Fluffy Tamer: Difference between revisions

[[File:rsz dino tamer 3766.jpg|frame]]

 

 

 

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.

 

{{examples}}

* 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)|Pokémon]]'' anime, Misty is known to adore all Water Pokémon, finding even Tentacruel beautiful. The only Water Pokémon she ever disliked was Gyarados. And that had more to do with a childhood trauma than the Pokémon itself (a manga version of Misty uses a Gyarados, too). Her Fluffy Taming doesn't extend beyond Water Pokémon however, and she finds Bug Pokémon repulsive.

* Misao Nanjo from ''[[Pani Poni Dash!]]'' has among her managerie squirrels, hamsters, fish, snakes, ostriches, and alligators. She absolutely adores them, gives them cutesy names based on what species they are, and the alligator once saved Becky from drowning.

* In ''[[Durarara!!]]'', [[Headless Horseman|Celty]] turns out to have named her massive, undead, headless horse-turned-motorcycle [[Fluffy the Terrible|Shooter]]. She thinks the way it terrifies random passers-by on the street is adorable.

* In ''[[Softenni]]'', the tennis club is attacked by a [[Everything's Worse with Bears|ginormous bear]]. Kurusu fights it to a standstill, naked. Then makes it so the rest of the team (except Chitose, who's carried by the neck of her uniform in its mouth) can ride it the rest of the way up the mountain. Then Kurusu waves goodbye to the bear, calling it her friend.

 

* In the [[XXXenophile]] story "Rescue 911 a.d.," the unnamed hero goes goes into the dragon's lair not to kill it or take its treasure but to "ease its loneliness." May not count because {{spoiler|he's half-dragon}}.

* In one [[Marvel Adventures]] issue, Hercules comes by and asks the Avengers to pet-sit two of his dogs: giant monstrous underworld hounds, one with three and one with two heads (though Hercules tells them apart by their different spots...) I even think one of them was the actual Cerberus... Anyway, not only does he treat them like cute puppies, ''so do the Avengers'', who have [[Heroes Gone Fishing|nothing better to do]] and start treating them stupid tricks.

** If one of them was Cerberus, [[wikipedia:Orthrus|the other one may have been Orthrus]].

* When she and Carnage first encountered the Doppelganger, ''[[Spider-Man]]'' foe Shriek stopped Carnage from killing it because she thought it was neat, and eventually turned it into a loyal little pet. To put things in perspective, Doppelganger is an animalistic, six-armed, fanged monster clone of Spider-Man with compound eyes. It got even freakier looking when it came [[Back from the Dead]], mostly due the photorealistic approach the artist took.

 

 

== [[Film]] ==

* The film ''[[Gamera|Gamera The Invincible]]'' has a little boy named [[Bratty Half-Pint|Kenny]] who befriends the titular giant turtle despite everyone else thinking Gamera's nothing more than a destructive monster.

** And, let's be honest, in the first movie that is exactly what Gamera is.

** Slightly more importantly, that same supplemental material reveals that Rancors are [[Fluffy the Terrible]] of the [[Gentle Giant]] variety; they're sort of like big, loveable apes with strong parental instincts. The particular Rancor from the movie fell victim to Jabba the Hutt's prejudices; because it ''looked'' big, mean, and nasty, he ordered it starved and mistreated so that it would make a good show when he threw people into it's pen. That's right, the Rancor is the Star Wars equivalent of a pit bull. If a pit bull were large enough to eat you in a single bite. They are even used as beasts of burden on their homeworld of Dathomir.

* In the live action film of ''[[The Jungle Book]]'', Mowgli is this. The end of the film centers on him {{spoiler|being able to look into Shere Khan's eyes and stop him in his tracks}}.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* The most famous example is ''[[Harry Potter]]'''s Rubeus Hagrid. 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. He's also a Fluffy ''breeder'', credited with the creation of the Blast-Ended Skrewts, an incredibly dangerous and aggressive hybrid possessed of absolutely no useful qualities.

* Lady Sybil Ramkin from ''[[Discworld]]'' is this way towards dragons. Also worth noting is she ''likes'' Nobby Nobbs when she first meets him.

** Hodgesaargh, Lancre's royal falconer, is somewhat of an example, although he doesn't name his charges "Fluffy". Still, he's successfully reared the most lethal feathered hunters in the world (which is, after all half the point of falconry). He just hasn't managed to tame them completely (admittedly, this is the other half) - which also gave him the second part of the name. And that's still better than some people could manage, given that Lancre's native birds of prey are described as having "a certain 'sod-you' disposition".

* In [[The Thrawn Trilogy]], [[Knowledge Broker|Talon Karrde]] keeps a pair of vornskrs, [[Gratuitous German|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 [[Human Aliens|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.

 

* [[Dueling Shows]] ''[[The Addams Family]]'' and ''[[The Munsters]]'' both, due to how altogether ooky they were. The Addamses had a pet lion (Kitty Cat), an aggressive plant (Cleopatra), and Pugsley had a pet octopus. The Munsters were noted for their pet dragon, Spot, that lived under the stairs.

* ''[[Game of Thrones]]'': Daenerys Targaryen, the "Mother of Dragons". Nuff said.

 

* St. Francis of Assisi and the Wolf of Gubbio.

 

* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]''

** Most editions have various "Beastmaster" kits. Naturally raising [[Up to Eleven]] in settings like ''[[Dark Sun]]'', where a dumb lizard the size of a house is but one of many usual means of transportation and the desert has [[Death World|more than enough]] powerful beasts and semi-sentient monsters one could persuade to cooperate.

