Also, because the Snake's shedding of it's skin, in many cultures, can to be seen as a symbol for death and rebirth.
AHC: Invert the reputation of Snakes and Rabbits
Also, because the Snake's shedding of it's skin, in many cultures, can to be seen as a symbol for death and rebirth.
That word you use, I don't think it means what you think it does
Seriously, though - the OP is not asking for people to be terrified of rabbits, just that they have a more negative cultural association in the Western world. Meanwhile, he asks for snakes to have a more benevolent cultural association.
If that was ASB, as you've suggested, then you need to be able to explain why many, non-Western, cultures DO have a more positive view of snakes.
Furthermore, if our association of rabbits as cute and 'good' simply stems from them being fuzzy mammals, then how do you explain how we view the equally fuzzy mice and rats? Because, I've seen people run out of a room when there is a mouse, and it ain't to get away from their adorable, fluffy, cuteness.
No doubt biology and psychology do play a role in our associations, and I'd be the last person to argue that they dont. But cultural baggage also does - as other's have pointed out, the Genesis story carries a lot of weight in the Western world and it's use of a snake as the temptor of Eve had a big impact upon our views of snakes (pre-Christian cultures in the West often have positive AND negative associations with the creatures).
Meanwhile, I mentioned mice and rats as examples of cute fuzzy mammals which we don't take kindly too. Once again, part of this is seems hardwired into us - they, after all, can spread disease and eat crops. Fair enough. But do you know what other animal eats human crops? Bunnies. Anyone who's had a garden decimated by rabbits can confirm this. And if you don't think it can be a serious problem, id id suggest you look into the Rabbit Wars on the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl.
So, is this AHC likely? Probably not - though certainly not as unlikely as it may initially appear. Is it ASB? Oh dear God no.
@DanMcCollum Thank you for explaining the premise of this thread better then I could. Also, way this could happen is that a branch of gnosticism which emphasise "Looks are Deceiving" use rabbits as metaphors for the illusions of beauty and the material world gains power long enough to gain a lasting impression.
Honestly, an easier way would probably rely on the older associations of rabbits and hares with fertility. We don't get the phrase "breed like rabbits" from nowhere, after all
In OTL, rabbits were believed to
be hermaphrodites - meaning they could give birth while maintaining their virginity. The positive Christian association here is obvious. However, as stated, rabbits were also fertility symbols for equally obvious reasons. Maybe have Augustine or one of the Church fathers use rabbits as a mataphore for wanton sexual appetites.
Of course, if you go this route, you're probably gonna end up with some odd medieval art depicting devils with goat and rabbit attributes
Not entirely true. Yes, we might like rabbits partially because they are cute looking mammals and snakes aren't but we can't deny strong cultural influence. Bible has probably strong part for ours Westerners disliking of snakes. And in some ancient cultures snakes had important role in religions and they were in some place even almost holy animals. And we don't hate other reptiles so much as snakes.
And mice and rats are too furry mammals but there is not many who would like them or say "Oh how cute!" when they see mouse or rat. Many ratherly see them as pests. And rabbits are too seens uch in Australia.
So ASB? Not anywhere near of that. Whole word is totally overused. Implausible? Perhaps but not impossible. This is surely difficult but ASB is quiet strongly stated.
Personally I find rabbits look rather creepy, although that may be lingering trauma from watching Watership Down as a child.
Bunnies aren't cute as everybody supposes
They got those hoppy legs and twitchy little noses,
And what's with all the carrots, why they such good eyesight for anyway
Bunnies! Bunnies! It must be bunnies!
Actually in the Anglosphere, the first bunnies in Britian came with the Saxons.
Have the Saxons be beaten back barely, and later the Britons establish a British Empire. Everywhere they go they take the legend of bunnies as a sign of catastrophe with them.
See, not ASB.
They got those hoppy legs and twitchy little noses,
And what's with all the carrots, why they such good eyesight for anyway
Bunnies! Bunnies! It must be bunnies!
Actually in the Anglosphere, the first bunnies in Britian came with the Saxons.
Have the Saxons be beaten back barely, and later the Britons establish a British Empire. Everywhere they go they take the legend of bunnies as a sign of catastrophe with them.
See, not ASB.
