Needs Help: Im A Humanitarian

This is a bit of a combination of "Misused", "Ambiguous Name" and possibly undefined definition what really qualifies as cannibalism.

Basically, I have been seeing this trope being used to refer to eating others what are not the same species as the person. Most of the time it is another species trying to eat humans, but I have seen cases where a sapient creature tries to eat other sapient creature. Some examples I can find:

• Saya No Uta: Where Fuminori can be qualified as a cannibal, Saya herself is an alien Blob Monster, and the first time she is seen eating a human, it is already hinted that she might not be a human after all.
• Characters.Heroes Of The Storm Diablo Universe: On The Butcher's character sheet, outside of it being a ZCE, it is technically correct, but not sure if the troper intended it. The Butcher eats meat from all sort of creatures, including other demons, but the troper most likely meant it that he eats human flesh.
• Recap.Adventure Time S 2 E 12 Her Parents: Not an example, Rainicorns are unicorn-like creatures.
• Recap.Adventure Time S 5 E 38 Red Starved: Marceline is a vampire, Finn is a human and Jake is a dog-like creature. I am pretty sure any of them eating one another wouldn't count as cannibalism.
• Characters.Blaz Blue Calamity Trigger 2: While Arakune was a human in the past, he is now a Blob Monster, thus not really an example.
• Characters.Cthulhu Mythos: Three examples, at least the first one listed in the page being incorrect.
• Characters.Touhou Perfect Cherry Blossom: Yukari is a youkai (basically fantasy creatures), and whenever or not she was a human at some point is questionable.
• Characters.Touhou Subterranean Animism: Utsuho is a Hell Raven, and she eats human corpses. Even the possible actual cannibalism of her eating eggs is debunked by saying that unless they were fertilized raven eggs, it isn't cannibalism. The trope page does use To Serve Man on her, though.
• Characters.Archipelago: I think this is fine in regards to Kurr, as it shows that the character is willing to eat anything, including their own kind.

I think that the problem is that most people assume that cannibalism does extend to eating other species, based on if they are sapient. Mind you, we have To Serve Man for when other creatures eat humans, and Sapient Eat Sapient for other sapient races (like humans) eating other sapient races (I assume).

The trope name itself doesn't help it. It can sound bit misleading, as aside of the pun for Humanitarianism, but also because it almost encourages the idea that cannibalism mainly focuses on human creatures.

The trope could use a clean-up and reconsideration in regards to its name. Or at least it should be better defined what the definition of cannibalism is as the trope page sort of makes it bit confusing when it comes to creatures other than humans (like the note about Speculative Fiction).

edited 2nd Nov '16 11:43:46 PM by TPPR10

Continue the bloodline, Fujimaru!

I removed the following example, as it has nothing to do with people eating people, or even sapient lifeforms eating one another, but in case it should be put back, I saved the code on my computer:

• In an example of an animal eating its own kind, MythBusters tested the tale that a cereal box was more nutricious than its contents. In the cage where mice were fed cardboard, one mouse decided that its fellow rodents were more nutricious than the cardboard. Even before then, there were signs that aught was amiss with the mice. Discovery Channel will not let the footage see the light of day.

Likewise, I'm not sure if the following examples from Doctor Who qualify for this trope, as neither of those doing the eating is human (though one is from Earth):

• Madame Vastra, a Silurian living in 1880s London, introduced herself this way in "A Good Man Goes To War":
  Vastra: Jack the Ripper has killed his last victim.
  Maid: How did you find him?
  Vastra: Stringy, but tasty all the same. I won't be needing dinner.
  • The most disturbing aspect of the exchange is that it appears Jenny (the maid) may have asked the question in the sense it was answered.

and:

• Later in the show, the Master comes back wrong and suffers extreme hunger. He eats several people, but is also shown scarfing down burgers and entire turkeys in seconds, and doesn't show any particular preference for human meat.

