#and speaking of intersections this will also be a super-relevant conversation if the Doom Syndicate appears in the upcoming show

[nientedal]

They did, but two things to consider-- (1) even when Hal has the Titan build, his face and hair remain outside the realm of what most people think of as conventionally attractive, and (2) the story turns him back afterwards. The western male power fantasy appearance is basically just a temporary overlay, and it's sort of a separate conversation anyway-- when I say "Hal," which version do you think of? That's the one I'm talking about, and that's the one I think most fans are envisioning when they're working on fanfics & engaging in discussions about character dynamics etc. So my point stands, I think.

(I say the power fantasy thing is sort of a separate conversation because Titan is a Gaston-type character-- and I don't see a lot of positive attention for Gaston either, despite him being "hot" for the entirety of his film! But this is because western male power fantasies are western male power fantasies; they don't actually hold a ton of appeal for a lot of the people who actively participate in fandom.)

(So like...yeah, the movie made Hal buff for a little while, but it didn't make him hot, it made him into friggin Carrot Top.)

And I do want to also say, on a different note... "skinny" and "pretty" are obviously not the same thing and I don't want to treat them as such. I made my tags about fatphobia because that's the conversation I see about this topic the most frequently (with ableism a close second, if equally often-- I've seen a lot of fantastic commentary on "holy shit can we please stop having the 'evil' characters be the ones who are scarred or disfigured or disabled in some way") and both beauty & fatphobia are relevant to the antagonist of my particular hyperfixation. But as long as I'm talking in an actual reblog, I REALLY don't want to ignore the fact that the original post is simply about beauty standards In General, not size specifically. And I think it's absolutely right and still relevant to this film! Hal would still get more sympathetic attention if he was both fat and hot; his canon appearance is unattractive by conventional standards in pretty much every way (even his apartment is a godawful mess) and I think that is ultimately what puts the nail in his particular coffin, not his size. There is nothing attractive about him and I do think that's why he gets next to no attention at all in fan spaces beyond "Nice Guy Bad >:C".

tl;dr Hal seems designed specifically to make the audience go "ugh," even as Titan, as much as possible. And like, I get why, and with Hal specifically it's kind of a relief that so few people try to excuse his behavior or find a way to minimize or redeem him the way they might if he was pretty (or even just buff, sure). But it wasn't necessary, and it does reflect a trope repeated often enough in fiction that I really do think it affects the way we talk about and look at real people! Fiction does the whole "unattractive = morally bad" thing SO MUCH and it fucking sucks, because it is effectively propaganda and it affects real people of all shapes & sizes in different but incredibly insidious ways. I get wanting your protagonists to be pretty and wanting your antagonists to cause a "NO" reaction, but goddamn I wish it didn't lead to people mocking the physical appearances of people they don't like as if it has any relevance at all. It doesn't. All it does is decrease the connection people might otherwise feel towards those they don't view as attractive.

i’m sorry but it is 2023 some of you NEED to let go of this belief that appearance and morality are linked you can not keep living in this disney world where all bad people are ugly and all good people are beautiful you can not