Chapter XI: Interview Interlude
Previous Chapter: Chapter X
‘We’re back with Dr. Jay Mehta. He’s a researcher who’s become somewhat of an expert on the relatively new topic of fluffy psychology. Great to have you with us again.’
‘Thanks so much, Steve. Always happy to be here. Discussing my research and bringing it to the public eye is quite enjoyable for me.’
‘So, we’ve been discussing fluffy psychology this evening, and we’ve covered a variety of topics. But now there’s one that came in the form of a question after our previous interview, if I can read it.’
‘Go right ahead. I’m definitely up for it.’
’ “Dr. Mehta, is there such a thing as sexuality for fluffies? My mare I recently discovered engaging in ‘special huggies’ with another mare when I went to pick her up from daycare. Is that normal? Can fluffies be gay?” Well, doctor, an interesting question. I thought all mares want babies more than anything, according to what a lot of people say. What’s your take on this?’
‘I hear that one a lot. It’s a question I love getting because it really illustrates the perception humans have on sexuality. Often we anthropomorphise, attributing human behaviours or psychology onto other species, and as with any, fluffies are one such case. Truth be told, from what we’ve seen, fluffies don’t actually seem to have strong inclinations towards sexual orientation.’
‘Really? Even though in nearly every case we’re typically seeing them breed like rabbits?’
‘It does seem counterintuitive, to be sure. But what we’ve found from experiments is that when it comes to sex, fluffies are inherently quite neutral. The biological urge for procreation seems largely disconnected from the desire for self gratification.’
‘So you’re saying that though fluffies want offspring, they don’t view sex merely as a means to that end?’
‘Basically, yes. This is a result of their limited ability to view things in a larger context. They’ve got a couple of competing drives underscoring their behaviour. One is that biological instinct, and part of that is due to it being stimulated by Hasbio’s desire to expedite their genetic modification programme by mass breeding. The other drive that pushes fluffies more than anything else, though, is their desire for self gratification.’
‘So when fluffies engage in sex acts, it’s mostly about feeling good, then?’
‘Isn’t it always?’
‘Hah, I suppose that’s true. What leads them to pursue it outside of normal relationships, then?’
‘Normal?’
‘Oh, I suppose I mean what’s the general case, like heterosexual interaction.’
‘Well it seems predominant, that’s true. Typically biology predisposes a species towards the goal of continuation. It’s an interest of those building blocks intending to perpetuate themselves. Yet at a point, that becomes highly abstracted. A protein interacts with countless others, all working in concert. Once you arrive at a species level problem, things stop looking unified. The further you get away from that single building block, the less of an effect that has. And we know that biochemistry in humans can affect a number of behaviours, both biological and psychological. In fact, they’re often intertwined. Yet fluffies are hardly an ordinary case in that regard.’
‘Due to their artificial origins?’
‘Yes. They may have a collection of genetic material originating in billions of years of evolution, like other life, but being assembled as all of it is, the biological components often conflict. Indeed, many of the biological imperfections in the fluffy physiology result from this haphazard assemblage. Whether viewed as an asset by Hasbio, or a limitation, the psychological and intellectual result of this assemblage leads to a lack of grounding, meaning fluffies are incredibly moldable early on in their development.’
‘Meaning their infancy, adolescence?’
‘Exactly. The research we’ve conducted has led us to conclude that when paired with other fluffies, an individual fluffy develops bonds, especially in a positive relationship. A fluffy’s overwhelming desire for love and affection, instilled by Hasbio modifications to assist in bonding with humans further extends to other fluffies. In fact, feral herds are an example of this—the community component often compelling fluffies to form social groups in order to achieve affection and comfort. That certainly doesn’t always work in a particular fluffy’s favour, as we’ve discussed on previous occasions. The dynamics of hierarchy and prejudice in fluffy ‘society’, if you’d want to call it that, is a whole topic on its own. But out of that desire for affection, little prohibits a fluffy’s inhibition.’
‘So you’re saying they aren’t particularly choosy?’
‘Indeed. When the drive for sexual intimacy is stimulated to a high enough degree, the social cue structure collapses. ‘Babies’ become a mere sideshow to the desire for personal pleasure. In fact, much of a fluffy’s existence is predicated on fulfilling the need for pleasure. Not that that’s a unique trait—humans go to great lengths for it as well. But this can be seen in more banal things like the overwhelming urge for ‘skettis’ or ‘bestest nummies’, to very dark things indeed.’
