Good and bad monsters

[TW: discussion of abusive relationships, and children and animals being in pain and danger, also mentions of food]
[Spoilers for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and some other JP/W media]

Some thoughts on cute raptor comics, because as it happens I've made quite a few of those by now.

I find interesting the occasional strong reactions to my drawing Blue and the Indoraptor from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom getting along and being friendly to each other, and potentially eventually becoming a pair. Sometimes people tell me they find the two dinosaurs interacting amicably weird, because he's a villain and she's a heroine, and that's just a bad ship dynamic all around. Sometimes people seem to like these two together precisely because they fit the villain/heroine ship mold, and after all, what fun is romantic tension without maximum drama.

I feel like both of these people are talking about different characters than the ones I'm drawing, but, I also feel like that's not entirely these people's fault.

I mean, sure, shipping villains with heroes has loads of potential for glorifying abusive relationships, and depending on the genders of the characters involved, also for reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes. Both of which, chances are, the media these ships stem from already does, so the blame is not all on the fans, of course, especially very young fans who have fewer resources to question what influences their views. But good girls healing bad boys with their self-sacrificing, barely reciprocated love and a happy relationship ensuing is fiction, and based on the misogynistic idea of women's suffering as an acceptable price or side-effect for something that benefits men, please don't try that at home.

That said, back to dinosaurs. I generally subscribe to the idea that animals are incapable of good or evil. They can still do things that when done by humans would be heroic or villainous, but they don't see the world from a perspective where humans' sense of right and wrong is very useful, and judging them by that isn't very useful in understanding them. The villain seeing themself as the hero is an interesting concept, too, but that's still two different human views of a situation. What I mean is more like this difference in world views:

A human sees a cat throwing around a squeaking, half-dead mouse that's obviously in a lot of pain, and thinks "how cruel, why won't the mean cat just put the poor thing out of its misery instead of drawing amusement out of another creature's suffering", which would be a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the situation if it was another human torturing a helpless animal. The cat on the other hand sees what is happening as a necessary safety precaution, where it makes sense to weaken the prey enough that it can't fight back when the cat - whose primary weapons are claws, which allow a bit more distance - has to bring its face, along with all kinds of vulnerable parts like eyes, close enough to bite the prey to kill it, and the mouse is just food, so the cat pays no more mind to whether it's in pain than a human would worry that eating a sandwich might hurt the sandwich. You're still allowed to feel bad for the mouse - we're compassionate creatures who empathize with other beings far beyond our species and form emotional bonds even to inanimate objects (maybe even sandwiches), and this is natural for us. Just know that the cat sees it differently, and won't have any idea what you're scolding it for when you interfere.

That is, this applies to real life animals. Fiction is made by humans for humans, and we like to be able to identify with the characters whose story we're following, so in fiction about animal characters, there's usually some level of anthropomorphization, assigning human traits to animals to present them as more relatable. We sometimes apply this approach to real life animals, too, like seeing the cat with the mouse as "mean" and "cruel", or in general assume animals behave the way they do out of motivations that make sense for humans to have, but may not for the animal in question. It's not always a problem, but can be when it influences how we treat the animal, whether it's unknowingly mistreating our pets, encouraging mistreatment of other people's pets or wild animals by uncritically sharing what without knowing better look like cute photos and videos, or contributing to a bias against an animal that could use help at conserving the species instead. As fiction doesn't exist separate from the reality that created it and which it influences, it can have this kind of effect, too.

If every character in the story is a clearly anthropomorphic animal, then, obviously, animals can be heroes or villains. When the story has humans in it, though, and the animals are clearly not just part of human society as humans in all but appearance, then the narrative can't treat the animals in it exactly like it would treat humans without running into problems.

I've always found flipping viewpoints interesting, especially imagining things from a point of view as different to my own as an animal's might be. I like when that kind of change in point of view can give a more complete picture of something dangerous and scary, so it's not just a monster for the sake of being one, and maybe it even finds the humans at least a little bit scary in return because of how different we are from it, and certainly we can be dangerous, too. It doesn't have to turn things completely opposite and have the monster be a misunderstood victim that was never dangerous to begin with, and the holders of these different viewpoints may not come to understand each other any better just because the audience understands them both now, it's just that things often are like that in nature: everything is just trying to live the way it knows how.

