[DISCARDED] Domestic Issues

[Jutsa]

Figured I'd try again at a reversal option to banning pets. I know, at this point it's not even that remotely necessary, but I still thought this could be amusing to work on.

Title: Domestic Issues
The Issue: Following your recent decision to free animals from @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ captivity, stray animal populations and deaths have skyrocketed in cities, while farms have lost all of their livestock.
Validity: Followup to #431.3

Option 1: "Well, you could always kill two @@ANIMALPLURAL@@ with one stone," suggests scruffy hermit lumberjack @@RANDOMNAME@@, throwing a stone through your window at some passing @@ANIMALPLURAL@@. "If you let us civilian folk hunt down and eat the rogue animals, free of regulation and licensing, I think all your problems would be dissolved rather quick-like."
[effect] bear traps are a common road hazard
(Would remove vegetarianism if active)

Option 2: "We need animals on the farm, you idiot!" yells @@RANDOMNAME@@, head of the largest agricultural supply chain in @@NAME@@, after having scavenged the cafeteria for food. "Not to mention that in your attempt to be 'ethical', you've left all these animals to die on our streets. Make an exception so farms can humanely house these animals and provide meaning to their lives, but have mandatory house checks to make sure strays can't be kidnapped and abused by the common riff-raff."
[effect] most households are considered farms

Option 3: "You can't do that!" yells the head of the increasingly unpopular People for the Ethical Treatment of Everything. "Animals are finally free, as they should be. There's only one more thing to do: release the plants! Abolish farmland, and let nature be untampered and free, at last!"
[effect] potatoes have been liberated
(Would probably lead to issue #460)

Title: Domestic Issues
The Issue: Following your recent decision to free animals from @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ captivity, stray animal populations and deaths have skyrocketed in cities, meanwhile farms have lost all of their livestock.
Validity: Followup to #431.3

Option 1: "Well, you could always kill two @@ANIMALPLURAL@@ with one stone," suggests scruffy hermit lumberjack @@RANDOMNAME@@, holding up a rather janky box trap. "All we'd need is for the government to let us civilian folk to hunt down and eat the rogue animals, free of regulation and licensing, and all our problems would be solved rather nicely."
[effect] bear traps are a common road hazard
(Would remove vegetarianism if active)

Validity: Not vegetarian
Option 2a: "We need animals on the farm, you idiot!" yells @@RANDOMNAME@@, head of the largest agricultural supply chain in @@NAME@@, after having scavenged the cafeteria for food. "Not to mention that in your attempt to be 'ethical', you've left all these animals to die on our streets, rather than in our nice, safe farms where they can be slaughtered humanely. Mostly. And sure, by allowing farms to house animals, civilians may try to keep onto pets under the guise of farm use, but at this point, do you really think that'd be so bad?"
[effect] homesteads are crowded with sheep and even more @@ANIMALPLURAL@@

Validity: Vegetarian
Option 2b: "We need animals on the farm, you idiot!" yells @@RANDOMNAME@@, head of the largest agricultural supply chain in @@NAME@@, after having scavenged the cafeteria for food. "Not to mention that in your attempt to be 'ethical', you've left all these animals to die on our streets, rather than in our nice, safe farms where their lives are made productive. And sure, by allowing farms to house animals, civilians may try to keep onto pets under the guise of farm use, but at this point, do you really think that'd be so bad?"
[effect] homesteads are crowded with sheep and even more @@ANIMALPLURAL@@

Option 3: "You can't do that!" yells the head of the increasingly unpopular People for the Ethical Treatment of Everything. "Animals are finally free, as they should be. There's only one more thing to do: release the plants! Abolish farmland, and let nature be untampered and free, at last!"
[effect] potatoes have been liberated
(Would probably lead to issue #460)

Title: Domestic Issues
The Issue: Following your recent decision to free animals from @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ captivity, stray animal populations and deaths have skyrocketed in cities, meanwhile farms have lost all of their livestock.
Validity: Followup to #431.3

Option 1: "Well, you could always kill two @@ANIMALPLURAL@@ with one stone," suggests hermit lumberjack @@RANDOMNAME@@, holding up a rather janky box trap. "All we'd need is for the government to let civilians to hunt down and eat these rogue animals, without regulation or licensing, and all our problems would fade away."
[effect] bear traps are a common road hazard
(Would remove vegetarianism if active)

