Having Plushies is a great idea! I wanted to try to use the Zombie Plushie to make an iron farm, but the problem is, it's always on as long as it's within an 8 block radius so it never lets the villagers sleep which is required to produce iron golems. After a while, the iron golems stop appearing. Do you have any suggestions for how to make this work? If not, could they be toggled with redstone or something?

I can add a block that when under a scarecrow disables it in the next update. Then you can just use pistons to swap it out when needed

yes, it does work through blocks. I probably will not add a config option to change the distance calculation to a cube. but if you can code you are free to add the feature and submit a pull request.

you can just use pistons to swap it out when needed

Just to help me manually control it with pistons, how big exactly is the 8 block radius? Is it a cube or a sphere? Is it exactly 8? Does it work through blocks? I know this is a lot, but it's necessary to design a consistent farm.

EDIT: From my tinkering it seems to be an 8-block sphere centred at the middle of the plushie. It also seems to work through blocks. Is this correct? If yes, is it possible to add a config to make this a cube?