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Actually, it seems like rabbits aren't being viewed in a really positive way in Australia.
http://www.rabbitfreeaustralia.com.au/
http://www.rabbitfreeaustralia.com.au/
Wank rabbits reduce Australia to a mad max hellscape with attempts to fight back the rabbits with conventional arms leading to early adoption of the machine gun by the Australian military to fight the rabbit conventionally (otl how they tried fighting the emus) but this proved to be too costly and ultimately futile as by this point their population had hit critical mass and was growing exponentially (and with the holy hand grenade being lost to time thus rendering the remnant Australian government unable to stop the second coming of the Rabbit of Caerbannog
.)
Thus forcing the Australian government to set up a government in exile in New Zealand and the remnant navys of Australia being used to set up a blockade of Australia, little do they know that during there retreat they have unknowingly brought stowaways with them (Cue sequel bait) later the united states declare the liberation of Oceania and the eradication of the rabbit a necessity after president jimmy carter is assassinated by a rabbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident. and joins the commonwealth alliance and develops a joint project with a team of geneticists to attempt to produce a breed of snakes with the sole intent to eliminate all rabbits while remaining docile around humans. Years later survivors would emerge with there tales, both true and embellished being made into globally renown blockbusters with such titles as HARE TRIGGER the story of a mob hitman turned smuggler and EASTER RISING story of the commonwealth landing to retake Sydney lead by an aged Australian general who was only a boy when they first left the island.
alternatively and (only slightly) more serious you might be able to tweak the concept of the year of the angry rabbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_the_Angry_Rabbit to get something (a bit) more realistic.
Thus forcing the Australian government to set up a government in exile in New Zealand and the remnant navys of Australia being used to set up a blockade of Australia, little do they know that during there retreat they have unknowingly brought stowaways with them (Cue sequel bait) later the united states declare the liberation of Oceania and the eradication of the rabbit a necessity after president jimmy carter is assassinated by a rabbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident. and joins the commonwealth alliance and develops a joint project with a team of geneticists to attempt to produce a breed of snakes with the sole intent to eliminate all rabbits while remaining docile around humans. Years later survivors would emerge with there tales, both true and embellished being made into globally renown blockbusters with such titles as HARE TRIGGER the story of a mob hitman turned smuggler and EASTER RISING story of the commonwealth landing to retake Sydney lead by an aged Australian general who was only a boy when they first left the island.
alternatively and (only slightly) more serious you might be able to tweak the concept of the year of the angry rabbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_the_Angry_Rabbit to get something (a bit) more realistic.
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some snakes could be seen as cute, but never rattlesnakes. They have evil angry faces. I mean, look at this thing!
Dunno, there's kind of a bulldog-esque gruff cuteness to him. WHO'S A GRUMPY SNAKEY?!?
As for rabbits -- there's history of humans keeping rabbits as pets (not just as livestock) going back to the Roman period in Britain.
All told, I think the best way to get it would be to associate rabbits with wantonness as above, play up their destructive nature in devouring crops to make them appear ... well, how Australians see them. Throw in a parasite or other rabbit-borne illness to spread through an area, or at least to be blamed for it, as rats were mistakenly identified as plague-ridden... and you could get there.
I say all this as a rabbit person myself...
"I will love him and pet him and squeeze him and call him Bitey"
bulldogs can smile and wag their tails, you know they're happy. Rattlesnakes never smile and are never happy. They're evil.
Of course, my opinion on them might be influenced by running into them several times in my youth...
In the 19th century, due to a childhood bite sustained from a rabbit (and an accompanying (although unrelates) illness) Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Caroll) develops a severe case of leporiphobia (fear of rabbits).
When he writes his masterpiece, Alice in Wonderland Dodgson portrays Alice as being abducted by the White Rabbit for the Queen of Hares/Hearts, while the Jaberwocky also possesses some rabbit-like attributes. Alice is rescued by the Cheshire Snake (snakes have a knack for camoflauge so Cheshire's "disappearing" act that Alice complains about as making one "quite dizzy" could be LESS magical and more SCIENTIFIC) and the Mad Hatter who help her return to Victorian England.
Dodgson's book is a hit in the English speaking world. And generations of children grow up terrified of bunny wabbits.
Things are made even worse for the world's rabbit population when Bugs Bunny, who is originally created to REHABILITATE the rabbit name is shown as sly and cunning, outsmarting Daffy Duck, Wiley Coyote and Elmer Fudd on a regular basis. This underlines the idea that rabbits are sly and not to be trusted, while ducks, coyotes, even the bumbling Elmer are viewed sympathetically.
