Part Twenty (Alternate timeline)
Things calmed down after a while, but for a time Sam’s life was in turmoil. After the attempted arson attack, she’d been forced to move, never a pleasant process, only exacerbated by the rush and stressful circumstances. Now, however, things were mostly back to normal, albeit in a new, if a bit nicer, house in a new housing development across town.
At the insistence of Mikhael, Sam refused further interviews when they were occasionally requested, opting instead to focus on her own life. There was a lot to focus on, since the whole incident had been extremely stressful for her fluffies. Knight seemed particularly affected, spending most nights awake, keeping an eye on the others. Sam didn’t have the heart to tell him, and no doubt he already knew, that there was likely to be very little he could do if a similar situation arose.
Something else was bothering Sam, though. Lately, the fluffies had taken to talking to one another in a low voice, as if trying to keep a secret from her. Sorely tempted though she had been, she’d stuck with her resolution to not spy on them, so whatever it was they were murmuring about was a mystery to her. She was equal parts hurt that they believed they needed to keep a secret from her, and concerned over what the issue might be.
She didn’t have to wonder for long, however. One morning when she was filling the food bowls and water bottles, which, although the younger generation of fluffies were long grown by now, she still hadn’t gotten around to replacing with bowls. While the fluffies immediately approached happily, as they always did when it was time for breakfast, Sunbeam seemed reluctant. When Sam had finished filling the food bowls, the little alicorn approached her.
Sam was shocked when she noticed the tears on Sunbeam’s face. Clearly, something had upset her. Dread immediately set in, and Sam glanced towards Aqua. Had the treatment not been enough? In the recent past Sam had been to busy to pay too much attention, but perhaps Aqua had reverted to her old behavior without Sam noticing. If so, this wouldn’t be just a case of a foal wanting to be the bestest babbeh, it’d be full-blown smarty syndrome.
“Mummah!” Sunbeam sobbed. “Sunbeam nu can taek it nu mowe! Nu wan wie tu mummah!”
“What is it, Sunbeam?” Sam asked, voice as gentle as she could make it.
“Sunbeam am soon-mummah!”
Sam heart dropped to her stomach. This was the worst possible time! She knew what she needed to do, but she dreaded it. God, why can’t anything ever be easy?
“Even though I said not to?”
“Sunbeam am sowwy, bu’ Sunbeam an’ Victow nee’ babbehs!”
“Victor! Get over here!”
Victor made his way over, a look of terror on his face. “Wut mummah wan?”
“Sunbeam says she has tummeh babbehs. Why is that?”
Victor’s look of terror deepened. “Victow gib Sunbeam tummeh babbehs, mummah.”
“Sunbeam nee’ babbeh! Fwuffies nee’ babbehs!”
“Victor, what did I say about babbehs?”
“Fwuffies nu hab mowe babbehs.”
“And?”
“An mummah nu taek wumps 'way.”
“But you gave Sunbeam tummeh babbehs anyway.”
Victor backed away as best he could with his missing leg. “Pwease, mummah, nu taek wumps! Victow nee’ wumps!”
“There are rules for a reason, Victor, Sunbeam. I didn’t want any more foals because I can’t afford to take care of them. I can’t have an entire herd living in my house.”
“NUUUUUUUUU! Mummah, pwease nu taek tummeh-babbehs 'way!”
“WAI SUNBEAM TEWW MUMMAH?” Hope was livid.
“Hope, did you tell them to keep this secret?”
“Hope nu wan Sunbeam wose babbehs! Wosin’ babbehs am wowstest heawt-huwties ebah! Nu wan’ Sunbeam hab wowstest heawt-huwties!”
“Mummah?”
“Yes?”
“Pwease nu be angwy at Hope.” After reaching adulthood the younger fluffies had begun referring to their parents by name, for reasons Sam was never able to ascertain.
“No. I’m angry at all of you. I didn’t want to have to do this. Sunbeam, as soon as your foals are big enough, they’re going to have to leave and live somewhere else.”
“NUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! SCREEEEEEEEEEE!”
“Victor, we’re going to have to have a talk.”
“Pwease, mummah! Pwease onwy taek Victow’s wumps! Nu taek babbehs!”
Sam sighed. There really wasn’t a good option here.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I can’t keep the foals here.”
“Fwuffies wewe tawkin’,” Sunbeam spoke up. “Wiww shawe nummies wif babbehs, nu nee’ mowe nummies. Pwease, mummah! Wet Sunbeam keep babbehs!”
“No, I’m not having you starve yourselves. That’d just make more problems.”
“Mummah, pwease!”
“GODDAMMIT, SUNBEAM! I’m doing this because I don’t have a choice! You can keep the foals until they’re old enough for solid food, then they have to go.”
