Sugar Wiki / W.A.F.F.

aka: Fluff

"Warm And Fuzzy Feeling". A work whose sole purpose for existence is to make the reader go "Awwww! That's so sweet!" at regular intervals and/or at the end. Frequently labeled as Fluff, not to be confused with the other kind. Mostly made and read by female audiences or male audiences who make sure no one is watching behind their backs (though there are some exceptions). In Hentai works (which are generally assumed to be Darker and Edgier by default), this type of story is labelled "vanilla". Often used in the context of "I need some vanilla to get the bad taste of Netorare out of my mouth."

Frequently seen as a feature of Continuation fics that attempt to tie up the romantic loose ends left by a series that ended without resolving them, but can be found for just about any reason for any fandom.

A Hallmark Presentation will likely be this.

Also seen in the adjective form "WAFFy".

WAFFy Lemon is a comparatively rare crossbreed of Fanfic, but several good pieces have come out of this combination. Moe hentai works also often exhibit WAFFy Lemonism. Apparently, the idea of writing romantic sexual interludes as opposed to Porn Without Plot brings out a lot of inspiration.

When a WAFF is a Porn Without Plot (with or without sex), it's Curtain Fic.

More serious or "cynical" series tend to inspire WAFF fanfics, in the same way comedies or "idealistic" series inspire Dark Fic.

See also Glurge, Lighter and Softer, Iyashikei, Sweet Dreams Fuel and True Love Is a Kink. Not to be confused with WAUGH, as in Evelyn Waugh, Waif as in Waif-Fu, WAAF as in the World War 2 era Women's Auxiliary Air Force, "Waugh, waugh, waugh", or "WAAAAAAGH!", which is something very different. Or the Australian cricketers.

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Examples

Canon Examples

Anime and Manga

• Blue Flag is a story that is entirely sweet, with lovely art and plenty of focus in the character's funny and heartwarming interactions with each other. Even the angst surrounding the Love Triangle aren't enough to subside it. It helps the author loves to draw the character in a cute way.
• The (hentai) OVA adaptation of the Yuri Visual Novel Sono Hanabira Ni Kuchizuke Wo.
• The Yuri Genre series Kase-san is a lighthearted series about the titular Kase and Yamada befriending each other and ultimately ending up together despite their differences.
• Hitomi-chan Is Shy with Strangers is a Romantic Comedy that completely averts the angst and love triangles prevalent in the genre. The focus is just on Hitomi, Yuu, and their inability to admit their love while at the same time showing each other how much they care more than any words could.
• Hyakunichikan!! is an adorable and wholesome look at Sink or Swim Fatherhood.
• I Want Your Mother To Be With Me! is one of the most wholesome romance manga out there, and has phenomenal character development.

Live-Action TV

• The Joy of Painting. Bob Ross' warm, gentle voice soothes you while slowly, a beautiful painting appears before your eyes.

Tabletop Games

• Golden Sky Stories is a Tabletop RPG with a focus on this.

Video Games

• In Mass Effect 2, you can invite whoever you romanced up to cuddle. No sex, just cuddling. On the Mass Effect page someone even described it as being like something right out of a WAFF fanfic. Which means, yes, canon WAFF in a Darker and Edgier sequel. Of the "it works" variety. Primarily due to (as Yahtzee puts it) the fact that "Birds fly, fish swim, Michael Atkinson molests dogs, and BioWare does good writing".
  • Every BioWare game has this, from Jade Empire to Knights of the Old Republic to Baldur's Gate to Star Wars: The Old Republic. Keep in mind, all of these games also allow you the exact polar opposite of WAFF. You can be a right sadistic bastard that'll even make the most heartless gamers wince.
• In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, if you move CJ to certain places, you can start a "two player run", and a second player will plug the controller, choose one of the characters and play with you. You can't go on missions but you can kill and destroy stuff together Just for Fun. If both player are near each other, any of them can press the L1 button, the time will stop, and the characters hug and kiss, even if it's CJ and another guy (and you can't deny the kiss). You can even kiss a police officer... This so out of place for a GTA it's more hilarious than cute.
• Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days has a large chunk of cutscenes of the characters Roxas, Axel, and Xion sitting on the Twilight Town clock tower and eating ice cream, with a good amount of best-friend talk to make any player laugh along lightheartedly. But then comes the Wham Episode at the end...
• The Wii remake of A Boy and His Blob features a button allowing the boy to hug the blob. Awww.
• The end of the last episode of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse has a long sequence where Sam is in complete and utter despair at the 'death' of Max. When (another) Max arrives from another dimension, the story resumes with them being overjoyed to see each other. The scene is played out so beautifully that WAFF is guaranteed in any player who feels empathy towards the characters (and anyone who has followed the story to this point definitely will).

