Thoughts on Yukkuri Abuse

[that one guy]

Disclaimer: this is not intended as an attack on abuse, but as merely
thoughts as to why it happens and why today it remains a staple of the
yukkuri fandom.

I was looking through the discussions and the question was asked, why
abuse and why is it so popular? I didn't really feel like bumping
those threads... so here's my thoughts.

Well, it's interesting.

As mentioned in previous discussions, Makako was probably the source
of it, and honestly, I can see why. Kanako smashing a Reimu in self
defense, the pinching of the cheeks, so on and so forth. Yes, it was
very light by the standards that exist today but when release to the
masses of the internet, someone is going to go "lets see how extreme
it gets!" either just because they're violent or to troll. Either way
the abuse sub-fandom of the yukkuri fandom (which is a sub-fandom of
touhou, so a sub-sub-fandom [i'm trying too hard]) is firmly
entrenched and won't go away.

Now while it seemed most of the violence did originally occur to
seemingly innocent yukkuris (for all intents and purposes, lets assume
they were cause there was nothing to imply they were "shitheads" we
see so commonly abused today at the start), and to a lot of people
would probably take offense to this. So the artists faced an issue:
continue to abuse creatures that did nothing wrong other than exist
(and potentially lose fans), shift to less violent art, or come up
with something to placate those who dislike it.

In hindsight it's obvious: give them traits that no one likes to
justify the violence, or as was previously mentioned elsewhere, take
the negative traits of the given characters and make them extreme.
Take away the cute factor (or over-ride it via extreme negative
traits) and it become more acceptable.

The implications of this are major. Abuse stories with "shithead",
"scum", and "gutter trash" yukkuri became the norm. People who were
on the fence leaning "it's wrong to do it to something innocent"
regarding the abuse prior to this went "well, ok it's a piece of shit,
it deserved it."

Now here's where it gets interesting, and reading the Yun Donuts
series made me realize it. It has been said many times that they're
probably stress reliefs for the artists. Had a bad day at work with
customers that have egos the size of Texas? Well, you could write a
comic with someone murdering customers like that after it happened to
them, but that'll get you thrown in the mad house (unless you're
writing Johnny the Homicidal Maniac). Instead you change it to
something more acceptable, in this case the yukkuris. Now instead of
beating up humans, you're beating up balls of dough filled with bean
paste. It would not surprise me one bit if the Yun Donut's artist
actually had to deal with customers like that at one point (in fact,
there's an egotistical human customer towards the end if I recall
right).

However, some good did come out of it. The implication of the
personalities of the yukkuris led to them having a bit more background
than before, gave those who want to portray them as nicer more
motivation to do so. And like humans, it gave them a wider range of
traits to pick from. So instead of having just "nice pet yukkuris" as
it was at the start, you have those "shitheads", "deibus",
"niceheads", and everything in between.

But all in all, to sum up, the abuse authors and artists picked up on
the fact that if you portray them as pieces of shit that only exist to
cause others frustrations and make them act like said pieces of shit
(how does shit act anyway?), you're going to get more and more people
who are going to go "that thing deserved it".

[Poweryoga]

Hi there, welcome to the boards!

We've actually just had this discussion very recently.

http://groups.google.com/group/yufanfics/browse_thread/thread/ba18ababb6318571?hl=en_US#

To be quite honest, I never really saw the need to justify abuse. I'm
always more of the mindset: "Why not?"

[MET]

Well i always said that Yukkuris developed in a darn interesting and
kinda unique deconstruct of the cute critter, way more than Happy Tree
Friends or any black comedy show that may had a cute critter on it.

Instead of always being, cute, nice, etc. and getting abused for their
diabetical levels of cuteness, some get abused because they are
horrible beings, raping others, murdering and stealing from their
fellows, invading human places and acting like they owned the world,
etc. That for me really made them way more unique of any cute critter
deconstruct, also i don't include jissous on that since they were
always disgusting from day 1 if i recall correctly. Basically you had
cute critters that betrayed the love and trust of those who like cute
critters by being horrible creatures, not all of them, but a great
deal of them would.

And as you said, the introduction of bad and trash yukkuris gave more
worth to the original niceness of yukkuris for many people, and even
some sort of "ideal" for some to achieve. So the nice yukkuris became
precious for those in the middle of the "Family Friendly" and "abuse"
faction.

And i may think that yukkuris many times embody some of the worse
people we meet everyday but without the protection they would usually
have. This being more notorious because of their smug snake attitude
and in many cases digusting morals, one may compare them to those
arrogant yet powerless villains that only have their position through
money or heritage, but not real own power, and in normal
circunstances, with no goons to protect them, laws for them to exploit
against you, etc. you would beat the crap out of them. Sometimes they
are as you say, avatars of that kind of horrible people we would like
to beat up to a bloody pulp but our civil attitude and restrictions,
thankfully, prevent us to.

In the end, while Yukkuris became more violent, got a mistaken infamy
from other netizens because of abuse, etc. I think that in a sick way,
they got benefited more by the abuse and the introduction of trash
yukkuris, it gaves them depth and made thtem grow beyond yet another
stupid net meme or yet another stupid and boring cute critter. Now
they are Yukkuris, and that right now means a lot.

[that one guy]

Thanks, and I'm one to analyze things a lot more than I should, but it
does give me something to do when you have a 15-20 minute walk to
school -shrugs-.

On Jan 25, 9:33 pm, Poweryoga <nospam11...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there, welcome to the boards!
>
> We've actually just had this discussion very recently.
>

> http://groups.google.com/group/yufanfics/browse_thread/thread/ba18aba...