Of course it’d be pretty horrific to see a stuffed deer head mounted on the wall – amongst a group of anthro deer especially, but amongst ANY anthro character too, I’d imagine.
But of course it all depends. Whenever we consider such things in an anthro universe, it inevitably comes back to this question of which creatures are “people” and which ones are “actually” animals. Feral versus anthro, I suppose.
My favorite example of this is: consider how the wildebeest in The Lion King aren’t people – they are just a mindless herd of animals into which Mufasa falls and then he’s stampeded to death.
I don’t really have a point here. I just wanted to share a thought that I had while writing my story, which is a setting where birds and fish are NOT anthro, and that’s why it’s “okay” for the seafood restaurant to have a giant swordfish mounted on the wall.
Ooh! That’s a neat approach to it! I honestly don’t think there’s any wrong way to go about it. Pixeas and Henry kinda shares a similar architecture, with the anthro characters having evolved from their feral forms into their anthro forms. I totally agree with you on the handwaving. I feel like it’s far too easy to get too far out in the weeds trying to settle minutiae, which can often distract from the story. I’m going to blaspheme and say that this was one of my difficulties when reading The Hobbit back in High School. I just got so damn bored with how richly described every little thing was. It’s the difference between drinking an entire jar of Alfredo sauce, versus drizzling it over your pasta.
That’s why I rarely implement most of my worldbuilding ideas, only ones that are relevant to the story.