Webcomics

• Nerd & Jock is just a Slice of Life about two friends who respect each other's differences.
• In Slightly Damned, Buwaro and Kieri's First Kiss has a very palpable WAFFiness to it.
• Transcendent is a story about a trans girl at an all-boys magic academy who makes friends, becomes more comfortable with herself, and grows as a person.
• 4AM shower is dedicated to embodying this trope.

Web Original

• This is pretty much the mission statement of Shigesato Itoi's Hobo Nichi Itoi Shinbun news/lifestyle site.
• In a Heartbeat is a LGBT independent animation about a young closeted boy who has a crush on a boy of his school. They eventually end up together and the whole thing is impressively sweet.

Fan-Work Examples

Anime and Manga

• I Won't Say an adorable Death Note (Light/L) Christmas Special FanFic.
• A cute Code Geass story about Lelouch and Suzaku meeting C2 as children.
• Snapshots: It's a girl is supplementary WAFF-material to an extremely long, well-written, and not warm or fuzzy fic for Fullmetal Alchemist entitled "Fullmetal Alchemist:Forever", the author of both stories has written a series of anecdotes about Edward and his daughter, Amy. The first one takes place just before her birth, the last one is Amy's earliest memory of her Dad It can be found here. To get that straight: "Snapshots" is warm-and-fuzzy accompanying material to a Fullmetal Alchemist fanfic entitled "Fullmetal Alchemist:Forever". "Fullmetal Alchemist:Forever" is definitely not warm and fuzzy... Amy gets pregnant at age twelve and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
• Fanfics that attempt to give Shinji and Asuka — or heck, anyone from Neon Genesis Evangelion — at least a moment of happiness, if not a full-fledged Happily Ever After ending.
  • Advice and Trust: The story's premise is: "What if Shinji and Asuka's kiss had NOT gone wrong?" The answer to that question is action, suspense and loads of waffiness as Shinji and Asuka keep a Secret Relationship.
  • The Second Try has some major Tear Jerker moments and a large dose of parental fears, but the post-Third Impact storyline and (eventually) the last couple of chapters are pure heartwarming awesome. Sequel/epilogue Aki-chan's Life drops the angsty bits almost entirely and goes for upbeat, heartwarming and often very funny Slice of Life.
  • The Child of Love: In this story Shinji gets Asuka pregnant accidentally and both have to learn to get over their issues and have a relationship during the war. It has plenty drama and dark moments but it also has plenty heartwarming romance and is very unapologetic about it.
  • Once More with Feeling: The scenes involving Shinji and Asuka are very heartwarming and tender with a touch of angst, even when they're bickering.
  • Another good one is the non-hentai doujin Epilogue of Evangelion, a whopping 700 pages of Shinji & Asuka's life as the only living beings who returned from the Sea of LCL after the finale of End of Evangelion. And by the same author, Happy End of Evangelion, which takes place in Alternate Universe where a majority of humanity returned from the Sea of LCL (sans some characters, like Yui and Gendou), Misato and a resurrected Kaji got married and even had a kid, and the plot follows the now older Shinji and Asuka's burgeoning relationship.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • The Road You Choose Pokemon alternate universe in which Ash and Misty do develop a relationship.
  • Giovanni's received some of these, but at least a few fanfic authors have been throwing in some Badass to control the fluff. This writer's known for the fluff, but, given the timeline she has available on her journal, and Giovanni killing off people who hurt his family (Silver and otherwise), there are going to be a few badass fics coming up too.
  • And Legacy is regarded by several of her fans as "Sweet and sincere, but with that dark edge he's known for".
• Setsuna's relationship with Konoka in Negima! Magister Negi Magi is already cute, and has accrued enough W.A.F.F. Ship Tease moments that most KonoSetsu fics just build on the substantial subtext to push Setsuna over the edge, either into a confession to or full-on yuri with her charge. E.g.: Egg Belly, a wonderful WAFFy Lemon.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • While there are plenty of Dark Fics in the Hetalia: Axis Powers fandom, there are also many fluffy fics for the series' Official Couples, especially for Germany/Italy who, while receiving their share of angsty fics, is responsible for most of the fandom's positively teeth-rotting fluff fics. In a good way. (One such example.)
  • 95% of all Greece/Japan fics fall into this category, with them being consistently portrayed by fandom as an adorable, mellow couple whose similarly quiet and gentle personalities lead them to be Happily Married in all but name. And they're really cute while they're at it. (A few examples.) Their WAFF status is so firmly entrenched, in fact, that them being paired together or even mentioned in relation to each other is vanishingly rare in Dark Fic, especially with the most common alternative pairings for each of them being far more attractive to angst-lovers.
  • A fan over on the Troper Tales page for Hetalia went as far as to call Prussia/Canada the "Ultimate Feel Good Ship". And not without good reason. It's impossible to find an angst-fic for them. There's loads of Hurt/Comfort Fic. And the writers usually carry it out magnificently. Some such examples would be called for, but they're all over the place, you can't miss them.
  • Hetalia Axis Powers H fanfic Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità: The Falling-in-Love Montage between Germany, Italy, and Japan is full of this
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Doujinshi circle Forest Village produces a number of worksafe yuri doujinshi, particularly of Madoka and Homura. One two-part series consists of them getting married and having a happy and playful honeymoon at a beach resort.
• The Abridged Series adaption of Toradora! has Toradora Randomness Episode 10 which appears at the very end. Which is a surprise knowing how ridiculous the rest of the show is.
• My Hero Academia: The fanfiction Toward A Bright Future has a new Teaching Assistant with a future vision Quirk join the faculty, and she quickly proves to be a darling to Class 1-A and beyond. Whether it's rewarding the students with stickers and snacks, getting Midoriya to blush with compliments, petting Dark Shadow, tutoring those who are struggling, interacting with Aizawa's cats, or even providing a home for Todoroki when she finds out about his situation, Y/N-sensei is outright adorable in how she cares for her new class.
• The Wound's Still Bleeding has a few sad elements, such as Minato's death and Obito's Disney Death, but it's predominantly a fluffy Obito/Kakashi story about Kakashi as a trans woman.

