Rework needed: Sliding Scale Of Anthropomorphism

In addition to being a little out of date with the results of some of our repair shop work, the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism has some problems of its own.

The biggest one which stands out to me is that it's trying to map something which belongs on a 2D plane onto a linear scale.

The way I see it, Anthropomorphism of a character has two components: the visual treatment and the narrative treatment. At present, the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism tries to put both on a single linear scale from Human to Non-Human, when really, the two components should be treated as separate axes, much like how Character Alignment uses a Lawful/Chaotic axis and a Good/Evil axis.

So, input from fellow tropers on this matter?

Accidental mistakes are forgivable, intentional ones are not.

I agree, but I have no idea what a 3x3 grid would look like under your proposition since the gambit isn't human to rock, it's also human to plant, human to robot, human to animal, human to eldritch abomination, etc. However human like mind to non human mind might be easier to make.

compare http://www.overthinkingit.com/2009/12/14/from-scooby-to-scrappy-an-analysis-of-cartoon-doghood/

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

Chinchilla, that's not the point. Regardless of whether it's animal/robot/alien/whatever, there are two broad types of anthropomorphism:

• anthropomorphism - The attribution of human physical form
• anthropropathy - The attribution of human mind

The latter term is incredibly esoteric and has been acceptably lumped with the former for centuries, but in shorter terms:

The first type is strictly about physical appearance only; a character's narrative treatment relates more to the second type. In practice, they're often related nonetheless: The more humanlike a character's appearance, the more humanlike their disposition.

Additionally, why does the "animal" scale start with 'animal' and progress to 'human' when the alien/robot/plant scales start at 'human' and progress oppositely?

edited 1st Nov '10 6:16:53 PM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

@Stratadrake: Easy, I just meant that things could get wonky because the DnD system is based on twin binary scales where Law vrs Chaos forms one axis and Evil vrs Good forms another, with an arbitrary middle in between resulting in a 3x3 grid. I was agreeing to your anthropomorphism and anthropropathy axes but what is the opposite of human like intelligence or form in fiction? alien? well what about when were talking about something born on our planet? robot? well what about biological creatures etc. Should we just call the other other side "other"?

I have no Idea who made the scales and why they arranged them the way they did, but I would venture a guess of it's arbitrary. like a+b+c = c+b+a.

I think the simplest approach would be to just label the extremes of each axis "Human" and "Non-Human".

For the physical axis when dealing with animals we have:

• Human
• Mostly human (Little Bit Beastly)
• Half-and-half (Petting-Zoo People)
• Mostly animal (Funny Animal)
• Animal

For the psychological axis we'd have something along these lines:

• Human
• Human with a few animal quirks
• Half-and-half
• Mostly animal, but with some recognisable human traits
• Animal

Number these points from 0 to 4 and the Star Fox cast would be (2,0). That is, half-and-half in appearance, but treated as if they were human as far as the narrative is concerned. Some tropes, such as Talking Animal would cover continuums between points on the graph. I'd say (4,0) to (4,2) for the most part for that trope.

edited 2nd Nov '10 2:04:32 AM by Roxor

Accidental mistakes are forgivable, intentional ones are not.

I would like to point out that the fifty-fifty bits are the extreme for what we defined petting zoo people as. Felica from Dark Stakers would fall under there for instance because she's got enough cat traits that she can't hide them. Little Bit Beastly is only for things that could be covered up easily. Anything more than that even if they don't fall into the Star Fox category is in there.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I think I finally figured out why I don't like "Little Bit Beastly" as a title: It's an adjective when most the other alternatives are nouns. You can't wikilink it the same.

(I also think there's some confusion with Beast Man.)

edited 2nd Nov '10 10:49:54 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Okay, okay, so I left things a bit rough when writing up those continuums. You do get the basic idea, though. Right?

Accidental mistakes are forgivable, intentional ones are not.

What will you do with this trope?

I can think of two approaches:

1. list the key points on each axis, with the appropriate tropes which fit with the points.

2. Use a grid, similar to the Sorting Algorithm of Deadness.

Accidental mistakes are forgivable, intentional ones are not.