Perhaps these belong better under To Serve Man?

edited 17th Nov '16 11:59:24 AM by SomberCaelifera

Found on 5,142 pages.

We'll need some compelling evidence to justify anything beyond a simple cleanup.

checking some random wicks:

Seems Good

• A Complete Waste of Time
• A Dark Room
• NightmareFuel.Adventure Time: pothole to "tastes like human flesh"
• All-New Ghost Rider
• Amateur Surgeon
• America's Most Haunted
• YMMV.Angel Heart: pothole to "eating a man's heart."
• AnimeAndManga.Bad Boss: mad scientist has modified himself to heal when he eats people.
• Are You Afraid of the Dark?
• ''Being Human (US)
• Black Man
• Blood Knight
• "Buffy the Vampire Slayer S3E12 "Helpless""
• Cannibal Larder (unsurprisingly)
• Channel Ate
• Funny.Clone High
• Characters.Codex Alera
• Commonweal
• Corpse Party Abridged
• Creative Sterility
• CSI
• Darkest Powers
• Death by Cameo
• Decisive Darkness
• District 9
• Does Not Like Spam
• Driven to Villainy
• Funny.Eddie Izzard
• Enigmatic Minion
• Fairy Meat (technically fairies, but I think that counts)
• Fallout: Dust
• EvenEvilHasStandards.Fan Fic
• Fattening the Victim (unsurprisingly)
• TheDragon.Film

To Serve Man / Sapient eat Sapient

• Funny.Beast Wars
• FanonPokedex.Baltoy
• Bewildering Punishment: man-eating robots
• Chlorophylle
• Court-martialed
• Darths & Droids
• Dragon Quest VII
• Evil Versus Evil

Non-human cannibalism

• Dinosaurs

Bizarre or Unclear

• Advertising.Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: characters disappearing from Macdonalds commercials??? I think this is a joke/sinkhole.
• Big Wolf on Campus: something called the "Spider-People"
• Daddy's Little Villain: not at all clear who's doing the eating

ZCE

• Batman: Rogues Gallery (Part 2) (already commented out)
• Bentley Little
• Boyfriend To Death
• Deadliest Warrior (referring to history though, so it would be a valid example)

---

Ugh, ok, enough for now. This is not a statistically significant sample (I think we want at least 70 for that), but it's a start.

edited 17th Nov '16 11:15:33 PM by Xtifr

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Wick Check pt. 2

Seems good

• Glasgow Grin (cannibalistic hillbillies)
• God in Human Form (natives trying to eat a white man)
• Funny.Goosebumps
• "Gravity Falls S1 E16 "Carpet Diem""
• ''Hannibal S 03 E 01"
• Hell's Kitchen
• Hillbilly Horrors (two examples, both fine)
• Housewife
• YMMV.Hunter X Hunter
• Inferred Holocaust
• Jabba Table Manners
• Kamala
• Katamari Damacy
• Lampshaded Double Entendre
• Literal Maneater (stretching, but the distinction was clearly understood)
• WouldHurtAChild.Live Action Films
• EvenEvilHasStandards.Live Action TV
• Love Makes You Evil
• Manly Men Can Hunt

Borderline or mixed

• Hope for the Heartless: goblin eats human?
• Legend mentions more than one example, not sure how many are which trope

To Serve Man or Sapient eat Sapient

• Characters.Gamera
• Characters.Hatoful Boyfriend
• Impossibly Graceful Giant
• NightmareFuel.Inuyasha
• Knight Templar Big Brother
• HumiliationConga.Literature
• Mailer Daemon

ZCE

• Judecca
• Le Petit Four (but potholed to "I'm an Equitarian", so almost certainly not valid)

---

Ok, I think that's 80, which should be more than enough for statistical significance.

9 of 80, or 11% are unclear or ZCE. That's probably par for the course, and I'm going to ignore them for the rest of the analysis, because it still leaves a statistically significant number of examples behind.

