Cliches in Writing

The following is a list of cliches and frequently used writing techniques common in the fluffy fandom. Not every idea mentioned here is intrinsically bad, however, the ideas are often over-done or poorly executed by many writers and comic artists.

Special Fluffy White-Knighting
Special fluffy white-knighting is a broad class of sub-cliches, and the source of many "justified" abuse stories. In this trope, a human will rescue a special fluffy of some type, such as an alicorn, runt, or brown foal, from a abusive mare or herd, and inflict his vengeance on the offending fluffies, often overly punishing them. Special fluffy white-knighting differs from a simple rescue, in that the rescuing human gets revenge on the fluffies that a mistreated the rescued fluffies.

Runt White-Knighting
In this cliche, a human saves a runt from a feral mare or protects a runt from their own fluffy. This idea can lapse into writing where the human's motivations do not make sense.

In the case of a feral runt, the human character may have little reason to adopt the foal. As most runts die within days or hours of birth, a rescued feral runt would be at most a couple days old, meaning it will require weeks of hand-raising.

In the case of domestic runts, the question arises as to why the owner did not prepare for the birth of a runt. Most fluffy litters have at least one runt or other rejected foal. If the owner does not want to deal with runt rejection, they should either have trained their mare to accept runts or not allowed the mare to have foals in the first place.

Alicorn White-Knighting
In this cliche, the human saves an alicorn, typically an alicorn foal, from an abusive mare. As an alicorn is potentially valuable, this idea makes sense from an economic perspective.

However, in a domestic setting, the owner will often show favoritism to the alicorn, while, at the same time, standing in righteous judgment over the alicorn's mother for having a "bestest babbeh." The owner (and writer) will assume that if the mare shows favoritism, the favored foal will turn into a brat. However, the same, or even greater favoritism shown by the owner is assumed not to negatively effect the alicorn foal. Additionally, this cliche typically confuses monetary-value with love-value, with the human owner loving their pets in proportion to their retail value, in order to justify the owner loving the alicorn foal over its mother.

In a feral setting, the main difficulty is explaining how the alicorn survived long enough to be rescued. According to most headcanons, a mare with typically kill an alicorn foal on sight, or run away, often abandoning the rest of the litter. A feral alicorn foal would have a lifespan typical or less than that of a runt.

The Abuser has the Most Winning Win in all Winningdom
In many neutral or sadbox stories, the fluffy character loses, but does still better than expected. For example, the fluffy might see through the psychological abuser's lies, or go out while maintaining at least a thread of dignity. In these cases, the fluffy still "beats the point spread," a reference to the sports gambling.

In the opposite trope, the abuser will not only be victorious over their fluffy adversary, but totally and utterly triumph, beyond the point of in-story plausibility. In some instances of this trope, an attractive woman will appear out of nowhere at the tail-end of the story to offer the human main character sexual favors for vanquishing their fluffy protagonist.

What defines this cliche is that the human character's outcome is implausible according to the in-story universe. The most common example is a society, in which fluffies are already commonly abused, giving undue attention to the abuser's actions. In the worst examples, a hot chick will figuratively drop out of the sky, and immediately lust after the abuser for no apparent reason.

Subspecies for the Sake of Subspecies
Fluffy subspecies are not inherently bad. However, fluffyfying a random ungulate (or a random animal, or a random object) rarely becomes successful. Since fluffies are not at all like horses, except for cosmetic similarities, a cow fluffy or a moose fluffy would only have cosmetic similarities with a cow or moose. So, a cow fluffy is essentially a recolor of a standard fluffy. Obviously, the artist/author could apply the attributes of the base animal to the new subspecies. However, instead of this, the author expanding or explaining the difference of the subspecies, they often create a single picture for the sole purpose of other people making more content with their idea.

Many new artists have tried to push their new idea onto the fandom unsuccessfully because they often do not flesh out the idea so people see no interest in expanding upon it. Unlike Puffy Griffons, Sea Fluffies, Microfluffies, Anthro Fluffies, and Fuzzy Ponies, which have stories and lore, these newly pitched ideas tend to just be a standard drawn image with a few suggestions on head canon, which doesn't catch viewers attention as much as a story or comic would.

Occasionally, a writer will try to differentiate the new sub-species from standard fluffies. However, these tend to be cosmetic differences, such as different favorite foods, or Mary-Sue attributes, such as not hating alicorns and runts or being much stronger and smarter than a standard fluffy.

All fluffies are greedy, self-centered, a-holes

 * “All fluffies embody humanity’s worst traits. They’re everybody’s shitty boss, bully or spoiled brat that we’ve ever wanted to beat up in past but couldn’t. That’s why we must abuse them.”

I think we’ve all heard something similar being said from someone in the abuse community, but it’s not exactly true. This phrase was originally just used for Smarties, since they are known for their bad tempers, huge egos and terrible attitudes. Over time, this idea has spread from not just smarties, but to regular fluffies as well. It has since been considered a lazy method to justify abuse in the story without making the abuser look bad or the author actually thinking of a reason or creative idea to abuse fluffies.

