But if I remember correctly (and I may not because it’s been almost 50 years) the book says that his mom “gave birth to a mouse.” And everyone just kind of said “WTF? Well OK we’ll name him Stuart.” So I feel like he is a mouse. But he was born from humans.
So we can all agree that her real baby died during childbirth and a mouse crawled into her vagina around the same time, and then everyone pretended the mouse was the child to save her the pain of losing a child. No further questions, your honor.
I only read once so I also can be wrong but the emphasis of "small boy, 5 cm, with mouse-like features" and also the book cover depicts him really look like a mouse, even with whiskers and tails.
I think the story never depicted any medical tests to check whether Stuart is a human or a mouse, but based on the cover....yeah, it is a talking mouse
He is born from human parents. The reason of mouse-like features IIRC was never addressed. Maybe because this is children book so it goes back to "it is what it is"
Now I have some ideas for thriller / psychology book story of what if the reason is more complicated than it seems...
Like, what’s that, Scoob? You think the energy demands of equivalent exchange are insufficient and you’re concerned it’s consuming innocent souls from another dimension?
Like zoinks, man. What a crazy thing to believe. We make up that energy deficit by eating tons of food. Like how else would we eat 50,000 calories in a day each and stay this skinny?
Fuck that, in the last theatrical movie he was a stray. Still annoyed that cop had to ask his last name as if dogs really have last names that everyone needs to know
There's some nuance to the Hello Kitty thing. She is clearly felinoid, but she is, canonically, a person. In context, calling her a cat would imply that she's just an animal, which is not the case.
The same thing explains the Goofy/Pluto divide. Pluto is a pet who acts like an animal and is, hence, a dog. Goofy, in spite of his appearance, behaves like a person and is, thus, not a dog but, rather, a person with dog-like features.
But Goofy is a dog. Mickey is a mouse. Anthros coexist with dumb animals in these universes; it doesn't solve anything to pretend that isn't the case. :D
That's funny dialogue, but the moment you ask, "What the hell is Goofy?" you're basically asking the same of Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Daisy. And they get called Mouse or Duck. :)
Yeah there’s degrees of anthropomorphism in play. Kitty White is like Mickey Mouse and his friends; she looks very much like a cat but she has the full legal rights as a human being. Some versions of Looney Tunes by contrast are a step more animalistic; Bugs Bunny acts very much like a human but he is a rabbit and it would not be murder if Elmer Fudd ever successfully killed him
Multiple times Donald Duck has been depicted as unable to swim. Disney anthros are as far removed from their animal ancestors as it gets.
New fan theory: unlike Looney Tunes where they're clearly sentient animals, Mickey and friends live in a post-gene editing world where they actually are humans who have had their genes altered to have animal traits. Because it's affecting them at a cellular level, it's hereditary.
I generally go with the parallel evolution theory. All of the humanoid animals in these universes are yes, like humans vs. monkeys. They evolved from a common ancestor to the "feral" animals, on different paths.
I seem to recall the movie made him an actual mouse.
I have never read the book so I can't comment on that, but I the movie he's 100% a mouse. I distinctly remember the woman at the orphanage explaining that he lost his parents in a tragic accident involving a collapsing tower of soup cans, which sounds extremely fatal for mice but not usually for humans.
Could depend on the size of the soup tower. I can see someone getting crushed by an unstable soup display because they grabbed a load bearing chicken noodle from the bottom.
He didn’t die or anything, we just couldn’t find him amongst the pile of cans. After hours of searching, Mom said we had to leave or she wouldn’t have time to make dinner.
Some say Timmy still lives within the wreckage, feeding off the cans of soup which imprison him.
I remember reading a story where he met another tiny person and they went on a picnic. The illustrations absolutely made him look like a mouse with human proportions because I think the other tiny person looked normal
I read a lot of E. B. White as a kid (although I liked Beverly Clearly’s The Mouse and the Motorcycle better than Stuart Little) and it’s always been one of my favourite facts to bring up out of nowhere.