53 of 71 actual examples, or about 75% are fine.
2 of 71 are borderline.
16 of 71 actual examples, or about 23% are definite misuse.

There, now we have an idea of the scope of the problem. Not great, but not terrible. I actually feared it would be worse.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Ok, looking closer, I notice that the trope isn't quite as OP suggested. I ran the wick check without double-checking—my bad. In fact, To Serve Man is listed as a subtrope, so any examples of that are not technically wrong. They're just at too high of a level. (Sapient Eat Sapient, on the other hand, is not listed as a subtrope.)

Of course, that raises the question: should To Serve Man (or several other subtropes) actually be subtropes?

I'm a Humanitarian says, "In Speculative Fiction, cannibalism is generally extended to include all sapient or humanoid creatures, even if they aren't technically human."

I think that might be going a bit far. I confess that I've seen that sentence before, but hadn't quite read it carefully enough. All sapient creatures? Even blob monsters? That doesn't seem right to me. Elves and Vulcans, sure. Vampires and goblins? Ma-a-aybe. Demons and Starfish Aliens? Getting doubtful.

So, technically, the misuse numbers I reported above are higher than they should be, by the current definition. But I think the definition deserves some consideration. And we'll want to do a cleanup in any case, since examples which fit a subtrope should go in the subtrope.

A cleanup doesn't need TRS, though, so really the only question here is, does the current definition really make sense? I'm not sure, but since a cleanup is definitely in order in any case, now is a good time to consider the question.

edited 19th Nov '16 10:10:31 AM by Xtifr

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

I did want to bring this trope up because I was really wondering what really is defined as cannibalism these days of fiction. I think one thing what lead me to ask this was due of one discussion I had in regards to Pathfinder where cannibalism is defined as eating other sapient creature, albeit due of an Obvious Rule Patch due of an early Loophole Abuse on the definition of cannibalism. Essentially should there be a more strict definition or can the trope be loose in what can pass as being cannibalism.

edited 19th Nov '16 10:41:08 AM by TPPR10

Continue the bloodline, Fujimaru!

Bumping this since we just had a query in ATT on the topic.

I suggest changing the "sapient or humanoid" thing to "sapient and humanoid". And maybe adding something about "if the work treats it as cannibalism, then who are we to argue?"

That way, my earlier analysis would stand, and we'd mostly have some cleanup to deal with—and maybe some minor adjustments to the description and a more prominent "See also" section.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Sapient Eat Sapient seems to be a newer trope despite sounding more like a supertrope to I'm a Humanitarian and To Serve Man. There's also Monstrous Cannibalism to consider (when monsters eat their own kind).

Dunno where "monsters eat other monsters" would go though. (Perhaps when both aren't sapient, the situation wouldn't be a trope, but if they are, it'd be Sapient Eat Sapient?)

And checking I'm a Humanitarian, some subtropes there are wrong if we follow "this is about cannibalism" in that page, like Wendigo or To Serve Man.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

Monstrous Cannibalism is well-spotted. I'd overlooked that one.

We might also want a general trope for Man-Eating Beast. (Maneater is something else entirely—something much hotter.)

I don't think we need anything for Non Sapient Eat Non Sapient or Sapient Eat Non Sapient, because both are Chairs.

But I still think To Serve Man should be a supertrope or sister trope to I'm a Humanitarian, rather than a subtrope! And yes, Wendigo shouldn't be a subtrope either.

edited 4th Jan '17 4:17:29 PM by Xtifr

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

It's partially covered by Super-Persistent Predator where a predator will follow a (often human) protagonist as a prey and will ignore other, easier preys. Not a perfect fit I know.

Just to add a language pedant's point of view, English has two perfectly good words, cannibalism (eating your own species) and anthropophagy (eating people), for the concepts under discussion. I don't see any reason to confuse the two.

