YMMV / Fluffy Pony

• 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 pittiable 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 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, 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".
• 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 horrifying...but considering that the target audience are jaded adults who are going through problems and life and want to take it out on defenseless babies, it's hilarious as hell.
  • 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 survivng 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!
• 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".
• Fridge Horror: Some of the depicted abuse raises several horrifying questions about the setting.
  • A fluffy pony named Chocolate is told he has "got to go" by his "daddeh" on the grounds of the owner getting a new foal, so he commits self-immolation. Just HOW did Chocolate know throw himself into the fireplace?! Why would the owner burn his old fluffies rather than simply abandon them in the park with the throw-the-ball-and-run method?!
    • There is a consensus among the fandom that fluffies are considered an invasive species. Abandoning it in the park may get you in trouble with authorities should you get caught. And even if not, there is the unlikely chance that the fluffy (who can talk mind you) knows your name and the house you live in. All it takes is it whining loudly about lost comfort and a bored civil servant within ear's reach.
  • A pet store owner in Hollywood grows tired of taking care of a feral fluffy and her foals, so he decides to fed them to his black-throated monitor lizard IN FRONT OF A PAYING AUDIENCE. How common are such blood-sports with fluffies in this setting?!
  • Many fluffies with no owner and are left to fend for themselves become feral. Fluffies were created as housepets with little survival instinct. How badly do they suffer in the wild? How much damage do they cause to ecosystems?
  • There are foal mills, not unlike real-world puppy mills. What the hell goes on in there?!
• Fridge Logic: It's accepted among the community that feral fluffies are an invasive species wherever they are present. Animals and plants that are considered invasive have traits that allow them to thrive in an environment they're not native to. Fluffies, however, are constantly depicted as being fragile, clumsy, and prone to death. They have no useful survival traits because they weren't engineered to live outside of human care. Their high breeding rate wouldn't do them any good if they have no means of ensuring their continued survival. This should logically prevent them from having any presence in the wild to begin with, invasive or otherwise.
  • In some headcanons, the explanation for this is that fluffies are asymptomatic carriers of diseases that kill animals.
• Heartwarming Moments: Hugbox works in general are made of this, but even non-hugbox works have a few:
  • When winter comes, so does karma shows a nice woman adopting a neglected feral "poopeh babbeh" named Rex. It's half this and half Tear Jerker, as the comic shows how his mother and siblings' lives went downhill afterwards.
  • While most of From bestes babbeh to munstah babbeh from the same artist is Nightmare Fuel (it's about an orphaned alicorn that becomes abused by a smarty and loses an eye) the ending is super sweet. The alicorn is adopted by the same woman who owns Rex, who gives her the name Dolly.
    Dolly: Bu'...babbeh am munstah babbeh...munstah babbeh onwy get foweva sweepies...
    Rex: NU! Babbeh am Dowwy! Dowwy nu munstah! Dowwy fo huggies and wuv!
    Dolly: Nu munstah...?
• Nightmare Fuel: Some of the more brutal fluffy pony abuse art/stories can fall under this. Fluffies have many child-like mannerisms, which makes them seem like thinly-veiled expies for human children. On the other hand, they could be expies of real-world animals.
• 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.
• Squick: Some cannibalistic feral fluffies develop a taste for other fluffies' intestines, calling them "tummeh sketties."
• Tear Jerker:
  • For people who aren't into fluffy abuse, many stories focused on their torture and harm can become this.
  • Other stories focused on the emotional pain of fluffies, whether it comes from abuse or not, are referred to as "Sadbox".
  • A fluffy put through too much abuse will become suicidal and can only repeat, "Wan die."
• 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.
  • 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 commit 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.

---