Finding E.B. White as a child was an amazing experience. First time in my life that I recognized and searched out an author besides The Berenstain Bears.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle was so good! My mom made me a little Ralph S. Mouse and he rode my Barbie motorcycle. It was one of the nicest things she ever did for me.
This is just a difference between people who only know the story from the movie and people who read the book. He's not a child in the movie. He's a mouse.
My mom read me the book as a kid and there was a mouse on the cover. I obviously did not pick up on the needed clues to figure out he was not actually a mouse.
Been noticing the hullabaloo on twitter about this. Have people forgotten how to be whimsical? To me it’s simply a silly lore explanation, said with a wink and nod to the silliness of it. EB White’s way of saying “he’s an anthropomorphic mouse. just take it for what it is and enjoy the story.”
Every time someone is surprised by this I know they haven’t read the book. I loved E. B. Whites books as kid. Mostly. That was one of the things I didn’t love. I thought it was weird. Though I was also annoyed when the movie came out and they made him an actual mouse who was adopted, because “That’s not how the story in the book went!” 😆
His human mother literally gives birth to him. There is no further explanation beyond that. I found an audio book of the first chapter if you want to see for yourself. 😆
I read this book more than once as a child, but I'd completely forgotten this.
I feel like the pictures in the book, which I vaguely recall being pencil or pen-and-ink drawings, portrayed him as a mouse. I guess he was dressed in pants (and shirts and shoes), and he walked on two feet, but his head was all mouse.
For all intents and purposes, he is a mouse, he was just born from a human mother and happened to be the size of a mouse, and look exactly like a mouse in every way, except he talk and dressed like a human. It makes no logical sense, you just have to grant it fairytale logic and just go with it. 😆
Lol, yeah. I think as a kid my head just translated all of that into a mouse. (If it walks like a mouse?) I've never seen the movie, but I seriously thought he was a mouse! And for whatever reason, I had no problem with that. Hahaha!
Something to the effect of Mama Little came home from the hospital with their new baby brother, Stuart. and he looked like a tiny mouse. Probably a very easy delivery, but extremely weird.
This is nonsense. I have read the book dozens of times this year (to my kid) and he’s absolutely a mouse in the book. The mom gives birth to a mouse. It doesn’t make sense, but he’s a mouse. His parents change the words to “Silent Night” to say “Not a creature was stirring, not even a louse” to avoid offending him. He gets carried around by a bird and tangled up in the rolling blinds. He’s 100% pure mus musculus.
edit: let’s imagine a real world scenario where a woman goes into labor and a bird comes out of her. No one is saying “it’s a human that looks like a bird”, we’re all saying “whoa that woman just gave birth to a bird wtf hold me”
I love the idea of ardent fans who’ve been watching this movie since 1999 suddenly independently coming to the realization all at once that he was not in fact a mouse
He WHAT
HE'S A HUMAN CHILD THAT LOOKS LIKE A MOUSE
With whiskers and a tail. If he's a human, he's got genetic issues. They say that crabs-like animals keep evolving, so perhaps the same with rodents?
BUTTLICKER! OUR PRICES HAVE NEVER BEEN LOWER!!!
I have no more fathoms left
This raises more questions than it answers for me.
This hasn't saved me a click at all
r/addedyoumanyaclick
welp, fell for that one
One more in a long line of clicks
It discussed in the source book, Stuart was born like that. He was not adopted, but he was really small with mouse features.
The reason why he was like that was never explained. This sure raises some concerns about his mother...
But if I remember correctly (and I may not because it’s been almost 50 years) the book says that his mom “gave birth to a mouse.” And everyone just kind of said “WTF? Well OK we’ll name him Stuart.” So I feel like he is a mouse. But he was born from humans.
So we can all agree that her real baby died during childbirth and a mouse crawled into her vagina around the same time, and then everyone pretended the mouse was the child to save her the pain of losing a child. No further questions, your honor.
What a day to have eyes…
That’s kind of like the book Starve Acre… but a hare instead of a mouse
You still have time to delete this.
I've never read the books but what the actual hell? In what world would the birthing of a mouse not cause absolute chaos?