* In ''[[Star Ocean: The Last Hope]]'', there's Lymle with her demonic canine Cerberus whom she refers to as "Doggy". Also, a catgirl is normally not considered [[Fluffy the Terrible]], but when you consider the fact that she crossed over alternate dimensions and was treated as a monster by special forces black ops, well...

* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]''.

** In the new system, all trainable animals work the same way - with "animal trainer" skill. But a civilisation in worldgen will have domesticated particular animal only if it's on "domestic animals" list or lives where the settlements are built, and normally ''cannot'' have "exotic" ones domesticated on its own. Sometimes migrant animal trainers arrive with their own pets (even giant cave spiders), however. The catch is that if your civilisation doesn't have knowledge of taming the creature in question and it's caught in the wild, it cannot be tamed fully, thus you want your trainer to be skilled enough by the time you try, and then go through the ''second'' generation before they are mature, otherwise animals revert to semi-feral and then wild at a wrong time in the middle of your civilians and "FUN" ensues. But when the trainer is good at this...

* Anyone who owns a Mabari in the ''[[Dragon Age]]'' [[Dragon Age II|games]]. While Mabari do act like adorable puppies around the people they like, one can't forget that they are sentient warhounds fully capable of tearing apart armored warriors.

** In ''[[Dragon Age II]]'' ''Mark of the Assassin'', [[Big Bad|Duke Prosper]] has a pet wyvern named [[Fluffy the Terrible|"Leopold"]]. Wyverns are huge, vicious, venom-spitting, man-eating lizards, and Leopold is much bigger and stronger than wild wyverns. Prosper has tamed Leopold so well that he can ''ride'' the beast.

'''Tsukiko:''' Aww, Baby wants his num-num, doesn't he? }}

* Kirk from ''[[Suppression]]'' has his best little buddy Morty, a [[Fun Size]] [[Extreme Omnivore]] demon that he feeds guns to. Then he lets the little guy [[Lovecraftian Superpower|eat his arm]] to become a [[Shapeshifter Weapon]] with a nasty [[Wave Motion Gun]].

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

**In later spin-offs, many other agents exhibit this trait towards large monsters of the unfriendly and canonical variety, and nearly all agents towards minis.

* In ''[[The Impossible Man]]'', Angela loves her pet [[Chupacabra]], Eli. Just don't call it a [[Mon|Kaijumon]].

* Shephard from [[Freeman's Mind|Shepard's Mind]] has his little alien weapon critters, [[Fluffy the Terrible|named Sparky (the shock roach), Gil (the spore launcher), and Barney (the barnacle grapple)]].

* [[The Nostalgia Critic]] hates "relatable" animals and they despise him right back, but give him a drooling demon dog from ''[[Star Trek]]'' and he'll descend into [[squee]]ful goo.

 

== [[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 [[Numbered Homeworld|Omicron Persei 8]], meet Bigfoot and start gushing over it as if he were a fluffy bunny.

* 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 [[Lilo & Stitch: The Series|the series]] by finding "their one true place."

** And in one of the episodes, Mrs. Hasagawa has adopted and tamed multiple experiments—but she insists on calling them her 'cats' despite none of them looking any close to one.

* On ''[[The Fairly OddParents]]'', Cosmo has a pet hydra named Snowball.

* Molly from ''[[Bump in the Night]]'' tries to tame the Closet Monster in "Comforting the Uncomfortable."

* Charlotte from ''[[Making Fiends]]'' has the ability to friend most, if not all, of the fiends Vendetta makes, even to the ability to taming all her guard dog puppies, and keeping them as pets.

* Noah from ''[[Total Drama World Tour]]''. When the contestants get attacked by an angry yeti in Paris, he's able to train it to play fetch with an imaginary ball via [[All Animals Are Dogs]]. This is justified as he mentions that the trick 'always works on my dog'.

** It licks her.

** Though she has her limits. In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", a vicious Hydra is determined to devour her, and she can't do anything but flee for her life.

*** She keeps a respectful distance from the truly dangerous under normal circumstances. The only thing she's legitimately afraid of is adult dragons. Her logic for all those other things she can face down is "because it's not a dragon", except for Spike, where the logic is "because he's tiny and adorable and not big".

*** In season 2 she does meet an actual three-headed dog out of hell and tames it within seconds.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

* [[Crocodile Hunter|Steve Irwin]] may not have given them cutesy names, but he definitely was good with dangerous animals.

* An episode of ''That's Incredible'' featured an otherwise normal American family that reared a brood of large cats - 10 cougars, 4 bobcats, a jaguar, and a lynx. All were treated affectionately as if they were housecats.

* Your average circus, zoo or water park animal tamer, charged with telling giant carnivorous animals to perform tricks for our amusement.

** Killer Whales come to mind, although they and pandas may be a subversion in that they are generally considered cute.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGJUREA0cmQ This brave fellow] shows that if you raise Polistes wasps from an early age and desensitize them to your fingers they will happily eat whatever you hand them on your finger. It's implied he's not only feeding a wasp, but a queen wasp whose behavior could determine whether the colony will accept him or sting him mercilessly.

* ASPCA agent Mark MacDonald, who often appears on Animal Precinct, one of the Animal Cops series, is known as the Beastmaster (not to be confused with [[The Beast Master]])for his ability to calm and handle the various creatures the agents are called on to rescue.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Characterization Tropes]]

[[Category:Pet and Animal Companion Tropes]]