Ambiguous Name: A Load Of Bull

Preference, sure, but we don't have to do it that way.

Okay, I just received a PM from Tinyhammer. They came to ask regarding a specific example from Tournament of Kikai:

• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Xero and Maurice's entire relationship is this. Xero is the Rascally Rabbit who is a Cloudcuckoolander who is also lustful towards woman and is very immature. In contrast to Maurice, who despite being a hulking bull is definitely more down-to-earth and tries to curb Xero's antics.

Tinyhammer clarified that Maurice is not a minotaur, but an anthropomorphic humanoid bull, and asked me does he still count as a case "Our Minotaurs Are Different".

So, I came here to ask: how do we handle the "anthropomorphic bipedal bull" cases? Do we put them under the same umbrella as the minotaurs, or do we treat them the same way as non-anthropomorphic bulls?

This is why I preferred Minotaurs And Bull People. Anthropomorphic bipedal bulls count.

Me too, for the same reasons.

& Personally I feel that to the majority of laypeople Minotaurs and Bull People are the same thing, even if it isn't technically correct, so adding it to the page name is somewhat redundant.

Edited by SebastianGray on Nov 12th 2021 at 2:20:00 PM

Perhaps the page image could help with that. I'll look up some examples and make an IP thread for it later.

I guess the question is: does this trope only cover Beast Man examples of bull people (i.e. what most people think of as "minotaurs"), or also bull-based Funny Animal characters?

I don't see why it couldn't include Beast Men, I'm sure I've seen Bull Beast Mem called minotaurs before

Why would anthropomorphic bulls be any different from other Funny Animals?

There's a difference between Anthro Animal and a Funny Animal; a Funny Animal is basically just a human with an animal design, like Mickey Mouse. A bull could be a Funny Animal, but such a character probably wouldn't be considered a regular bull, and thus wouldn't really be the same as a Beast Man or bull-human hybrid type.

Basically the question is, how human do they act?

Here's the first revision of the pic I'm planning on pitching to IP; how's it look?

Edited by FernandoLemon on Nov 14th 2021 at 9:21:28 AM

An anthro bull still isn't any different from another anthro animal. A minotaur is its own thing, but an anthropomorphic bull is just The Same, but More Specific to other anthropomorphic animals. Chief Bogo in the picture above doesn't have any notable narrative value in the story for being a bull.

Edited by nw09 on Nov 14th 2021 at 10:02:49 AM

That was what my question was referring to. Do Chief Bogo, Taurus Bulba, Pajuna and other anthro / Funny Animal bovines qualify for this trope or not? And looking at the above comments, there seems to be a disagreement. But if we call the trope Our Minotaurs Are Different, then they should not count.

^^^Not a fan of the left two images. They're very dark and it's difficult to make out what's going on.

Regarding the naming issue, some degree of naming flexibility is already present in most "Are Different" tropes. For instance, Our Orcs Are Different includes things like urgals, trollocs, sranc, fammin, swine-things, koloss and Green Martians, which aren't named orcs but are considered examples because they look like orcs and fill the same narrative niche. Our Dwarves Are Different and Our Elves Are Different have similar trends.

Now, I think this can be taken to mean either one of two things. One, fantasy creatures don't strictly need to be named X to be an example of Our X Are Different — rather, they need to look, act and "feel" like X, or at least be similar enough that you could call them X without any significant dissonance. Two, creatures do need to be named X to fit and a lot of pages are going to need a fair amount of cleanup.

Edited by Theriocephalus on Nov 15th 2021 at 9:36:35 AM

But there's a difference in a fantasy Beast Man based on a bull that is not called a minotaur (such as the Tauren) and a Funny Animal character that happens to be based on a bovine. Do Pig Man, Frog Men, Fox Folk etc. include Funny Animal characters?

Correct, that's a pretty important difference. Like I said, the "Are Different" tropes allow things with divergent names based on the narrative niche they fill — basically, if Y looks and acts like X and fulfills the same narrative and worldbuilding tropes as X and might as well just be called X, let's call it an example of X.

That's an important difference between Funny Animal and Beast Man. Like WarJay said, funny animals are basically just humans with funny designs. Their animal traits are chiefly cosmetic, and as a result they're not listed on the Beast Man subtropes because they're not really what those tropes are describing.

So, to answer your question,

Looking at their pages — no, they don't.

Personally, I would say that there's no problem with Our Minotaurs Are Different including bovine Beast Men that aren't called minotaurs (like Tauren, Apis, etc.), but Funny Animals shouldn't count.

That tracks for me

Yes, that make sense. This disqualifies the likes of Chief Bogo and Taurus Bulba.

However, I think this means that Maurice from Tournament of Kikai doesn't qualify for this trope either - though I'm not familiar with the fic, my understanding based on how the example is phrased is that he's not a Beast Man but rather a Funny Animal.

Regarding the conversation about Funny Animal bulls, some characters in Animal Crossing are cattle, and I wouldn't count them as examples of this trope because they're just humanoid cattle and not minotaurs.

To muddy the picture, there are some settings where minotaurs and Funny Animal cattle coexist. The minotaur statue from DuckTales (1987) and Larry the Minotaur from Legend of the Three Caballeros are identified as half-bull, half-man monsters, but Clarabelle Cow and Taurus Bulba are just "people" who happen to be bovines, even though all four of these characters share a setting with Donald Duck.

Edited by Snicka on Nov 18th 2021 at 11:14:58 AM

Yes, I agree, antropomorphic animals that happen to be bulls and monsters part man and part bull inspired by the Minotaut have differences. The only way I could see a bull Funny Animal in a page about the things A Load Of Bull talks about would be if they made some reference, like a bull character hating labyrinths or something. I think Bull People or Our Minotaurs Are Different are both good.

Edited by good-morning on Nov 18th 2021 at 1:43:47 PM

Does anyone know what the discussion around Beast Man and subtropes (Shark Man, Bat People, etc.) were? This trope is in the same boat. No characters-basically-humans-in-animal-shapes, but characters farther along the anthropomorphism scale count.

I only recall the time when "Petting Zoo People" got cut, and examples were moved either to Funny Animal or to Beast Man. The idea was that if the anthropomorphic animal is seen as a half-man, half-beast being in-universe, then it's a Beast Man, but if it's treated like a regular person, then it's a Funny Animal.

EDIT: Here is the PZP thread.

Edited by Snicka on Nov 22nd 2021 at 3:55:47 PM

I don't recall any discussion that was directly about Beast Man. I just remember that the crowner for the Petting-Zoo People thread voted to turn the page into a redirect to Beast Man (the alternatives were either redirecting it to Funny Animal or redirecting Funny Animal to it).

Is Sandbox.Our Minotaurs Are Different ready to be put in place? As previously stated, Minotaurs And Bovine People will be a redirect.

I don't see anything wrong with it, so I can move it if it's ready.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 29th 2021 at 9:45:46 AM