I mean, I could have made it narrower, but it seemed better to me to pick endpoints beyond where I expected the game to fall, yes?
Unless you’re saying that Tiny Frog Wizards falls outside those points on the anthropomorphism scale?
What I mean to say is those are weird end-points for a scale of relative anthropomorphism because they make it difficult to pin down exactly what we mean by anthropomorphism.
The rabbits of Watership Down, for example, are almost entirely non-anthropomorphic in terms of their anatomy and use of technology, but they’re considerably more politically sophisticated than a lot of media that’s ostensibly much further up the scale of anthropomorphism; heck, they even have rabbit Fascism!
Redwall, conversely, is weirdly inconsistent; early books strongly imply that the mice of Redwall Abbey are roughly the size of real mice, while later books back away from that and adopt a more human-normative scale. Anatomic anthropomorphism, meanwhile, seems to vary not only between species, but also between members of the same species, based on how civilised or, ah, “savage” they are (and isn’t that a can of worms).
Let’s put it another way: if Watership Down and Redwall are the end-points of your scale, where does The Jungle Book fall? The Wind in the Willows? The Great Mouse Detective? Bambi?
Well…..it’s actually a completely reasonable scale, is the thing?
Like. Try this phrasing instead: “Where does this story fall, onn a scale from ‘To an outside human observer, these would be completely normal animals doing completely expected animal things (and not because they’re hiding/faking it)’ to ‘these animals wear clothes/armor, write/draw, use tiny human weapons, cook food that they eat at tables, and otherwise act like tiny humans’?”
And your examples kind of….make the point? Bambi would be just inside WD (there is a zero percent chance of any WD owl ever giving playful relationship advice to a rabbit), and Wind in the Willows/Great Mouse Detective would probably be about even? I’d argue GMD would be less so than WitW because due to the presence of human stuff in their setting, it’s much more relevant/restrictive to the characters that they are in fact mice, whereas there’s functionally no humans in Redwall to ground it.
Personally, I am VERY firmly of the opinion that anything further along the scale than Redwall is no longer an animal story. Like–I adore Disney’s Robin Hood as much as anyone, but that’s not an animal story? It’s Robin Hood with furries, which is extremely valid, but it’s not anthropomorphic fiction, it’s a normal story with anthro character designs.
Again–that’s not, like, derogatory, or a criticism, it just is what it is.
I suppose you could argue that the back marker in the Watership Down direction should really be something like Black Beauty, where there’s no culture worldbuilding and the horses really don’t have any rich inner lives or mythology of their own; but I think that’s measuring “anthropomorphism” on a totally different axis than the one the asker was thinking of.
….Okay I might actually need to make a larger post about this because I saw this post and then spent the entire bus ride home thinking about sliding scales of anthropomorphism and I got, like, really into it but I’m genuinely just thinking out loud here and don’t want to come across as starting an argument on someone else’s post for fun.
HI I’M BACK AND I MADE GRAPHS
For me personally, I think there’s two primary axes here–the first is like I said above, a scale from “a real-life human observer, looking at these animals in a brief snapshot of their lives, would experience them as normal animals” to “these animals live their lives as tiny humans complete with clothing and period-typical technology”.
The OTHER axis is the degree to which the animals have a distinct culture independent from (though generally not untouched by!) humans. As in–do the animal characters, as in Watership Down, have their own mythologies, their own worldview, their own ways of living that would go on just fine without human influence? or, as in Black Beauty, do the animals primarily define themselves according to the roles humans give them?
(Note that the latter isn’t a mark of, like, bad writing–I literally used Black Beauty as the ur-example! If you’re writing from the perspective of a DOMESTICATED ANIMAL, having them mentally define themselves by their place in human society is the only thing that IS realistic! This is actually where the Warriors books lost me as a kid–it got to the point where even as a member of the target audience I was going, “but they’re domesticated cats? the fact that they have to live in and around humans is like, the Point, that’s what made this interesting–”)
So, for example:
You will notice this gets super weird if you go ANY further right than Redwall–Robin Hood: Men With Fursonas flipped to the other axis for no clear reason because if you go any further along the scale than Redwall, there ceases to be any relevance to the characters being animals at all*. It’s no longer an animal story. If they behave 100% like humans and there’s 0% human influence (ie, no humans in the setting at all), then they’re just……………people. The Y axis ceases to have any meaning.