‘Dark things?’
‘Yes, one of the most disturbing sides of this paradigm is manifested by things like rape, even extending to raping foals, or an adult’s own offspring.’
‘That sounds horrific.’
‘I’d say so, but understanding why it occurs is important in our research. One of the good signs we’ve seen is that this behaviour is more often exhibited from ferals, rather than in domestic fluffies. And under the right conditions, according to our experiments, fluffies innately connecting babies with happiness and good things like love seems to abate that collapse of morality, as it were. When exposed to the corrupting influence of a fluffy or a herd which has smarty or coddled, unfettered hedonistic tendencies, this is where that breaks down. Instead of the ‘good things’ connection relating to love, the pleasure side of that association overrides it. A view of an innocent treasure to be protected turns into an object of gratification, a toy.’
‘Still, it’s hard to believe that creatures intended to be kid friendly can so easily become violent.’
‘Indeed, this is the dark side of genetic experimentation. Creating a whole new artificial species is uncharted territory, and some of the results we’ve seen are troubling. But on the flip side, when it comes to unconditional love, we’ve seen some surprising and fortunate results as well. One of the traits being shut down by bad upbringing and negative reinforcement is the fluffy predilection for empathy and a wanting not only to receive but express love. When we’ve placed groups together who only received good instruction from carefully trained mares, or even stallions raising offspring, the foals have fairly consistently shown little to no animosity or hatred for each other, only care and affection.’
‘What happens when that changes?’
'When a mare starts teaching her foals preferential treatment, they easily adopt that worldview and propagate it. Even when foals who weren’t ‘best’ according to the mother have their own offspring, they, knowing the experience they had if they weren’t treated best, can have an aversion to foals which mimic the things their mothers disliked. And that’s where the orientation component comes in—in isolation fluffies don’t have a clear understanding of biology at all. That’s part of the reason the ‘Babies!’ show exists. Hasbio never intended them to procreate as products.
Early on in the research, an unintended consequence of the desire to limit fluffy awareness of procreation meant that their ability to innately understand how procreation works led to the discovery that when they implemented changes to begin mass breeding to speed up the development cycle, the fluffies had to be instructed and motivated. Stallions and mares would sometimes engage in acts together, but would also engage in acts with fluffies of the same sex, as well as self stimulation. What they saw was the fluffies enjoyment of ‘good feels’ as they now typically call it presenting as the overriding motivator. This too is something we have observed in our research.’
‘So it comes down to the social component and that fluffies are guided to wanting offspring?’
‘That appears to be the case. Everything seems to circle back to happiness and gratification. When fluffies are led to believe that certain things give them either of these, they seek it out. What’s apparent, even without social pressure, however, is physical stimulus that one can discover directly. Thus, they can be easily motivated into engaging in ‘special huggies’ by knowing that, and when coupled with a cue that babies are extraordinarily amazing, the psychological temptation of babies being better than anything else practically compels them towards it, even when the reality is rather less rosy.’
‘So in your experiments, what’s the main thing motivating them as far as you can tell?’
‘When fluffies develop strong emotional bonds with each other, the biology seems irrelevant. For them, psychologically, the need for ‘huggies and love’ is overwhelming. Without it, many fluffies are even known to die of emotional stress. If two fluffies happen to be of the same sex, but find each other appealing, embracing that is like second nature.’
‘So do fluffies have predispositions at all?’
‘Inherently? I’d say no. At least not on an emotional level. But a lot of the external influences pressuring a fluffy during their development shapes their worldview. That’s the case for societies in general, and as they experience a bias in their formative years, they drift in the path of least resistance, as it were. Part of this is merely sensory, with fluffies they perceive as being visually or aromatically pleasing eliciting a positive response, they then get this chemical trigger fulfilling that component seeking gratification. Thus the cycle continues. Essentially, if they smell or look pretty—everything is simplistically termed for fluffies—they are interested on some level. The path they take in their development being different, what a fluffy finds appealing can vary, just like with any other animal. But overall, aesthetics are universal. Something that’s pleasant gives you a skew, and they too drift in its direction.’
‘So if fluffies see primarily fluffies of a particular sex that they find appealing, they’ll be biased in that direction?’
