280 posts. What the hell.
Okay, I’m going to respond to OP first, before I read the rest of this thread.
-
This is correct. We are a varied community, and the abuse/grimdark/edgy content doesn’t represent all of us
-
The lore DEPENDS ON HEADCANON. There’s a reason why I stress this. Fluffies started out as a joke among the MLP community on 4chan. The Hasbio stuff, the PETA stuff, all of that came about AFTER anons started putting more time and greentexts in the lore. But the lore is NOT consistent. Over time, different artists and different writers had their take on canons, some following a major hivecanon, some doing their own thing. You need to keep this into account.
-
As L.AVaught said
Not all the artists and writers had fluffies as completely unlikeable. I know Waggytail sure as hell didn’t. Carpdime has explored fluffies both likeable and unlikeable. And I know Marcusmaximus saw them as endaring, like Waggytail. Hell, Art-anon, aka the person who first drew fluffies based off the udnerstanding of them as a genetically engineered pet, did so because the concept was cute.
- As said in 2 and 3. Depends on headcanon. And you’re too depending on looking at fluffies only as hellgremlins.
If anything, I’d say looking at fluffies as “only” unlikeable, and relying on that approach is precisely the reason why a lot of people look at our content as weird. What kind of fandom obsesses so much over a creature that people are supposed to hate and torture violently?
I recommend reading Foxhoarder’s topic on hellgremlins, and how their approach is what helped put this community in its current place: What's a Hellgremlin? by:Foxhoarder
I consider drama and an over-emphasis on abuse to be the larger causes, but obsessing about hellgremlin lore is definitely a contributing factor.