Honestly it would be REALLY easy because mice are so small… my question is did his mom even know she was pregnant? Lol
I only read once so I also can be wrong but the emphasis of "small boy, 5 cm, with mouse-like features" and also the book cover depicts him really look like a mouse, even with whiskers and tails.
I think the story never depicted any medical tests to check whether Stuart is a human or a mouse, but based on the cover....yeah, it is a talking mouse
So in the book he was just a mousy boy? Was being a mouse any part of it? This is Humpty Dumpty all over again.
He is born from human parents. The reason of mouse-like features IIRC was never addressed. Maybe because this is children book so it goes back to "it is what it is"
Now I have some ideas for thriller / psychology book story of what if the reason is more complicated than it seems...
pasiphaë…2!!!!
Like somebody else said, first Hello Kitty and now this? What's next, Curious George? Marmaduke?
scooby doo is shaggys brother. he trapped his spirit in their dog after a transmutation to resurrect their mother went horribly wrong
. . . Ed . . . ward? Can we play now?
Ra... ggy...
Like, what’s that, Scoob? You think the energy demands of equivalent exchange are insufficient and you’re concerned it’s consuming innocent souls from another dimension?
Like zoinks, man. What a crazy thing to believe. We make up that energy deficit by eating tons of food. Like how else would we eat 50,000 calories in a day each and stay this skinny?
Full Mystery Machinima: Jinkieshood
Fuck that, in the last theatrical movie he was a stray. Still annoyed that cop had to ask his last name as if dogs really have last names that everyone needs to know
There’s a Scooby-Doo movie where Shaggy has a dream of what Scooby would look like as a human?file=Scooby-Doo_%28human%29.png)
Thanks, I hate it.
There's that one continuity where he's canonically some kind of lovecraftian Old One trapped in a dog or something
I believe that was the mystery incorporated TV series on Cartoon Network.
definitely is probably Mystery Incorporated.
I hate you
If I remember correctly Scooby-Doo is canonically of origins. His family lineage is from outer space.
There's some nuance to the Hello Kitty thing. She is clearly felinoid, but she is, canonically, a person. In context, calling her a cat would imply that she's just an animal, which is not the case.
The same thing explains the Goofy/Pluto divide. Pluto is a pet who acts like an animal and is, hence, a dog. Goofy, in spite of his appearance, behaves like a person and is, thus, not a dog but, rather, a person with dog-like features.
But there's no way she's five apples tall but only weighs three apples with that big-ass head
Confirmed an airhead
75% fluff!
There's a whole race of dog-people like Goofy in the Disney universe. Same with ducks. And Mickey Mouse is a mutant.
Because he can turn around but his ears remain oriented to the viewer?
Four dimensional ears are a secondary mutation
Signifies that the Mouse is always listening
But Goofy is a dog. Mickey is a mouse. Anthros coexist with dumb animals in these universes; it doesn't solve anything to pretend that isn't the case. :D
Counter, Goofy is a very skinny hippo.
It’s the mouth.
Trope: Furry Confusion
That's funny dialogue, but the moment you ask, "What the hell is Goofy?" you're basically asking the same of Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Daisy. And they get called Mouse or Duck. :)
And not just with Disney characters. Every anthropomorphic animal character is now called into question. Bugs Bunny, Yogi Bear, Underdog…
Yeah there’s degrees of anthropomorphism in play. Kitty White is like Mickey Mouse and his friends; she looks very much like a cat but she has the full legal rights as a human being. Some versions of Looney Tunes by contrast are a step more animalistic; Bugs Bunny acts very much like a human but he is a rabbit and it would not be murder if Elmer Fudd ever successfully killed him
Multiple times Donald Duck has been depicted as unable to swim. Disney anthros are as far removed from their animal ancestors as it gets.
New fan theory: unlike Looney Tunes where they're clearly sentient animals, Mickey and friends live in a post-gene editing world where they actually are humans who have had their genes altered to have animal traits. Because it's affecting them at a cellular level, it's hereditary.
