Tag: interesting

c4bl3fl4m3:

drferox:

schniggles:

doctorvtumbls:

schniggles:

THERE’S A PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION FOR THE WESTERN WORLD’S PROLIFERATION OF FURRIES??

Okay no, you can’t just drop a knowledge bomb like that and not EXPLAIN! Or at least link! Gimme a search term?! Anything!

ok i’ll write up the lightning-bolt of bizarre mental synthesis later but here:

the pacific standard article and the pdf of the study in question

find the term “folkbiological reasoning” and peruse this paragraph in the psmag article:

“Studies show that Western urban children grow up so closed off in man-made environments that their brains never form a deep or complex connection to the natural world. While studying children from the U.S., researchers have suggested a developmental timeline for what is called “folkbiological reasoning.” These studies posit that it is not until children are around 7 years old that they stop projecting human qualities onto animals and begin to understand that humans are one animal among many. Compared to Yucatec Maya communities in Mexico, however, Western urban children appear to be developmentally delayed in this regard. Children who grow up constantly interacting with the natural world are much less likely to anthropomorphize other living things into late childhood.”

now consider, and i say this in the least pejorative way possible, that furry culture seems to arise at least partially from a desire/instinct to anthropomorphize and identify with non-human animals, often in broad, non-species-specific categories (cat, dog, etc.). 

i need to lie down

As an outsider to furry culture the whole thing is really interesting.

I approach animals from a certain point of view (veterinary medicine) and I think I understand them, what they are and what they do pretty well. I assumed somebody who goes around introducing themselves as a cat, for example, actually knows something about cats.

Not in this case.

So one evening my brother brought a few of his friends around to my home with fursonas consisting of a dog, cat and kangaroo.

I was bottle raising a litter of seven adorable kittens at the time (a handful and a half, let me tell you) and I thought this was brilliant. Three animal lovers, in my home, which don’t have any pets of their own. Perfect future kitten owners, right?

I mean, at a certain stage in kitten season you start trying to pimp out those cute little fuzzballs to anybody.

Mr Cat Fursona had no idea what to do with a real live cat or kitten. He’d never interacted with one, he’d only seen pictures and videos. He was so thoroughly awkward, and possibly a little bit afraid, completely unsure about how to hold them, what to do if they wiggled and even if they were happy. He marveled at the way their ears twitch when they swallow but freaked out about their toileting habits. And to my surprise he wasn’t actually interested in these real cats for more than three minutes.

They had minimal interest in this litter of kittens, they were not interested in real animals. They were not familiar with real animals.

I don’t think they’re ascribing human characteristics to an animal. This group seemed to be taking perceived animal qualities (eg dog=loyalty, cat=aloof) and applying it to themselves. Even if the real animals don’t actually have those qualities at all, they were interested in the qualities that society had assigned those animals and then applying that to themselves. Is was society’s concept of a cat that was of interest to him, not the real thing.

So you can be a cat, it seems, without knowing a single thing about cats. And perhaps if he had grown up with cats then he wouldn’t have chosen one for his fursona.

Fascinating!

I grew up in the woods, in farm country, very close to nature and animals. I wonder if that’s why I’m not a furry? *shrug*

thassalia:

kernezelda:

taiey:

Now we get to what will inevitably be remembered as the signature character of her career: her nuanced role as Black Widow, the chief protagonist of the single most successful film franchise ever. Here’s why her character is the main protagonist of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: She is the primary character advancing the plot, she is growing and changing as an individual, and she’s the character that the audience most identifies with.

Look at Natasha Romanoff and what she does over the course of the films. She’s the one who personally disables the Chitauri wormhole generator. She’s the one who busts S.H.I.E.L.D. wide open while Cap is punching helicarriers until they explode. She’s the one who tames the Hulk and helps found the New Avengers. She’s the one who decides the outcome of the Civil War. While the other guys are busy punching the baddies, Widow’s moving the ball forward, arc-wise. While the tanks may run interference, the real work of saving the world is Johansson’s.

And among her higher-billed co-stars, she’s the only one who serves as an audience stand-in. Sure, there’s Hawkeye, but between the psychic possession in “The Avengers” and the family-man backstory established in the subsequent films, he doesn’t directly influence the good-guy game plan the way Romanoff does in the main storyline. She’s the one making sense of the incongruous team-up in “The Avengers,” she’s the audience surrogate who gets a romantic arc in “Age of Ultron,” she’s the one experiencing the same moral journey as the audience in “Civil War.”

Romanoff is also the only character who discernibly grows or changes over the course of the franchise. She’s alone here in part because the medium requires it; comic-book characters work best as stand-ins for ideas, so Tony Stark and Steve Rogers can grow only in their relationships with others and not internally. Stark’s engineer-it-till-it’s-fixed personality ossifies over the course of the franchise, and Rogers only gets more morally stubborn. But Romanoff? She’s reacting and growing with the changes in the world around her. Her arc is practically out of Joseph Campbell — a reluctant hero called to adventure and thrust into a world of supernatural powers, who is guided by a mentor who “dies” too soon, and who prevails as a common person against supernatural enemies. Stark, Rogers and the rest of them are the supernatural world she’s thrust into. They may be the protagonists of their individual trilogies, but only Johansson’s Widow could be considered the protagonist of the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Four Types Of Scarlett Johansson Movies by Walt Hickey.

@handypolymath, @thassalia

I feel this so deeply!!! And it’s certainly how I experience these films;)