That's kind of what I've had in mind in with my cutesy JP/W fanworks - taking some of the scariest dinosaurs in the series and seeing how unscary I can make them by having them be the viewpoint characters, while still having them be dangerous predators instead of making them cute specifically by domesticating them. I don't include humans much except as hazy background cryptids and signs they've been in the same area, the way scary dinosaurs might be included in comics about humans traversing a land full of dinosaurs and trying not to run into these strange beasts. Blue is probably the unscariest raptor in the franchise (or maybe the first movie's hatchling is, but I have not forgotten her, either), so making her cute is not exactly a new side of her, but I do want to show her being friendly and happy among her own kind, and not just in the context of whether she lets humans pet her.

Well, "own kind" to some extent, at least. So about that villain/heroine shipping going on here.

The Indoraptor is a villain because we (presumably) care about the human protagonists, and he's a threat to them. Other than how the situation is presented, though, he's just a carnivorous animal doing what carnivorous animals do. His behavior in the movie may not be perfectly realistic, like pursuing a prey that a real animal would probably judge as more trouble than it's worth, but that still means he's bad as in bad at being a functioning wild animal. Blue is a hero because she's friendly to at least some of the human protagonists, and we've gotten attached to her over the course of two movies and care about what happens to her. She's just as much a predator, though, and we see her kill humans without hesitation. The Indoraptor killing Maisie would have been horrifying, and it's natural for us to think it would have been; that's a child of our own species. On the other hand, animals killing and eating other animals' babies happens all the time. Blue herself tries to kill a baby Triceratops and rob a Baryonyx's nest for eggs in the VR game. The way an animal treats something it sees as food is not an indication of how it might treat those it sees as its peers.

I believe Blue and the Indoraptor's canon relationship also isn't terribly indicative of how they might interact under any kind of different circumstances, because, well, they don't have a canon relationship. They don't know each other. No abusive history, no opposite political views, what have you. What we've got is just two animals with coincidentally conflicting goals.

They might not necessarily get along under different circumstances, either, or be interested in even trying to. I just find interesting the possibility that they would, so that's the possibility I'm exploring, and a lot of why I find that the interesting scenario is how much of a given the human perspective on the matter seems to be that duh, of course they wouldn't. Blue running off with the Indoraptor and them forming a pack together isn't a happy ending for humans, but what do the raptors know about all the reasons it wouldn't be, or why would they care, even if one of them dying and the other obediently going to what the humans consider a safe place would be more convenient for humans. Blue being a good raptor and the Indoraptor being a bad raptor may be how the humans see it in-universe, too, but assuming the humans' reasons for that still hold if the animals' primary motivation to fight each other is no longer an issue sounds like something you'd find subverted in a movie about nature being less predictable and controllable than humans like to think it to be. It wasn't subverted in that particular way, so I took the liberty. I like seeing creatures that are unwanted and deemed unsuitable for the world they've despite their unwantedness been born into thrive anyway.

Though I won't claim just wanting to draw cute pictures of cuddly dinos isn't a big factor, too; it definitely is. Luckily, the cuter the cuddles, the further it gets from the expectation that these animals would no question be mortal enemies because of how much human characters like or don't like them, or that a more anthropomorphic portrayal of them hanging around each other would have to be unhealthy. Whether the expectation is because they need to fit any of the many shipping tropes younger avid writers and readers of fanfiction often don't recognize as and older ones often refuse to acknowledge as unhealthy and likely misogynist, or perhaps because some edgelord who mistakes idolizing serial killers for a personality finds finally getting a male monster in a franchise full of female ones convenient for projecting his unexamined toxic sense of masculinity and violence fantasies onto anything marketed as a Ruthless Killer™. Either way, I can't say I'm sorry if I disappoint.

