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What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Difference between revisions
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{{trope|wppage=Bambi effect}}
[[File:coelacanth.jpg|frame|[[The Woobie|Poor little thing...]]]]
{{quote|''"A massively disproportionate amount of money goes towards saving the panda because it looks like a battered wife."''|'''Jimmy Carr''', ''[[QI]]''}}
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Incidentally, we are very happy to report that since this trope was launched, it turns out that many Tropers [[Freaky Is Cool|have a soft-spot for unpopular creatures]]. And do enjoy the blog [http://endangered-ugly.blogspot.com/ Endangered Ugly Things.]
{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* In what was probably a deliberate [[Viral Marketing]] campaign, Ford "accidentally" leaked two SportKa ads onto the Internet. One depicted a pigeon getting squashed by the car's hood, and the other depicted a cat being decapitated by the car's sun roof. Guess which one sparked protests.
** To be fair, getting whacked by a car's hood looked quick and painless compared to slow decapitation. So there might be reasons to protest the latter.
== Anime and Manga ==
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** Also note that the movie avoided making them too cute.
* The heroes of ''[[Charlotte's Web]]'' are a humble pig and a very compassionate spider. They also befriend a rat who seems sleazy and selfish at first, but he's actually a [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]].
* This and several other [[Animal Tropes]] were well-addressed in the ''[[Discworld]]'' novel, ''[[
{{quote|''"Had it been made for humans? The shop had been made for humans, true, but surely even humans wouldn't make a book about Ratty Rupert the Rat, who wore a hat, '''and''' poison rats under the floorboards at the same time. Would they? How mad would anything have to be to think like that?"''}}
** Quoth the Raven is also aware of this trope, claiming he would receive better treatment if he were cute like a robin. Of course, robins don't typically manage to work their love of eating eyeballs into every conversation.
** Also in ''[[
* Interestingly addressed in the ''[[Silverwing (novel)|Silverwing]]'' trilogy of children's books. The main characters are all bats, traditionally a creature humanity considers menacing. The divide between "good" and "evil" bats is at least somewhat racial—the villains are carnivorous False Vampire Bats, while the "good" bats are smaller, more conventionally cute ones. However, the villains are primarily marked not by their frightening appearances, but by their predatory habits and worship of an evil deity. No points for guessing who the Big Fat Traitor is by the way, it's straightened like an arrow in the cartoon.
* The Caldecott medalist picture book ''[[Stellaluna]]'' is about a bat. (For good measure, it's a ''female'' bat.)
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** The spider-wolves, however, look very much like things out of nightmares—even [[Eldritch Abomination]]s—which gives officers qualms even after they become the first race humanity can actually establish friendly relations with, and [[Fire-Forged Friends|they fight together against the bear cows]]. This is all the more ironic in that they clearly share human aesthetics in several ways: their ships are marvels of elegance, their ship formations are beautiful mathematical patterns, and their multi-color clothing never clashes in human eyes.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* Uncomfortably applied in ''[[Star Trek]]'', where you'd think they'd know better. For example, ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'' introduces the Xindi, a planet made up of five different races: a humanoid race (who looked [[Human Aliens|very human]]), a sloth-like race (who looked [[Rubber Forehead Aliens|mostly human]]), a [[Sapient Cetaceans|dolphin-like race]], an [[Big Creepy-Crawlies|insect-like race]], and a [[Reptiles Are Abhorrent|lizard-like race]]. You win no prizes for guessing which ones remain villains.
** Especially bad in the Enterprise episode Hatchery. The ship discovers a heavily damaged and abandoned Insectoid ship. In the most hardened part of the ship is their hatchery with ~30 soon to be hatching insectoid offspring. Archer is shown to be caring for their fate and trying to save their hatchery from failing. He gives a story about his great grandfather having to deal with a school during the war and saving the children inside the school at great personal cost. Everyone else on the ship looks at the Captain like he's nuts. In the end {{spoiler|it turns out his paternal feeling were only due to his being infected by an enzyme the eggs gave off. [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|Huh...]]}}
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** Averted in the episode The Doctor's Daughter, when the ugly fishlike aliens turn out to be the good guys (or at least no worse than the humans.)
** The Doctor averts this quite a bit with his "They can't help themselves" speeches. He said the same thing about the Vespiform in "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (It was the wasp), and the metal stingrays in "Planet of the Dead."
== New Media ==
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* The artist Scythemantis (Jonathan Wojcik) of bogleech.com pretty much subverts this trope in everything he does. It's kind of his thing.
