I think fluffies are a force of evil, both classic fluffies and hellgremlins. They are an ecological disaster and have no place in the world.
That being said i think that hellgremlins need classic fluffies for contrast and to have something to abuse themselves.
I think that in the same way the human news don’t report on trains making it to their destination but on trains crashing, the fluffy fandom will naturally fixate on the atypical fluffies specially the hellgremlins.
I was going to answer to @Shadowstein how a world with hellgremlins is already a fundamentally different universe, but you just said it straight from the horse’s mouth. In an universe like that, good fluffies exist only to give hellgremlins something to abuse, and it’s hard to even imagine any fluffy as good when they’d apparently be just as abusive if they were at the top of the social ladder instead. @OtherCoraline’s post earlier summed this up perfectly, and especially the link to Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy come up inevitably when you just wish that all fluffies would die.
In an universe with hellgremlins, every encounter with fluffies is a threat. You can’t approach any of them with amused curiosity if there’s a very real chance that they happen to be a shit-based suicide bomber. You can’t be happy for a family without checking whether they’re abusing one of their babies. It’s a world with fluffies, but with all the likable parts of the fandom so utterly oppressed and endangered that it would actually be better if they were just all homogenously evil instead. It just makes you miserable. But then again, making you angry and unhappy is the whole point of hellgremlins, isn’t it? That way you’ll be mulling over how much you hate them and thus feel the need to pay more attention to them, which is the sole reason they were so popular in /b/ of all places. You’re more likely to answer to a post that insults you, but that definitely doesn’t mean you enjoyed it.
I was going to write my thoughts out but I’m not gonna waste my breath. This whole “this is how they should be” gatekeeping is just discouraging to new writers/artists that don’t have self confidence, like myself. Frankly to see that I can’t even express myself without the fear of rebuttal for my interpretation of a medium is genuinely heartbreaking.
TL;DR Im big sad that this community has gatekeeping
If I let my fear of gatekeepers hold me back I never would have created mortis. I simply used one community member’s headcanon as a template (u/deviana22 on reddit) and went forward with it.
The problem is that gatekeeping had been the way since the very beginning. Its very much a leftover of 4chan culture that the booru community ended up adopting. People who didn’t “fit in” with the boorus original crowd would get shitposted on or shit-edited, and later on, abusers tried to gatekeep hugboxers, pushing the idea that fluffies were “only good for shitting and only deserved abuse”. Even when things got toned down as certain elements left the booru, the last active mod was himself practised a form of gatekeeping, pushing the idea that fluffies “had to be a certain way”, while practising uneven morderation.
I mention chan culture, because it was something the original 4chan community approached the initial MLP:FiM fandom. The term “bronies” was detested by them, and they wanted the MLP fandom to be ‘kept to them’, kept niche, and not developed. But, and personally speaking, I think it was a good thing that MLP and bronies became mainstream - its diversification and appeal to outside people was what made it stronger, and now there is more than one place that has MLP content.
I feel that fluffies too can reach that height. But it does need to have less gatekeeping. And I think the boundaries need to be respected where applicable (for instance, abusers should leave hugboxers alone, and vice-versa)
I am pretty new to this site, but I was pretty active on 4chans mlp in around 2012 until 2014 and then came back to lurk the booru. I have to say, the biggest problem was always the drama and the aggressive way of dealing with others. Now, on 4chan, where everyone is pretty much anonymous and you can’t prove who is who a lot of times, that makes sense. But the minute you start making content on sites like the booru, where you allow yourself to not be anonynmous anymore, the critic and aggressive stuff hits way harder and you become far less interested in making content. Now, thats only the way I see it, of course. But I see others feel similar, so maybe there is a truth too it, just like there is a truth to the fact that too much of the hellgremlins can make the whole idea of fluffies feel stale. Everything not diverse and interesting, engaging, will feel stale and soon turn into nothing more than something you look at once a year because there is nothing making you want to go back.
I think you need both, and a lot of inbetween, to make something interesting for a broader audience. Some people will only like hellgremlins, some only like “vanilla” fluffies who constantly drown in one of their tears.
I love an even mix, and I think there is nothing wrong with seeing the worth of each of those headcanons, respecting the people who pretty much probably just want to enjoy some time of the hellscape of this planet for a while and moving on when you see stuff you dislike.
I always interpreted it as Fluffys having a dual nature. On one hand they are essentially organic robots pre-programmed for specific rules and behavior that define their existence. On the other hand they are also sentient free-willed creatures. It makes them a more fundamentally tragic existence, leaves open the ability for fluffys to be assholes or truly good and loving for more than just their programing. For me personally this lets me enkoy abuse, sadbox, and hugbox stories way more.
