Just had some thoughts come up with a future story I’m working on. Obviously it’s all “depends on headcanon” in the end, but I’m curious about how you all see it.
There are some pretty good “in universe” reasons I’ve seen for fluffies being as durable as they can be in some ways, for being so fragile. Blood clotting easily (intended so they don’t bleed to death from treatable injuries by careless kids, instead leads to things like them not dying from amateur pillowing), not passing out from pain (intended so they can call for help if injured, leads to all kinds of abuse scenarios). Also sometimes things like being immune to most diseases but sometimes still able to carry them (due to messed up genetics).
I was thinking of a scenario with barely-survivable injuries that would lead to any real creature quickly dying of septic shock, and if a fluffy might survive them the way it would something like a quadruple amputation. I can’t recall infection coming up as often as other forms of harm in a story context. Any thoughts on if fluffies are more resilient to infection, and if so what an in-universe reason might be?
Edit: Already some great responses; to clarify I’m thinking more of “infected wound” kind of things than infectious diseases (it that’s a distinction in your head).
No viruses because they have synthetic DNA that isnt like other animals. Bacteria because of the whole strong immune system.
Small communal animals like rats are naturally prone to respiratory infections so it would make sense from the Hasbio “no one will pay 2000 bucks for an animal that will get sick and die in 2 years” marketing aspect.
They are basically gorging themselves on public sketti dispenser meals made of ground poopie babbehs after those poopies were living toilets for the duration of their lives. basically factory farming if spreading e coli was the main goal instead of just a side effect.
Yeah, the scenario that came up is part of a longer story (not a crucial part so it may end up very different in the final version) that’s kind of an accidental abuse thing. Someone who’s not remotely qualified to do surgery on anything tries to “fix” an injured fluffy with self-styled surgery, possibly saves its life but the fluffy might end up wishing it were dead.
That was what had me thinking about it, since a fluffy in that condition would usually either be with an abuser and won’t live long as you said, or would be in some kind of vet situation with the right tools, medicine, and know-how on hand. This is more like someone with a one semester of middle school Home Economics level of sewing skill and a few bandaids for post-op care “helping” the fluffy, and I couldn’t think of much that I’ve read for reference points as to what might happen next.
dude, get outta my head! lol. i’ve thinking about this exact topic for about a day or so myself after coming up with a line in a fluffy sales pitch, “There’s almost no vet expenses because they naturally heal from just about anything that dosen’t kill 'em outright.” which was more of an overall observation then my own specific headcannon. i’ve kinda been asking myself the same questions but the replies are better then anything i could come up with.
I seem to be surfing on the same mental wavelength as a bunch of others on here recently, lol. I had a reaction like yours to two or three things in the recent “fluffies in music videos” post and discussion, like they’d all been floating around in my head at the same time.
As for this I’ve had kind of the same view as what you’re saying, seeing them as durable in their own weird way, even taking a long time to die from fatal injuries that aren’t of the “instant death” variety. Maybe even running around like a literal chicken with its head cut off as the severed head looks back at the body with confusion, if things are getting a little weirdbox.
On one hand I can see them pretty resistant to infections, like with disease. It could be interesting from a storytelling perspective to have them resistant but not immune too. Something like in a situation of bad amateur surgery as mentioned before, the infected wounds start to get gross and painful, but not so much that the infection actually spreads enough to kill it.
I don’t really recall infected wounds coming up too often either. A local infection can always turn systemic, so my guess would be a fluffy has really good innate immunity to keep minor localized infections at bay before they can be an issue. Possibly some sort of like…mild anti microbial compound in their spit which is why they do the ‘licky clean’ thing.
I now want to see a fluffy with active MRSA, able to transmit but unable to die.
Also, it seems like fluffy resistance would make them incredible disease vectors. I can see a massive plague outbreak due to a luxury fluffy breeder in Four Corners.
the only infected wounds already done in stories here (that i can think of off the top of my head, anyway) resulted in death in a matter of days, so i imagine that if an infection IS capable of hurting a fluffy, it’s very serious and probably can’t be stopped
No viruses because they have synthetic DNA that isnt like other animals. Bacteria because of the whole strong immune system.
You’re thinking of retroviruses that insert themselves into the host cell’s DNA; the vast majority of viruses just hijack cellular machinery like ribosomes to generate more virus particles.
That said, the most reasonable excuse is that Hasbio put a lot of work into the fluffy immune system as looking after a ill whiney human child is bad enough; looking after an ill whiney fluffy on top of that would test the patience of even the most seasoned hugboxer.
From an immunological perspective, the most logical approach would be to change the antigenic markers of fluffy cells, so viruses don’t have anything to latch onto and invade the cell. Bacterial infections would still be an issue, but a super hostile and aggressive immune system (even more so than a standard one) working off a completely alien set of external cellular markers would generally put paid to that.
