Here’s a little idea I have for the world of zootopia, not the one presented in the finished film, but instead a variation of the one shown in original marketing, and which seems to have gotten a fair bit through development, the world of repressed predators made to wear shock collars that activated in the event of too much excitement.
The thing that originally brought this idea to mind was seeing a picture by leosaeta of the original version of cub Nick Wilde. All happy and smiley, yet with his requisite shock collar. Of course with me being me I had my very Coonian idea that I really wanted to see him with his shorts soaked, and with the same happy carefree expression. I actually asked a friend to do said edit, and it turned out wonderfully.
Now upon seeing the edit and masturbaiting thoroughly to it to be blunt, an idea formed in my brain, the brain that of course has immense love for weird and interesting potty rebellion themes. The idea being this: In this world, cubs wetting themselves, pred cubs at least, wasn’t remotely uncommon. As with all kids it’s common of course for kids in the zootopia universe to hold off on using the toilet until it’s an emergency. However, because of their shock collars, the desperation they experience is often enough to set the shock collars over their threshold, with the base level being pretty high as it is due to being excitable kids.
Needless to say this is a rather unpleasant experience, and one worth avoiding, though it’s not treated with nearly the weight it would be in our universe, because it is just the unfortunate way of things in that one. Additionally, this leads to wetting anyway. So long story short, pred cubs often just soak themselves at recess and it’s treated completely matter-of-factly. Most cubs make some attempt to avoid wet pants, but it’s not something particularly shamed for or anything. Both cubs and adults accept it as an unremarkable part of life
As for why the cubs don’t just wear diapers or pull-ups, well some do, but most don’t because it was a common occurrence long before disposable diapers were invented, and happened outdoors more commonly than indoors (historically at least, video games and other indoor play changed that in more recent days,) so merely wetting normal clothes was the norm.
However, I imagine that Nick himself is a bit different. He’s the type to only use the potty when most convenient and wet himself with no second thoughts the majority of the time. This led to light harmless teasing from his friends, and wasn’t really considered a problem by anyone, just a matter of cubs being cubs.
However Nick also had a tendency to soil his undies rather than use the toilet. This was something a lot more rare. Still it was treated with a lot less urgency than in our universe, but was regarded by most adults as a bad, immature and ‘gross’ habit. However predator noses weren’t evolved to regard feces as overwhelmingly offensive, so it was on a level more like nose picking/eating boogers, etc. Something that might have got him birched at by adults, and considered a bit of a wacky troublemaker by other kids, but nothing world ending. Also poop physically is more difficult to clean off of indoor things, so him and other cubs with the habit are strongly encouraged or forced to wear pullups in many situations. Though, because Nick was fully fecally continent, he often forwent his pullups if he just wanted to wet. And his mom didn’t make him wear them at home besides to bed.
Speaking of, bedwetting for preds in this universe is the norm, and not something that anyone thinks twice about. In general potty training is slower and less pressure, likely due to the decreased urgency caused by wetting made de facto necessary in some situations. However generally speaking cubs were out of diapers and expected to poop in the potty and try to pee in it when possible by school age. With everything said in mind
Also, I imagine that for prey animals, this is yet another source of predifice against the preds, them being considered disgusting, uncouth, and smelly. Because prey noses do consider excrement, especially from preds as undesirable. This extends everywhere from bullying by prey cubs to prey politicians preaching the ‘degeneracy’ and savagery of preds.
I imagine this can play into the scene of the movie where the prey cubs bully Nick when he tried to scout with them, with them adding shaming of his toileting habits and calling him disgusting and inferior. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good example of facist thinking and ideology, which fits the oppressiveness of the universe.
In summary, there’s my weird potty rebel zootopia story concept, leading into an unexpected, but in hindsight obvious political take about the prey ruling class in such a society. Very real facist thinking would have to go into the world becoming oppressive in that way.