Fluffies have a wide range of personalities, similar to human children. Sure, there are little shits and spoiled brats, but there are also personalities with good and neutral traits as well. Not every fluffy acts the same way. They each have slightly different quirks to differentiate characters and roles needed to make an interesting story from antagonists, to protagonists, to everything in between. If every fluffy acted the same way, especially if that behavior is bad, there wouldn’t have been enough people to care about fluffies enough to fund the many pet shops and shelters which make interesting settings for fluffy stories of multiple genres.

Another problem with this portrayal of fluffies is that many authors who portray them as assholes try to shove in normal fluffy behavior only when it’s convenient for abuse. A particular author’s fluffy mother character could be a complete self-centered bitch and abuse or kill her foals on a daily basis, but when a human comes by and takes away the foals legs, then the mother breaks down in tears, begging the human to stop. There seems to be no reason as to why the mother would suddenly care for her foals instead of running away and saving herself. This style of writing comes off as inconsistent and "lazy", but it is very common for new authors and artists to do this.

Perpetual foal abuse (poopy babbehs)
One over-used trope that has lost any shock or effect on readers is the abuse of bland colored foals by its parents and siblings; usually brown. What used to be pretty rare behavior has become so common place that the subject has become just as bland and stale as the offending foal’s fluff color due to the predictability of the trope’s content. The stories focused on the abused character tend to want it to be sadbox, but the theme has been so overdone that it is now considered "boring".

Usually, it means that the bland colored foal will be rejected and abused by its parents and not be allowed to eat any real food but instead only be allowed to eat feces to survive. Somehow, if that fluffy survives in wild, it will usually be given a job at collecting food for the herd while still being completely forbidden to eat anything else but the herd’s droppings. If this foal survives in a shelter/shop, the foal usually ends up not making any friends, being adopted and eventually put down or sold as a "litterpal" where it will suffer for the rest of its life.

Occasionally there will be "poopeh babbeh white knighting", but these stories usually focus on the constant abuse and lack of back bone for the foal to try and stand up for itself, which makes these stories run almost the same. If you’ve read one poopy babbeh abuse story, you pretty much read all of them.

Quadruple amputation
While quadruple amputation of the legs is a legitimate method to permanently punish bad behaving fluffies, the slow death of neglect has been done very commonly. Whether the fluffy in the story deserves abuse or not, the end result is usually as bland and boring as the pillow fluff’s life.

The fluffy usually complains and cries that it can no longer run, play or do the things it used to do and often wants to die, but is unable to end its own life. Occasionally an abuser keeps the amputee fluffy alive to continue abusing it, but the majority of stories end with the fluffy neglected in a box or cage all alone or forced to eat other fluffy’s droppings. One way or another, the fluffy is usually guaranteed to live a long, unhappy life that you can see coming from a mile away.

Smarty Leader is evil for sake of being evil
Often in stories that feature herds of feral fluffies, the leader is a Smarty who regularly kills foals and rapes mares. The problem with this is that it is never explained why the Smarty acts like a spoiled brat despite not having access to an owner, shelter, or food. The Smarty is constantly depicted as one-dimensionally evil with no redeeming qualities, they are openly rude and abusive towards their own herd members and don't even try to feign caring for their herd. They are also shown to be incompetent and cowardly leaders even by fluffy standards, running away at any potential dangers. This raises the question as to how the Smarty got into and stayed in power despite zero redeeming qualities both as a character and as a leader. Since these stories often are from the POV of an adult fluffy (usually a mare with foals) who should be of similar age of the Smarty, it would make sense for the fluffy protagonist to have witnessed the Smarty's inaguration.

The Smarty's acts of villanry are usually limited to three things: rape mares, kill their foals, give "wowstest owies" and/or "sowwy poopies" to anyone who is defiant towards them. The Smarty also fails to be a threat to anything or anyone that isn't a fluffy foal, making it hard for the audience to take him seriously. The audience is left waiting for the one-dimensionally evil Smarty to be killed off in a satisfactory way which often never happens because these types of stories often lack an actual ending because they never really go anywhere. At this point Smarties have went from being villains that the audience loves to hate, to just plain irritating.

Feral Families Consisting Too Many Characters
Whether or not you like the stories, most of it not all of the writers on Fluffybooru are not profesional writers (although there's nothing wrong with that). As a result, they often write stories about feral fluffy families. The family usually consists of a single mare and her foals (usually there's six of them). Since the writers are not professional writers, they are left with too many moving pieces and most of the foals (as soon as they become weanlings) end up sharing the same personality. As the plot progresses, the writer often kills of a couple of foals, which is usually their way of realizing in the middle of the plot that they added too many foal characters to utilize. These stories would be better off if it just focused on a single feral fluffy.