Parasites like protozoans would likely meet a sticky end at the hands of fluffy equivalent of IgE and macrophages, but macroparasites like intestinal worms could still flourish, barring authors’ tendencies towards neobiogenesis of worms for fluffies in extreme poop environments.
Thk in “Simple Creatures” proposed a solution - when fluffies give ‘huggies’ to each other, it kicks off a pyrexial (fever) response, raising fluffy’s body temperature to kill off pathogens and stimulate the immune system. Hugging also triggers endorphin and oxytocin release, which have a synergistic effect, thus making fluffies feel better at the same time.
Edit: I just realised, under Thk’s headcanon, fluffies literally give warm hugs due to their raised body temperature.
Since they don’t normally use methicillin to treat fluffy bacterial infections, there’s nothing special about a fluffy contracting MRSA over a normal staph infection (MRSA just stands for Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus).
If anything, a MRSA infection would be better for the fluffy over a normal S.aureus as the strain wastes energy and resources generating the protein that gives it the methicillin resistance.
In terms of physical trauma if it doesn’t kill them outright or in the minutes following due to heavy internal bleeding or ruptured organs they’re surviving the encounter. Now a secondary infection might do them in over the course of days or weeks if they can’t keep the wound site clean or dehydration/starvation if they’re immobilized but they’ll probably survive otherwise. That is of course assuming that a predator doesn’t stumble upon them in an injured state and finish the job.
Death by infection can be a slow death if it doesn’t progress fast enough that complications spring up. It will be painful. It will cause them problems depending on where the infection is based.
I will say that, intentionally or not, a lot of Fluffies are written as if they don’t really go into shock or if they do it’s in a similar way to humans and we’ve got a great ability to deal with and recover from shock compared to other animals. This is distinct from the condition known as septic shock in which entire organ systems shut down from wide spread infection from sepsis. Septic shock can kill very quickly if it’s not caught early and treated, sometimes even then. Shock kills faster. The animal just can’t deal with the suddenness of the trauma and is overwhelmed. The stress of the situation and their own biological responses to it are too much and their vascular system can’t handle it. They stop responding and kinda… just give up. Fluffies don’t seem to do this.
I could be mashing two stories together in my head: There was a post apoc storyline about a fluffy flu killing fluffies and humans alike. Was a plot point for “why im an abuser” type stories.
Fluffies caught more diseases because they were designed to be indoors, not exposed to filth or wild animals and relying on the immunity of the vaccinated humans and household pets.
This would have been early 2010s, so it was a swine/ avian flu allegory.
It’s a big part of the “Doctor Maggie” fluff TV show in my Glimmer stories, a happy kid who loves fluffies encouraging ‘shots to stay healthy’ but its really marketing to get people coming back to fluffmarts to try and ‘fix’ the defective units.
So a fluffy could still live really long even if a stranger injected them with large amounts of semen or soda in their bloodstream? Or didn’t let them make poopies.
I personally go with them not really being ‘immune’ to most things, just less likely. Mainly because: If they can basically make a cure to some of the most deadly illnesses, like Rabies or B virus, would be silly to waste that on walking shit tanks. But to answer your question, my personal take is they’re more given shots at birth to most illnesses, nothing really stopping a new virus showing up on the block and wiping out a herd of fluffies. Otherwise, to me, they’d be just walking talking bio-bombs ready to go off.
I would think more the outside forces being more, like another life form injected its young into a fluffy and cause hell on its body. Could always go with things like frost bite, overwork, turn muscles where the injury would need to be remove as it’d flood the body with too much protein and would need the limb removed or replaced.
I’d recommend hitting up ‘Monsters Inside Me’ for infections that can kill, but can be treated if done in time and is survivable if done in time.
Very interesting about deer, I knew some of those things, but not kind of the whole bigger picture.
I’ve seen the lack of going into shock as being like the lack of going unconscious from pain. Originally engineered for domestic situations so if they’re injured they can call for help, rather than passing and out and dying before the owner realizes anything is wrong. There was a story by Gardel (I don’t remember which one offhand, it might have been Hubris) where that all sort of coalesced, there was a scene where one of the original fluffy developers sees a fluffy missing it’s back half crawling down the street with its front legs and dragging its guts behind it, wailing in pain. He thinks about the “safety” measures that were designed, and how they instead led to this creature that should be dead from shock/trauma/blood loss living out its final hours in agony (obviously I’m kind of paraphrasing, it’s been a while since I’ve read it).
I don’t know if the idea was originally Gardel’s or not, but that really stands out as an example of a quasi-realistic in-universe explanation of some of the durabilities fluffies have.