Comic Books

• The Black Cat's Batman and Sons comics are downright adorable. Terry and Tim take the cake.
• We Won't Tell You to Heel: The Runaways steal a dog away from its abusive owner.

Films — Live Action

• The Maleficent fanfic Your servant, Mistress is mainly about Maleficent and Diaval healing each other's emotional wounds. The Maleficent fandom in general is fond of this, as Maleficent is The Woobie in the original movie, and doesn't get much time to enjoy her regained wings on-screen. Fanfic is there to fix that.

Literature

• The Animorphs fic Like Father, Like Son (also a Song Fic) started from the series's end, added the premise of Tobias intercepting Elfangor's six-year-old hirac delest, and ended up with none of the major deaths of the series occurring, even Elfangor's. Tobias's mother even got her memory back — acknowledged by the author as probably the least believable part.
• There was a quite enjoyable Harry/Luna WAFFy Lemon on the Restricted Section Harry Potter smut website called Release (NSFW). The site it was once located on is no longer around, but it was uploaded to AO3.
• The Chronicles of Narnia fanfiction The Fledgling Year—a Continuation Fic from The Horse and His Boy detailing the adventures of Cor’s traipse through Archenland and Aravis’ attempts to keep him from getting assassinated or roasted alive and to find him a suitable future queen. Still ongoing, but there’s heaps of fluffy Ship Tease and the author has promised a happy resolution to the abundant sexual tension. Note that this does not apply to the later chapters, where Aravis is nearly raped and suffers severe trauma because of this. Cerebus Syndrome does not begin to describe it.

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: The All-Ages Kirk/Spock Archive, due to the PG-13 content restriction, tends to attract these.
• This is quite prevalent in the Jeeves and Wooster fandom, though they're usually used for certain scenes instead of entire fics. On Being Blankety is a notable exception.

