I’ll never understand why anthropomorphic animal cartoons like Robin Hood and Zootopia will go to the trouble of creating character designs that are meant to be understood as “attractive” or even “sexy” to the human audience but explicitly avoid showing interspecies romances between anthropomorphic animals. Why is THAT weird but, like, trying to make rabbits recognizably sexy-coded to humans isn’t?
Sometimes, sure, but why was Maid Marian a fox in Robin Hood? There wasn’t anything particularly “foxlike” about her personality, and it would make more sense for her to be a lion. They made her a fox only because Robin was a fox and making her something else would be “weird”, but I don’t think the wolf cop or the chicken maid or the lion prince were actually meant to represent race.
The best inter species couple is Kermit and Miss Piggy as the Cratchits in A Muppet Christmas Carol, because all their sons are frogs and all their daughters are pigs, as God clearly intended.
In which Captain Amelia (left), an extra terrestrial anthropomorphic cat, had hybrid babies with Doctor Doppler (middle), an extra terrestrial anthropomorphic dog, whom also gave birth to the babies
@therobotmonster im just saying, if i offered you $200 and a pizza of your choosing, whats the best headcanon you would come up with for my proposed issue?
I can circle that square with a few pieces of canon. We start out with Kermit on SNL:
The muppets are a form of life, perhaps not quite like our own, but one with its own orders and genuses and the like. Robin goes from tadpole to frog stage on Muppet Babies, after all, that’s a biological life process. Note that muppets keep sewing/stitching/hand jokes to a minimum, that’s because they aren’t puppets, they just resemble them.
The hand-thing presumes muppets work like toons from Roger Rabbit or toys from Toy Story, where they’re made by people an incarnated. I propose they are like Pokemon, a separate, parallel classification of life that exists alongside what we would call natural life. As with Pokemon, these lifeforms are not the result of a parallel evolution. Rather, their various kinds were created by some manner of God. We know these exist in the Muppet canon, as Big Bird argued the Egyptian Pantheon into letting a child ghost into the afterlife that one time.
Personally, as the essence of being a muppet is your greatest motivation being your greatest weakness, I blame the demiurge.
But you can blame Gonzo’s people or the aholes that are made of a Skexis and a Mystic, but not the Goblin King (he is a rogue memetic construct, what some might wrongly label a ‘tulpa’). It’s also possible they crossed over from the Gorg world. (but that does not preclude them from also being the creations of the demiurge)
This is not to say that muppets are inherently magic, any more than say, a hobbit or a goblin is “magic” in Lord of the Rings. They are simply created beings that thereafter reproduce after their own kind. Emmit Otter and his Ma, the fact that “Monster” and “grouch” are explicitly races in Sesame Street, etc.
Now, I hear you saying, “but therobotmonster@tumblr.com, you handsome madman, we just pointed out that Fozzie and Kermit have a green half-bear/half-frog father!”
Yes. In a movie.
Because the Muppets are actors.
Muppets (the order of life) and the Muppets (the comedy/acting troupe), are different things. The former contains the latter but the latter does not contain all of the former. In essence, Kermit named his endeavor “The People’s Theater”.
Breaks down like this: You have our, real world universe. Within that is nested a universe that is much like ours, except it is sillier, and Muppets are creatures and not special effects. Within that are nested the fictional worlds of all the various muppet productions.
For further proof, I present these bloopers from Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas:
It is uncertain how much of the Muppet ouvre is canonical ‘behind the scenes’ and how much is constructed entertainment provided by the Muppet organization, because of one deep wrinkle we haven’t touched on…
Kayfabe.
Kermit is hard-core about Kayfabe. He comes from a Vaudeville theater background, the 4th wall does not exist in his performance ethos, the show must go on, and the rubes getting a peek behind the curtain doesn’t get you off that hook.
All your Muppet-troupe core performers stick close to this ethos, ensuring you can never be quite certain on what level of reality the scene you’re being presented with is intended to be.Any specific example that conflicts with the others cannot be shown not to just be another straight-faced performance.
It’s not an unreliable narrator, everyone is unreliable, from the producer on down to the go-fer.
don’t forget that during the filming of the Muppet Christmas Carol, the Muppets continued to move and talk after cuts, asking how they did playing their characters etc.
so like, e.g., Kermit broke character as Cratchit but nobody broke character as Kermit
@therobotmonster You bring up kayfabe and use that gif of Beaker and Sheamus, but completely neglect to mention that Beaker and Sheamus are (at least within the story of WWE) cousins.
Fair enough, but that it’s even implied to possible for a human and a Muppet to be blood relatives is pretty important to the overall conversation of Muppet biology.
I’m not talking simple, one-level Wrasslin’ type kayfabe. Shamus can’t be used as evidence, because we don’t know how the levels of Kayfabe align. This is also true of arguments that Walter is Jason Segal’s cousin outside the film-verse.
Breaks down like this:
Shamus is a character within the Wrassleverse. In this universe, he has been presented as Beaker’s cousin. In the next level of reality up, Shamus is a professional wrestler playing a role wherein Beaker is his cousin.
But we don’t know if that universe is the one where the Muppets are sapient creatures who are actors, or if it is the reality where they are puppets performed by actors. Remember Emmit Otter and his ma.
Are we seeing one man perform kayfabe, or are we seeing two?
The answer cannot be locked down, because the essence of Muppet is the futile struggle of Sisyphus by way of Willy Loman, with a chaser of “No Exit.” Never succeeding, never failing enough to invalidate the effort. This is why I blame the demiurge.
There are Muppet “humans” in the same sense that there are muppet dogs (both sapient and otherwise). Dave the human is no more an issue than the Swedish Chef or Statler and Waldorf. (If the Animal Show can be considered a part of this)
The Muppets, with Walter, is just like all the other muppet movies, the conceit is that these are productions starring muppets (the creatures) put on by the Muppets (the acting troupe/production company). As stated above, in-our-universe promotionals present Segal and Walter as cousins, as opposed to brothers in the film. However, that’s still got Kermit’s hand on it, so we don’t now if that can be taken at face value.
And lets diagram out the Shamus problem. We’ve got the following possibilities, and no way of telling them apart, except for the last one, which is out of bounds for the nature of the exercise:
Wrasslin and Muppets are both real. - Beaker and Shamus are cousins, whether by blood or marriage unknown, though blood is implied.
Muppets are fake in a world where Wrasslin’ is real. - Shamus is the character, but Beaker’s still being worked as a puppet as part of a cross-promotion tie-in.
Muppets are real in a world where Wrasslin’ is fake. - Both Shamus and Beaker are Actors.
Both Muppets and Wrasslin’ are Fake - Presumed state of our universe.
That being said, if the Muppets are, as I hypothesize, a created order of life, it is possible that whatever creator (ex: the demiurge) involved might have granted them the ability to breed true with non-muppet life. I’m just not yet convinced there’s canonical support for that happening.
There is a very good chance that Grmalkn is going to clear ringworm on Christmas. And a friend of one of our volunteers wants to adopt him when he clears.