Validity: Not vegetarian
Option 2a: "We need animals on the farm, you idiot!" yells @@RANDOMNAME@@, head of the largest agricultural supply chain in @@NAME@@, after having scavenged the cafeteria for food. "Not to mention that in trying to be ethical, you've left all these animals to die on our streets, rather than in our nice, safe farms where they can be slaughtered humanely. Mostly. And sure, by allowing farms to house animals, civilians may try to keep onto pets under the guise of farm use, but at this point, do you really think that'd be so bad?"
[effect] homesteads are crowded with sheep and even more @@ANIMALPLURAL@@

Validity: Vegetarian
Option 2b: "We need animals on the farm, you idiot!" yells @@RANDOMNAME@@, head of the largest agricultural supply chain in @@NAME@@, after having scavenged the cafeteria for food. "Not to mention that in trying to be ethical, you've left all these animals to die on our streets, rather than in our nice, safe farms where their lives are made productive. And sure, by allowing farms to house animals, civilians may try to keep onto pets under the guise of farm use, but at this point, do you really think that'd be so bad?"
[effect] homesteads are crowded with sheep and even more @@ANIMALPLURAL@@

Option 3: "You can't do that!" yells the head of the increasingly unpopular People for the Ethical Treatment of Everything. "Animals are finally free, as they should be. There's only one more thing to do: free the plants! Abolish farmland, and let nature be untampered and free, at last!"
[effect] potatoes have been liberated
(Would probably lead to issue #460)

[Trotterdam]

meanwhile farms have absolutely no animals

Well, no livestock. They probably have plenty of pests eating the crops

[Jutsa]

Fair enough. Small fix.

[Australian rePublic]

Option 3- so how does this hippie plan to eat?

[Jutsa]

Hunting and grazing, or hypothetically with a massive food storage made in case of an apocalyptic scenario where he is the chosen and divine 10% that survives.

Something like that, I'm sure.

[Australian rePublic]

Hunting and grazing, or hypothetically with a massive food storage made in case of an apocalyptic scenario where he is the chosen and divine 10% that survives.

Something like that, I'm sure.

Hunting and grazing can only feed so many people, and forget about veganism. This hippie could very well be that stupid, but make that clear as a consequence

[Jutsa]

I wouldn't make it a clear consequence, personally. If someone's gonna go to a hunter/gatherer lifestyle (as is possible rn), the ramifications would be issue 460.
Meanwhile, I'm quite amused with potatoes being liberated.

[Jutsa]

Little bump; made a few rather small changes to the dialogue to either flow slightly better or add slight personality.

[Jutsa]

Alright, tweaked options 1 and 2 a little (merged 2 and made it less of a reversal option and more of an absolutely incredible line of reasoning if I do say so myself).

Hopefully all of the speakers are a bit out of whack now.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

The Issue: Following your recent decision to free animals from @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ captivity, stray animal populations and deaths have skyrocketed in cities, meanwhile farms have lost all of their livestock.

Last bit seems unlikely. ALL their livestock?

[Trotterdam]

Last bit seems unlikely. ALL their livestock?

Well, yes. If you make ownership of animals illegal, then there won't be any livestock anymore, except maybe a few subsistence farmers keeping animals illegally.

Though that's less of a consequence and more "That's literally what I just said to do. Working as planned. Duh?".

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Oh right, I always thought of the issue option as letting all pets go. Never thought it meant that farms couldn't keep animals as livestock, though I can see how it could be read that way.

I just thought from the context of the issue it meant just pets.

[Trotterdam]

It says "We must free all of the animals!". Besides, pets tend to get treated better than livestock (I mean, they get free food and shelter without having to do any actual work, and don't get crammed into overcrowded battery farms), so anyone wanting to ban pets on animal welfare grounds would probably want to do the same to livestock too. Not doing so would just be silly. Err, sillier.