Video Games

• Any of the Lloyd and Colette fics that Lil Samuu writes fit in this category. And they're well written. All of them.
• Metal Gear has inspired a lot of "interim" fics for Snake/Otacon and Big Boss/Ocelot, where the writers just want to give the two ships some happy-times too before everything goes south again.
• Plenty of Touhou Project Fanfics fall into this category. Take a look for yourself. Try Can't Fix The Helmet's GERANIUM, anything by "Hero Bear", Millet Soup's Even If Life Isn't Short, most Flipflops doujins...
• Quite a few shipping fics in Ace Attorney involve this. It's no doubt helped by the fact that most of the characters are woobies to some degree, and just about all the defense attorneys and prosecutors have had at least one horrific thing happen to them that makes writing about them having something adorable or nice happen very appealing.
• While you wouldn't expect it (being a Crack Pairing played completely straight), Dating a Team Magma Grunt is adorable.
• The majority of all Sorey/Mikleo fanworks, albeit some of it does veer into Tear Jerker territory if it involves any post-game stuff. The big exception to this would have to deal with the popular Tainted AU which works tend to be not so fluffy.
• The Dragon Age fic series Skyhold Academy Yearbook has most of its angst and drama confined to the first story; the bulk of the series is composed of fluff and hilarity, often at the same time.
• TheDanganronpa fic Danganronpa: Ultimate High School Experience is a Slice of Life story about the characters living a normal high school life without any killing games to get in the way of it. It primarily focuses on the various romantic interactions between the cast, with the pairings ranging from fairly commons ones like Makoto/Mukuro and Hajime/Chiaki to rare ones like Tsumugi/Ryota and Kaede/Nagito. However, regardless of which love story you’re most invested in, each one is presented with equal amounts of fluff with the only angst stemming from things like an inability to confess.

Webcomics

• Harmonystuck is an AU of Homestuck where everything is cute and nothing hurts. It's been described by many who read through the logs as 'a highly effective Homestuck Antidepressant'.
• Touhou Journal features Touhou Project protagonist Reimu Hakurei, normally a hero with a large side of Good is Not Nice, as a mute, but adorable and benevolent miko who treats anybody and everybody with silent kindness.

Western Animation

• The Teen Titans (2003) fic Christmas with the Graysons definitely counts.
• The Codename: Kids Next Door fanfic Sleep Tight is an adorable Wally/Kuki shipfic where There Is Only One Bed.
• The Phineas and Ferb fic Lovey Dovey is this trope.
• Chapter 53 of the Justice League fic The Truth About Flash is this in its entirety: where all of the Leaguers, associated heroes and their families have a giant picnic in the park, to give Wally the perfect day he's dreamed about.
• Kim Possible fanfic has plenty of WAFFy stories about Kim and either her sidekick Ron or her nemesis Shego, but the real nexus of Kim/Shego cutesiness is the artist Rinacat and the #kimshego group.
• The Iron Man: Armored Adventures fanfic Iron Man Kindergarten Adventures is a cute, fluffy fic in which the five year old main cast make friends with each other. And then they fight Mothman.
• The KaBlam! story Goodbye, June is this crossed with Tear Jerker. But mostly this.
• Many fanfics set in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic universe do a good job of this. Though a surprising number are also the exact opposite, putting warm-and-fuzzy characters through brutal situations.
  • An excellent example of the former is Windfall, about the wacky hijinks involved in the Elements of Harmony reuniting for the birth of Fluttershy's first foal.
  • Another excellent example is The Light in the Darkness, a fanfic regarded as so heartwarming, it is considered the Good Counterpart of the infamous Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles).
  • Another good one is Post Nuptials, which details the Mane Cast and a few associated characters dealing with their feelings after the royal wedding and changeling invasion, specifically not believing Twilight about Fake!Cadance.
  • Xenophilia combines this with Lemon scenes, resulting in a story that's a lot more heartfelt than most examples of its genre. There's some drama, but it's mostly sweet romance.
  • New Beginnings: S3 Chapter 34 features Page encountering Scootaloo and letting her fly in her dream.
  • The King Of Love Bugs: The entire continuity created by Navel Colt is specifically meant to showcase how the reformed changelings share and spread love through empathy and affection, mostly via wholesome cuddles and snuggles.
• Total Drama has a fair amount of these, a great deal done by the author Winter-Rae, who specializes in feel-good Fanon fics that are sweet and heartwarming, focusing on attraction and affection.

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