This reply section has alot of words that can make a few pages of a fluffy novel if its not arguing .w.
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Amen to this!
People need to let fiction be fiction, and move on in life.
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My issue is more with being told that âif you donât write with this specific lore and head canon you are the worst scum and will be the downfall of the community.â I feel like the concept of fluffies take very well to multiple interpretations, and while the hell gremlinists no doubt did ruin things, restricting everything to a single interpretation and canon is likely to do the same
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Truth be told, the hellgremlins are here to stay. Thatâs just a fact of the fandom now. As long as we treat one another with respect, itâs all good. Everyoneâs welcome, as long as one behaves decently on here.
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For me the âREALâ fluffy is somewhere in-between the two. They arenât all good or all evil, and if we stick only to either of those lists of rules fluffy stories would get boring as hell real fast.
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Yes, indeed.
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The âall fluffies are evilâ step comes in at the late stage apocalypse, but it always starts with âsome fluffiesâ and snowballs from there. How many episodes of Columbo raping children would it take before youâd stop viewing him as a good guy? I bet the answer would be much less than ten percent of them.
Every time the fandom has blossomed, it has been thanks to people who enjoy seeing fluffies as innocents in the amoral world we live in. Everyone likes that. And every time the fandom has fallen it has been because of people ruining that core premise until no one likes fluffies anymore. First the hellgremlins drive away people who create likable content, and whatâs left of the fandom is so shitty that even the people who ruined it in the first place get bored of it. Sane people donât want to deliberately subject themselves to things that make them angry - this isnât rocket science!
As for good fluffies getting boring, at that point you should just find more hobbies outside fluffies in general. If you want to get angry there are plenty of things to hate around the internet, but fluffies were never meant for that. If you feel the only way to get enjoyment of the fandom is to set it on fire and watch it burn, just save yourself a year and move on without ruining it for absolutely everyone.
I wish I could say âI told you soâ to the people who caused the last collapse by claiming evil fluffies would just spice things up. But I canât because even they themselves left the fandom when they drove it to hell.
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Foxhoarder, I will have to disagree. And Iâm going to do so because I want to assert a point that I had reached after researching the history of the booru, and seeing its highs and lows. I know you and a number of others have been against hellgremlins, but I refuse to say that this idea of showing âbad fluffiesâ or âletting there be evil fluffies to spice things upâ was what caused the collapse of the fandom twice, or drove the booru down. No, I remain strongly of the opinion that it was drama, and an overall culture of negativity that led to that decline. I donât deny that hellgremlins are part of the problem, but I wonât consider them the primary cause.
I donât want to dredge up the past. But itâs there, if people want to find it in the archives. Like the one time Bawsnia did hate art of an OC, despite LordAnubisâs assertion that no one should do it. Or the time Jein1234 did hate art of Carpdimeâs Avocado, because Carpdime wasnât focusing only on abuse as Jein expected him to (as well as Jeinâs irrational hatred for any fluffy being happy) Or the abuse ending Great_White_Nope did of Roach Queenâs Marble, which reinforced RQâs opinion that the booru was mostly schadenfreude and made much of her later art darker and more mean-spirited. Or the time that CarnivorousDuck turned Donut into a pillowfluff, as he did to two other OCs.
You mentioned Renaissance doing good for the fandom, but I also know that Renaissance left because people kept trying to push a specific view on fluffies. I remember the last post she made was on this picture by Mangoalie, and her gripe was that the commentators on the picture were saying âthis shouldnât be possible, fluffies are too stupid.â In fact, Iâll reproduce @Renaissance 's own final comment here.
Its drama. The real problem is drama. Itâs the very thing LordAnubis said on this page.
Do I think âall fluffies are evil or are stupid and only capable of shittingâ? Of course not, as I am a hugboxer. But do I think there shouldnât be evil fluffies? Hereâs the thing - I think there is a merit to exploring fluffies that are flawed. I think that, if a creator wants to humanize fluffies, and make them violent, or angry, or spoilt, I think there can be a merit to it, just as there is a merit to a headcanon where a fluffy is 100% perfectly innocent in an amoral world.
But we have to learn to respect each other. That was the real problem with the booru - that people didnât do that. And Iâm not sure if we can really achieve that.
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I love your work, but I canât agree with you. It was the range of fluffy behavior and human responses to it that kept me pulled in to this fandom when I found it. Sure the idea of all fluffies are evil is flawed beyond measure, but your metaphor doesnât work. Fluffies are individuals, so if one particular fluffy is a monster 10 percent of the time, that fluffy might well not be a good guyâŚ(depending on circumstances) but might still be an entertaining protagonist. But you could have monstrous people on a show every episode without making the heros monsters. you can have assholes on the heroâs team without tainting his story, you can make some of the villagers unlikable without invalidating the heroâs choice to save them. Nuance is what makes a story great.