In the other Jurassic Park raptor fanfic I wrote, too, I present raptors thriving out of containment as good and raptors dying as sad because it is to the raptors, but that doesn't mean they aren't still dangerous or that Lex and Tim were being villains by trapping and therefore indirectly killing a raptor that was trying to kill them (or that Kelly was being a villain by directly killing one). Raptors trying to kill human children to feed their own starving young doesn't make them the "real" good guys, it just gives another view of the same story, where one animal's lunch is another animal's precious child to protect, and both motivations are valid from their respective points of view.

The Jurassic World movies already anthropomorphize their dinos to such an extent that the contrast between canon and Cartoony Raptor Adventures isn't terribly stark, though, so I can understand the confusion. Perhaps looking at the kitchen scene in Jurassic Park from The Big One's point of view is an obvious perspective shift, but Blue is already a character alongside the other protagonists, one the filmmakers want you to relate to, and the Indoraptor and the Indominus rex are assigned plenty of villainous human qualities to present them as scary monsters, and to uncomplicate the matter of them being dangerous, yes, but also just mistreated animals trying to make sense of a world they were created into but which doesn't have a place for them in it. I personally tend to think of some of the hybrids' anthropomorphization in the movies as them being genetically part human (dinosaurs physically can't smile, they don't have the necessary facial muscles, and for most animals a facial expression resembling a human smile is completely counterinstinctual to see as indicating joy - what else am I supposed to think?), but I know that's not canon (which is bullshit, because if you want your new artificial dinosaur to be the crime against nature you're treating it as, go all out, you cowards), and they really just had an animal do something extremely humanlike for no in-universe reason. Same goes for having Blue shed tears, apparently out of emotional reasons, which animals also don't do, no matter how much they like one or two humans. This is not a movie very well suited for being given an anthropomorphizing-the-animals-to-get-something-completely-different treatment. So... that's a bummer.

Are my comics outright doing harm, though? I hope not.

I like to think I'm keeping a closer eye than the source material did on what's stylistic anthropomorphization and how the animals would behave outside of that, including restricting humanlike behavior that doesn't fit my usual rules of stylization (humanlike facial expressions and communicating by dialogue = nondiegetic, humanlike body language = diegetic if it happens, but it shouldn't) to the animal I am explicitly treating as part human, and presenting that as being weird in the "normal" animal's opinion, too. I like to think I'm not accidentally encouraging people to see animals as basically human with my portrayal of these animals, although admittedly I am adding to content featuring outdated, scaly dromaeosaurids in the world, so that's something for me to think on more, too.

I like to think I've made clear throughout my comics about these two characters spending time together that neither of them is in danger from the other, and that it's been that way ever since they decided to start spending time together. There's no heroines loving away villains' evilness here, instead what I'm at least trying to depict is animals navigating a world full of humans and being drawn to each other for finally having company of their own kind, but not so dependent on that company they wouldn't go their separate ways if being around each other proved unpleasant.

I know the Indoraptor's complete inability to form bonds and be co-operative is made a big deal out of in the movie, but it's made known through dialogue by human characters for whom the Indoraptor having or not having these social propensities only matters in the context of obedience to humans, and who don't seem to have exactly given him much reason to like and trust the humans he is expected to obey, so I don't think it's a huge stretch of logic to think a grain of salt can be appropriate in judging the reliability of this source. For all the Indominus rex, too, is treated as a mean villain who manipulated the nice raptors into betraying their humans, nothing she actually does indicates she couldn't have just had the bad luck of her first ever friends turning out to like her enemies better, and she seemed to do just fine at making friends with the raptors up until that revelation. They're very inconvenient creatures to have around for humans, sure, but that they would absolutely never be able to successfully partake in social behaviors natural for the species they're largely/mostly made of is told but not shown, and assuming they can be evil is anthropomorphization inconsistent with and inappropriate to the movies' style of storytelling otherwise.

Tl;dr: this isn't a beauty and the beast story, they're both beasts and have no reason to want themselves or each other to be anything else.