Medicinal and optimistic approaches to shitheads?

So, basically, I'm making this topic because I've barely seen stories/comics that approach shitheads from the angle of it being a treatable mental illness/disorder without making it a bleak excuse for more yukkuri suffering.

Which is a shame, because I think it actually has potential as an interesting setting, and I was thinking of
potentially making my own story about it.

I see shitheadedness as a mental illness like 95% of the time, because 95% of the time it doesn't actually serve the logical purposes that normal meanness/selfishness does, and only ends up hurting yukkuri and making them more self-destructive. Yukkuri are weak, needy, social creatures that don't have many traits that back up the ability to be mean and get away with it. Even a yukkuri that wins a fight would probably hurt itself or waste energy, making itself more vulnerable. Even shitheads who can manipulate others usually lack foresight and can only think about themselves, so the whole thing will blow up in their face soon enough. Therefore, this setting is assuming that a normal, mentally healthy yukkuri should only be mean when nothing else worked.

Anyway, what consequences could be caused by the existence of anti-shithead medicine? I'm thinking specifically if it actually has a high success rate, since the point of this idea isn't just suffering. There could've previously been an argument that killing a shithead was merciful, even doing the yukkuri gene pool a favor, but now there's demonstrably a reliable and humane alternative.

I was especially thinking of what the consequences would be if the anti-shithead medicine was unexpectedly cheap and easy to get, and the overall fixing process was pretty easy. This way, it actually does matter and have a huge impact for the whole population, and not just exceptionally privileged, skilled, or lucky people.

The main idea for that I had was that it turns out to be just be a relatively simple orange juice based formula. If you just add a small dose of a core-harming toxin to orange juice, the orange juice will now have the chance to heal the yukkuri's core, which it usually doesn't. The juice will immediately fix whatever damage the toxin causes and "rewire" the core to be better than before, improving the yukkuri's mental health and cognition. This would also be paired with some therapy and training, but the medicine would make the process so much easier that anyone with a decent amount of time and patience can do it. The orange juice will always heal the damage as long as the toxin concentration is low, so it is also pretty difficult to be careless and overdose the yukkuri. (Again, this is not supposed to be an easy excuse for suffering). To do that, you'd probably have make the medicine from scratch and add way too much toxin, which would only be possible for really stupid or actively malicious anons.

Pet shops could react either positively or negatively. Now they can sell just about any yukkuri as long as they use the formula, or sell the formula so people can do this themselves. That sounds like pretty good news for them, and yukkuri ownership would probably increase by a considerable margin + yukkuri would probably become more sympathetic and pitied when people realize they can be rehabilitated and redeemed without a gigantic investment of time and money.

On the other hand, now yukkuri have been leveled out to a certain extent. There's still the rare and special varieties, but now nearly any yukkuri has the potential to be a good pet. The formula would also have to fix and enhance intelligence and social awareness to the degree required for the yukkuri to be sufficiently kind and obedient, after all. Genes and pedigrees for behavior and intelligence alone will become much less important, which could potentially have a big impact on profit and how things operate. The system could be changed so much that some things could actually be bad for the pet shops now, so they might retaliate or try to control it in certain ways.

Also, if wild yukkuri ever discovered that humans know how to fix all their shitheaded friends and family, how would they respond?

Like there could be a mother Reimu or slave Marisa coming to a house, but instead of doing typical shithead home invasion, tearfully tells the human that she'll do whatever the human wants as long as they fix her awful, dirt stupid, selfish family so they can take it easy.

You're suggesting replacing one totally unrealistic story excuse... with another totally unrealistic story excuse? I don't see the point. Shithead yukkuri are a thing because shithead humans are. While it would be great if we could cure narcissism with a pill, that sort of wishful thinking doesn't make for very intersting stories.

I was trying to get across that treating mentally ill yukkuri is now an accessible and widely known thing, not necessarily a thing that fixes everything all the sudden. The process itself is pretty reliable when done properly, but that doesn't necessarily mean everything else goes on without a hitch.

It'd be like a look at something that seems great on the surface but could lead to unforseen consequences and unexpected reactions, along with people exploiting the situation.

It'd also pretty much be similar to having humans go through therapy and taking medicine for that, but a more stripped down process because yukkuri aren't as mentally complicated.

The point of doing it would be more about examining the changes in general, both good and bad.

But I get the feeling a lot of people here probably feel similarly to the way you do, so it'd probably be best to keep the idea to myself.

