- Accidental Aesop:
- Even though PETA is something of a bumbling villain in the Fluffy lore, Fluffies are interesting commentary on animal (and to some extend child) abuse and murder. They are pitiable animals with no means of defending themselves given a voice, and by extension an opinion of their suffering. Is killing animals actually immoral? Or are Fluffies different since they have some form of sapience?
- Hugboxers (that is, people who write Fluffy stories that don't involve abuse) provide something of a double inversion to the concept. Due to their helplessness and bumbling nature, Fluffies can actually be quite cute and compassionate animals when placed in hands of people who understand them.
- Both in and out-of-universe, Fluffies are used as outlets for sick humour and sadistic urges. If the only thing between those urges and actually carrying out those urges is the threat of consequence, can people call themselves moral? Or is the willpower to not act out on those urges the basis of morality?
- Alternate Character Interpretation: Since canon is loosely defined, each author and artist has their own interpretation on fluffy behavior and their place in society.
- Bile Fascination: A not-unheard-of reaction to fluffy ponies is people reading the stories just to see how horrible they are, as much of the artwork and written fiction runs headfirst into gory, violent, and bleak NSFW territory.
- Broken Base:
- Are fluffies supposed to be cute, innocent creatures who wouldn't even hurt a stuffed toy, or are they a race of vicious assholes who want only to bully, rape, and murder their own kind (known in the fandom as "hellgremlins")? Fans were divided for a while over which interpretation of fluffies is the better one, although now most fans go for "fluffies vary just like humans".
- There's a low-key civil war between fans of hugbox (fandom slang for non-violent) content and fans of abuse content: for some hardcore hugbox fans, most abuse content is way too messed up for them to enjoy, and many think that abuse fans' fixation on cruel things happening to small furry animals is suspect at best. Hardcore abuse fans usually respond by saying that fluffy abuse is cathartic and an outlet for "cute aggression", writing off hugbox content as Glurge and hugboxers as emotional children (and sometimes ACTUAL children). Even so, both sides seem to respect fluffy creators who manage to mix both, and a lot of hugboxers will tolerate abuse if it's justified.
- Among fans of abuse content, there's a few that draw the line at adult fluffies sexually abusing foals (or "enfie babbeh") and humans sexually abusing fluffies. Those that don't will sometimes accuse the latter of being hypocrites with arbitrary standards since a lot of people outside the fluffy fandom already assume that fluffy abuse is a fetish in and of itself. (The Fluffy-Community site compromises by allowing sexual content, but only to registered users who opt-in to see it).
- Crosses the Line Twice: For some reason, animal abuse tends to be extremely funny when the animals are genetically engineered living plush toys who speak with a baby voice...
- Two words: "Ortolan foals"
. To elaborate, Ortolan bunting is an old French delicacy made by taking a songbird, fattening it up, and then drowning it in brandy before roasting it. It was so decadent that it was traditionally eaten with a napkin around the eyes so as to hide from God. Now, you can't use a songbird anymore because of laws protecting endangered species...but you can use fluffy foals! - A great gag decoration for cakes: Party Foals!
They're fluffy foals that are amputated, have their buttocks and genitals sewn shut, and forced to be toppers for birthday cakes. Now, the idea by itself is both hilarious and horrifying...and even more so because the targets are cynical adults who feel like they've been pushed around in life and want to take it out on a defenseless biotoy. As an added bonus, the loving mothers of these foals are shown the final fates of their precious "babbehs" before they're euthanized. - A fluffy watches FluffTV with FOAL PSAs
: Due to a legal settlement with a fluffy welfare group, the normally Sickeningly Sweet Fluff TV has to air PSAs discouraging domestic fluffies from wandering off and having babies. The first is a fluffy themed parody of the Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials, complete with a fluffspeak version of "Angel", showing what happens to foals in grimy fluffy shelters. The second is a musical Scare 'Em Straight educational program, hosted by a cheery hand puppet, about the Trauma Conga Line of a mare who runs away from home to have babies. She breeds with a smarty stallion who abandons her and her babies, gives birth in the alleyway to a horrifying looking stillborn alicorn, has another foal who starves to death, ends up having to eat her surviving foals to stop herself from starving, is abandoned by her last foal who poops on her before leaving, and then freezes to death. Don't worry, there's some justice at the end: the stallion went to a shelter, and because he was a smarty nobody liked, they burned him to death. The moral of the story is be a good fluffy and don't make bad babies! And the best part is that since this is from the point of view of a lone fluffy named Rhonda watching TV, we get to see how a fluffy would react to this content: first by crying, then by screaming to make it stop, then shitting themselves in fear, and then eating the evidence so that their owners won't put them in a shelter. Well, it obviously worked...Rhonda: ...Wonda nu wike fwuff teebee no mow!