It wasnât maroon or the horrible nameless smarties or grandma killing invading herds that drove me away and kept me from raising my head when I came back the first time. It was the jerks in the comments, telling me what i wanted from my story wasnât good enough. Telling me the way I was enjoying fluffies was wrong, that only their view was valid.
Abuse or hugbox, thatâs what ruined it for me, the people that insisted on gatekeeping my headcanons. The Drama, as Oculus said.
I love your work, Foxhoarder, but your lectures in these threads are starting to verge on that again for me. I donât want to be driven from the fandom for having the wrong way to do fluffies.
Please just let people enjoy things?
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Iâm happy with nuance in fluffies. They shouldnât be cookie-cutter-all-the-same. The problem arises when the literal psychopaths and sociopaths make up such a huge percentage. Selfish, bratty, arrogant? Fine. But literally baby rapists and murderers? With how often they pop up in the fandom, the percentage of these sociopathic fluffies are orders magnitude higher than they are in the human population. And fluffies are supposed to be the sweet lovable ones. So either you have a species of âdesignated heroesâ or the humans are far worse than fluffies and youâve achieved Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy.
And the problem with these types of smarties is that neither explanation is satisfactory. âWell fluffies are designed by humans and they are suffering a glitch, itâs not their faultâ. Well if I canât fault the bad ones when they are being bad, why should I care about the good ones being good? âFluffies are individuals like humans, they are going to be bad ones with the good onesâ. Well with how much hellgremlins pop up, the fluffy species as a whole make Lord of the Flies look like a Disneyland ride, so why should I care about the few good ones when their species is doomed anyway? I donât really mourn the death of the eaten praying mantisâ the mother eats to survive. Thatâs just in their nature.
tl;dr: Brats, snots, arrogant, rude fluffies make for great smarties and can provide enough drama considering a cold breeze is enough to threaten a herd of fluffies. Hellgremlins just make things uninteresting.
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Seems a little like judging humanity from a set of Lovecraft stories. Itâs not that the aggravating ones are more common, its that they are the vocal minority, and observer bias kicks in. I believe most fluffies are like most humans. Shades of indifferent with their own motivations, biases, and personalities, with maybe more instinctive leaning to altruism than our species is capable of on the best day. Doesnât mean they donât have a good scattering of assholes among them along with the occasional saint. And even the worst monsters have reasons for what they do in their own minds.
But that wasnât the point. This site/fandom is doing great things for my mood and mental health, and I donât want to be driven away from it by gatekeeping drama again. But I also donât want to have to start blocking great artists just so I donât see lectures intended to make me feel Iâm enjoying fluffies wrong and should feel bad.
Can we, pretty, pretty please, just let people enjoy things?
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People also enjoy abusing classic fluffies as well (I for one much prefer unjustified abuse over justified) so I donât see your point making much sense if Iâm being honest.
EDIT: However, I do completely agree with the fact that Hellgrimlins, as a whole, arenât good for the fandom. It gets irritating when every story you read has the typical âoh wow this fluffy is so unique because itâs nice and behaves and has a good heartâ character, while every other fluffy is just so annoying that the story hurts to read. There does need to be a balance, I feel.
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The point I was making was more of a response to the idea that hellgremlins was the specific cause for the decline of the fandom. While I do agree that hellgremlins are a problem, I have come to the conclusion that the larger problem is drama, as well as a lack of respect for each other. And while its easy to blame both sides - hugboxer and abuser - for drama, I found that more often than not it was abusers who tend to be more aggressive in harassing or starting drama with the hugboxers and neutralboxers. The culture of toxicity is why creators left over time, and there was a lot less collaborations (the last one I can remember was one that Squeakyfriend started, which GWN then shitposted on)
I agree balance is needed, but my belief is that hugboxers and abusers should respect each others boundaries. In addition, while gatekeeping has its merits, I think the balance that is also needed is the presence of the other boxes. I will state that my focus is hugbox - I get more out of it, and I see more benefit from it.
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100% I agree with this. I feel this site is miles better than the old booru and the current subreddit. Personally (and Iâm obviously a small sample size), it seems people are more willing to simply tag a user as âIgnoredâ and move on rather than pick a fight. I think not being able to comment as an Anon has helped greatly with this. Iâm personally more than fine with Ignoring hellgremlin artists and missing out on some content if it means drama is kept to a minimum and the fandom actually lasts this time.
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Be the change you want to see in the world
- Some normie, non-fluffy enjoyer, probably.
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Fucking kill hellgremlins
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that is the only purpose of their existence
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Is there a reason that this doesnât have the hell gremlin tag?
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It wasnât made yet when the picture was posted, but I added it now.
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Is it so wrong that in my headcanon, hellgremlins and fluffies exist in the same universe
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