Anthropomorphic Personification Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

From YKTTW:

Red Shoe: A recent addition to Sufficiently Advanced Alien got me thinking: seems like we need Anthropomorphic Personifications (Death, Mother Nature, Father Time, those little mischievious legged fireballs in the old Looney Tunes shorts) as a character type. But this seemed so obvious that I thought I'd pop in here first and ask:

Is there some reason we don't?
Is it possible that we do and I'm too obtuse to notice
Anthropomorphic Personification is a mouthful. Is there a pithier title anyone likes?

Ununnilium: I was actually thinking the same thing. There are a ton of these in comic books. Can't think of a better title, though.

Gus: Um, "Anthropomorphic Personification" is pretty much the same word, twice. Calling the character type an "Anthromorph" works, though.

Ununnilium: Yeah, but everyone says "Anthropomorphic Personification", and nobody ever says "Anthromorph". The title should either be accurate or funny.

Tabby: Anthromorph is more likely to make people think of anthro animals than abstract/inanimate concepts. Throwing my vote behind Anthropomorphic Personification.

Dark Sasami: Another vote for Anthropomorphic Personification, as that's the term used any time someone defies Genre Blindness to call them out on it. Cf. Terry Pratchett, Earthworm Jim (I think)...Simpsons, that sort of thing. Yes, it's a tautology, but it's a familiar one.

Robert: Definitely Anthropomorphic Personification, which isn't redundant - you don't have to look remotely human to be a person. Non-anthropomorphic personifications are rare, but they do exist. Some of the Chinese dragons are personifications of the weather, or of rivers.

Looney Toons: I'm throwing my vote behind Anthropomorphic Personification as well. I've seen it used several places for just this type of being.

Robert: I've tried to draw a boundary between a Anthropomorphic Personification and a god. There is quite a bit of overlap, but they aren't the same thing. The associated tropes are different.

Hades is a god of death, ruler of the afterlife, brother of Zeus, abductor of women, etc. The Grim Reaper is Death, no more, no less.

Can we keep this page for those entities who are their name? (Not necessarily in English. Satan is the The Enemy, in Hebrew.)

There are a lot of minor examples - the muses, the virtues, Brittania, Uncle Sam, etc - far too many to list, and they get treated differently to the big names, but I can't think of any examples of their use off-hand.

Ununnilium: Not necessarily "are their name", but yeah, I agree. Greek gods aren't Anthropomorphic Personifications.

Looney Toons: "The DCU has them too, the most famous being Neil Gaiman's "The Endless"; Dream, Delirium, Destruction, Destiny, Death, Desire, and Despair." I just have to quote a script-format Fan Fic I read about ten years ago:

Susan: The Endless are a group of seven...umm...sort of personifications of abstract concepts.
Kasumi: Typical anthropomorphic gods?
Susan: They get mad when you call them that. Anyway, there's Death, Delirium, Desire, Despair, Dream, Destruction, and Destiny. I've heard rumors of an eighth one called Donuts, but they get mad when you ask them about him too.

Ununnilium: And Homer Simpson starts yet another religion.

Tabby: Literary example: In Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens Pestilence retired after the invention of penicillin and was substituted by Pollution. Apart from War being a woman, the rest of the Horsepeople of the Apocalypse follow more or less their models from Revelation (and Death is straight out of Discworld).

Sukeban: They share the Grim Reaper look, but they have very different personalities. Besides, DW!Death does not have wings, and GD!Death does :)

Inyssius: I'm removing the Dominic Deegan example because its "champions" aren't Anthropomorphic Personifications, any more than the Flash is the personification of speed.

Tabby: Death isn't in Wee Free Men. I think this discussion has come up before.

Ununnilium: I think he's in every book other than the Young Adult ones.

Daibhid C: Every book other than WFM, I think, including the later Tiffany ones.

Nevrmore: I love how the example of the Four Horseman says that it's their depiction in the Bible that makes this one of The Oldest Ones In The Book and not the countless appearances of such anthropomorphic beings in mythologies thousands of years before Christianity's time...Just a nitpick.

Lale: This is not the only case of randomly selecting any "old" example and adding, "... making this one of the oldest ones in the book." Just a nitpick.

Ruthie A: Since Wikipedia has an Anthropomorphic Personification, I figured TV Tropes Wiki should have one as well. So, I drew one. She's done in the same kind of style as Wikipe-tan and the Os-tans. I posted the picture on my deviantART gallery (Link

), if anyone's interested...

Gloating Swine: TV Tropes does have an anthropomorphic personification. Haruhi.

Gloating Swine: Cut

This troper is surprised that Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics have yet to be mentioned. Each of the Endless is an anthopomorphic personification of his'her namesake.

Because they plainly had been mentioned.

Seanette: Cut

This is (unsurprisingly) the entire premise of Piers Anthony's "Incarnations Of Immortality" series.

as a duplicate of a more detailed listing further down.

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