‘That’s a good question. We did test for this in our research, and there’s a moderately positive correlation indicating that to be the case. That said, the main surprise we found is that for fluffies love and sex seem fairly separate in concept.’
‘Really? So they don’t think that sex is related at all? What do they “think” about love, or sex, for that matter?’
‘When it comes to reasoning, fluffies seem to have a very binary level of association. Bad and good are viewed as absolutes, and are hard to overcome in training if ingrained at an early stage. For example, one reason why same-sex affection is nominally viewed no differently is that love is a good thing, as is affection. We can see this in the language that fluffies use (i.e. ‘wuv huggies’, ‘wan wuv’, ‘fwuffies am fow huggies an wuv’) if you’ll pardon my fluffspeak.’
‘Not at all, doctor.’
‘And for fluffies, these phrases connect. The if/then form of argument being the heights of fluffy reasoning, they can apply it rather liberally. In this case, if fluffies are for huggies and love, and huggies are good, and love is good, then huggies and love with other fluffies are also good. Similarly if something is bad, then it can’t overlap with good things. If a mare thinks a baby is bad, for whatever reason, it doesn’t get huggies, love, anything. It’s an awful baby doing bad things to her, therefore she won’t give it anything good.’
‘That seems like a rather harsh reality.’
‘It does seem that way. But if you put them in a roleplaying context, it’s as though they only view the external under a system of lawful good or evil, themselves being an exception to this. Being a fluffy, if fluffies are good, then they are good—and they deserve love. When they’re denied good things, they come to the conclusion that they must somehow be bad—unless they’ve reached a point of no return with smarty syndrome. At that point, practically nothing will disabuse them of the notion that they are entitled to anything they want.’
‘Still there seem to be some outliers here. You’re talking about a disconnect, where exactly does that show most easily?’
‘Well, to understand that, we enquired. We asked fluffies questions themselves. According to ones we asked, it boils down to huggies being good, i.e. affection from another. Special huggies by extension are just another form, one which they pursue due to it having the added bonus of giving more good feelings, as they put it.’
‘How does it work when it comes to more unsavoury topics, like force?’
‘Again we see the parallels between good and bad dominating the fluffy psyche. Not only can it be painful, but it triggers the association of even worse psychological feeling knowing that it’s bad. Furthermore, consent is something that fluffies innately understand. They innately don’t want to harm another as this was made a priority by Hasbio in their research subjects. Danger from the product would be bad. When consensual, fluffies find a way to communicate if something is unpleasant with each other. Behaviour contradicting this developed out of learned behaviour according to the data we’ve collected. When looking at this subject, we found that fluffies unsurprisingly never want to be on the receiving end of ‘bad enfies’, and even witnessing the act can trigger physical and emotional stress. Being on the receiving end of the act greatly amplifies this effect—and pain—especially when the perpetrator takes no care of the victim’s wellbeing, can be intense.’
‘Interesting stuff all around, doctor. I’m afraid we don’t have more time for this segment this episode, but any concluding thoughts? What’s the overall conclusion we can draw?’
‘Ah, putting me on the spot. Well, in conclusion my perspective is that fluffy sexuality is fluid, or at least dissociated from their desire to love and be loved. For them, when practised with a partner they do have that strong emotional bond with, the feeling of love and connection simply grows.’
‘Thanks again, doctor. We’d love to have you again to hear your thoughts. Got questions for our show? We hope to have Dr. Mehta back with us again, so let us know. Don’t forget to hit like and subscribe and…’
Mark exited the video, and sat down his phone. Huh.
His mind was certainly interested to learn more about fluffies. Having two now, knowing as much as he could about them would certainly help, but what had he really learned from that?
Brushing aside the covers of his bed, he made his way to the door. Attempting to keep quiet, he opened it gently and walked across the hallway. Through the doorway of the spare room, the safe room he made for Fenrir was dimly lit in the moonlight. A night light presenting a warm glow from one corner of the room, he traced the shadow of two fluffs in a peaceful, content slumber.
What did any of that theory and research matter? What he saw before him reminded him of the plain truth—he had two beautiful, kind, amazing fluffies. And they loved each other, just like he loved them.
It was a moment that crystallised his truth. He loved them both, they were his family now.
That was just about the size of it.
Next Chapter: Chapter XII