*(Anthro characters having animalistic traits isn’t the same thing and I’m not dismissing the use of that trope! Their TRAITS are still relevant and can be part of a super compelling story–but it’s no longer an animal story, no longer anthropomorphic fiction, ie telling a story about animals with human traits. Frankly, NARNIA falls into this–Talking Beasts are full citizens 100% and Narnian culture belongs to all Narnians, so they don’t really fit into the concept being discussed.)
So Robin Hood flips the axis because on a technicality, you literally cannot have a Robin Hood adaptation that’s not dependent on human civilization, but normally, after you pass Redwall you break the quadrants and enter non-euclidean furryspace.
Then there’s that z-axis I added, which I’ve made a reference for–the Z axis is there to account for “talking animal” stories, where an animal might have totally natural-looking behavior but also be able to speak to one or all humans and confuse the placement somewhat.
I used 101 Dalmations as the anchorpoint, dead center–they can clearly understand every word their humans say and can even read, but aren’t capable of communicating back in any way other than dog behavior ™.
On one end of the scale is The Rescuers (all the animals are clearly ABLE to speak to humans at will but choose not to for their own protection). The other is again Watership Down, where human speech is comprehensible to the reader but the rabbit characters don’t understand it, and in which only a few of them are–just barely–capable of almost grasping the vague concept of writing or even of pictures/images being capable of conveying meaning.
For media like Redwall where humans just don’t exist or don’t functionally exist, they’d join 101 Dalmations dead-center because the question is irrelevant.
The demon looked around. There was a summoning sigil drawn in the ruddy sand, but nobody… It shifted its perception to the spiritual plane. Ah. A dust devil.
“Why hast thou-”
“A battery.”
“A battery?” The demon looked around. “What need for a battery on Mars?”
“For our friend.”
I live down the street from a school that’s also a Pokémon Go gym so I’ve been going up there to kick all the kids pokemon out and taking it over with my avatar dressed as team rocket everyday.
I’m like their one man Jessie and James, I like to think
The Rhydon is at the school and I’ve just been going back up now and then between their classes to heal it lmao
Not on my watch. Get some more Layton votes in there.
Layton-heritage-posts, you are my beloved comrade, but on this occasion, I fear we will have to be temporary enemies. I hope you can understand.
VOTE GUMSHOE!!
Understandable, but have you considered that, as sweet and kind as he is, ACAB still includes Gumshoe?
I find no fault with this statement as is; all cops are indeed bastards, but as an argument, my dear comrade, it falls flat. My counterpoint is thus: this is a poll whose purpose is to find out who would be considered the best fictional detective. I posit that Hershel Layton is not truly eligible. One’s opinion on policing notwithstanding, Detective is a job title, and if my eyes do not deceive me, *Professor* Layton has an entirely different job title preceding his surname. I rest my case here.
VOTE GUMSHOE!!!!
Im sorry @aceattorneyheritageposts, but you’ll have to try harder than that. While it is true that the good professor doesn’t have the official job title of “detective”, he isn’t the only one. This tournament features several people who aren’t officially detectives, including Mystery Inc.(more accurately paranormal inestigators) , tintin (an investagative journalist), Bruce wayne (a billionaire ceo), and steve (just some guy with a mischevious dog). What all these people have in common isn’t that they all have the profession of detective, but that they do the job of a detective, that being investigating clues to find a culprit, a job which the good professor does on the regular.
(Ack! There goes my argument…Just what are all these unlicensed police-badgeless detectives doing running around investigating crimes anyway?!)
(…Let’s not follow that train of thought too far… or else our own local PD might start asking me and Maya more questions about why we’re snooping round their crime scenes…)
Ahem, anyway.