*Essentially Carroll does the same with the White Rabbit as what Walt Disney did with Mickey Mouse. Disney purportedly had a fear of mice, and drew Mickey to overcome this fear. Or whatever the truth behind the story is. Only in Carroll's case the pen-portrait of the rabbit is NOT considered cute
When he writes his masterpiece, Alice in Wonderland Dodgson portrays Alice as being abducted by the White Rabbit for the Queen of Hares/Hearts, while the Jaberwocky also possesses some rabbit-like attributes. Alice is rescued by the Cheshire Snake (snakes have a knack for camoflauge so Cheshire's "disappearing" act that Alice complains about as making one "quite dizzy" could be LESS magical and more SCIENTIFIC) and the Mad Hatter who help her return to Victorian England.
Dodgson's book is a hit in the English speaking world. And generations of children grow up terrified of bunny wabbits.
Things are made even worse for the world's rabbit population when Bugs Bunny, who is originally created to REHABILITATE the rabbit name is shown as sly and cunning, outsmarting Daffy Duck, Wiley Coyote and Elmer Fudd on a regular basis. This underlines the idea that rabbits are sly and not to be trusted, while ducks, coyotes, even the bumbling Elmer are viewed sympathetically.
*Essentially Carroll does the same with the White Rabbit as what Walt Disney did with Mickey Mouse. Disney purportedly had a fear of mice, and drew Mickey to overcome this fear. Or whatever the truth behind the story is. Only in Carroll's case the pen-portrait of the rabbit is NOT considered cute
Well, rabbits and snails are both known for eating crops. Maybe that had something to do with it?
Skallagrim
Banned
Gnosticism triumphs and becomes as successful as Calchedonian Chistianity in OTL; more specifically, it's one of the forms of Gnosticism that considers the serpent to be the bringer of wisdom that makes it big and becomes the basis of the orthodoxy. Much like OTL Christianity, the OTL Gnostic orthodoxy can splinter later on-- that's no concern, so long as it's deeply ingrained by then that the snake is the noble being that warns mankind against the manipulations of the evil Demiurge.
The fact that a snake is not "cuddly" fits right into the rather wide-spread Gnostic notion that the pleasures of this world are an illusion made by an evil creator, meant to lure you into slavish complacency. That the snake isn't "nice" is therefore actually an indication that he represent the true world, beyond the illusion.
Then there is the rabbit. This creature -- or more specifically the hare -- is a trickster figure in various folk traditions, and in fact became one in the West, too: Br'er Rabbit, or as most people know the archetype nowadays... Bugs Bunny. Of course, the rabbit is cuddly. Yet that can become a sign of its deceit! Suppose that this trickster role filters into mainstream Western culture via some kind (any kind) of cultural cross-pollination. The archetype then evolves to accentuate the sinister aspects. The rabbit becomes the very antithesis of the serpent. Instead of a distintly un-cuddly truth-bringer, a deceptively cuddly lie-spinner. A deceiver, representing precisely the kind of perfidious influence that an honest person should guard himself against!
And so we come to the tale of the snake and the rabbit; of the sharp truth and the soft lie. A moral lesson woven into a thousand folk-tales old and new, which every child knows all too well.
The fact that a snake is not "cuddly" fits right into the rather wide-spread Gnostic notion that the pleasures of this world are an illusion made by an evil creator, meant to lure you into slavish complacency. That the snake isn't "nice" is therefore actually an indication that he represent the true world, beyond the illusion.
Then there is the rabbit. This creature -- or more specifically the hare -- is a trickster figure in various folk traditions, and in fact became one in the West, too: Br'er Rabbit, or as most people know the archetype nowadays... Bugs Bunny. Of course, the rabbit is cuddly. Yet that can become a sign of its deceit! Suppose that this trickster role filters into mainstream Western culture via some kind (any kind) of cultural cross-pollination. The archetype then evolves to accentuate the sinister aspects. The rabbit becomes the very antithesis of the serpent. Instead of a distintly un-cuddly truth-bringer, a deceptively cuddly lie-spinner. A deceiver, representing precisely the kind of perfidious influence that an honest person should guard himself against!
And so we come to the tale of the snake and the rabbit; of the sharp truth and the soft lie. A moral lesson woven into a thousand folk-tales old and new, which every child knows all too well.
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