Well, if we were merely trying to describe reality, things would be a lot easier. Unfortunately, in the world of fiction, things can get messier. In reality, "species" roughly means "able to have fertile children". But in fiction, snakes can mate with chickens to produce a cockatrice, and aliens with green blood can mate with humans to produce a Mr. Spock. And sometimes chickens can mate with humans to produce a chicken-man. Does that mean tucking into a nice chicken dinner makes you a cannibal?

In any case, while anthropophagy and cannibalism are well-defined and very distinct terms, anthropophagy among humans is cannibalism. Which is kind of the root of the confusion here. Especially with all these non-human-humans thrown into the mix.

And cannibalism isn't a trope. In fiction, a mantis eating her mate is simple a...normal mantis. (Or, in more realistic fiction, an unusually hungry one.) While a human eating her mate is...something pretty odd and freaky. The same term may apply in both cases, but it's not the same trope.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Wendigo is sort of odd in terms of transhuman cannibalism part as in some tellings you become a wendigo if you eat human flesh.

Continue the bloodline, Fujimaru!

Yeah, wendigo and werewolf and the undead are particularly tricky cases. My personal feeling is that if you've been turned into a supernatural monster, then you don't count as human, so it's not really cannibalism. And my wick check confirmed that the trope is rarely used that way. Tropers in general don't seem to think that vampires or werewolves are "humanitarians". And I'm fine with that.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

They are if the mate-eating mantis is clearly anthropomorphized in mentality to the point of being obviously sapient.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

"They are" what? Committing cannibalism, or being a trope?

I dunno where "animal cannibalism" (i.e eating their own kind, whether they're sapient or not) would fall to.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

I think that would still fall under Sapient Eat Sapient. I may sympathize with the nice Everymantis who gets eaten, but I'm unlikely to start worrying that my wife might devour me after reading such a story.

Edit to add: Ok, on reflection, I'm a bit torn. I mean, ideally, I'd say: if it's portrayed as regular cannibalism, then, even if we're dealing with a blob monster that eats other blob monsters, it could qualify as long as that's not standard nature for the blob monsters. (Because then, it wouldn't be invoking the same taboos that cannibalism has in our society—so the mantis still wouldn't qualify.) But that may be a hard distinction to enforce, and I'd rather try to make this easier for tropers to work out, rather than harder.

edited 6th Jan '17 11:16:29 AM by Xtifr

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Being a trope.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

"We'll need some compelling evidence to justify anything beyond a simple cleanup."

One of the unfortunate things about this wiki is the resistance to making changes because they are simply the right thing to do.

My 2 cents: 1) The name is bad, extremely ambiguous. 2) "Cannibalism" is the consumption of human beings by other human beings and should not be applied to any non-human, sentient or not. Look at any dictionary and it will tell you that cannibalism is about humans, not Mythbusters rats and not aliens.

'Sfunny, my dictionary explicitly says "the eating of the flesh of an animal by another animal of its own kind."

Here's the OED: The practice of eating the flesh of one's own species.

With the example: "to avoid cannibalism caterpillars were reared individually."

edited 8th Jan '17 7:15:23 PM by Xtifr

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

I stand corrected.

Name is still bad and should be changed no matter how many thousands of links go to it.

edited 8th Jan '17 7:46:54 PM by jamespolk

If people were interpreting it literally, and linking it to cases of great humanitarianism, I would completely agree with you. But they're not. Everyone understands it's about eating people. The name is not the problem. It may be a stupid joke, but it basically works, and, frankly, there's nothing wrong with a stupid joke or two. It's part of the site's appeal.

The only real problem here is that it's not always clear what cannibalism refers to when dealing with some of the more exotic speculative fiction, and we need to decide where the boundaries between this and To Serve Man are. And maybe consider if we're missing a trope somewhere.

(It doesn't help that people often refer to man-eating aliens as cannibals when they're not even close to being human. But there's little we can do about that. Renaming this trope Cannibal wouldn't solve that problem.)

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Clock expired; locking up.

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