There are gray areas too, since sometimes the same types of animals are both kept as pets by some people and used as livestock by other people. Most dogs are pets, but if a farmer has a working dog to herd his sheep, or sniff out truffles, or guard against intruders, or the like, does that count as a pet or livestock? Cats, too, are often found on farms to keep the crops safe from pests like mice (which is probably the original reason they were domesticated for, thousands of years ago). Meanwhile, typical livestock animals like chickens or sheep are rarely kept solely as pets, but it does happen. If you ban pets but allow livestock, you would probably have people making up dubious "uses" they need their animals for in order to justify keeping them.

[Jutsa]

That's precisely why I altered option 2, in fact. Originally it was just a "might as well reverse it" option, but that's lame,
so I made it an option that specifies that only pets be banned, and not farm animals.
ed: The consequence, of course, being more people raising farm animals.

[Fauxia]

Pssh, terrible issue, Jutsa, don’t you know it should be "while" not "meanwhile" in the description?

Okay, I’m kidding. About the terrible issue part.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

It says "We must free all of the animals!".

Yeah, but I read that as "all the animals that we're talking about here" rather than "all the animals everywhere".

It's like if you are talking about a bad restaurant, and you say "and all the desserts are disgusting", then people would assume you're talking about that restaurant's desserts, and not all desserts everywhere.

That "all the animals" statement takes place in an issue about stray dogs and cats, and it even opens the option with "These animals deserve to be free!"

Premise:
A group of distraught high school girls has brought the problem of stray dogs and cats around @@NAME@@ to your attention.
Option:
“These animals deserve to be free!” screeches RANDOMNAME, a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Everything. “They found a home in the back alleyways and dumps. Who are you to take them away from their homes, tame them and make them your slaves? They don’t exist for your entertainment. We must free all of the animals!”

To me the implication is that "all the animals" here refers to all the animals being discussed, not all animals in general.

Having said that, Luna's stat allocations there do include a hit to agriculture, so he may have read it your way.

[Trotterdam]

If I really read it your way, then I could argue the option doesn't ban pets either. The subject is specifically strays, and so pets that have never been strays would not be covered. But I think that's pretty obviously not the intent.

[Jutsa]

destroyed the mean, put it on last call.

Frankly, I still read it as free all the animals. Admittedly, context in options 1 and 2 kinda bring some fluff to the matter of option 3 being about pets not strays,
and for sure, strays are definitely an issue with pets and generally not farm animals. generally.

Plus here's some more banter: On one hand you have this:

Who are you to take them away from their homes, tame them and make them your slaves?

That highly suggests domestication for farm use, ngl. On the other hand we have this:

They don't exist for your entertainment.

Which implies housepets or, optionally, circus animals.

For sure, there's some ambiguity imo, but I think that's kinda missing the point:
that the issue premise is meant to be a funny, unintended consequence. (Or expand upon a potentially intended action, depending on how the option's interpreted.)

ed: Forgot to say, put this on last call.

[Drasnia]

The Issue: Following your recent decision to free animals from @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ captivity, stray animal populations and deaths have skyrocketed in cities, while farms have lost all of their livestock.

This desc simply doesn't work for me. First of all, it's lacking in specificity - which should be its strongest quality considering you have it setup as a direct followup. It's only one long and awkward sentence which exacerbates the situation. Also, it's probably just my style, but I generally don't like starting issues with phrases like "Following your recent decision to...".

As it stands, it really doesn't feel very believable, though a stronger start might fix most of that problem.

"Well, you could always kill two @@ANIMALPLURAL@@ with one stone," suggests scruffy hermit lumberjack @@RANDOMNAME@@, throwing a stone through your window at some passing @@ANIMALPLURAL@@. "If you let us civilian folk hunt down and eat the rogue animals, free of regulation and licensing, I think all your problems would be dissolved rather quick-like."

That's rather dark and unnecessary. Presumably, the majority of people this issue is aimed at banned pet ownership because they care very deeply for animals. Starting out the options with such casual animal cruelty seems to me as very unnecessary and callous.

Remember, this is the option that this is a follow up for:

3. "These animals deserve to be free!" screeches @@RANDOMNAME@@, a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Everything. "They found a home in the back alleyways and dumps. Who are you to take them away from their homes, tame them and make them your slaves? They don't exist for your entertainment. We must free all of the animals!"

This is who you need to be targeting with your first couple options. It's a far more narrow type of player than the general NS populace where your character description would make more sense.

