage of it

[@flameboi7104]

Never heard of him and turns out he made a large portion of my childhood. Thank you for giving me a name to thank

[@tailkinker1972]

There is no such thing as giving Don Bluth too much power. The real tragedy is that we never gave him enough.

[@KlaxontheImpailr]

@@flameboi7104 he was also in Stargate sg1

[@CharlesAngelus]

For anyone who really likes this trope, I heavily recommend playing Rain World. It's set in the remains of a civilisation alien to ours, so it's fairly unparalled in terms of replicating the feeling of being a little critter in an urban jungle. That does mean it's missing the dramatic irony cosmic horror element... but it does keep the second half of that

[@GrimmsWolf]

Love seeing this vid after finishing Dimension 20: Burrow's End. Seeing the breakdown of the trope helped to deepen my understanding of that story. I also really liked how they explained their "secret small mammal magic."