Sunbeam cowered, but to Sam’s surprise Aqua spoke. “Pwease nu be bad fwuffies! Aqua nu wan’ 'ou tu wose weggies!”
“SUNBEAM NU CAWE! WAN’ BABBEHS! WAN’ BABBEHS MOAW DAN WEGGIES!”
Shit. She had the foal-fever bad. Sam was busily trying to think of options, but there were so few. Her budget was already stretched thin after the move, so there wasn’t much she could do. Maybe she could have the foals fostered until she could afford to take them in, but that would be almost as bad as just giving them up altogether.
“Mummah,” Knight, who’d been watching silently, made his voice heard. “Knight wiww gu, nu nee’ howsies ow nummies if babbehs can stay.”
“No. I’m not letting you do that to yourself. That goes for Hope too. The foals have to go, and that’s final. Sunbeam, you have two options. Either I can take your tummeh babbehs away now, or you can keep them until they’re able to eat solid food.”
“SUNBEAM HATCHU!”
“I know, but we don’t have a choice.”
“Sunbeam wan’ keep babbehs!”
“Fine. Now, since all of you hid this from me, sketties night is cancelled until I decide you’re all good fluffies again. Sunbeam, I can’t give you the sorry-stick, so you’re going in the sorry-box. Victor, you’re getting the sorry-stick.”
“Otay, mummah.” Victor went to go grab the sorry-stick. Since the anticipation was more of a punishment than the few whacks from the stick, it paid to have fluffies fetch it themselves.
“Mummah, Sunbeam wub 'ou! Wai ‘ou taekin’ ebewyting 'way fwom Sunbeam?”
Sam snapped, and for an instant the euphoric rage that she’d unleashed on the smarty buoyed her mind. “Listen, you little bitch! You think I want to do this? I told you all not to have foals to prevent this! THIS IS YOUR FAULT, NOT MINE! I should have had you all fixed. You’re too stupid to follow one simple instruction.”
“Hewe am sowwy-stick, mummah.” Victow dropped it in front of her feet.
“Leave. Now.”
“Wut?”
“If I do this right now I’m not going to be able to stop. LEAVE!”
Sam’s breath quickened, and she left the saferoom, then the house. She just needed a moment to clear her head. What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t fix everything! She couldn’t keep trying so hard!
“What am I supposed to do?” she asked nobody, but there was no epiphany, no moment of realization. Only the question lingering in the air.
The fluffy babbeh fever is far too deeply rooted in them to be overcome. Mostly. They really should’ve been fixed be they biotoys or animals. One would’ve thought Hope and Knight would’ve been somewhat able to know the consequences of what might happen if they’d already been told no babbies as they’d been without any human care before. Though that might be asking for too much of a fluffy… 
This really miffed me. They acted like such ungrateful brats here. Sure it’s in their nature to want babies, but damn, zero consideration for Sam, after everything she has done for them.
Glad she went outside to cool off.
Yeah but they are fluffys and when everything is good and nice they can and will be great and lovingly to you but if they don’t get what they want they can and will be the greatest pain in your live, more annoying than little children end to an extend more perversely evil, because the hole shitting around and stuff.
I also mean just the base Fluffy no Smarty or bitch mares just out of the mill or street and if you have ferals you most likely have the violence problem with them or at least the possibility that they are more prone to threaten you or your other Fluffys because live in the woods or back alleys is a bitch. But yes I get what you mean and I think the best for her health at this point would be to not have any Fluffys anymore or at least for time. Naturally a shelter would be the best solution preferably non kill shelter or at least one were they give them more time then 3 weeks to be adopted. If there were no shelter then the woods would bee the second best solution. Soo this was the normal reasonable me talking but the Fluffy abuser is now taking over… Just kill and be done with it girl you did soooo much vor them and there species at least in your area and nooo they are ungrateful shits who are destroying you mentally and financially sooo cut of there legs and make a quick buck by selling them as enfie toys.
Ok, I realized my post could be misinterpreted. I meant that the desire to have babies was in their nature. Depending on headcanon, fluffies vary from being little children who don’t understand morality and as such rape and kill with no regret (worse still if they DO understand what they do is wrong, those are hellgremlins, not fluffies) to being bundles of joy and love, who simply don’t have the brain power/haven’t been told that sometimes, even if something seems simple to them, it might not be the case.
Sam here should have explained more throughly WHY they can’t have babies, maybe even resorting to a bit of psychological abuse if need be (e.g. “if you have babies, you give mummah the worst heart hurties, because if you don’t eat to feed the babies I cry, do you want mummah to be sad?”).