- Two words: "Ortolan foals"
- Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Do not confuse the Fluffy Pony universes with Ask Fluffle Puff. Discounting the fact that Fluffle Puff and Fluffy Ponies live in different continuities altogether, the vast majority of Fluffy Pony writers respect Mixermike's work too much to harm a hair on Fluffle Puff. In the words of an anonymous Fluffy Pony writer, "Fluffle Puff is a pony who is fluffy, she is not a fluffy pony".
- Nightmare Fuel: Some of the more brutal fluffy pony abuse art/stories can fall under this.
- Realism-Induced Horror: Many Abuse stories are inspired by (or directly based on) real-life animal cruelty, and many Fluffy behaviors (including discrimination against runts and bad-colored foals) are also based on real animals. The fact that Fluffies can talk to express their pain (up to and including the "Wan Die" loop) can make it worse.
- Spiritual Successor: To Jissouseki and Yukkuri fandom, which, like fluffy pony fandom, originated on imageboards, and had the majority of the artwork and stories focused on graphically torturing and maiming the titular creatures in their respective fandom.
- Squick:
- Some cannibalistic feral fluffies develop a taste for other fluffies' intestines, calling them "tummeh sketties".
- Many fluffy stories and art (especially abuse-focused ones) feature copious amounts of poop, pee, vomit, blood and gore. In the case of poop, the fluffies are often shown pooping uncontrollably when they're scared.
- Sweet Dreams Fuel: Hugbox stories and art, which are for showing fluffies being taken care of by loving owners, playing with toys, eating spaghetti and being happy.
- Ugly Cute: Dependent on the artist, fluffies range from pure cute to this.
- The Woobie: Fluffies are often undeserving of the cruel fate they face in the wild and at the hands of abusers. Even then, some fluffies stand out more than others.
- Brown and alicorn fluffies mistreated by their families (as the former are considered ugly while the latter are regarded as abominations) are even more pitiable than normal fluffies, as they endure abuse from their family members on top of the rest of the world's hardships.
- "Enfie babbehs", foals in feral herds that suffer sexual abuse from adult stallions. On top of the obvious pain and trauma that comes from being one, they are frequently ostracized by other foals and called "dummeh babbehs".
- Fluffies that have been turned into pillowfluffs (meaning they've got no legs), and subsequently lose the ability to walk or play with other fluffies. Even well cared for pillowfluffs often become deeply depressed and enter the want to die phase later in life.
- Litter Pal fluffies take the pillowfluffs premise up to eleven as these are fluffies who not only don’t have the ability to walk or play, but are either specifically trained into, or in most scenarios, forced against their will to eat other fluffies' shit.
- Mares who live in fluffy mills. Breeding mares are repeatedly impregnated and will only spend a short time with each litter they give birth to before they are taken away to be sold. Enfie mares are pillowfluffed and used as sex toys for breeding stallions to take out their aggression on so they don't injure the more valuable breeding mares. Milkbags are not only pillowfluffed but held in place with straps, pumped full of hormones, and used as wet nurses for countless foals.
- Party foals have it just as bad: they're pillowfluff foals who are sterilized and forced to act as living cake toppers. Their legs are replaced with plastic sticks so they can stay on the cake, they're specifically positioned in such a way that they can smell the cake but never take a single bite, there's a candle on their head or their back that's supposed to either burn them to death or cause them to die of asphyxiation when they choke on the melted wax, and to prevent them from contaminating the cake they have their anuses plugged shut and their genitals chopped off and sewn up. The company that sells them uses "the only bodily fluids you'll taste from them are their tears" as a selling point, and offer their customers videos of the fluffies' mother seeing their babies die as an incentive to sign up for their email list. If they managed to survive, they either die in the trash...or are picked up and used on another cake.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/FluffyPony
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