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Rubeus Hagrid was cheerless the day his man-eating spider friend, Aragog, had gone to the great web in the sky.
One man's snarling three headed dog is another man's cute puppy.
A Fluffy Tamer is a person skilled with animals, and is especially good at the kind of snarling beasts which qualify to be called Fluffy The Terrible. A Fluffy Tamer isn't merely good with such creatures, they are the ones most likely to name them "Fluffy" in the first place. To them, such creatures are as adorable as any kitten or similar house pet. They would either be mortally offended by the idea of What Measure Is A Non Cute or hold it in completely opposite regard than your average person. The main drawback of such a pastime seems to be having to deal with consequences of Muggles and Idiot Heroes freaking out when they see a beast and mistake Fluffy Tamer for Distressed Damsel or something. Repeatedly.
Such characters are frequently a Friend To All Living Things. Other times this preference may only extend so far and won't encompass all scary beasts but perhaps just a particular kind. They may also be a Nightmare Fetishist, who finds beauty in all things terrifying.
A surefire sign of a Fluffy Tamer is speaking to such ravaging beasts in Baby Talk and not getting eaten. If the Fluffy Tamer works by being terrifying to all animals, she's less likely to call him Fluffy and more likely to name him George. Contrast Animals Hate Him, who may think they're good with animals but really aren't.
Examples:
Anime & Manga
- There is a story arc in Chocotto Sister in which Choko discovers a gigantic kitty cat (a.k.a. a panther), names it Kuro (the Japanese equivalent of a black cat named "Blackie"), and doesn't get eaten.
- In the Pokémon anime, Misty is known to adore all water Pokemon, finding even Tentacruel beautiful. The only water Pokemon she ever disliked was Gyarados. And that had more to do with a childhood trauma than the Pokemon itself (a manga version of Misty uses one of those, too). Her Fluffy Taming doesn't extend beyond water Pokemon however, and she finds bug Pokemon repellent.
- She makes a guest appearance later in the series, where she uses a Gyarados- and kisses its Pokeball before throwing it.
- Its also the same one that gave her childhood trauma. Revealed why in a spinoff episode.
- Kukuri of Mahoujin Guru Guru reaches the fourth level of a tower made for her to train her powers, the last before she reaches the top. There she must befriend a creature named Tora Tora before she can proceed. The previous three tests Kukuri did took her three, one, and two months respectively for a total of six. She has Tora Tora giving her horsey rides before the person giving her the test is finished killing time dancing.
- This Troper doesn't know if it's part of her basic personality, but when Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu of Magic Knight Rayearth first entered Cephiro, they met a large flying fish. Umi and Fuu agree that, unlike Hikaru, their first instinct was not to pick it up and give it a hug.
- Luffy from One Piece finds a huge foreboding three-headed dog on one of his adventures and decides to tame it. The sequence goes something like this:
Luffy: Okay. Shake.
All three heads of the dog bite Luffy. No really.
Luffy (soothing tone): Good dog. Now let go. Slowly. Carefully...
Three-headed dogs confused at his calm tone slowly let him go.
Luffy (smashing them into a wall): You bastard!
Luffy (to the now unconscious dog): Shake.
- Also, Robin found the dog to be cute, putting her in line with this. Luffy is later seen triumphantly riding his tamed pet.
- A minor incident occurs on Jaya, when Usopp happily plays with a tarantula that freaks out Nami and Sanji.
- Konoka of Mahou Sensei Negima had this sort of reaction to a dragon once.
- While her personality is rather unlikable to others, Machi from Nagasarete Airantou is beloved by her Shikigami, who she treats as friend when all other summoners consider them mere tools. Machi's great-grandmother Yashiro is the same.
- While perhaps more of a Killer Rabbit Tamer, Tamako of Dennou Coil is the controller of the Satchii and Kyuu-chan anti-virus programs. She's also prone to giving them affection pet names like "Tama", a Japanese equivalent to "Fluffy," and praising them like one would a pet.
- Astro Boy's sister, Uran.
Fan Fiction
Film
Literature
- The obvious person who will likely come to most minds is Harry Potter's Rubeus Hagrid, pictured above. He has raised giant spiders, baby dragons, and a three headed dog. Their names were Aragog, Norbert, and Fluffy, respectively. He's a half-giant, so such creatures are less likely to hurt him, but he tends to not realize that most people aren't as indestructible as he is. This has landed him in trouble numerous times – Tom Riddle was able to use Aragog to frame him for opening the Chamber of Secrets – and yet he never seems to learn.
- To this troper, Hagrid's experiment, the Blast-Ended Skrewts, sound like giant exploding camel spiders. Normal camel spiders are Nightmare Fuel enough...which is why the Skrewts are one of the best examples of Hagrid liking scary animals.
- Not to forget his full-giant half brother. Justified as he is a relative, but Hagrid downplays a lot the fact that his brother frequently beats him with little or no provocation. Apparently, it's a giants thing.
- Lady Sybil Ramkin from Discworld is this way towards dragons. Also worth noting is she likes Nobby Nobbs when she first meets him.
- Despite all evidence to the contrary, Nanny Ogg can only see her tomcat Greebo as the sweet little kitten she first took in.