However (credit to the author for this) she is justified in snapping and not thinking about doing something of the sort because of everything she has gone through lately, so it is truly believable she would react this way.
Even worse if you consider that she really took a huge toll on her own health just for the fluffies’ sake, which can lead to the aforementioned “they are ungrateful brats” sentiment.
In truth, it’s simply their animal nature. Do you blame a cat for killing a bird? No. Same applies to fluffies, BUT, unlike cats they can talk and reason, although in a limited fashion. It’s that part that sparks the hate for them, as one would think they should understand.
There Natur? You mean programing right? Because no creature Normally evolved is capable of what fluffys can. The knowledge to speak and understand human language and Fluff speak as well as a for notion of what things are engraved in der DNA and being. It’s not even a some canons yes some no thing but a destinktiv feature of there being. Yes they can and will i fact learn more but programing is programming.
And Knight and hope have shown that they know what is right and wrong that they understand what bad special huggies mean so I Argument for the smarter kind of Fluffys in this story and because of all that happened to them the hardship of a feral live and later with Sam they have shown that they are understanding and as Fluffy parents they have failed to teach these lessons to there children.
So I would Argue yes sunbeams programing musst have worn hard on her but if Knight and hope are really these goodly fluffys as the story shows them to be they would have talked her out of it or tried to prevent it but it seems that it is the complete opposite with hope completely Supporting Sunbeams wish for babies and most likely the one that organized this betrayal of trust and love and it is a betrayal for the Fluffys if not Sunbeam hadn’t broken down at first. And after the break down and Sam’s reasonel reaction to let her keep the babies till their are weaned both hope and Sunbeam ferbale attack Sam. Sam is there owner pets are property (atleast here in Germany you own your animal and it is even in your right to end it if you can’t give it away to a shelter or you deem it to aggressive or dangerous , but humanly by medication) and fluffys aren’t even animals. But i know she is mostly hugbox soo forced abortion is out of the way. Victor has devinatly lost his ball privilege and hope is at this point just a bitch as well as Sunbeam who is now in danger of becoming a bitch mare because she isn’t out of the age gap yet. Knight I don’t know I think he has a to big of a heart to say no to his daughters what was one of the reasons for Aquas downfall but in the end he is boy and the only really good fluffy that Sam has.
One of Hope’s and Knight’s failings is that, due to their lives as feral fluffies, they have an incredibly strong drive towards forming a herd as best they can, as a matter of protection through safety in numbers. In their eyes, while they might on a more rational level understand that more foals isn’t a good idea, on a more visceral level they’re partially stuck in the mindset that more offspring is always a good thing, because they don’t know how many will survive; to them, the idea that they might all survive and result in food problems just doesn’t compute.
Sunbeam and the other foals grew up hearing stories about how wonderful their parents’ old herd was, and how much they missed having a herd, so the logical best course for them to want to take is to make a new herd. Fluffies have difficulty with abstract concepts such as money and, to a very large extent, future planning. To them, the idea of not having enough food for the new foals doesn’t make sense, because they’ve seen the big bags of kibble and can’t understand how quickly it goes. Keep in mind that for feral fluffies, a 10kg bag of kibble looks like enough food to last forever, because they’ve never seen a lot of food in one place before.
As a human, it’s easy to look at the fluffies and think they’re just being brattish and stupid, but to them, it’s a case of their mummah taking the foals away for no good reason, because they can’t understand the very valid reasons why she has to do so. As many times as it’s explained to them, it’s always going to be an alien concept; they can understand that having more foals is something their mummah doesn’t want, and that doing something she doesn’t want is bad, but they can’t comprehend why it’s a bad thing.
Essentially, the fluffies are trying, and failing, to fight their instinct and programming that’s telling them they need to have as many foals as possible. Sunbeam, due to being well behaved, hasn’t had a lot of instances of punishment, so she doesn’t really fear what could happen from being bad as much as Aqua does. As a result, while she knew she’d get in trouble, she thought it’d be something simple like a sorry-boxing, not losing her foals.
Hope, by telling the others to keep the foals a secret, was hoping to protect Sunbeam and Victor from the consequences of their actions. Her and Knight understand what that kind of loss is like, so they’re desperate to avoid having their children experience the same thing. Unfortunately, their over-protective nature also prevented them from trying to explain to their children that they can’t afford to have more foals, due to not wanting to frighten them.
TL;DR: Fluffies are stupid and can’t plan ahead, and can’t understand why someone who can plan ahead might do something that seems to them, right now, to be doing nothing but harm. This goes double for domestic fluffies who’ve lived a sheltered life.
What I don’t understand because hope was pregnant and almost starving when she came to Same and she would now that starving is a possibility of live at this point?