People have pet monkeys 🤷
Pluto/Goofy never confused me.
Trope: Furry Confusion
I generally go with the parallel evolution theory. All of the humanoid animals in these universes are yes, like humans vs. monkeys. They evolved from a common ancestor to the "feral" animals, on different paths.
Arthur has a pet dog, Pal, but he goes to school with Binky who is also a dog.
Just wait till you find out that curious George was so hairy because he was a chronic masturbator!
And he was just curious about his own body
Curious George is a hallucinated perspective of one of the monkeys with the Rage virus in 28 days later.
Clifford will turn out to be a red elephant with dog-like features.
The Fraggles are all abandoned children with horrible birth defects.
Skippyjon Jones
If you know what Night in the Woods is, those characters are all allegedly humans. As if.
Curious George is just a city kid. That's what people from cities look like. Everybody knows that.
🤬 HOW DID THIS NEVER COME UP IN THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES??!!!
The average redditor starting to feel what it feels like to be a 90 year old bigot.
I seem to recall the movie made him an actual mouse. I know in the book he is actually a human.
But his family really treats him like a mouse!
I did not particularly enjoy the book when I listened to it with my 7 year old.
I have never read the book so I can't comment on that, but I the movie he's 100% a mouse. I distinctly remember the woman at the orphanage explaining that he lost his parents in a tragic accident involving a collapsing tower of soup cans, which sounds extremely fatal for mice but not usually for humans.
Could depend on the size of the soup tower. I can see someone getting crushed by an unstable soup display because they grabbed a load bearing chicken noodle from the bottom.
I lost my little brother that way.
He didn’t die or anything, we just couldn’t find him amongst the pile of cans. After hours of searching, Mom said we had to leave or she wouldn’t have time to make dinner.
Some say Timmy still lives within the wreckage, feeding off the cans of soup which imprison him.
/r/OSHA
Wasn't there a plotline about all the neighbourhood cats trying to kill him because 'a mouse with a pet cat' is an affront to nature?
Shouldn't be a problem if Stuart is a human, right?
I remember reading a story where he met another tiny person and they went on a picnic. The illustrations absolutely made him look like a mouse with human proportions because I think the other tiny person looked normal
What's weird is how his fake mouse parents are able to catch a cab so easily. Like what, do mice in New York tip cab drivers really well?
It’s just soup for my family
Stuart Little’s parents died in mouse 9/11??
What a twist!
(M. Night was a screenwriter.)
I read a lot of E. B. White as a kid (although I liked Beverly Clearly’s The Mouse and the Motorcycle better than Stuart Little) and it’s always been one of my favourite facts to bring up out of nowhere.
Finding E.B. White as a child was an amazing experience. First time in my life that I recognized and searched out an author besides The Berenstain Bears.
I was JUST talking about the Ralph S Mouse books with my partner the other day! I don't know that I've met another soul that's read them
I loved the Mouse and the Motorcycle books so much! I’m going to revisit them with my niece when she’s learning how to read
Ralph S Mouse!! I literally forgot about Ralph until this post and it made me so happy!
I loved the mouse and the motorcycle!
I’m hoping I get to read them to my daughter soon, they were some favorites for me when I was a kid!
damn i hardly remember my childhood but that just pinged something in my memory. mouse and the motorcycle… i loved that shit
I still think of Ralph any time I need to take an aspirin!
When I was a kid this was the first chapter book my Dad read to me. I made sure it was the first for both my kids as well.
I was absolutely obsessed with the Mouse and the Motorcycle books. Huge part of my childhood. I always wished there was more of them.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle was so good! My mom made me a little Ralph S. Mouse and he rode my Barbie motorcycle. It was one of the nicest things she ever did for me.
🥰
This is just a difference between people who only know the story from the movie and people who read the book. He's not a child in the movie. He's a mouse.
My mom read me the book as a kid and there was a mouse on the cover. I obviously did not pick up on the needed clues to figure out he was not actually a mouse.
What the fuck
In the book, it was the case. Therefore, the movies understandably decided to have him be a mouse that gets adopted instead.
