Those are some interesting ideas, and I'm looking through the fanfiction.
Also, I admit that I also want more stuff where yukkuri are just straight up cute and not in danger... It'd be a nice counterbalance, since my usual cycle of looking through stuff on here involves a "burnout" point where I leave because the abuse gets to be frustrating rather than a source of morbid fascination.
Same here. Constant abyuse can burn you out if there's nothing but that on offer. It's time to bring some balance back to the Force. XD
It gets disheartening when all you see when you log on is abyuse. I like some of the darker stories, but it still ends in death, and yukkuri only finding peace and happiness in their afterlife.
I don't mind teasing and picking on them a bit. That one with the Marisa who the owner dressed up as an Alice is a cute little series, especially the Valentine's one. xD The chocolate hat reaction was priceless.
The thing is, there's plenty of one shot FF stuff out there, but there's very few fully ff comics. FF material just doesn't lend itself well to long comics because there's honestly not too much to do with them.
You can't have conflict in a FF story, and the most that happens is light teasing. Anything with real conflicts and it drops out of family_friendly altogether because someone is getting seriously hurt. Purely FF stories read like sesame street or dora the explorer. A happy land with happy things with no conflicts and possibility of danger.
Pure abuse stories, with the yukkuri in the 7th circle of hell of neverending torture and a clear psychopath anon, are also fairly boring but at least they get creative with torture methods like they did during medieval times. Both are really stale tbh. The best stories are the ones that focus on actual plot, with yukkuris being major plot devices, and focus on world building around the yukkuri. Or are at least inventive with the story. My favorite kinds are just yukkuri vs nature, with humans being a very minimal part of the equation, or at there to be a plot device to push the story along.
Yeah, I often find it hard to stay interested in comics where yukkuri are seen as a pest that must be killed on sight all the time.
I often find it hard to suspend enough disbelief to feel that the "they're just manju" rationalization would always be enough to get away with putting them through so much cruelty. There would probably be plenty of abusers, but they'd have to be at least a little sneaky about it. If not outright illegal, I'd at least think it makes you a lot less socially acceptable.
Especially because I don't see why yukkuri wouldn't be popular pets too. It has no fur, its waste is totally inoffensive, it can talk to you, it's soft and harmless, its easy to maintain, and it's adorable when it isn't being obnoxious.
Most people don't want any kind of animal to go through prolonged suffering, with the preference being that even pests should die quickly. Yukkuri can talk, on top of that.
Most likely, many people wouldn't necessarily like them too much, but they'd at least have the decency to try deterring them in non-fatal ways.
...In itself, something about the logistical challenges of handling their urban populations as civilly and non-fatally as possible would be pretty interesting. Or cities that actually have an "immigration policy" to allow for yukkuri that are intelligent and responsible enough to cooperate and be helpful in some way.
The thing is, there's plenty of one shot FF stuff out there, but there's very few fully ff comics. FF material just doesn't lend itself well to long comics because there's honestly not too much to do with them.
You can't have conflict in a FF story, and the most that happens is light teasing. Anything with real conflicts and it drops out of family_friendly altogether because someone is getting seriously hurt. Purely FF stories read like sesame street or dora the explorer. A happy land with happy things with no conflicts and possibility of danger.
Pure abuse stories, with the yukkuri in the 7th circle of hell of neverending torture and a clear psychopath anon, are also fairly boring but at least they get creative with torture methods like they did during medieval times. Both are really stale tbh. The best stories are the ones that focus on actual plot, with yukkuris being major plot devices, and focus on world building around the yukkuri. Or are at least inventive with the story. My favorite kinds are just yukkuri vs nature, with humans being a very minimal part of the equation, or at there to be a plot device to push the story along.
I would say that this lends itself to the issue -- the fact that it's only put through two lenses. There's a few good FF stories, only because people actually tried to make them. You don't have to make abyuse the plot mechanic in order for it to be a story -- it could be the mating with a stray story, thrown out, learns how to survive, brings together other strays, then maybe finds another family, and hard choices that can come from each event. Maybe at one point, mommy and/or daddy has to make a tough choice of letting another mister human adopt them, or stay with their family and friends.
It doesn't have to be abyuse/death as the mechanic, that's just where it tends to go. It can be PG-13, and I'd still consider it FF. Besides, isn't all that warring over with?
The warring is only over because we enforce that rule so strictly. You can blame that on the people who are unwilling to compromise at all, early on with the yukkuri-loving side and later with the abusers (or trolls, can't tell). I love a good FF story as much as a good abuse story, but that's because at their cores they're good stories first, yukkuri stories second.