True it may be as you say that the actual job title of Detective isn’t required for eligibility in this tournament. However! I still believe Gumshoe has the edge over Layton, and here’s why!
Gumshoe, in design and naming, is the very essence of a detective. His beaten up coat, low-maintenance hirsuteness, the pencil behind his ear - all of this screams “detective”. Where is the detective swag in Layton’s design? It simply isn’t there, your honor. Not only that, but his first and last names - “Dick” and “Gumshoe” - are both established slang terms for a detective! He was born for this profession! This man eats, breathes, and LIVES investigation!
(I’d better not mention that he’s not actually very good at it… That might undermine my point somewhat.)
It is true that Gumshoe does seem to have the essence of a detective, but aesthetic alone does not make him the better detective. What makes a good detective is finding evidence and solving cases, and as we both can attest, Gumshoe is terrible at his job.
In fact, your job is to claim that he has failed in his duty as a detective. Gumshoe may look like he has the essence of a true detective, but in reality he has the spirit of a buffoon.
O-oof!
(I really should have guessed that Edgeworth of all people would draw attention to the fact that Gumshoe is a crappy detective… Poor guy’ll be getting another salary cut in 3, 2… Wait, hold on a minute!)
Wait, Edgeworth!
Maybe he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but without Gumshoe helping out, there are so many cases we wouldn’t be able to solve! He’s saved all of our hides more times than I can count. Without him and his metal detector, you’d be in jail for a murder you didn’t commit, remember?!
And he has the biggest heart this side of Japanifornia! What more could you want in a detective? Actual detecting skills? Utterly irrelevant to the case at hand! It’s a popularity contest, not a skills contest, and on the former metric, he absolutely deserves to win!
Are you really so cold as to throw such a kind and upstanding man under the bus, just because he’s not very good at his actual job?!
Yes we are. Besides that, the title of the tournament is still “best-fictional-detective”, not most “popular” or “beloved” detective.
I’ll accept your point if you can show me that the majority of poll voters are basing their decision on each character’s respective deductive skill and investigative talent, but I strongly suspect you have no evidence to prove such an assertion! The jury are not going to be picking who is the “best” based on skill. They’re going to be picking based on which one they love more, or, alternatively, considering this is Tumblr, which one they wish most to put in a jar and shake it, or to put in a maid outfit and have a tea party with, or to flatten with a steamroller, or any of the other stuff they do to people here.
This website sure is weird.
I can assure you that during my time as Heritage Blog runner I have seen more than one Layton in a Maid dress. Also you are talking about a stereotypical example of a British Gentleman, of course he likes tea.
As for the evidence that voters actually vote for the better detective and not just who they like more,
This Certificate has been handed to me by a source that wishes to stay anonymous. The Prosecution requestes that it will be added to the Court record.
(No way…! they actually have evidence…! How the heck did they get that?)
(It’s so over… I’m sorry Gumshoe… I’m sorry everyone…)
(What was that…? Chief…?!)
(Don’t give up yet, Phoenix! Find the contradiction in the evidence! You can still do this, for Gumshoe!)
(I need to examine the evidence more closely… think, Phoenix, think! Where is the contradiction Mia mentioned?)
Wait!
Hold on a minute! That note is in your own handwriting!! Your Honor, this certificate… is a fake!!
(Ok so first of all, I might be biased here but how can we have a Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney Battle and not use the music from Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney. With that out of the way,)
So, you think that this certificate is a scam?
And just how do you intend to prove that? I don’t remember an instance in which you could have seen how my handwriting looks. Furthermore, I want you to have a look at this:
You might remember it, after all, as we can clearly see, it is only 47 minutes old.
Your Answer to the question if you have ever played a Layton game before is a clear no. You might wonder what role this little fact plays, and it’s actually quite simple.
You view this poll through an incredibly small lense! You never actually saw Layton in action except the occasional post you might have come across! Whereas I actually played through the original ace attorney trilogy, and therefore have a very good picture of both contestants!
