Fandom

Happy Tree Friends has gained a lot of fans, and a decent cult following. Shortly after its internet debut in 2000, Happy Tree Friends became an unexpected success, getting over 15 million hits each month. It is one of the most downloaded iTunes podcasts. There are also many fan sites, fanons, fan spin-offs and forums for Happy Tree Friends.
==Fanon==
Fanon content is content created for Happy Tree Friends by Happy Tree Friends fans, rather than the official Happy Tree Friends staff. Happy Tree Friends fans create a large variety of fanon content like fan art, original characters (OCs), fan videos, fan episodes and ships.
=== Fan Art ===
Fan Art are drawings of Happy Tree Friends made by fans. Two of the most prominent themes in fan art are characters killing each other and characters in relationships, such as getting married or having children. Some of them are drawings of existing characters, while others are of their own OCs. Fan Art are published on various websites (most prominently, DeviantArt). Currently, there are over 300k Happy Tree Friends art pieces on DeviantArt. 
A popular style of Fan Art is to draw the characters as humans, usually in an anime-esque style.
=== Original Characters ===
An Original Character (or simply know as OC) is a fan-made character. It is a type of Fan Art. OC's will be commonly put into scenarios with existing characters or other fan-made characters. Most fan-made characters are mammals and are usually shaped like Generic Tree Friends.
Two OCs in particular even got to appear in the official Happy Tree Friends episodes (namely, Tricksy in Pet Peeve and Rudy in A Vicious Cycle).
Some criticism of HTF Fan Art is that many fan made creations are not very HTF like. Some OCs are too human like as some have hair, glasses, full sets of clothing, and even braces. Some even have human body parts that are not normally seen on HTF.
Others can be too creative such as having multiple battle scars in different colors, the eyes being both different colors, and even the nose and teeth being changed. There's also hybrid OC's that usually consists of two different mammals mixed together: bunny/chipmunk, beaver/raccoon, skunk/squirrel, etc.
TricksyNewPicSK.png|Tricksy.
Neena.png|"Neena" a HTF with long hair, glasses, and a full body outfit by Neenagirl2220.
A detailed OC.png|"Trouble" a very detailed OC with different eyes by shadowmax0HTF.
===YouTube Fan Videos===
thumb|right|270x270px|"Tools for Fools" by Yudhaikeledai. An example of a fan creating their very own episode.On YouTube, thousands of Happy Tree Friends fan videos have been created. A lot of the videos consist of snippets from different episodes being put together with a song played over the top (also known as an "amateur music video" (AMV), or a montage). Such videos are usually referred to as video clip. Other types of fan films include various fan art pictures put together in a movie. Some have even gone as far as to create their own animations or episodes.
===Couplings===
Couplings are a form of Fan Art where the creator will put two characters together, usually as lovers (there have been examples of rivals as well, such as Flippy and Splendid).
==Fan opinions==
===Character ships===
According to Warren Graff, Happy Tree Friends doesn't have any official characters pairs, despite there being multiple episodes of characters on a date with each other. Despite this, fans often ship some characters together. The most popular ship by a landslide in the Fandom is Flippy and Flaky. The other most popular ships are the show's most prominent couples (Cuddles-Giggles and Handy-Petunia), who have gone on a few romantic dates with each other in the series. It is known that some fans ship a vast variety of different pairs of characters, even those who have never interacted with each other on the show.
===Character popularity===
The fan favorite characters in the fandom seem to be Flippy/Fliqpy and Flaky. Despite Flippy having a low appearance count, some of the most popular episodes star Flippy.
Lumpy, who has the highest appearance count out of all episodes, seems to be popular, with fans either loving him or hating him. A lot of the hate comes from the two episodes, where Lumpy beats Fliqpy by killing him, which a lot of fans had protested against.
The most popular duo characters are Pop and Cub. Cub seems to be well liked in the fandom, while a lot of fans dislike Pop for killing Cub or overall bad parenting. As a result, in the most recent seasons, Pop started dying more often than Cub, which has lead some fans to believe that some of the recent episodes may be fan service.
==Debates ==
===Debatable deaths===
While Happy Tree Friends is known for having a lot of deaths, fans love to see their favorite characters survive some episodes. All characters have survived at least a few of their appearances in the series, although some episodes don't make it very obvious if some characters have survived episodes or not. These are called debatable deaths. There are many forms of debatable deaths: character was injured, but had some chance of survival, character died, but might have been revived, the character could've died a few seconds after the closing iris from some danger etc. Fans usually like to speculate with each other weather the characters actually died or survived.
Sometimes, fans turn to ask the creators themselves to clarify character's death/survival, so they often ask Kenn Navarro and Warren Graff across various social media. They are known to give vague responses, which leave most debatable deaths still debatable, but they sometimes confirm character's death or survival.
===Flaky's gender dispute===
Flaky is infamously known for her early gender debate. Several fans assume that Flaky is male due to the lack of a distinguishing feminine appearance; female characters tend to have long eyelashes, whereas Flaky has none. Series creator Rhode Montijo once stated that he initially created Flaky as a male, however, most of the creators at MondoMedia regard Flaky as a female character, whereas others simply don't know. Flaky's true gender has caused much confusion; even the Happy Tree Friends website is ambiguous about this. In the DVD commentaries, in fact, they regularly refer to Flaky as a "her", such as the commentary for And the Kitchen Sink or in the episode description of Wingin' It.
Like the staff, most fans see Flaky as a female, although there are some fans that think of Flaky as a male. This has lead fans to ask the series creators themselves weather Flaky is a female or not, to which most of them responded that Flaky can be either male or female and that it is up to anyone's interpretation. 
==Vote or Die==
Vote or Die was an event held throughout the month of March 2010, as part of the tenth anniversary celebration. A poll on the HTF website allowed fans to vote on whether Lammy and Mr. Pickels would be the next addition to the cast or Truffles would be. Fans voted and the result was:
Out of the 181,512 votes...
*a total of 107,273 votes went to Lammy and Mr. Pickels.
*a total of 74,239 votes went to Truffles.
==Fan Fest==
The Fan Fest was a category on the Happy Tree Friends website. It mostly consists of YouTube Fan Videos, however some are by Mondo still.
*Nyan Nyan Cuddles
*All Work and No Belay
*YouTube Copyright School
*Happy Tree News
*Theme Song (Piano Version)
==See Also==
*Happy Tree Friends Fanon Wiki
Category:Other Media
Category:Fandom