I can try my hand at a quick short story, but it's frankly sort of difficult to write a FF story. I've been itching to write a quick one or two as of late, but I can't but help think that it's going to have a very heavy warhammer 40k influence... since that's all I've been reading as of late. >_>
There's a lot of stories about taking in yukkuris as pets, and especially comparing them with cats/dogs/traditional pets. I personally think they'd make fantastic pets, if not a bit unnerving "raising" a human head-shaped minor youkai as a pet. There was one about anon making friends with a bunch of them, and them helping him farm, build something (school I think?) and eventually evolving to be something like minor youkais with flying and touhou-themed abilities.
I know, I was just using it as an example of why I headcanon that abusers couldn't be overly obvious about their activities... Like if you just went up and smashed a yukkuri in broad daylight, even gutter trash, people wouldn't exactly have a high opinion of you. And having yukkuri loudly scream as you abuse them isn't exactly ideal either, so abusers would at least have to be a little secretive about it.
I see something more along the lines of just a reproduction ban in urban/farm areas, and expulsion or mass neutering for those who aren't smart/strong-willed enough to listen. Or hell, just let them have the crappy, run down parts of town no one likes anyway. Overgrown lawns to hunt in and abandoned houses big enough for whole clans.
I know, I was just using it as an example of why I headcanon that abusers couldn't be overly obvious about their activities... Like if you just went up and smashed a yukkuri in broad daylight, even gutter trash, people wouldn't exactly have a high opinion of you. And having yukkuri loudly scream as you abuse them isn't exactly ideal either, so abusers would at least have to be a little secretive about it.
I see something more along the lines of just a reproduction ban in urban/farm areas, and expulsion or mass neutering for those who aren't smart/strong-willed enough to listen. Or hell, just let them have the crappy, run down parts of town no one likes anyway. Overgrown lawns to hunt in and abandoned houses big enough for whole clans.
The first part about abyusers: how I feel.
I don't think society, as a whole, would openly accept killing something that can beg for it's life and weep for it's lost children, even if they ARE manju.
I touched on that in my story -- that, at first, people were okay with it (sort-of), but then it started to become too addicting to those who did it (like a drug, as shown in other fandoms), so society rejected it and made laws against it. It still happens, but people keep quiet about it (mostly, like animal abuse/torture), because people will still break laws.
As for the assembly line breeding, I'd think that'd be put to an end once abyuse is frowned upon. The idea behind that is mass production. If people aren't gonna buy that many, then production can slow down. They can give more attention to the ones that are born, and maybe find better ways to train/discipline them. Even unruly dogs can be trained. If you think people won't buy 'em once they're that expensive, you haven't seen the prices of real pedigree show dogs (thousands xD).
As for the neutering part, you can, but they'll die from anti-yukkuritis. It's hard-coded for them to breed. I would say the best thing would be to help yukkuri in urban areas like that to get together and form big herds. Teach them that all the kos are their family. It might actually trick them into not having more children, though you would think they wouldn't have so many children if they can't provide food for them.
The warring is only over because we enforce that rule so strictly. You can blame that on the people who are unwilling to compromise at all, early on with the yukkuri-loving side and later with the abusers (or trolls, can't tell). I love a good FF story as much as a good abuse story, but that's because at their cores they're good stories first, yukkuri stories second.
I can try my hand at a quick short story, but it's frankly sort of difficult to write a FF story. I've been itching to write a quick one or two as of late, but I can't but help think that it's going to have a very heavy warhammer 40k influence... since that's all I've been reading as of late. >_>
It doesn't have to be about yukkuri. It can be about a human. :P Like I said, I consider it family friendly if the emphasis is on the story, and not the abyuse. Just because a yu dies or gets hurt doesn't (to me, at least) mean it's not family-friendly. Tragedy happens; it's a part of life. The trouble I have is that's where most stories either start shortly before, and/or end at. Never respite.
That is why i prefer Yukkuri and Yukkuri clans in nature, one of my earliers ideas was the Yukurarium Stream. Imagine a school ant farm project with house of yu's left alone for weeks in a livestream. Imagine every survivor season with real deaths and lasting consecuences.
I had a thought to expand on the comedy "Abusing Yukkuri is actually a bit more difficult" idea I had earlier.
Abuse stories and comics still exist in a universe with real yukkuri, and many of them are advertised as true stories, but most of them are actually exaggerating the stupidity of the yukkuri to make it funnier or more impressive.
So an anon actually believes that yukkuri really are this stupid and pathetic, and ends up trying to abuse a wild Marisa...
Only for the Marisa to stop seeing him as an actual threat within minutes, and to eventually conclude he's just a bully there to insult her intelligence, because he keeps using overly ineffectual methods so he can brag about how pathetic his victim was.
Marisa finally starts crying and Anon is happy for a second... only for it to turn out that Marisa is just crying because she feels so offended by how stupid the Anon thinks she is.
"Yunya! Bullying mister thinks Marisa is the stupidest yukkuri in the entire world!"
