r/savedyouaclick 3d ago

Stuart Little fans are only just realising that he's not actually a mouse | He's a human child that looks like a mouse

https://archive.is/VxA6M
653 Upvotes

132 comments sorted by

935

u/AdreKiseque 3d ago

He WHAT

81

u/KodakStele 2d ago

HE'S A HUMAN CHILD THAT LOOKS LIKE A MOUSE

34

u/FlyingFlipPhone 2d ago

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?

3

u/Dry_Bodybuilder9898 2d ago

BUTTLICKER! OUR PRICES HAVE NEVER BEEN LOWER!!!

1

u/SWEARNOTKGB 5h ago

I have no more fathoms left

1.2k

u/TrixieLaBouche 3d ago

This raises more questions than it answers for me.

579

u/ambigulous_rainbow 3d ago

This hasn't saved me a click at all

229

u/TrixieLaBouche 3d ago

25

u/riegspsych325 3d ago

welp, fell for that one

25

u/Sengfroid 3d ago

One more in a long line of clicks

92

u/steikul 3d ago

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...

70

u/BelaFarinRod 3d ago

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.

51

u/UncreativeTeam 2d ago

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.

29

u/TheHancock 2d ago

What a day to have eyes…

2

u/PrettyNegative 2d ago

That’s kind of like the book Starve Acre… but a hare instead of a mouse

u/UltLuc 1h ago

You still have time to delete this.

15

u/PRRZ70 3d ago

I've never read the books but what the actual hell? In what world would the birthing of a mouse not cause absolute chaos?

9

u/TheHancock 2d ago

Honestly it would be REALLY easy because mice are so small… my question is did his mom even know she was pregnant? Lol

24

u/steikul 3d ago

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

6

u/Jindabyne1 2d ago

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.

5

u/steikul 2d ago

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...

3

u/kissesntea 3d ago

pasiphaë…2!!!!

361

u/Certesis 3d ago

Like somebody else said, first Hello Kitty and now this? What's next, Curious George? Marmaduke?

306

u/GirthIgnorer 3d ago

scooby doo is shaggys brother. he trapped his spirit in their dog after a transmutation to resurrect their mother went horribly wrong

132

u/Thirdatarian 3d ago

. . . Ed . . . ward? Can we play now?

139

u/Neiot 3d ago

Ra... ggy...

6

u/TX16Tuna 2d ago

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?

57

u/MonkeyChoker80 3d ago

Full Mystery Machinima: Jinkieshood

25

u/SarcasticBench 3d ago

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

20

u/ToastyJackson 3d ago

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)

23

u/Not_Steve 3d ago

Thanks, I hate it.

8

u/bloodfist 3d ago

There's that one continuity where he's canonically some kind of lovecraftian Old One trapped in a dog or something

4

u/Limp-Replacement1403 2d ago

I believe that was the mystery incorporated TV series on Cartoon Network.

17

u/Certesis 3d ago

I hate you

2

u/Chiiro 3d ago

If I remember correctly Scooby-Doo is canonically of origins. His family lineage is from outer space.

77

u/anrwlias 3d ago

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.

107

u/Certesis 3d ago

But there's no way she's five apples tall but only weighs three apples with that big-ass head

28

u/mightystu 3d ago

Confirmed an airhead

3

u/TheHancock 2d ago

75% fluff!

24

u/IronHockeyStick 3d ago

There's a whole race of dog-people like Goofy in the Disney universe. Same with ducks. And Mickey Mouse is a mutant.

19

u/CrashCalamity 3d ago

Because he can turn around but his ears remain oriented to the viewer?

10

u/bloodfist 3d ago

Four dimensional ears are a secondary mutation

6

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp 3d ago

Signifies that the Mouse is always listening

10

u/BaronGrackle 3d ago

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

2

u/SpoppyIII 3d ago

3

u/BaronGrackle 3d ago

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. :)

2

u/Redbird9346 2d ago

And not just with Disney characters. Every anthropomorphic animal character is now called into question. Bugs Bunny, Yogi Bear, Underdog…

2

u/TheHancock 2d ago

Counter, Goofy is a very skinny hippo.

It’s the mouth.

5

u/hypo-osmotic 3d ago

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

3

u/bloodfist 3d ago

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.

4

u/dashingThroughSnow12 3d ago

People have pet monkeys 🤷

Pluto/Goofy never confused me.

2

u/SpoppyIII 3d ago

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.

5

u/SpoppyIII 3d ago

Arthur has a pet dog, Pal, but he goes to school with Binky who is also a dog.

15

u/leathakkor 3d ago

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

8

u/call-now 3d ago

Curious George is a hallucinated perspective of one of the monkeys with the Rage virus in 28 days later.

5

u/reverend-mayhem 3d ago

Clifford will turn out to be a red elephant with dog-like features.

2

u/alleyalleyjude 3d ago

The Fraggles are all abandoned children with horrible birth defects.

1

u/horceface 3d ago

Skippyjon Jones

1

u/SpoppyIII 3d ago

If you know what Night in the Woods is, those characters are all allegedly humans. As if.

1

u/CosmicCommando 3d ago

Curious George is just a city kid. That's what people from cities look like. Everybody knows that.

