"Stock Animal" tropes

I've seen many works featuring ratites (ostriches, cassowaries, emus, rheas) angrily chasing down anyone who disturbs their nest or chicks to peck at them. Think its enough to qualify?

Uh... that's not on topic with the thread. We're trying right now to figure out what a "stock animal" would even be, not to pitch new subtropes of the idea. Your idea isn't stock anyway, it's just "birds chasing people".

Yeah, we're talking about stock cartoon animal tropes like Cartoon Penguin and Green Gators, not Stock Animal Behavior.

Sorry.

Stock Animal Appearance so to speak.

Would the dog nosed, toe beaned, floppy eared rabbits with frontally placed eyes count as a stock depiction?

Don't forget about rabbits having paw pads on the bottom of their feet (when in reality, they don't).

Edited by Nen_desharu on Oct 2nd 2022 at 11:07:12 AM

That's what "toe beaned" means.

Ah. Thanks.

So, this thread sorta died because it got bogged down in "is this animal stock?" questions when my earlier discussion was meant to focus on what we even consider a "stock X" to be just in general, like, not not to identify which animal appearances "count" but rather to figure out what we mean when we say something is "stock".

Well, to me "Stock" seems to imply the repeated use of a specific thing or form of that thing, regardless of whether it's realistic or not, over other possible forms it could have.

Like, for instance, Animal X being depicted with Appearance Y and Behavior Z, regardless of whether or not it actually looks or acts like that in real life or of wether or not it has any other appearances or behaviors in real life.

Would Stock Cartoon Rabbit be tropeworthy, Because there are many anatomical traits common on cartoon rabbits that don't show up on real rabbits, like cat/dog nose leather, toe pads/beans, floppy ears, frontally placed eyes?

Edna, please, can we get off the specific animals for a minute?

to be clear Edna, the persistent fixation on small details that aren't 100% anatomically correct for every kind of animal is why there has been a lot of discussion about scrapping most, if not all of these stock animal tropes in favor of 1 unified trope that discusses the general concept. Fact is, for every animal out there, there are simplified or reductive ways to animate them. Some become standardized, while others may just be stylized for a particular work. Trying to list them out would leave us with possibly hundreds of "stock animal tropes" that cover the same basic concept just tweaking the specifics for each animal.

And personally, I just don't think that's all that useful or desirable.

Edited by amathieu13 on Oct 22nd 2022 at 1:15:26 PM

Well, that and the fact that I've been trying to re-rail the conversation for ages now but it keeps descending into "what about this animal?".

Okay, well, to try to get the conversation back in motion...

So, on the one hand, as a general concept I do think that the "Stock/Cartoon Animal" concept has its merit. At the very least, the fact that visual media consistently chooses to depict certain creatures in specific ways is a narrative trend and therefore a trope by definition. I mean, yes, that's often a product of stylization, but it's still notable that most people choose to stylize in the same exact way.

On the other hand, it's also clear that these tropes are ZCE magnets and that people are being overzealous about making new ones for every little thing. The first issue strikes me as an inherent issue of these being Tropes in Aggregate — that is, where the notable thing is less what the specific work is doing and more the common use of this specific depiction across media. So then my question is: how do we usually manage this problem in other tropes in aggregate?

I see merit in the idea of trying to create a general supertrope first and then being careful about how, why or if to split off subtropes, as has been brought up in this thread, but that raises another question for me: Typical Cartoon Animal Colors was already doing a form of that before it was agreed to cut it, and now I see that there seems to be a lot of controversy over whether to launch the Stock Cartoon Animal Depictions draft, and I'm not really clear on how this proposed supertrope would differ from them.

Another thing is that, yeah, we probably need to come up with a clear idea on what a "Stock" anything is, precisely, and on what makes something an example of a given stock trend.

We don't typically treat Tropes in Aggregate differently but that's because there's more to discuss in terms of how meaning is conveyed. Take Men Are Tough for example; there's a lot of ways a work can reinforce men being tough (male character not allowed to cry, a male character being told to be strong after tragedy for their family, a male character working out because they believe men are supposed to be physically strong, etc) so (good) examples will list them out; they wouldn't (shouldn't) just say "Character X is a tough guy" and the usefulness of the trope comes in documenting the variety of ways this trope shows up.

Even for a trope like Bald of Authority where a valid example can be just "Character X is bald and The Leader of Such-And-Such Org", there are also examples that discuss how the character is not just a leader but characterized as being authoritative. Or point out how they're the only bald character in the work and are The Leader. Or at the very least, the kind of group they're the leader of will be different for different works.

The problem with stock depiction tropes however is there is no other meaning outside of the depiction itself. There isn't more to discuss for Stock Cartoon Pig other than it being pink with a corkscrew tail and there is by defintion no variation in the depiction, so every example ends up the same. At best, you could have every example describe how accurate the depiction is or how well it fits the level of realism the work is going for.

But let's be real here, from the rampant ZCE issues these tropes accrue, most tropers aren't going to do that even if we mandate it.

Edited by amathieu13 on Oct 23rd 2022 at 3:13:54 PM

Additionally, most examples were just "this animal in this work is stock" even if it's a one-off usage or even if other animals weren't stock. It just became a list of animals.

The way I see it, Tropes Are Tools, and there is no helping the plot or working the narrative or enhancing characterization gained from something being "stock" (which we haven't even clearly decided what that means yet). Just as there is nothing gained from having a person sit on a chair, there is nothing gained from making the pig character pink and fat and with a little curly tail. The only thing that says about the character is that they are a pig, just as a human appearing on screen says nothing except that they are a human until the moment they start doing something or saying something and then we get characterization.

Looks on their own aren't tropes, as we've found out through the Appearance Tropes Cleanup. Even some of the tropes on that list that do have characterization or narrative significance (or should), like Beautiful All Along, have been found to devolve into ZCE fests of "attractive character".

The idea is more along the lines of it being an artistic shorthand to tell the audience what they're looking at, especially if the audience is young.

There is meaning in the divergence between a symbol and the thing it's supposed to represent. It's related to Acceptable Breaks from Reality, and in the latter cases Lies to Children.

I don't think it's Lies to Children any more than an anvil falling from the sky is.

Edited by AmourLeFou on Oct 23rd 2022 at 10:40:48 AM

What do you mean by that?

An anvil falling from the sky in a cartoon doesn't need a particular reason to do so, it just does. It's fantasy, at best Rule of Funny. I grew up on Looney Tunes cartoons, and I understood it wasn't a real depiction of anything, not even gravity.