Kind of a cop-out answer (and involves way more work for our writers), but for the sake of answering honestly:
I really enjoy stories with multiple endings.
(Eg: Hugbox ending, sadbox ending, etc.)
But only when the writer themselves is genuinely interested in exploring the different paths a story could take; nobody should feel like they need to pander to everyone’s different tastes.
Depends on the setting/set-up.
I love justice for bad-mummahs and smarties, but also just abuse of fluffies for being shit-heads.
Doing an ending with blended elements might be a compromise. Some good things, some bad things, life goes on.
Typically speaking I don’t seek out heavy abuse in my fiction but if it is true to the world and narrative I accept it wholeheartedly. I love happy endings but if it’s not earned it kills it for me.
Good point! That’s probably why I love neutralbox stories. It’s like Neapolitan ice cream: you get all the good flavors.
I think the big thing is it feels more natural, depending on the scope of the story. The bigger the scope, the more I think it needs to be blended. A simple house fluffy story (like @Swindle’s amazingly fun “Bad Nummies”) can get away with being mostly one thing. @Oculusfluffy’s "Wan Play"s ending was a number of things, but I think it was important that it was such.
Suffering and death for the fluffies.
If there is a human, he is an asshole and gets away with it - even better.
Poopie babbeh dying after eating shit? Poetry.
Smarty dying after doing something stupid? Poetry.
Bestest babbeh having an accident leaving it crippled? Poetry.
Making an urn out of clay for all the dead fluffy ashes? Pottery.
It very much depends on the story. Personally I like happy endings but if it wouldn’t make sense then it’s not fit for the story.
I sort of agree with @AxolotlAndy point that the flow of the story should be organic and reflect artistic intent. That said, and speaking as a hugboxer, I find that too many stories in the genre have things escalate too quickly, or “force” a rather bad predicament. I can think of one too many stories that escalated to a gratuitous level.
I agree with @MossyFluff’s point that happy endings should be earned. Likewise, I definitely agree with Chika that, even for a story with an intended “happy” ending, that happy ending should not come about by a sudden deus ex machina, but be earned. For instance, even the ending of Jojo Part 2 : Battle Tendency, while seeming like an asspull, actually made sense within the context of its universe and a had a good explanation.
I love different story paths! But I feel like different story paths become meandering after a while, especially if a person has a particular story to tell. Also, branching story paths are definitely difficult to plan out and write.
My favorites are ones where bad fluffies like bad mummahs or smarties are punished and/or tortured, bonus if said fluffy/fluffies where abusing a “poopie baby” or another fluffy and that abused fluffy gets a happy ending
Good fiction relies on endings that make sense. You don’t want to have your happy hug boxing story suddenly and unexpectedly end with the rescued foals getting ice picked by the up until now completely loving owner. See if you can guess how this story is going to end.
That said, having a frustrating ending is sometimes a great thing because fluffies almost never get what they want. The smarty lives another day because there is no justice, The mummah never finds food and slowly dies of starvation. The human got what they wanted from the fluffy and the fluffy gets nothing.
When you write, write with your ending already in mind. It makes the journey there easier.
Personally I like all endings since all endings give their own flavors in the community. Sure, I may personally like hugbox but that’s only so enjoyable when read along with depressing, nihilistic, or cruel endings. As others have said, go with the ending that’s most appropriate for the story’s themes.
My favorite is lots of suffering followed by a happy, or at the very least bittersweet, ending. This is just personal preference and opinion of course, but I think that because of the longer reading time and such I become more emotionally invested in stories, which makes me hope for a better ending, while in comics I don’t have time to get attached to the characters so I don’t care much if it ends with pure abuse.
All too often we get stories that end with poopie justice. I want more stories where all the fluffies- poopie or not- end up either dead or horribly traumatized.
I need to agree with this. If there is a twist? Leave breadcrumbs. I remember eons ago a writer for “Murder She Wrote” said that when things were finally revealed, the viewer had to be able to think back and smack themselves asking, “How did I miss that?”
This is something I’ve been trying to work on myself, so don’t use my work as examples. The last story I did (Bad Baby) I tried that and messed it up. While some folks got to where I wanted them to end up, I think its more out of familiarity with my work/ideas than actually having written it well. Some folks got lost, and its solely on me as a writer for not doing as good a job as I could have.
I personally prefer hugbox endings, that is as hugbox as can make sense from how the story gets there. Still, I prefer proper closure to a sudden twist ending or an “I’m finished because I got bored”.
I like tragic endings, especially the undeserved ones. Where good innocent fluffies gets broken purely out of human callousness/cruelty.
Dummy series still sticks with me because I start rooting for him and then, bam, sledgehammer of finality.
Or that story where the owner kidnaps his own fluffy and run it through the most horrid abuse and rape. At the end, where the fluffy is maimed to hell and back, she still loves the owner and are unaware that it’s all of his doing, while he blinds her.
Perfect endings that break the “and then they all lived happily ever after” mold.
Do you… happen to know where I could find that second story… asking for a friend of course
Which story?
Sorry, been trawling the site for it. But can’t find it again.
I read it first on the booru a few years ago. I’ll give some hints below (with as little spoilers as possible) in case someone else remembers it better and can give you a link.
The setting is this: fluffy wakes up in a cell, gets repeatedly raped by a stallion wearing a razorlike cod-piece, gives birth repeatedly, the foals gets shoved to their deaths down a hole by stallion. Rips of fluff to create a mat for her foals, gets one pure white foal that looks perfect.
Ending was changed to be more “acceptable” acc. the writer, since the original ending was pretty bad and created some rustled jimmies IIRC.