I like shit like that because it feels like prebuilt phrases. They might not specifically be in their “programming” but the feelings are there and they only have so many words to work with.
i’d definitely agree if i could at least differentiate the fluffy characters from one author to the other, but they feel too cookie cutter to stand out. i know there isn’t a lot of room to be unique with fluffspeak, one because they’re really limited creatures, and two because you risk breaking established canon/making your fluffy dialogue unreadable. but people rely on archetypes way too much under the pretense of “programming” without taking into account small differences in how they use phrases that might otherwise be affected by lived experiences. like how a domestic turned feral could still use words from a human environment, or a fluffy that could be just a tiny bit street savvy, without giving it the street smarts of a hobo.
It started off as a thing first-time mothers said cuz they didn’t know it was babies, then idiots saw it and went “oh that’s the community-coined birth term” and decided all of them had to do it no matter what. Same for “forever sleepies”, young fluffies used to just not understand death and genuinely thought “mom’s been sleeping forever and won’t wake up, weird” - then people decided “oh fluffies know it’s death and just call it forever sleepies anyway”.
Personally … yeah abuse worlds are pretty dumb. I don’t much like the pre-programmed thing either, it just a world of “no fluffies can’t be unique or have hearts, they’re little furbies nothing else”. Also stupid is the poopy prejudice-justice thing where all the fluffies hate the brown one and make it eat shit and it somehow survives just fine living like that. “Oh it’s for hygiene or to get rid of their poop so predators won’t-” no! It’s not! They are consistently depicted in a giant pile of shit 4 times their size! And then humans are like “oh the brown ones are so much better : ) yes I want a realistic shit-brown color, oh and if it’s mute then even better, I don’t want any of those traits that actually make fluffies unique” and it’s just annoying. You want a miniature pony or a guinea pig, not a fluffy.
Tropes I like … I do like fluffies drowning incredibly easily, or ending up in places they seriously should not be able to get to. I like it when they’re very childish and operate on a small child’s mindset, even when they’re clever. Like “you solved it completely wrong but got the right answer anyway” vibes. And I like dams who are so swollen they can’t move, making them basically beach balls. And I like fluffies being scared of alicorns - not “murder on sight” or “make it eat poop” because that’s hate, not fear. But being uneasy around them, crying if one touches them, hiding in their hooves whenever their alicorn baby feeds. Like the monster under the bed has crawled out and decided to snuggle, you don’t try to shove that thing into the toilet, you just stay still and pray he doesn’t do worse.
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I too love those repetitive phrases the fluffies squeak out- it makes more sense as to how and why they can talk when so many of them repeat the same exact statements. They were meant to be products and thus would have some strange pre-programmed behaviors to fall back on.
I also like selfish and mean fluffies. I know some people insist that fluffies are all meant to be innocent, child-like toys in a mean, human world- but to me, fluffies have the relative intelligence of young children and that is a VERY different thing than ‘innocent’. Empathy can be a learning curve just like other learning skills, so there are plenty of incredibly selfish, feral kids out there. The difference of course is that, most of the time, those kids are either taught otherwise by their families, peers, or authority figures, or wind up being punished. Fluffies tend to get stuck as whatever they are pretty early on in their development and if they were already coddled by their owners or other fluffies, well…
I generally don’t like fluffies being able to be a threat to anything other than other fluffies. Seems to be a recurring issue that some people’s OC fluffies just have to try to be badasses that can take on other animals or even humans ( ha! ). Its a small four legged artificially designed chimera with hooves that mean fluffies can barely even hold their own children let alone tools, and every aspect of them was designed in a lab to be as harmless as possible so it could be a toy for human children. A human adult should be an insurmountable threat for a fluffy, unless it either is a supernaturally themed story, or the real threat is the fluffy’s human friends, IMHO.
Shit so fragile, etc.
I can’t stand poopie justice stuff. A fluffy does not magically stop being an annoying shit machine because its mother called it names and made it eat feces once. Some of that content, especially on reddit, feels like it’s just the author trying to make a dumb allegory without even being conscious of it.
Also, unironic hellgremlin behavior as a way to excuse abuse. If the fluffy is an asshole for no other reason than to justify beating it up, it ceases to be satisfying. Either give it a real personality with both shitty and not shitty traits, or else don’t give it a personality at all and leave it as a mindless biotoy.
And especially when people have the contrast between the poor aboozed poopie alicorn that’s so unnaturally smart and polite, and the horrendous, dumb, garish bestest babbeh. Like, either one of those can be fine on their own, but dumbing down one character’s writing to make the other seem superior is Hollywood-tier garbage.
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This is a fandom trope; but I hate it when people come up with a interesting or new twist on something that is standard and all of a sudden someone comes out of the woodwork and starts dragging them for it. like, nothing is static forever bruh. So what if someone does something slightly different.
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I like to see fluffies doing a decent job at surviving on the wild, there’s just a lot more interesting things to see out there than as a pet or just dying. Also like “justicebox” where assholes get punished or suffer from their own actions, but not so much if they’re just getting tortured by an abuser, at that point the story is over and is just more gore slop.
I really hate when the abuser gets away with it, human or fluffy, so I don’t really read the stories that are just abuse and torture without reason or purpose.
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I also really like the “dams just naturally get so pregnant they turn into balls” thing. On one hand it’s really cute and silly if you’re going for something hugboxy or moronboxy, on the other it’s a compelling kind of vulnerability for something that’s a little darker.
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True. I like this one as well. It can be cutesy, funny or dark like you said. I’ve seen some stories where they’re abandoned by their herds during danger and you have this giant, heavily pregnant ball of fluff that desperately wants to flee, but can’t even move.
Or it can be just cute, tip then over and gently roll them.
Oh yeah fluffies’ extreme weakness to water is always great. “Fluffy drowned” was like one of the first memes here and I loved it. Always down for funny shit and moronbox