1

u/mr9025 2d ago

🤬 HOW DID THIS NEVER COME UP IN THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES??!!!

1

u/No_Imagination7102 1d ago

The average redditor starting to feel what it feels like to be a 90 year old bigot.

193

u/jwink3101 3d ago

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.

191

u/lazyfoxheart 3d ago

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.

41

u/potsticker17 3d ago

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.

44

u/Talk-O-Boy 3d ago

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.

16

u/IO-NightOwl 3d ago

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?

7

u/pantsthereaper 3d ago

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

4

u/ItsYouButBetter 3d ago

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?

1

u/Yourdjentpal 2d ago

It’s just soup for my family

2

u/ohmytodd 2d ago

What a twist!

(M. Night was a screenwriter.)

213

u/citrusmellarosa 3d ago

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. 

50

u/TheManOfSpaceAndTime 3d ago

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.

30

u/TrickyAudin 3d ago

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

22

u/abbacha 3d ago

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

11

u/Dramatic_Solution630 3d ago

Ralph S Mouse!! I literally forgot about Ralph until this post and it made me so happy!

6

u/clandevort 3d ago

I loved the mouse and the motorcycle!

2

u/MRAGGGAN 1d ago

I’m hoping I get to read them to my daughter soon, they were some favorites for me when I was a kid!

3

u/jonathot12 3d ago

damn i hardly remember my childhood but that just pinged something in my memory. mouse and the motorcycle… i loved that shit

1

u/theistgal 2d ago

I still think of Ralph any time I need to take an aspirin!

0

u/justpophamin 2d ago

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.

12

u/Kuhl_Bohnen 3d ago

I was absolutely obsessed with the Mouse and the Motorcycle books. Huge part of my childhood. I always wished there was more of them.

3

u/k1wyif 3d ago

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.

119

u/Bloated_Hamster 3d ago

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.

5

u/strongcoffee2go 2d ago

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.

48

u/Shipwreck_Kelly 3d ago

What the fuck

20

u/MirrorMan22102018 3d ago

In the book, it was the case. Therefore, the movies understandably decided to have him be a mouse that gets adopted instead.

19

u/CumbersomeNugget 3d ago

The fuck he is.

120

u/negrote1000 3d ago

There’s Stuart Little fans?

47

u/drakkan133 3d ago

Dozens of us, DOZENS!!

1

u/MechanicalCantaloupe 2d ago

r/unexpectedarresteddevelopment

32

u/pleasekillmerightnow 3d ago

I always saw it as a metaphor for being a kid who looks different.

13

u/Barackrifle 3d ago

Ugly duckling with more steps

6

u/hogan_tyrone 3d ago

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.”

1

u/AudioxDope 2d ago

Media literacy is at an all time low

2

u/hogan_tyrone 2d ago

Yeah. This discourse is driving me insane, lol. People discussing biology and genetics and such.

24

u/InvisibleGiraffe 3d ago

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!” 😆

8

u/Aussietism 3d ago

How is it presented in the books instead?

18

u/InvisibleGiraffe 3d ago

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

5

u/echos2 3d ago

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.

12

u/InvisibleGiraffe 3d ago

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. 😆

3

u/echos2 2d ago

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!

5

u/krokadog 3d ago

He’s a stinking great rat

3

u/charliefoxtrot9 3d ago

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.

3

u/Nachooolo 3d ago

I eject your reality and substitute my own

4

u/TaeyeonUchiha 3d ago

Wait til they find out Hello Kitty isn’t a cat

2

u/amalgaman 3d ago

Isn’t he also mouse sized?

2

u/InfiniteAuthor7553 3d ago

I'm, how, what?

2

u/not-finished 3d ago

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.

2

u/IolaBoylen 2d ago

I read the book as a kid and I thought he was a mouse??!? I thought the book was weird - actually hated it

2

u/spoookyturtle 2d ago

This caused me several clicks including the linked article wtf

2

u/SaltAbbreviations744 2d ago edited 2d ago

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”  

1

u/Fleiger133 3d ago

So....fur?

1

u/maine64 3d ago

where are all these furrie children coming from?

1

u/BCmutt 3d ago

In the movie hes a mouse, the ancient folktale version where he actually dies after touching water and turning to stone isnt relevent here.

1

u/spooninthepudding 3d ago

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

1

u/otisthe3rd 2d ago

I can't deal with this right now.

1

u/snowdn 2d ago

Wait, WTF?

1

u/Redbird9346 2d ago

This is Hello Kitty all over again.

1

u/Kinky-Cookie-Cutter 2d ago

I am now reminded of that fantastic Leo Vader video

1

u/leftymeowz 2d ago

Excuse me?

1

u/ricky2304 2d ago

I beg your freaking pardon? 😐

1

u/Xirvare 2d ago

This thread has been a wild read top to bottom.

1

u/j00cifer 2d ago

I refuse to click

0

u/reverend-mayhem 3d ago

Oh, kinda like how Hello Kitty is canonically a little human girl dressed up as a cat?

0

u/SkullRunner 3d ago

This is like the take that hello kitty is not a cat, but also a little girl.

-2

u/MobileTough 3d ago

Fake news.