Bonus if anon comes back and fails so much that Marisa eventually just regards him as a mild nuisance and addresses him in a resigned, weary tone.
"Oh, it's bullying mister human again... Mister human, Marisa is trying to hunt-hunt right now, so please take it easy today and don't bully so much..."
*casually avoids the very obvious and telegraphed attempt to hit her with a hammer*
I had a thought to expand on the comedy "Abusing Yukkuri is actually a bit more difficult" idea I had earlier.
Abuse stories and comics still exist in a universe with real yukkuri, and many of them are advertised as true stories, but most of them are actually exaggerating the stupidity of the yukkuri to make it funnier or more impressive.
So an anon actually believes that yukkuri really are this stupid and pathetic, and ends up trying to abuse a wild Marisa...
Only for the Marisa to stop seeing him as an actual threat within minutes, and to eventually conclude he's just a bully there to insult her intelligence, because he keeps using overly ineffectual methods so he can brag about how pathetic his victim was.
Marisa finally starts crying and Anon is happy for a second... only for it to turn out that Marisa is just crying because she feels so offended by how stupid the Anon thinks she is.
"Yunya! Bullying mister thinks Marisa is the stupidest yukkuri in the entire world!"
Bonus if anon comes back and fails so much that Marisa eventually just regards him as a mild nuisance and addresses him in a resigned, weary tone.
"Oh, it's bullying mister human again... Mister human, Marisa is trying to hunt-hunt right now, so please take it easy today and don't bully so much..."
*casually avoids the very obvious and telegraphed attempt to hit her with a hammer*
"Marisa hopes mister will get tired soon, ze..."
In other words, a yukkuri backtrolling the anon? I like where this is going... :)
Ultimate irony: It eventually goes full circle. The anon actually ends up developing respect for the Marisa and adopting her to live as a completely normal and non-abused pet. The Marisa then has a happy, easy family under the anon's care.
The ultimate failure.
Your actions only resulted in more happy yukkuri being born.
Ultimate irony: It eventually goes full circle. The anon actually ends up developing respect for the Marisa and adopting her to live as a completely normal and non-abused pet. The Marisa then has a happy, easy family under the anon's care.
The ultimate failure.
Your actions only resulted in more happy yukkuri being born.
I'd read that. Would be good, with an actual good ending.
I sort of didn't know how to reply because I don't understand Japanese and I'm not really following that comic at all, oops...
But anyway, I came back because I had another idea for a setting:
Yukkuri living nuclear-family style is actually unnatural and detrimental for them to do, but its become ingrained as a sort of misguided cultural practice for a lot of yukkuri. This in itself would explain a lot of excessively self-destructive behavior in this setting.
After all, there are people who argue that it's not even that good for humans, and we used to live as very interconnected tribes and groups. For things as weak and stupid as yukkuri, the issues would be even more pronounced.
Like maybe they saw that humans do it and become convinced that copying it will make them better somehow... But yukkuri are supposed to live as organized clans, and the independent nuclear family structure only brings out even more of their over-abundant flaws. No one else can make up for their weaknesses, or put them in line when they do ridiculous self-destructive things, and they can't share knowledge as well.
To take it even further, it could even be that regular proximity to a Dosu along with receiving continuous orders is supposed to help a yukkuri be more "easy", and be more social and rational through some kind of "pheromones" or instinct. Without that, they're even more prone to flaws and self-destructive tendencies than usual.
This also made me think of bees a little bit, so I also ended up coming up with a tangentially related idea where any adult yukkuri actually can fire danmaku that is legitimately dangerous to yukkuri and small animals, and painful to a human... but they will immediately die of exhaustion upon firing it.
I would like to see a yukkuri trained to assist and/or accommodate people with disabilities (e.g. blindness, clinical depression, etc.) too.
It'd be even better to see it done seriously, rather than my first thought, which basically amounted to "stress relief yukkuri that's bred and trained to take massive amounts of abuse"
...Unless the absurd survivability of the yukkuri eventually backfires and the stress-relief subtype escapes into the wild and becomes a huge problem. I'd like to see karma working against humans for once...
I don't really have much taste for stuff where the human is morally worse than the yukkuri. I like when yukkuri victims genuinely prove themselves as shitheads.
More raper suffering would also be great, because I typically can't enjoy anything with rapers, especially when they only get used to make others suffer and get no comeuppance.... I know its just cartoony manju rape, but it still often has a huge impact on how much I enjoyed the work otherwise.
There used to be a whole bunch of 'instant karma' artists, but none that would ever really punish humans. Humans, in almost every story, are the death flag. So easy to be the assist, or even just the neutral party/magnanimous. I sort of feel, sometimes, it's like, "Do you stop everything you're doing every single day to go over and stomp ants at every opportunity that presents itself?"