Fluffies and disability?

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@BFM101’s latest story made me think, what is the general opinion about feral fluffies’ attitude to other fluffies with disabilities? Before you assume it must be negative on “survival of the fittest” grounds, there is fossil evidence that prehistoric people did sometimes care for severely disabled people, even congenitally-disabled children.

I suppose it’s broadly a sub-topic of “are typical feral fluffies naturally caring and loving creatures, or are they scumbags who rape each others’ foals to death and make brown fluffies lick their anuses clean?”.

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I have it change in a herd by herd basis. Parents will often disown disabled foals because of the runt scent, or the shame of having “dummeh babbehs”

Adult Fluffies are more likely to shun amputees due to them being a drain on resources, with some of the more vile Smarties actively taking advantage of weaker members. However it’s not uncommon for Fluffies to keep disabled friends close, believing that Huggies will make them better

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I tend to think that fluffies are generally sympathetic creatures, and so they would do the best they could to care for a disabled fluffy or foal if the herd has the resources. I imagine they would bring food for the elderly and disabled fluffies, maybe put them more towards the middle of fluff piles to keep them warm.
Overall, fluffies are supposed to be animals/toys made to be friends to people and one another. So I like to think they would care for herd members the best they could, in general, unless the herd is a herd of hellgremlin fluffies.

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Its generally only a thing in stories of Hugbox rescues or Abuse/Sadbox Hellgremlins.

Traditionally writers make some more empathetic or make it a Feral/Domestic divide, but general Fluffy lore is any sign something is wrong from mental to physical disability or even undesirable aesthetic traits are a “Dummy” and are subject to as severe of abuse as if they were brown, though are less likely to be forced to eat shit.

Mothers and siblings are likely to kill them, they are excluded from all activities, berated constantly, subject to any violence or sexual assault, and will go unmourned and immediately forgotten.

Why Toughies can suffer such damage and be accepted, why Sensitive and Derped are different from just neurodivergent, why Pillows or Litterpals are seen as different, and other contradictions is up to the creator as well.

Generally a Bestest is exempt from being a Dummy and in fact the mother may treat the “normal” (can’t recall the modern term) worse as a result of increasing damage to the Bestest, though the Dummification of a Bestest via broken or missing limb, stutter, missing ear, going bald, and so on may result in a mother cycling through the undamaged Fluffies as the Bestest until settling on the least damaged in spite of other factors or just abandoning them all to start over. Maybe cheerfully, like she genuinely no longer loves them and thinks she’s free from them. I dunno.

I like toy/capitalism metaphors, so they’re like toys missing accessories, with broken gimmicks, lost limbs, general defective traits, fucked up paint, or a Barbie with fucked up hair. Maybe its more endearing, maybe trash. Should be based on the story and individuals.

Hell, decent scars or a limb with a clean loss may be more endearing to Fluff and man like misprinted toys and trading cards. No lower legs beneath the knee means shorter means cuter?

So really it depends on if you are writing them obeying programming where they might shun damaged goods so the child buys a new Fluffy or it may slot into intentional glitches like hating knockoffs and seeing damaged Fluffies that way, or just incomplete programming tying their empathy to cuteness. Otherwise, animals and the cruelty of nature where the weak are shunned.
Or simplify it as a cheap trick to make kind Fluffies Hellgremliner. Establish villains or make them all trash.

In real life most wolf packs often continue to protect the crippled, and some species of ants care for their disabled while others shun or prey on them. You can back up anything you choose to do, if you treat them as living creatures rather than flesh robots.

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I go with fluffies being sympathetic and loving as a default, with abuse and trauma leading to smarter but emotionally colder/broken fluffies over time.
So it would really depend on how long said fluffies have been feral and how pleasant or unpleasant their lives have been.
A mistreated herd could easily turn on or even take advantage of a fluffy with physical limitations, while those closer to standard fluffies would go out of their way to help them.

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I consider them to take care of their disabled as best they can.

A lot of stories have the disabled fluff be abused, but that’s just because people around here love abuse. (Personally I feel it’s the most boring outcome, since the disability gets no chance to shine - it’s just a prop to have a specific fluffy get hurt.)

If a fluffy is missing a leg or similar, it’s treated no worse than any other scar - fluffies can walk on three legs pretty well, and it’s not like high speed is an important factor for the little guys. A blind or deaf or derped fluffy may need nudging along and extra attention from whatever herd member likes it most, but will be considered as good a fluffy as any other. It’s not their fault they’re a bit of a silly dummy who can’t hear any good, after all. (This isn’t limited to disabilities either - an example is my one-shot Nu Num Fwuffies!, where a cannibal fluffy is born and the entire herd works together to watch over her and stop her from eating meat.)

