So since I have the knowledge of hellgremlins I was thinking there could be hellgremlin tags like hellgremlin-smartie or something
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I know Foxhoarder was all for this, as was some other artists, but personally, I am conflicted.
The reason is because the approach to hellgremlins also heavily depends on how one sees Fluffies. Foxhoarder is of the hivecanon that fluffies are biotoys, or bioengineered creatures that are not really animals. It is the reason why she depicts fluffies as naturally innocent, and thus not capable of fending off or understanding abuse. In contrast, I know enough artists and writers (myself included), who considered Fluffies to be animals to some extent, but because theya re owned by a corporate entity, they are “marketed” as toys. So Fox would argue that Fluffies should be a certain way, and that certain behaviours are hellgremlin. And then it becomes a matter of gatekeeping, which is a tricky problem in and of itself.
Another way to view the hellgremlin definition is as an approach to fluffies. It is generally agreed that hellgremlins came about as a result of a push to portray fluffies in as negative a light as possible, in order to justify abuse. This can take the form of making them look as ugly as possible, or making them “represent the worst of humanity.” So, if a person intends his fluffies to be the worst thing imaginable, then I suppose the hellgremlin tag would suffice. But see, its a matter of intent. There’s a difference between an author intending his fluffies to be “hellgremlins”, and a person saying that the fluffies that an artist/write is depicting is “hellgremlin”. And an abuser might argue or believe “all fluffies are hellgremlins, so the tag is not really needed, also fuck you for writing about nice fluffies, follow the damn hellgremlin hivecanon” and so on.
For the record, this is not a definitive answer, this is more my thoughts on the subject. As it was, the old booru did not have tags for hellgremlins and, unless artists and writers start acknolwedging evil fluffies as “hellgremlins”, there may not be a need for it.
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In principle I’m all for it since hellgremlin fluffies are a type of story where no fluffy has noble or admirable traits at all (bearing in mind that most abusers love hurting good fluffies in general as well). A lot of us get tired of that kind of content, hugboxers and abusers alike (and in-betweeners too).
In practice I disagree because
- We’ll get a no-true-hellgremlin problem where imperfect fluffies can’t be distinguished from hellgremlins proper.
- In some stories, we can have several reprehensible fluffies (especially smarties) and lots of good fluffies. Does this warrant the tag?
The tag would risk being quite meaningless or inconsistent. And if we did answer these questions with very specific guidelines, we’re then being very pedantic with our headcanon (dare I say gatekeeping?) on fluffies. So I don’t want to use that tag unless someone can persuade me otherwise. Open to suggestions of course.
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Speaking as someone who leans very heavily into the abuse camp, I’d say there is a valid use for separate hellgremlin tags. Granted this is heavily headcanon influenced but, that’s all that exists for fluffies, right?
My personal perspective has always been that hellgremlin-ness is an aspect of fluffy psychology when it goes wrong, just like sociopathy is in humans when something gets fucked up in our wiring. The main difference is that fluffies were bioengineered to be extremely emotive, and extremely dependent on humans for all survival aspects, and so you get a range of deeply bratty, maladaptive behaviors that aren’t corrected easily. Or in the wild, the correcting forces that a decent human owner would have simply are not present, and you get the really bad cases.
I’ve also noticed that a decent chunk of people pair HG-ness with smarty syndrome, which I’ve only ever taken as something that’s correlative, rather than causative. It’s entirely possible to have a fluffy be a horrible little bastard while not having smarty syndrome.
This is getting a bit off topic but in essence I would say the tag would be useful, if it was used specifically in the case that was illustrated here. Hellgremlin is a term reserved for the fluffies that are completely without redemption because of their inherent psychology, be it maladapted to early developmental forces, or simply because the fluffy is wired wrong.
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The old booru definitely needed some way to separate hellgremlins from normal fluffies. I think the history of what happened without it speaks for itself.
The defining difference between fluffies and hellgremlins is the reason they’re drawn in the first place. Fluffies, whether it’s abuse or hugbox, are drawn to be enjoyed. They make you happy one way or another.
Hellgremlins are drawn to be hateable. The sole reason they’re drawn is to make you angry, whether it’s to make you root for their abuse, or even more often simply make you angry and leave it at that. Anything from the nature of fluffies to the reasons of their behavior are completely and utterly irrelevant compared to this fundamental difference.
If you compared fluffy fandom to a boardgame club, hellgremlins are like letting in someone who enjoys randomly punching people in the face. He wouldn’t see what the problem was, saying that if others didn’t like suckerpunches they were free to not punch anyone in the face! I’m sure everyone can see why no one who enjoyed boardgames would want to go to that club anymore.
Both hellgremlin apocalypses started with bad fluffies being the minority, with hellgremlinists saying that their sadistic murder-rapists were just rare exceptions. But as you can imagine, selling the fandom to people who like innocent fluffies is nigh impossible if them turning out to be embodiments of evil is presented as something that happens once in a while.
Like I’ve said before, this is how the hellgremlin snowball effect always starts. Classic fans start avoiding the fandom because visiting it makes them angry, leaving only the hellgremlin fans who “enjoy” getting pissed off on purpose. The fandom is lost long before all fluffies are declared hellgremlins, as those “exceptions” become so common there isn’t any art of the actual good fluffies anymore. At that point there’s nothing to do but wait for the fandom to die, and hope that a miracle like it’s last revival could happen one more time.
I know gatekeeping doesn’t sound good, but if we don’t do something the fandom will die just as it has twice before. I know we can’t ban hellgremlins altogether, but at the the very least we should put more than just baby-rape into the controversial category.
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