* One part this trope, two parts [[Humans Are Cthulhu]] in [http://www.flickr.com/photos/babbletrish/4056157011/in/set-72157602749425047/ this comic].
== Tabletop Games ==
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* So did ''[[Beast Wars]]''. See [[Western Animation]] below.
* Subverted with [http://www.squishable.com/ Squishables]. While they do make adorably rotund plushies of your typical kitties and puppies, they also make plushies of sharks, alligators, bats, snails, octopuses, robots, and even [[Satan|the devil]]. Yes, they managed to make Lucifer adorable.
== Video Games ==
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** A later quest has you hunting for a giant spider egg for Tieve, that she can hatch and raise as a pet.
* The wolf boss in [[Dark Souls]] has many in the fanbase wishing that they didn't have to kill him. None of the other more grotesque bosses are extended such favor.
== Web Comics ==
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* Averted in ''[[Suicide for Hire]]'': Arcturus and Hunter look pretty cute (Arcturus in particular), but...[[Those Two Bad Guys|well.]]
* The mere existence of ''[[Nature of Nature's Art]]'' challenges this trope - it's about Lycosa and other spiders. So far it's been proving successful, to the point that some ''arachnophobes'' enjoy it. The author of the comic also went to the trouble of preparing [[Shown Their Work|a guide on spiders, including anatomy and behaviour]]; that's probably a factor.
* This is generally the rule for [[Half Human Hybrids|chimeras]] in ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'' - the nicest is part squirrel, the nastiest is a monster of uncertain origins, and the rest are somewhere in between. The bat, at least, is interestingly justified: he's evil (or at least destructive) because he's aware of his ugliness and redirects his self-hatred at the world around him. {{spoiler|He manages a [[Heel Face Turn]] after turning fully human.}} Also, the squirrel version as originally planned? [[Poisonous Friend|Not nice at all]].
* ''[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]]'' had it inverted [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2393#comic here].
* ''[[Vexxarr]]'' invoked this while [http://www.vexxarr.com/archive.php?seldate=100807 arguing] with [[Wide-Eyed Idealist|Sploorfix]] who developed doubts about ethics of hunting Predatory Moons for caesium (after they already killed one using Sploorfix's plan).
* Discussed in ''[[Sandra and Woo]]''. A cartoon world is [http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2009/10/26/0106-woos-nightmare/ nightmare for the predators who eat mice].
* ''[[Awkward Zombie]]'' illustrates ''[[Animal Crossing]]'' version: "[https://www.awkwardzombie.com/awkward-zombie/survival-of-the-cutest Survival of the Cutest]".
== [[Web Original]] ==
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** Look at 'im, he's so cute!
* Also on [[Deviant ART]], Skulldog's [http://skulldog.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d24tbcs Ugly Crew] (note that some of the animals very definitely qualify as [[Ugly Cute]], like the Shoebill).
== Western Animation ==
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* Lampshaded in ''[[Ratatouille]]''. Remy's major struggle is the fact that humans think rats are gross; the movie shows them as just mischievous. A bonus short on the DVD cheekily acknowledges the relationship between humans and rats throughout history; they ''do'' have a history of carrying fleas that spread disease, but rats in and of themselves are actually pretty fastidious.
* Leave it to ''[[Shark Tale]]'' to get really confusing about this. To the fish population of the Reef, Lenny the Shark is scary as a shark, but cuddly and safe when he disguises himself as a dolphin. Just so we're clear, [[Carnivore Confusion|dolphins eat fish too]]—but they're cute! (This led to a few reviewers reading a [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|stronger metaphor into it]]...) Funny thing, is, the movie actually ''uses'' this, {{spoiler|when Oscar tries to subvert [[I Have Your Wife]] by having Lenny fake eating his girlfriend. The "attack" appears to be just as quick and almost as savage as...well, a shark attack}}.
** The whole thing with dolphins is particularly disturbing considering [https://web.archive.org/web/20100820114047/http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080831135003AA68nDs certain aspects of real dolphin behavior.]
* ''[[Finding Nemo]]'': The good guys are colorful tropical fish. They're threatened by ugly, drably-colored predators with sharp teeth who don't talk. And then there's the sharks, [[Carnivore Confusion|who try to go vegan]], [[Off the Wagon|but old habits die hard]]. Interestingly, they ''do'' reference the hypocrisy of humans who think dolphins are cuter than sharks.
* Done both straight and subverted in ''[[A Bug's Life|A Bugs Life]]''. On the one hand, the heroes are ants and a [[Multinational Team|circus troupe]] which includes a ladybug and a chubby caterpillar, while the main villain is an ugly, voracious locust. On the other hand, the circus bugs include in their ranks a praying mantis and a black widow spider; while both are considered cool-looking by some, neither are most people's idea of cute. The remaining grasshoppers are only [[Punch Clock Villain]]s. But the biggest subversion of all is that the one creature the others fear the most is...a Goldfinch. Which from their perspective is the equivalent of the T. Rex in ''[[Jurassic Park]]''. The sight of {{spoiler|Hopper meeting his demise at the beaks of her fluffy little chicks}} gives new meaning to the phrase [[Grotesque Cute]].
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* In ''[[Ruby-Spears Superman]]'', the Kryptonian known as [[Superman]] falls into something similar to the ''[[Thundercats]]'' example above in this second episode. He had to determine who an alien criminal was between two two choices—a beautiful lady humanoid and an ugly whale man. Whale Man turned out to be a space-cop, and the lady humanoid was the crook. Fortunately she soon transformed into a giant Kaiju monster, which everyone felt made beating her up much easier.
* Played with shrewdly in ''[[The Dreamstone]]'', the heroes are basically the definition of [[Tastes Like Diabetes]], the Noops (cute little bunny civilians) the Wuts (strange plant-like poodle creatures) and a literal dogfish hybrid, meanwhile the villains of the show are the definitely evil giant menacing [[Eldritch Abomination]] Zordrak and his slovenly human-lizard henchmen, the Urpneys. In terms of [[Sympathetic POV]] however, the Urpneys tend to [[Villain Protagonist|get the lions share]] and often come off as highly sympathetic and humanized [[Minion with an F In Evil|Minions With An F In Evil]] compared to the one dimentionally cutesy Noops, who lean more as [[Hero Antagonist]]s.
== Real Life ==
* There is a massive ongoing debate in Canada right now{{when}} over the baby harp seal hunt.{{verify|reason=This Canadian who listens to news hasn't heard anything about this issue since before Y2K}} Many people have pointed out the apparent hypocrisy in caring about the systematic killing of adorable fuzzy seals, as opposed to something not particularly cute such as cattle.
** In the late
* This trope became incredibly obvious during a commercial break on the [[Discovery Channel]]: A commercial was aired from the Humane Society about animal abuse, which among understandable footage of maimed dogs and cats had a shot of a seal being clubbed while the narrator explained how horrible it is to harm or even kill a living animal. Immediately afterward was a commercial for ''[[Deadliest Catch]]'', a show about the unsympathetic systematic slaughter of millions of crab that are killed in much less humane ways than the seals.
** Those commercials also never show the one eyed dog who runs those kennels.
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* In Conservation Biology, this trope is called a [[wikipedia:Flagship species|"Flagship species"]] or an [[wikipedia:Umbrella species|"Umbrella species"]].
* In America, opossums tend to get this treatment. Due to their vague resemblance to [[You Dirty Rat|that abhorred rodent]] and [[More Teeth Than the Osmond Family|disturbing dentition]], they often get treated with much less respect and mercy than other native wildlife. Some people immediately conclude that an opossum is rabid [[Insane Troll Logic|because it's ugly]], even though their low body temperature makes them unlikely to catch the virus. An opossum living outside your house is usually harmless and sometimes even useful, as they eat many small pests. Admittedly they are rather dirty animals, but rarely carry any contagious diseases. They have very little chance of hurting you, their best defense is to hiss and play dead. But they're uglier than [[Killer Rabbit|raccoons and skunks]], so they must be evil!
* A teacher in USA was charged with "animal cruelty" for feeding a puppy (who was about to die either way) to snapping turtle. Nobody cared while he fed that turtle (and snake) with rodents. He [https://web.archive.org/web/20190106132851/https://www.rt.com/usa/448185-puppy-teacher-turtle-feeding/ was found not guilty]. But the Idaho State Department of Agriculture killed the turtle.
* Even the “cuter” of us humans sometimes get [https://www.bustle.com/articles/184109-8-strange-privileges-ive-had-because-im-a-small-cute-white-woman a few privileges] over the rest…
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:Rule of Cute]]
[[Category:Animal Tropes]]
[[Category:Personal Appearance Tropes]]
[[Category:What Measure Is an Index?]]
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:This Index Asked You a Question]]
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