Strange I thought there old Smarty and herd were shit then a Smarty alone can’t force other fluffys alone he nets toughfies and followers to be a shit so I don’t get the appeal?
And is there now not the possibility of Sunbeam getting bitch mare syndrome because i checked she should not be out of the six to 8 months age gap of not breeding your mares?
Hope understands that starvation is always a risk in the wild, but due to her only two times being domestic (once as a small foal and now) being times with plenty of food, she’s created a sort of black-and-white view of the world where “living with human = food” and “living without human = starvation.” Due to being sheltered for so long, while her instincts to form a herd aren’t gone yet, she’s gotten an extremely idealistic, almost worshipful, view of Sam and “nice hoomins” in general.
Hope and Knight were from a healthy, well-adjusted herd that was killed by a group of abusers. The smarty herd was one they encountered later, which they fled from.
Regarding Sunbeam’s age, there’s a time skip of a few weeks between part 19 and part 20, so she’s not really at any risk of complications from having foals. Maybe I should have made this a bit more clear, but the younger generation of fluffies are fully adult by this point in the story.
I for one dislike the whole “programming” shtick.
It lends itself more to those headcanons where fluffies are more replicants/biomechanical/whatnot.
A creature of flesh and blood, that can reproduce, needs to drink and eat, has aspirations and hopes, I struggle to see it as mere “programming”.
Especially with so many artists out there giving their fluffies personalities, something that would make no sense if every fluffy had the same programming.
I tend to imagine it more like animal instincts. Like, an eel knows that at some point in its life it must fuck off to the ocean, despite having never seen it or known how to get there. They just… do.
The same I think of fluffies. At their core, they all long for huggies, love, human affection and sketties, even if they don’t know what these are because they have never experienced them.
That’s not what I had in mind with Sunbeams age more the fact that the Fandom the notion of the so called bitch mare syndrome has to explain why many fluffy mothers are so giant bitches after getting pregnant and becoming mean and neglect full to all of there foals that they don’t dream bestest baby not to mention outright abusive to off-color foals like poopie babies or runts. The notion is the syndrome comes from a to early pregnancy not child pregnant but i the notion of six to eight mons after puberty.
But I think in your head anon they are to perfect for some flaws like this or the capability of evil
But they are its fundamental to fluffys its part of what makes a fluffy a fluffy its basically from the beginning there
Its like the clone army of star wars they were programt and they had personalities
It varies, just like with people. Some fluffies are wonderful and kind, while others are spiteful and cruel, it just depends on the fluffy. I’m personally not a huge fan of the monolithic style of where they’re all fairly similar, I prefer them to have a little more depth. So while Sam’s fluffies are generally kind, they’re perfectly capable of doing horrible things if pushed too far.
As for why Sunbeam is acting the way she is, she’s just been told she’s going to lose her children. Honestly, most creatures, humans included, would react to that waaaaay worse than she did, even if it was their own fault.
Yep, this one.
Fluffies are an awesome writing tool, reducing them to mere dispensers of “huggies, wub, wowstes owwies and SCREEE” gets stagnant after the umpteenth drawing/story. At least for me.
And they were created in a lab they are chimeras and please don’t come me with head Canon because than we are at a point we’re your headcanon goes far of the establish fluffy standards that the side put up not long ago
An example for this would be the difference between Knight and Hope. They’re both good fluffies, but they’re also completely different. Knight is more focused on protecting his family, even if that does mean he sometimes spends more time patrolling the house than with them. However, he’s very brave and selfless. Hope, on the other hand, is less brave, but is very caring and would do anything for her children. That’s the main reason why the first few parts had Knight doing most of the talking for the pair, since he’s less reserved, but later Hope started talking more, once she was more comfortable.
Ok, shall we go back to the start and remember the very first appearance of the fluffy pony and base everything on that then?
Also, the fact they are created in a lab using a mix of animal DNA doesn’t ring a bell? They (usually) aren’t made at an assembly line.
Besides, maybe the first ones were. From their release onwards, they are born from a womb. Unless you plan on telling me there are nanotechnologies at work in there to program an unborn foal’s brain too.
That I get totally and like but it doesn’t change my comment above they were first created like the clone army in Star wars with a basic template to keep the standard for the product on the same level but like the clones they can over there live learn new things and develop personality and quirks.
I mean, there are a few stories where the fluffies literally have chips implanted in their heads to program them, but that’d only really apply to officially-produced fluffies, since nobody would be there to implant the chips in ferals fluffies or home-bred fluffies.
Personally, I don’t treat fluffies as a complete tabula rasa, so there are a few constants among them. They love sketties, they have certain words and phrases built in, and they’re scared of water. Other than that, they’re pretty diverse in terms of personality.