Feels like similar to that comic where a former stray Marisa becomes a shithead, and a friend of the owner suggests scraping the surface of the core to remove any "bad memory" that made her a spoiled brat, only to discover she was a natural-born shithead

Edit: found the comic pool #961

I suggested the solution be a Satori simply rewiring a Yukkuri's core, but I suppose that works too. I would think it would be some kind of chemical make-up of the core that caused them to be a shithead. Even in humans, narcissism can be offset with particular chemicals, it's just when you come off of them that your brain goes a little loopy. The only means of changing that, though, would be to yes, chemically change the core. Perhaps it has something to do with the vibration/spinning?

While I do believe some people are inherently bad, and thus some yukkuri are, I do believe the far-in majority shouldn't turn out as shithead. After all, if they're all alone, what good does that do them, and how will they take it easy? Decidedly, clans would either quarantine them or they'd die out if taken over by them, which to me means extinction, so on some level, a balance has to be found. The total self-destructive personalities of shitheads wouldn't be the dominant, even with wasa-Reimus, as then those particular Reimu breeds would never exist.

I've always thought it interesting, though: what would happen -if- you kept that pet and simply just catered to it? Would it eventually change in personality or would it always stay like that?

Edit: Also, there was a story (though incomplete) about how families would deal with their shithead pets -- only because they had the pet for so long, they want to retrain rather than simply kill. The retraining facility is pretty heavy abyuse, and even has a disclosure form you have to sign that says that your yukkuri may not make it out alive (and offer insurance).

Why would someone want to reform a shithead when FF canon makes replacing them dirt cheap?

If it was a very valuable or rare type then ya i could see reform school yukkuri comic . . . Otherwise just set it on fire. We've seen how selection for gold badge training starts at "birth", so its obvious that killing rejects is common course.

exitstrategy said:

Why would someone want to reform a shithead when FF canon makes replacing them dirt cheap?

What if you already had it as a pet, and your family is attached to it?

Hitosura said:
What if you already had it as a pet, and your family is attached to it?

With actual pets, many families will choose to euthanize an animal if cost of treatment is too high or too risky.

Among yukkuri, the higher the badge level, the lower the spoilage rate. Anything pet grade (silver and above) will probably not be at any real risk of shitheadness unless the owners are especially neglectful about their care.

Before I go offtopic, I think it's a good idea, if not a bit idealistic to explore. Idealistic because I think it strikes a bit too close to treatment of mental health IRL and to be as un-political as I can make it, it's kind of a shitfest. If you do write the story, be careful of making stories that are 100% happy and roses with no downsides since unrealistic scenarios sort of detract from the story's quality as a whole.

Now to veer severely off topic:

I think it really depends a lot on what you consider "shitheadedness". A lot of selfish traits are actually helpful for survival in nature. Given how weak yukkuris are and how often your neighbors die, I feel like yukkuri clans need to reach a certain critical mass as well as have a few key types of yukkuris before group-beneficial actions would even outweigh selfish individual ones.

Like do yukkuris that break into houses count as "shitheads", or are they just doing what their instincts tell them?

Or how about yukkuris that leave behind their young (for the predators to eat) so they can escape easy and live another day?

Or the bully marisa that's big and strong, and takes over other nests and eat the food before moving onto the next one?

I'd think all of these can be considered "shitheads", but all of them increase the probability of survival on a very basic sense. Houses have more food and are safer from the elements, your koyukkuris dying means you can survive (and produce more koyukkuris), and being big and strong/smart enough to basically be the alpha yukkuri and bullying/eating other people's food ensures you yourself won't starve to death. Rats don't exactly congregate in restaurants and some people's houses because they're assholes: that's just where the food's at.

Where as the "nice" traits only really apply from a human standpoint. Like the Reimu that shares her food, how honorable! How nice! But one accident and she starves to death. Or a Marisa that tries to defend the clan from intruders, etc. Nice noble traits don't win in the wild most of the time, and realistically speaking most people don't "care" enough to try to attack yukkuris. They just want them to get out of the way like a flock of pigeons or scurrying rats. Even in nature a lot of the times predator and prey will share the same watering hole, and lions don't give a shit about the antelope unless they're hungry. Yukkuris may congregate because its beneficial to help each other (to receive favors in return?) once in a while, but its every man for themselves whenever shit goes down.

I don't think "shitheadedness" is inherently a disease any more than "niceheadedness". I know its justification for abyuse 99% of the time (because look at this fucking rude disgusting yukkuri being a piece of shit) but on a higher level it makes a lot of sense. Unless "nice" behaviors pay off better than shitheadedness, I think overall the behavioral evolution will gear towards survival of the fittest, and not the nicest.