Hmm, I'm not sure a "grid" approach is such a good idea in this case.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Since the primary thing we had to do when reworking Petting-Zoo People and Little Bit Beastly was decide how we measured animal natures. And early on we specifically stuck with NOT using narratives as a deciding factor and stuck strictly with appearance...

It seems a little odd to me we have to rework the scale to include narratives when last time we argued/discussed this point we decided to deliberately leave it out. Reworking the scale so it includes the new tropes should be enough... we're really making this more complicated than it needs to be.

Who needs a signature, really?

Well the thing is that Petting-Zoo People and Little Bit Beastly were easiest to define based on physical appearance while adding "acts animalish" messes up the 23% (or whatever the number was) human to non-human ratio. To have a page with both the physical and mental scales in the same place would be useful, it seems like it would be really hard to combine the scales especially when you add in arbitrary middles, wonky dichotomies, and tropes that are possible but not found in fiction (unless I'm following the wrong stuff).

So I would think it would be appropriate for a Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism to takle both aspects.

Yes, but it'd be problematic to cover both differences on a single scale. Especially when the tropes are defined by strictly appearance.

Trying to make a scale of human to non-human appearance AND a scale of human to non-human personality in a grid will get complicated. Having a scale for personality on the page of scales of anthropomorphism is a fine idea, the application seems to be rooting for failure.

Who needs a signature, really?

Is keeping the page but not combining the scales a option?

If you mean something like this

[list of points for visual aspects]

[list of points for mental aspects]

Then I think I already suggested that as one option.

We could assign numbers from 0 to X for the physical scale and 0 to Y for the mental scale, then when listing examples, give the two scores. Say, (2,0) for Petting-Zoo People physical appearance, but treated like a human for the purposes of the narrative.

If we go with a coordinate pair system, I think all-human should be zero, with numbers increasing the further away you get from human on both scales. After all, Most Writers Are Human, anyway, so we tend to think of ourselves as the default.

edited 5th Nov '10 6:00:06 AM by Roxor

Accidental mistakes are forgivable, intentional ones are not.

Yes to the first thing, no to the second thing.

Adding the Human to non-human mental aspects list is fine, and I am for it if we can find a list of narrative tropes for anthropropathy to put onto it. No to the X and Y axis points on a graph thing. Because:

• The subtropes on the list(s) will be one or the other, not both.
• Even at its most basic (say 5 points on each scale) we're not making a trope for each cross point between the two scales, leading back to the above that tropes will be one or the other, not both.

We should make a list of anthropropathy tropes, tweak/rework the list of anthropomorphism tropes (they can share the Sliding Scale page) and that's it. Nothing more complicated after that.

Who needs a signature, really?

I'm of the opinion that their narrative depiction tends to mirror their visual depiction. All varieties of Talking Animal, for example, could be mentioned as a subset of the "fully animal appearance".

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

What are the anthropropathy pages going to be like?

Could the animal anthropropathy tropes be like,

• All Animal: Does Not Act Human At All
• Mostly Animal: Acts A Little Human
• More Animal: Acts Somewhat Human
• Half Animal, Half Human: Acts Half Like Human
• More Human: Acts More Like Human
• Mostly Human: Acts Mostly Human
• All Human: Acts Completely Human

edited 6th Nov '10 2:52:47 PM by EdnaWalker

I'm not 100% convinced that one is really necessary, actually.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Yeah... on thinking about it we don't have a lot of narrative tropes to fit the list, so we'd have to make them all. For the most part it's acts human, doesn't act human, and acts human but has a few animal ticks (adding Nya to the end of lines in Japan is the most general one. Chasing objects for dogs, Wolf's scratching behind his ear in Tenth Kingdom, etc etc).

It isn't enough to make a scale unless someone else can think of examples to cover a spectrum...

Who needs a signature, really?

Goofy and Max are dogs who act completely like humans and Pluto is a dog who acts completely like a dog.

So nothing about Talking Animal, Speech-Impaired Animal, Intellectual Animal, Robo Speak, Mobile-Suit Human, Translator Collar, or Empty Shell?