Hedwig, The Snowy Owl
This isn’t a full article, but it’s just something I’ve been thinking about recently. What is with audiences and cute pets? Or in a few particular cases even not cute pets.
Take the Harry Potter series for example, a big thing is the wizards have to have familiars this fits into basic wizard lore and also ties Harry Potter to more traditional wizardry tropes. Harry’s familiar was Hedwig, a snowy owl. How is a snowy owl cute? Yet a fairly large portion of the fan base still found a way to connect themselves to this creature to the point of people reportedly crying when Hedwig died. I’m serious just Google “I cried when Hedwig died.” And just look at this he even has a Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/pages/RIP-Hedwig/223550581002442?ref=ts …Although everyoe and there cat has a Facebook page now.
It almost seems like as a writer you spend countless hours and even days months and years developing an astounding and compelling character to carry out the narrative and your fans just say “Nope, we want cute furry animals.” Is there anything wrong with this? Not really, I can’t say anything as long as it gets and keeps people reading. Admittedly my favorite character from the Disney movie Tangled was the chameleon. But that’s entirely understandable.
It’s a weird way about how the uncanny valley works. We find human traits in non-humans adoring and cute and humanizing while if we see something that looks too human it is creepy. However that’s in animation. This is a book we’re talking about and even in the movies you couldn’t say Hedwig looked cute.