(Rant mode)
I’ll say this, while I firmly believe a decent amount fluffies can become assholes or are even born that way, the majority of them shouldn’t be programmed to suck. Like if all of them are instinctually sociopathic racist sex offenders not only do you not get the destruction of innocence feel but you can’t even be mad at them as it’s literally not their fault. So even the hateboner is hollow, empty and leaves you feeling gross for imagining something forced to be that evil by design. Second of all the “they’re flawed prototypes” idea is stupid if they were in development why would their be mass breeding already set up? Besides they’re children’s pets thrust into an environment they are not designed for so of course shit will go wrong! Of course they won’t have many defenses they’re made to be as safe as possible! Of course they won’t have survival instincts, they’re supposed to be friendly to all humans they meet. There is no fucking need to say that they’re half baked in anything except their digestive system and even that seems suspect. Granted the idea of fluffies having horrifying biological flaws amuses me but 90% of the time it’s just they’re horny assholes with no empathy. Great for a combination of toy/pet/and friend for kids right?
The reason that fluffy herds are usually dysfunctional isn’t due to fluffies inherent selfishness or narcissim it’s because they’re too dependent and immature to make their own societies. Just think of lord of the flies where it’s due to lack of guidance, rather than them being the world’s most pathetic tolkein orcs.
Also the idea that a talking pet who can play human fucking games appeal would be color is so mind boggingly stupid to me. Like if we can make a quasi sapient horse simulacra rodent we can probably make a blue guinea pig. It just feels to me that people really don’t think anything through before they write it and never stop to consider the actual implications these fruit pig horses’ mere existence poses. If you just go with the same tropes over and over again you really don’t need to make new content because it’s all gonna be the fucking same.
I think thats the larger problem with the content. There’s a goldmine in fluffies for some really interesting stories, but too many people are only content in telling the same ones.
Now, I know that Smarty Friend=Smarty, but for my stories, I kinda use this info in this picture, and the pic explaining Smarty Syndrome, as a sort of Sliding Scale of Fluffy Behavior. Like, a Smarty Friend is just a smarter fluffy that is good and kind leading a herd, such as a higher quality/better made fluffy leading some wild feral. They protect their herd, and always give food to the soon mummahs , ect.
A Smarty and Bad Smarty are roughly equal. Less a smart fluffy, and more of a dumb and cowardly bully. Basically a spoiled brat suffering from Smarty Syndrome due to being raised badly. They take the food for themselves, and pick fights only to run and use their herd as a shield.
A Hell Gremlin is like in that pic. A psychotic monster that is the pure opposite of what a fluffy is supposed to be. But that brings up an interesting question. HOW do Hell Gremlins survive long enough to be fully grown? If they are violent and practically fueled by all the deadly sins, won’t they get stomped as a bad babbeh?
Like, are they so scary that they attack and terrify their parents into not stomping on them, and do they kill their siblings so they get all the milk or something? I do not understand how they can even reach maturity.
As someone relatevily new this is very helpful information!
I always believed smarties and hellgremlins were the same, I also believed the mummah rank of babbehs was something normal for regular fluffies to do. It’s kinda complicated to separate some aspects now since I came to know them that way, but this might be useful later on!
The problem is that the definition of smarties is also problematic, and really down to headcanon. I mean, at the base of it, smarties are supposed to be “a fluffy that’s smart” based on the idea that fluffies as art-anon, marcusmaximus and the like drew them were not very bright. Somehow that idea evolved into “fluffies that work as herd leaders”, or “fluffies that have a syndrome where they they think they are owed everything” aka “smarty syndrome”. This is why people try to reconcile the idea by having “good-smarties” or just not using the term at all with ‘actually-smart’ fluffies.
This of course goes with the assumption that fluffies are mainly horse-based, if they are then id agree with you. But considering the mess of genes present in fluffies, it’s hard to say what traits they would, and wouldn’t have.
Though while there’s a majority of smarties that are male that does not mean a mare is incapable of being a smarty. Considering it’s a syndrome, really any fluffy could become a smarty.
Hellgremlins have a place in fluffy fiction, but the problem I noticed at the time was that some people (like BadMummahFluffah) would write stories and art with Hellgremlins being the default fluffy type. And that makes absolutely no sense. No one would give those monsters to children if they really were child-fucking shitfountains. BMF even upgraded their shit to burn like acid. I mean, I love to see an evil fluffy get what it deseves, but that doesn’t feel as satisfying when ALL fluffies are like that.
Also, I still appreciate the Marble reference in this comic.
BTW I want to think that I coined the term “Hellgremlin” but I don’t know if that’s true.
The only problem with this is now some people feel like they are entitled to lecture new creators on the “hellgremlin doctrine” when they see something they don’t like in a comic or story. Sometimes you get a story with all sorts of fluffs from nice to jerks, sometimes you get a hellgremlin comic. But flogging people with this obscure label the moment they make something you don’t like is a good way to chase new people out and make some inside quit.