If a fluffy is impossible for the herd to take care of, like it lost both front legs or got spinal damage or something, they try to find it a good owner or alternate home so it’ll be safe and happy. So you could have a herd asking a human to take in their crippled friend, or bringing it to a shelter, or similar. If another fluffy is extremely attached to the disabled one that fluffy can be its full-time caretaker, and possibly even drop out of the herd to stay with its friend.

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You can’t compare fluffies to prehistoric people - they’re still people, and fluffies will never be on that level.

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I guess it depends how childish, sensible and dimwitted you make your fluffies.

Über childish fluffies might think their friend is a meanie because they no longer play with them and even (gasp!) refuse huggies, thus leading to other fluffies simply finding other playmates and ignoring the disabled offender.

Dimmer-than-a-broken-lightbulb witted fluffies might not even realize their friend is injured, either falling in with the previous group or, if they are selfish little pricks, they might even take advantage of their predicament and “stick a fork in it”, except the fork is something else. After all, if that fluffy doesn’t want to help them relieve themselves, why doesn’t it leave?

Caring and (somewhat) survival capable fluffies might find a way to help their companion by having a large toughie carry it whenever the herd moves/he needs to go to the poopie place. It can also still provide warmth during the night. If it has lost bowel control and thus cannot be kept with the herd, they might be able to be put it on guard duty: after all, it can still stay outside the hovel and spot potential dangers.

Extra careful and survival-oriented herds might realize just how much their friend is going to suffer and either put an end to it if they can stomach it, leave despite the heart hurties, or look for a human that might do the former for them or even adopt their buddy.

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I do like the discrimination as a means of exploring programming.

Brain says little sister who took a tumble is terrible because of the bone poling through what was once a front leg?
Smart Fluffy dismisses it as an intrusive thought. Dumb Fluffy obeys, now free from all morality and encouraged by a primal unnatural need to abuse that causes the brain to flood with happy chemicals to promote obedience, on top of whatever other desires from a tantrum to sexual release to cannibalism which worsens its behavior across the board since now it associates hate with feeling very good. Especially dumb Fluffy is mired in contradiction between the spark of artificial aggression and its general belief that everything is alive and good other than monsters, resulting in things like eating all her food but then giving her its own, hugging out of anger and hitting out of love, labeling her things like “bestest nu gud” or “dummiest gud”.
Different breeds having different programming responses. Not seeing cripples as Fluffies but still as friends, presenting to humans even if they are inclined to stay unseen for survival, just not being able to connect damage to lack of physical abilities, attempting prosthetics or reattachment, and so on.

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…
Huh?

Fluffies were meant to be children’s toys, right? Giving them an innate, actively programmed desire to torture/kill their wounded and derive pleasure from it is uh … I guess it would work if you planned to market them as “Little Mary Traumatizer 5000”. Imagine being a kid and accidentally hurting your fluffy’s leg, so you make it a make-shift splint and puts it with its friends to rest, and its friends proudly stomp it to death.

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I think it was in “Listen To Smarty” that there was a stupid as shitrock fluffy that couldn’t remember anything.

You may find it an interesting read if you haven’t already done so.

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Ah, but unfinished prototype products programmed by an evil megacorporation based on Hasbro which in real life has an atrocious record for bad ideas, poor taste, and actively harmful products or ones with (allegedly) intended flaws to ensure breakage and replacement.

I mean, they’re the lawn dart company. Nuff said.

Compare early builds of video games and dev controls where something specific is being tested, so you can load in abandoned features like enemies who can kill you and steal equipment from your body in a game where that never progressed further, or insta-kill mode, or psychology effects like fear or switching sides. Quite often, more and more, that shit makes it to live versions of the game.

Plus look at the history of toys. Play features like trying to make competitive games out of otherwise ordinary products, trying to turn toys for small children or feminine products into XTREME toys for insecure boys like the grossout/dystopian future Troll dolls and poorly thought out crossovers.

That’s how I explain Hellgremlins and the other unsavory traits. Breeders unintended to be sold, war Fluffies, roleplaying game ones, and various unfinished or idiotic gimmicks all awkwardly stuck into the existing unfinished build pf being ickly bubblegum sweet morons, all wrapped around the base of a chimera with instincts that don’t match its biology and mesh poorly with their preprogrammed language center.

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So basically, alongside the “normal” fluffs, Hasbio was already making up a ton of gimmick versions in the hopes of interesting more people, which is kind of including cowboy outfits in your initial Star Wars merch lineup. Except the gimmicks were things like “rapes babies” and “murders anyone that’s wounded” so more like including R2-D2-shaped shrapnel bombs in your initial Star Wars merch lineup. Shrapnel bombs that go can off inside the factory.

Hasbio programmers sure need a lot of therapy…

I haven’t heard of it, that sounds interesting!