THE DEFENSE IS IN FACT NOT FIT FOR THIS COURT, AS IT HAS ONLY FULL KNOWLEDGE ON ONE OF THESE CHARACTERS! THE PROSECUTION RESTS ITS CASE YOUR HONOR!
Wh… Wha…
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!
(How could it have come to this?! It’s impossible to argue against that!!)
Fine. I admit that my viewpoint is narrow and biased against Layton due to not having full knowledge of his character and games.
But still, gracious in defeat, I will leave you all with this final exclamation.
While there is friendly rivalry between Singapore and Malaysia over
who makes better food, for one notable family in Singapore, the best sambal belacan (a spicy condiment made from shrimp paste) indisputably comes from Malaysia, though only from a very special source.
In 2019, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong conveyed his thanks to the Malaysian queen for regularly sending over her sambal belacan
to his family. “Thank you for your warmth and kindness, sending my
father (and me) your special sambal belacan all these years!” he tweeted
on 28 October 2019. “I hope you enjoy making it as much as we enjoy
eating it!” A few days before, Raja Permaisuri Agong Tunku Hajah Azizah
Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah had shared on her Instagram account a letter
written in July 2009 by former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. He wrote
that the six packets of sambal belacan she had given him were
delicious. “I shared them with my two sons. They have all been consumed.
It is the best chilli belacan we have tasted. Can my family have a few
more?”1 Since then, she has been regularly sending her sambal belacan across the Causeway.
Sambal belacan is a regular accompaniment to rice in Malay, Eurasian and Peranakan meals. It is made by pounding toasted belacan
with chillies and adding calamansi lime juice, salt and sugar to that
mixture. While it is popular with many people, its key ingredient, belacan, has a somewhat malodourous reputation.
Hugh Clifford, who served as Governor of the Straits Settlements between 1927 and 1929, referred to belacan
as “that evil-smelling condiment which [had] been so ludicrously
misnamed the Malayan Caviare” in his 1897 account of the Malay
Peninsula. He wrote that the coasts reeked of “rank odours” as a result
of women villagers “labouring incessantly in drying and salting the fish
which [had] been taken by the men, or pounding prawns into blâchan”
throughout the fishing season. The stench was so strong that “all the
violence of the fresh, strong, monsoon winds” would only “partially
purge” the villages of it.2
In his book, A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands & Adjacent Countries (1856), John Crawfurd, the former Resident of Singapore, describes balachong (belacan) as:
“[A] condiment made of prawns, sardines, and other small fish, pounded and pickled. The proper Malay word is bâlachan [belacan], the Javanese trasi [terasi], and the Philippine bagon [bagoong].
This article is of universal use as a condiment, and one of the largest
articles of native consumption throughout both the Malay and Philippine
Archipelago. It is not confined, indeed, as a condiment to the Asiatic
islanders, but is also largely used by the Birmese [Burmese], the
Siamese, and Cochin-Chinese. It is, indeed, in great measure essentially
the same article known to the Greeks and Romans under the name of
garum, the produce of a Mediterranean fish.”3
Today, the Malay term belacan is commonly used in Singapore,
Malaysia, Brunei and parts of Indonesia to refer typically to shrimp
paste. In Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, it is called kapi, which is borrowed from the term ngapi (literally “pressed fish”) used in Myanmar, while it is referred to as mắm tôm or mắm ruốc in Vietnam.
Because it is rich in glutamates and nucleotides, belacan
imparts savouriness to any dish, what is often described as “umami”.
Other foods that are rich in umami include fish sauce, soya sauce,
kimchi, mushroom, ripe tomato, anchovy and cheese.
Making Belacan
A 17th-century account gives a remarkably detailed description of making belacan. In 1688, the English privateer William Dampier encountered people making a paste of small fish and shrimps called balachaun during his visit to Tonkin (North Vietnam). He saw how this process produced nuke-mum or nước mắm
(fish sauce) as well. His account, published in 1699, provides one of
the earliest Western descriptions of making fish/shrimp paste:
