[Dragaera] Boing!

[Davdi Silverrock]

On 9/7/06, Joshua Kronengold wrote:
> Davdi Silverrock writes:

> >And more recently, /Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell/.
>
> Oh, yeah -- that (well, the only, so far) Susannah Clarke work

Speaking of which, she also has some additional previously published
short stories which are being collected into one volume /The Ladies of
Grace Adieu and Other Stories/:

   http://www.foem.org.uk/archives/2006/09/the_ladies_of_grace_adieu_prev.html
   http://www.foem.org.uk/archives/2006/06/exclusive_the_ladies_of_grace.html

So if you like that sort of thing, this is definitely the sort of
thing you'll like.

>
> >And there is still the issue of the phrase "animal-like", which still
> >makes *me* think of anthropomorphic furries.
>
> This is a worse choice of words -- "sharing animal characteristics"
> would be better, since the Dragaerans are far from what I'd think of
> as animal-like.

I still think "humanoid" is best, because it emphasizes that they
mostly look human.
The visual differences between Easterners and Dragaerans are rather
slight, at least at first, so even "sharing animal characteristics" is
not really appropriate.  Or at least, no more appropriate than it
would be to describe ourselves, in the sense of evolutionally shared
common descent.

>  Hell, the best of the furry comics aren't necessarily animal-like;
> certainly I wouldn't descirbe Usagi Yojimbo's characters that way.

While they aren't behaviorally animal-like, they are portrayed
visually as being animal-like.  But then, so are the characters in
Spiegleman's "Maus", which is meant to at least partially depict real
history.

Anyway, I think we are agreed: "animal-like" is a poor choice of
words, in describing Dragaerans, and even in describing some
anthropomorphic comic characters.