Shelter for amputee. (by: artist-kun)

Fluffy Image Self-Posting
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61

The logic here is flawed.

Spider-man, Daredevil, Punisher, and Fantastic Four all have similar origin stories, handwaved origins that make no plausible sense, and exist in a medium which is, by default, fantastic.

Punisher is almost always grounded in most of his stories. They barely fit in when you realize in the arc where he deals with a mob boss the city of New York was being flooded by Namor using bullshit powers and a kraken.

Daredevil’s most popular runs, as well as most of his history, is very grounded. The fantastic is largely only in origins, not in his world nor how everyone behaves in it.

Fantastic Four have met the omnipotent God twice. Its not even really all that worth mentioning given the amount of bullshit they encounter and go through daily.

Spider-man straddles both, mixing grounded life with super science and magic before looping around to show folks as mundane despite all the extras.

Grounding Fluffies, indeed trying to ground any fiction or find a grounded place within it, is not anathema.

As I said, Fluffies as an idea are not impossible. As presented? Just pseudo-science bullshit handwaving.
But that doesn’t require you to go for broke in eliminating the fantastic, nor in going as far as the dial goes on it.

After all, by definition the reference to grounding fiction is trying to create realism in the unfathomable. Otherwise it would just be modern.

Adding in a plausible business model, legal ramifications, cultural evolution, scientifically sound ecological impact, and consistent anatomical features doesn’t mean I’m missing the point, in that there isn’t really a singular point. Saying that its a pointless and simply wrong endeavor to work on basically zero-sums my intended work, leaving me only with exploring how utterly worthless all forms of life is and the question of how Fluffies would affect the supernatural existing within folklore.

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62

Again, I see your point, though they probably did stuff like Punisher MAX for a reason.

Plus the bullshit part of Punisher is that he’s still in one piece. Really, when you get right down to it, every story has fantastic elements in it, even if the fantastic element is just the amazing coincidence that one powerless guy with a lot of guns can somehow manage to kill half of New York’s criminal underworld, without any of them killing him, while also mysteriously failing to kill anyone who actually matters. Seriously, they might as well just show Frank’s bullets magically curving around the Kingpin at this point. Real talk? All stories are made of bullshit. I ain’t saying that’s a bad thing.

But of course, without that, there’d be no hero, or there’d be no villains. The anthropic principle strikes again!

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63

True.

Ground something too well and its just Slice Of Life.

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64

If people want a grounded slice of life story with zero fantastic elements, I have just two words to stay to them:

Go. Outside.

65

Counterpoint:

image

Also, hell is other people. Slice of life is social masturbation so you can get back to what matters.

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66

Just saying, if you want a realistic story, you can’t get any more realistic than real life.

And I know that Hell is other people, which is why I don’t go outside if I can help it. I ain’t got a lot of places to go.

67

But that’s the thing.

You don’t get a story from life, at least one to enjoy. One to tell, sure.
Inspiration for a GOOD story to tell, fine.

But then you lose out on one of the most important aspects, one of the primary purposes, of fiction. Exploring life and humanity.

After all, history tells what a people did. Their mythology, folklore, and fiction tells you why they did it.

Slice of life uses the grounding to explore themes that are divorced from allegory, allowing you to confront them head-on.

Octopus Pie for example, playing with what growing up would mean for the hipster generation of young Millennials. When their fantastical perception of reality would collide with reality as they age, proving to themselves they were never as unique, interesting, fun, mature, or clever as they thought they were. Predictive fiction which has become past speculative fiction.

Making that story more fantastical would turn it into Scott Pilgrim. Which isn’t bad, but nature abhors a vacuum and not everyone can or should Scott Pilgrim. Bump up the fantastical level again, and you have The Graveyard Book.

Saying that instead of reading Octopus Pie you could just go outside is saying “Don’t read boring fiction. Just go out there and grow old.”

68

Yeah, exactly. Things in real life don’t just happen for your entertainment. The events unfolding aren’t scripted to occur. Everything isn’t wrapped up in a neat little bow in thirty minutes. That’s realism for you.

And everyone has a story, Thk. Not necessarily an interesting story, but again, that’s realism for you. Things don’t have to be interesting in real life. But hey, if people want realism, they shouldn’t be reading fictional stories. Maybe they should check out the non-fiction section of their local library instead.

69

The simple fact that you can write anything does not preclude writing realism.

Writing the realistic care of a small animal that can talk, is fragile, and has varying degrees of human intelligence is not a pointless endeavor simply because you can write a Fluffy achieving CHIM and bleeding different universes into its own.

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70

I didn’t say that it’s pointless. I just said it ain’t realistic.

Look, I’m not judging, okay? I’m not trying to be an asshole about this, even though being an asshole comes easily to me, which is exactly why I’m trying not to do it.

I’m just saying, if a given reader is able to accept fluffies without the fuzzy little buggers shattering their suspension of disbelief, then there’s a lot of other things that they should also logically be able to accept.

So they can’t complain about, say, vampires or aliens or demons being unrealistic. There’s a line between what can be accepted as grounded and realistic, and what can’t, and I firmly believe that fluffies are on the latter side.

Of course, if somebody actually manages to make real live fluffies, I’ll be willing to admit that I’m wrong. I have no problem with admitting when I’m wrong, if I’m actually wrong. But for now, I’m right.

Fingers crossed, though! This is a win-win for me, because honestly, if fluffies do become real, Imma get one and hugbox the fuck outta them. So I can accept losing this argument in the end, if I get an actual goddamn fluffy out of it.

71

An unstoppable force is still pushing on an immovable object?

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72

I’m having fun. Aren’t you, @Thk? This has been a very interesting debate, if you ask me. We’ve covered so many different topics! But, at the heart of the discussion, we’re still talking about fluffies.

And that’s what matters most.

73

That won’t happen when I’ve soldered their assholes shut after emptying em nice and thoroughly. I don’t expect em to last more than half a week.

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