- This would be the Greebo that is said to be able to fight and/or rape anything up to and including a four-horse logging wagon, and once killed a vampire.
- Twice. One he ate (said vampire was in bat form at the time) and one he just attacked violently for disturbing his nap.
- Hodgesaargh, Lancre's royal falconer, is somewhat of an example, although he doesn't name his charges "Fluffy". Part of the reason, of course, is that falcons aren't fluffy.
- In The Thrawn Trilogy, Talon Karrde keeps a pair of vornskrs, Sturm and Drang, as pets. Wild vornskrs are quite vicious and dangerous, as Luke and Mara find, but apparently surgically removing their tails curbs their aggression. Even so, Sturm and Drang are both hostile to Force-Sensitives, even if they don't make instant diving leaps of death, and won't listen to his commands to relax. Karrde does have the sense to have one of his people take the animals away when he talks to Luke.
- In Otis Adelbert Kline's novel Outlaws of Mars the hero attempts to save a Martian woman he just met from a hideous lizard monster that he sees running towards her. After he kills it the weeping woman has him arrested for killing her pet that she raised from a baby.
Tabletop RPG
- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons has various "Beastmaster" kits. Naturally raising Up To Eleven in settings like Dark Sun, where a dumb lizard the size of a good house is but one of usual means of transportation and the desert has more than enough of powerful beasts and semi-sentient monsters one could persuade to cooperate.
Video Games
- Pokémon Diamond and Pearl has an NPC standing outside Amity Park (which only admits "cute" Pokemon) complaining about discrimination against his Steelix.
- Thanks to the complete aversion of What Measure Is A Non Cute any Pokémon Player can become one of these. Want to raise a Giant fire breathing dragon and call it Snookie? Sure why not? The embodiment of nightmares? Player Characters will be Player Characters. However the Tamer Class among NPCs is the closest to this trope.
- Pet classes in MMOs will often count. For example, Hunters from World Of Warcraft can tame things like Devilsaurs and Core Hounds.
- In Half-Life 2, Dr. Isaac Kleiner keeps a "de-beaked" headcrab as a pet. Its name is Lamarr.
- In the Final Fantasy series, the job classes Beastmaster and Trainer are precisely this, able to tame wild monsters from that cute little flying kitty to that rampaging three-headed hydra. The Mediator/Orator class in Final Fantasy Tactics can even learn the "Tame" and "Beast Tongue" abilities to use while equipping another class, and they only work on animals, leading to situations where a tiny White Mage is backed up by her new pet, the Dark Behemoth.
- In zOMG!, a labtech asks you to acquire technology from vicious prairie dog/cyborg aliens, in hopes that he can build a translator to communicate with them. When you meet him again in the Sealab Compound, he indicates that he can communicate with Grunnies, and that they gave him a heads-up you were coming.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- The Powerpuff Girls episode "Three Girls and a Monster" features Blossom and Buttercup arguing Brains VS Brawn to deal with a new monster. Bubbles flies up to it, asks it to leave "pretty please with sugar on top" and it peacefully walks away.
- On the Futurama episode "Spanish Fry", Lrr and Nd-Nd, the fearsome rulers of Omicron Persei 8, meet Bigfoot and start gushing at it as if he were a fluffy bunny.
- The beloved pet of Avatar The Last Airbender's King Bumi is a goat-gorilla named Flopsie.
- Lilo from Lilo And Stitch single-handedly turns a rampaging, gentically-modified alien into a loving pet. She procedes to do the same to 625 other such creatures in the series by finding "their one true place."
Real Life
- This is the job of César Millán as featured in Animal Planet, his specialty being breeds that are (unfairly) thought of as Fluffies... Pitbulls and Rottweilers.
- Steve Irwin may not have given them cutesy names, but he definitely was good with dangerous animals.
- This troper once watched an episode of That's Incredible featuring an otherwise normal American family that reared a brood of, large cats - 10 cougers, 4 bobcats, a jaguar, and a lynx. All were treated affectionately as if they were housecats:
- One of the grown cougers even served as an alarm clock for one of the kids (by crawling into the kid's bed and snuggling her, right on time not to be late for school).
- The jaguar had a habit of sleeping in the bathtub, and one morning when the family mom found it there as usual she said "What are you doing in there? Get out so I can take a bath" while she gently nudged it out by its leash without resistance.
- One of the cougers growled at a window, and the show host remarked "It's probably just the mailman."
- Obviously they would have rather tame names. One couger who made a living as a photoshoot model (trained by the family dad) was named "Bo", while another that was rearing a newborn cub was named "Brenda" (that morning both mother couger and cub were seen with the family mom talking sweetly to them and petting them while the latter was doing the dishes).
- Also, Bo (accompanied by the family dad) spent his after-work hours at a nightclub called the "Kit Kat Club" (complete with Cat Girls who work there) and drink cold water, his "usual" order. From a glass. With his tongue. At an almost standing pose and leaning at the bar. While everyone would look at him with amusement.
- Also, in the morning before work he has roasted chicken for breakfast, which is hand fed to him, at "his favorite restaurant."
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