The fuck he is.
There’s Stuart Little fans?
Dozens of us, DOZENS!!
/r/stuartlittlefacts
r/unexpectedarresteddevelopment
I always saw it as a metaphor for being a kid who looks different.
Ugly duckling with more steps
Been noticing the hullabaloo on twitter about this. Have people forgotten how to be whimsical? To me it’s simply a silly lore explanation, said with a wink and nod to the silliness of it. EB White’s way of saying “he’s an anthropomorphic mouse. just take it for what it is and enjoy the story.”
Media literacy is at an all time low
Yeah. This discourse is driving me insane, lol. People discussing biology and genetics and such.
Every time someone is surprised by this I know they haven’t read the book. I loved E. B. Whites books as kid. Mostly. That was one of the things I didn’t love. I thought it was weird. Though I was also annoyed when the movie came out and they made him an actual mouse who was adopted, because “That’s not how the story in the book went!” 😆
How is it presented in the books instead?
His human mother literally gives birth to him. There is no further explanation beyond that. I found an audio book of the first chapter if you want to see for yourself. 😆
https://youtu.be/NugoenEDgU0?si=5UhTdLf7BK2mcwnf
I read this book more than once as a child, but I'd completely forgotten this.
I feel like the pictures in the book, which I vaguely recall being pencil or pen-and-ink drawings, portrayed him as a mouse. I guess he was dressed in pants (and shirts and shoes), and he walked on two feet, but his head was all mouse.
For all intents and purposes, he is a mouse, he was just born from a human mother and happened to be the size of a mouse, and look exactly like a mouse in every way, except he talk and dressed like a human. It makes no logical sense, you just have to grant it fairytale logic and just go with it. 😆
Lol, yeah. I think as a kid my head just translated all of that into a mouse. (If it walks like a mouse?) I've never seen the movie, but I seriously thought he was a mouse! And for whatever reason, I had no problem with that. Hahaha!
Something to the effect of Mama Little came home from the hospital with their new baby brother, Stuart. and he looked like a tiny mouse. Probably a very easy delivery, but extremely weird.
He’s a stinking great rat
What?
I eject your reality and substitute my own
Wait til they find out Hello Kitty isn’t a cat
Isn’t he also mouse sized?
I'm, how, what?
Having never read the book or watched the movie I don’t feel bad saying this: I did not know that, and I assumed he was a mouse.
I read the book as a kid and I thought he was a mouse??!? I thought the book was weird - actually hated it
This caused me several clicks including the linked article wtf
This is nonsense. I have read the book dozens of times this year (to my kid) and he’s absolutely a mouse in the book. The mom gives birth to a mouse. It doesn’t make sense, but he’s a mouse. His parents change the words to “Silent Night” to say “Not a creature was stirring, not even a louse” to avoid offending him. He gets carried around by a bird and tangled up in the rolling blinds. He’s 100% pure mus musculus.
edit: let’s imagine a real world scenario where a woman goes into labor and a bird comes out of her. No one is saying “it’s a human that looks like a bird”, we’re all saying “whoa that woman just gave birth to a bird wtf hold me”
So....fur?
where are all these furrie children coming from?
In the movie hes a mouse, the ancient folktale version where he actually dies after touching water and turning to stone isnt relevent here.
I love the idea of ardent fans who’ve been watching this movie since 1999 suddenly independently coming to the realization all at once that he was not in fact a mouse
I can't deal with this right now.
Wait, WTF?
This is Hello Kitty all over again.
I am now reminded of that fantastic Leo Vader video
Excuse me?
I beg your freaking pardon? 😐
WOT??
This thread has been a wild read top to bottom.
I refuse to click
WHAT
Hello Kitty isn't a cat. She a little girl that looks like a cat.
What would happen if those two met?
I hate this movie even more now.
I thought he was a just mouse in the movie to get kids interested
Oh, kinda like how Hello Kitty is canonically a little human girl dressed up as a cat?
This is like the take that hello kitty is not a cat, but also a little girl.
Fake news.