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I like the idea that keeps happening in video games by companies that absorb studios and start giving directives while keeping departments in conflict to motivate them but having poor or absent management so there is no directive or communication.

Shit like Mass Effect Andromeda and Aliens: Colonial Marines or yearly sports games. You have two or three teams making the same game with a third mashing results together, with a barely “functional” result all with reused code and assets that no longer actually work because something one of the other teams did, stolen work from anything they have access to, unfinished products, redundancies that break aspects of the game or cause unexpected reactions, and no testing.

Team one tries making real horses, team two makes cartoon characters, team three creates roleplayers who build on each other. Team four just started trying to make a sapient being and team five ripped what the Power Rangers team had for team dynamics. Team six didn’t even know what they were working on anymore. Team seven was making breeders to mass produce for the guys working on improving the bodies to work on. Team eight may have had a witch and blood sacrifice involved.

All of them are being applied to different physical bodies produced by the body teams, causing more issues because the programmers have to work with what they were sent which may be outdated flawed bodies the body guys don’t need anymore or teams creating different styles for focus groups of children to pick the least uncanny valley style for.

Each team brings various stages of what they were working on to a company show. Most were only intended to do a single thing like sing, race each other, tell stories, spar, or survive a fall. They all get out and start breeding.

Programming for empathy combines with a different program for empathy, and you get a Fluffy with the morality version of Colonial Marines Aliens in the T pose who go backwards in circles before playing a dying animation and fall through the floor due to trying to run two conflicting AI packages at once. Impulses from a team trying to impress the marketing higher ups with self-destructing Herds, and the one guy who got fired from Mattel for getting them to make a Barbie who cleans up animal shit twice and wound up in charge of color recognition.

Complete mental messes, functional because at heart they are a badgers, hamsters, parakeets, and small apes who obey whatever bimbofication-like urges provide them the most serotonin or tangible physical pleasure. Intelligence stems from the programming lining up right by chance or having the defiance/will to make choices of their own and not the ones their brain is presenting to them.

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I am not shocked when wild fluffies kill weaker individuals.
Fluffies aren’t humans, they have animal DNA. In my opinion they have the right to not using human morality.
No one is angry, when female tasmanian devil eat her unwanted babies. When fluffy do same thing, everyone going crazy!

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I think it depends, like a herd that can’t find enough food may abandon fluffies that are disabled or if they have to get away from a predator they can’t quickly drag a pillowfluff. But if food is plentiful or maybe the leader was an old house fluffy they may be more sympathetic

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It’s dependent on herd dynamics or the individual fluffy. Some fluffies love the “baww fwiends” and have no problems rolling around the amputee fluffies. Others will beat the shit out of them because they’re ugly, dummy, no leggie fluffies.

I’ve written about it both ways, with feral herds abandoning injured fluffies because they take up resources and naive fluffies trying to hug the pieces of their dismantled friends back together.

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I think things like why or how they came to be ought factor in, what they were like, etc. And the story you’re going for. Really, the genre or mood dictates what things will be like.

I don’t do overall continuity but if I did I think @BFM101 's approach would be my preference. I think that as time goes in from PETA’s release of them the homogeneity would lessen and you’d see herds shaped by their experiences, traumas, and more. The herds in Maroon’s arc won’t be the same as ones in something by me which will be different than Vanner, Fluffus, Oculus, Thk, etc. Maybe you think they’re smart enough to learn a little. Perhaps you think the programming was incomplete and has begun to degenerate. Maybe hardship had overridden their intended natures and they’re pushed by impulses they feel but can’t articulate.

I prefer my ferals a little smarter due to natural selection being quite the crucible. Additionally, they’re forced to at least attempt to learn unlike domestics because there is a life or death demand. Their loving nature is still there but it’s reclusive and wary.

As such? I think it would be very difficult for mine. They’d want to help and keep them around but when the cold times come and it’s either help the disabled fluffy or feeding the thing colts and fillies? There’s going to be a torturous decision made. And the smarty that makes it will likely be hated/resented either way it goes.

Alternatively you could have them collapse under the burden and the whole herd is dead come spring. Lots of skeletons hugging each other, having starved and frozen to death since they spent all their time trying to cheer up the sad fluffies instead of preparing for winter. And that’d be perfectly consistent as well.

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There is none. It depends solely on the type of story the author is telling

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Given how fluffies are a genetic mess and a rushed incomplete creation it’s very likely and probably highly possible, that fluffies would be disabled outside the obvious low intelligence and speech impediments. There could get tons of litters of fluffies with phyiscal deformities, others with even lower intelligence and development and only a few would actually be “normal” fluffies ie. the ones you see in stories and art.

Though none of this fact and it’s entirely up to the author/creator.

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