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laserviking42 Since: Oct, 2015
2022-05-19 21:37:56

Technically neither, since the book clearly portrayed them both as mice, it's not Interspecies Romance. It would be Artistic License – Biology if the author was aware field mice are voles and just decided to make them mice because it would be better for the story, but given that it's rather esoteric knowledge, that's not a given. We used to have a bunch of research failure tropes for this, but they were prone to nitpicking and bloat.

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
GnomeTitan Since: Aug, 2013
2022-05-19 23:12:05

I think we can use the artistic license tropes even if we think it’s an unintentional error. It used to be like laserviking writes, with AL for intentional things and research failure tropes for unintentional errors, but one of the reasons the RF tropes were removed was that it’s often impossible to tell if an error was intentional or not. So AL was changed to include at least some unintentional stuff (likethis case, were we can’t really tell how much the author really knows about mouse biology).

RoseAndHeather (Edited uphill both ways)
2022-05-20 03:03:52

That is very esoteric knowledge. As in, my university degree is in an animal science-type field and I didn't know that (or if I did — because I probably was taught it at some point — I'd long since forgotten).

That said, I don't have a problem with listing it under Artistic License – Biology. It's a valid example IMO. I agree that it doesn't qualify as Interspecies Romance because it's clearly not supposed to be one in the text, however.

Edited by RoseAndHeather I serve at the pleasure of President Pritchart.
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