With more revision, this might make sense as a third option, but it doesn't seem right as the first one.

"We need animals on the farm, you idiot!" yells @@RANDOMNAME@@, head of the largest agricultural supply chain in @@NAME@@, after having scavenged the cafeteria for food. "Not to mention that in your attempt to be 'ethical', you've left all these animals to die on our streets. Make an exception so farms can humanely house these animals and provide meaning to their lives, but have mandatory house checks to make sure strays can't be kidnapped and abused by the common riff-raff."

I don't like red. We generally assume that without further clarification, speakers are usually addressing Leader. I don't see anything that would suggest otherwise, so it's really easy to construe it as him calling us an idiot. Furthermore, it seems very out-of-place regardless of who he's speaking to. This is the business/economic option, not the fanatical one.

Blue is a run-on sentence. Clean it up.

[effect] most households are considered farms

I generally don't comment on effect lines because it's by far the thing I'm weakest at, but this is one I think I have some input. Right now it's a bit of a non sequitur. What the joke I think you're going for (and could work with good execution) is about people calling their homes farms so they can get an exemption - similar to how in RL people call their stupid pets emotional support animals or service animals to get them into public places they'd otherwise be disallowed.

You're going to have to spell it out a bit more/make it a bit more explicit for it to make sense.

[Jutsa]

Huh. Never actually thought of that @First option being wrong for the target audience.

In hindsight, maybe should've considered that.

Wellh, I'll probably make option 2 option 1 then (play on specificity), and then... huh. I'd maybe consider putting option 1 into option 3,
but you do make a good point about the premise not being very concise. I think my line of logic was something like
"There are several issues with this but since this is a single followup lets throw them all in!"
And, in fact, the whole agricultural aspect of it was kinda thrown in after the initial populations aspect... which, I think that's what I'm going to drop,
and make this solely based on the affects of not having animals in agriculture.

Course, with that, option 1 becomes rather pointless anyway, doesn't it? And to top it off, it already has a hunter/gatherer vibe which is what option 3's meant for.
Sooo... I'll have to think of a new option. Probably still have 3 stay as 3, though.

Many thanks, Drasnia. Also, I'm aware I make run-on sentences*. It's a shame that I simply never think to actually check for them.

[Trotterdam]

and for sure, strays are definitely an issue with pets and generally not farm animals. generally.

There's lots of feral animals descended from farm animals. Mustangs, for example. They're just too large to be comfortable in cities, so they mostly roam the wild.

The Issue: Following your recent decision to free animals from @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ captivity, stray animal populations and deaths have skyrocketed in cities, while farms have lost all of their livestock.

This desc simply doesn't work for me. First of all, it's lacking in specificity - which should be its strongest quality considering you have it setup as a direct followup. It's only one long and awkward sentence which exacerbates the situation. Also, it's probably just my style, but I generally don't like starting issues with phrases like "Following your recent decision to...".

I usually don't either, but it's okay if it's an actual chain issue you'll receive immediately after the one it's based on.

What I'm more concerned about is presenting as a "consequence" something that's the entire point of the decision. You're basically saying "Following your recent decision to ban the keeping of livestock, people no longer have livestock.". Which is pretty close to the dreaded "people don't like what you did and are asking you to reverse it".

I don't like red. We generally assume that without further clarification, speakers are usually addressing Leader. I don't see anything that would suggest otherwise, so it's really easy to construe it as him calling us an idiot.

Characters have called @@LEADER@@ an idiot before.

[Jutsa]

What I'm more concerned about is presenting as a "consequence" something that's the entire point of the decision. You're basically saying "Following your recent decision to ban the keeping of livestock, people no longer have livestock.". Which is pretty close to the dreaded "people don't like what you did and are asking you to reverse it".

Well shoot. That's an excellent point. Dang, actually that's a beyond excellent point.

My line of thinking was "You banned animals. Surprise, you weren't thinking of FARM animals, were you!",
but now that you mention it, either you intentionally ban pets or you intentionally ban all animals,
regardless of your interpretation of the option there's no real issue here.

Discarded.

edit: The thing I'm really sad about is the title going bye-bye.
Eh who knows, maybe it could be used if a zoos reversal issue title needs some punching up.