Huggies And Wub!
Also known as:
Writer’s Workshop
Turns out it wasn’t a stroke last time.
I am just mentally disabled.
And that makes a lot of sense given what I am about to start writing about today. However, I may have the rare counter to the whining that addressing topics like this inevitably leads to. An umbrella against the petulant shit-spray that comes from trying to remove the child-brained from their safety blanket.
I have the word of a beloved community artist, and by the logic of one particular staff member, this means I can present a case on their behalf!
Here has really become like a kids playground I think and really hugboxy where people forget where this community started/what it’s about.
This isn’t furaffinity or deviantart
Also yes, but I understand that’s why it’s so empty here now too.
If that doesn’t hold up, I can just claim that beloved artists can do no wrong and that everyone who disagrees can slip and slide off the edge of my dick! I love democracy.
Now that we’ve filtered past those who only react to titles, and strained past the few that attempt to read the contents of a passage, we can finally approach some kind of maturity by recognizing that all the fluffy genres give rise to content that is not compelling, to use polite terms.
I would go so far as to venture that fluffy genres as they are now are deeply flawed and are some of the reasons why fissures are so common in this following. What else can be expected from a culture that actively seeks to reduce the amount of nuance in a work, for the sake of making it easy to categorize on the off chance that some [redacted for the sake of decency] won’t have their precious sensibilities challenged.
If you would allow me a quick tangent; otherwise ignore.
Seriously, with the reputation that this community has garnered, fairly or unfairly be damned,
“I went to Fluffy Community and saw some fucked up shit,” is a statement that belongs on a T-shirt. No shit, idiot. Either that’s what you signed up for, or you made an honest mistake and you decided this wasn’t the mood. Both of these are valid reactions to have, but somehow the debate of morality keeps rearing its head and users invariably acknowledge the shock threads that depict this place as a congregation of troglodytes.
You’re not troglodytes. You’re a bunch of overly-coddled societal rejects who finally found a clubhouse to participate in, with all the bad opinions and loud keyboards that entails. But at least ya’ll usually condemn violence against animals and children, so someone in your lives did one thing correctly.
Anyway today we are going to address some problems with the hugbox genre that I’ve noticed in the nearly two years I’ve been involved with this mess.
I may not be the most receptive to hugbox, nor do I find myself compelled to make anything that follows the conventions of the genre due to the fact that I would rather not induce an aneurysm – nevertheless, much like how one does not need to be a chef to know they are eating shit, one can comment on annoying hugbox tropes without necessarily being invested in that side of the following.
One can even do it without being overly combative as well!
H83R you are a fucking hypocrite!
And your mother never really loved you, eat a fat one you acne ridden –
Do not assume that the audience finds fluffies endearing.
Hugbox for hugbox’s sake may have its therapeutic uses and that’s perfectly understandable. It does not speak to me, personally, but as a human being capable of baseline empathy, I have no qualms with people using art to cope with going through what some may refer to as, “some shit”.
Do not force an agenda.
However, there exists this notion that hugbox does not get a fair shake compared to abuse because people just won’t give those gosh darned plucky fluffies a chance! And that’s just stupid. I didn’t decide I enjoyed fluffy abuse because I came into the fold eager to belt out punishment against imaginary shit factories. I would wager that most people who find this place are not actively out to revel in pretend-pain and agony.
But if this is the case, why don’t more people draw happy fluffies doing happy things?
I don’t know bud. Maybe it’s because of the virtue grandstanding that was common with hugbox pieces in which people would assume the worst of the other camps just for their preferences, or headcanon disagreements. Maybe it’s the atmosphere of competition that exists between hugbox and literally anything else that does not treat fluffies like some heavenly gift. Perhaps it is possible that… people do not automatically find fluffies to be that great? Is it even conceivable that people can be ambivalent towards them?
As someone who was sitting on the fence for a brief period of time, I know firsthand how it does not take much of a push from one side to end up on the other. And seeing how I went with abuse, you can imagine which side did the pushing.
Maybe if there were more stories that had a more encompassing approach to fluffies that were themed around how the intrinsic value of friendship and love as a concept, and not the imaginary corporate product, overcomes even the staunchest adversity.
What do I mean by encompassing? Well I mean –
Do not cherry-pick traits.
Do I expect a creator to shoehorn every piece of herdcanon that may exist out there into their work in order for it to be considered unbiased? Of course not. Yet still, if one is coming from the angle that fluffies were an exercise in corporate greed and hubris gone awry, it follows that even in hugbox centered stories, the flaws and drawbacks of fluffies should be represented. The effectiveness of the story comes from how well the positive and negative fluffy traits are juxtaposed; a contrast upon which nearly every narrative in this community hinges upon. In the case of hugbox, if every fluffy is just a colorful ball that talks funny without any meaningful drawback, that isn’t a fluffy story. It’s a pitch for children’s television that will never see broadcast because it was written for the fluffy community.
If your story does not follow the template, then this contrast becomes even more difficult to achieve due to it needing to be established in niche lore as, opposed to the common-enough knowledge of the usual Has-bio incident.
Do not rely on OCs.
Characters exist to drive a story along. The story does not exist for the character’s benefit. A character must also do something. This comment is mostly directed to static art pieces that are made to show a happy fluffy with a name. Even with regard to the first point of fluffies being a coping mechanism; what good is shallow saccharine joy in times of darkness? If recovery is a journey, then why can’t the fluffies go on a journey as well?
Do not dick-ride.
Another pointed comment here.
It’s one thing to appreciate someone’s work. It’s one thing to be inspired by someone’s work.
It’s an entirely different beast when the vast volume of one’s work is essentially fan-fiction for another creator.
Personally, if I see someone’s work being paraded around as the complementary basis for a fucking saga, then any merit either work alone may have had is automatically diminished in my mind.
Don’t dick-ride. It’s not a good look. I guess this also counts as “do not force an agenda”.
But beloved artists can do no wrong so what-the-fuck-ever I suppose.
CONCLUSION.
I don’t care how others prefer their fluffy content, at the end of the day. I am not interested in telling people what they should like; I just write these things based on what things could be like if there was a damn left worth giving. If you like how things are, then there’s no fixing that. Along with everything else.
I’ll address abuse the next time I get the inclination to write something so please don’t cry too much.
As always, I toe the line of getting banned for the fun of it.