Fillmore is by-far the bleakest, most depressing fluffy story I’ve ever read. Everytime there seems to be a ray of hope, it’s snuffed out in brutal fashion.
Some contenders I know of that haven’t been mentioned yet are Spinel and the two fluffies from The Farm (both stories by Wolfram_Sparks).
The part that really makes that story for me is the fact that LilBlue was right all along about the owner, but by the time the owner realizes it, it’s already too late.
My vote is for Gerald. His whole life was pain after pain. Not just his, either; it was his pain, his fluffy family’s, his human owner’s, and eventually the pain of hundreds and hundreds of human children at the worst possible times in their lives. He’s a repository of suffering, and can’t even go into a wan’ die spiral because the world contains so much fucking pain, and he’s been given the job of soothing it.
There’s suffering, and there’s Gerald.
I’m not a fan of the ending. But still really good comic, one of da best even.
It may sound weird coming from me but I’ve sort of come around to the ending. The whole theme of that story was testing his love. The abuser giving him a proper burial at the end wasn’t a sign that he loved him all along, or even a sign of respect, it was more of a way of saying “Congratulations, you passed the test”.
Oh… I forgot Snowmeg.
The most empathetic, loving, pure mare ever written is turned into an unwilling breeder mare and forced to watch every last litter she produces get tortured and raped to death until she’s barren. Highlights include being fed the cooked remains of her chirpies, seeing her special friend get suffocated to death with a plastic bag as she stares into his eyes, and one of her own foals being brainwashed and forced to rape her. Her suffering ends in a fucking terrorist attack at Skettiland where her remaining foals are turned into suicide bombers and she’s burned alive and blown up.