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thedevotionaltour · 19 days ago

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Warning upfront: This post is about weight, and will therefore be focusing on weight gain and loss alongside eating habits, especially in relation to mental health and grief at certain points.

If you are like me, perhaps you also take issue with Kyle Rayner being either insanely shredded (or some skinny beanpole, depending on if you’re reading his solo title or literally anything else) from the start of his time as Green Lantern despite the following known facts: He sucked at gym class. He has a primarily sit down job as a graphic designer and artist. He did not train before Donna started helping him out. If you are also like me, perhaps you are often attempting to find ways to cope with this fact. I'm also going to say right now, this post is going to be super insanely informal, so sorry if it meanders a lot or gets confusing in some places. This is rambling I attempted to turn into coherent sentences.

Here is my personal step by step, headcanoned to hell and back rationalization as to how Kyle became the lean thing he is. Or the beefy thing he sometimes is. Again, it really does depend whether you’re reading his solo or literally any other title he’s making an appearance in. Anyways. Let’s get started!

I truly do think Kyle started off as a scrawny to averagely slim kid of sorts, all the way through middle school. His diet is pretty so-so, especially since he and his mom live on a tight budget, so the food situation isn’t necessarily spectacular for most of his life. Up and down. Maura tries her best with what she’s got.

In high school, he actually gets some meat on his bones, especially to Maura’s delight. She likes that he doesn’t look like a starving waif, as she’s put it to him a few times. Kyle doesn’t have strong feelings either way; sometimes he grumbles, sometimes he gets a small laugh out of her comments about it. They’re positive overall, and honestly, that’s all he can ask for from her. He actually keeps the weight he gets when he eats, and then some. He’s never been spectacular at sports or gym. It’s not his forte, and he doesn’t care to necessarily get better at it, either. He’s not in any physical extracurriculars. He does minimal physical activity on his own time, but nothing much. He’s too glued to his desk drawing or reading some comic book or fantasy novel. By the end of high school, he has some pudge.

College hits, and he gets your typical freshman 15. Thank you school cafeteria and vending machines. He doesn’t really have the best concept of what to get for groceries, either. He’s got your very average college diet. He has vegetables, yes, but he doesn’t need to tell his Mom that that isn’t necessarily an everyday occurrence. Not like he’s telling her anything at all, by this time, but that’s not really the point. That, combined with how his major is pretty much all sit down work, and it’s no surprise he gains a few more pounds for the rest of his college career. Dancing at the club and walking around campus only does so much for a person. Once he leaves college, his diet and grocery shopping abilities get better and more well rounded. But the point is, this man is not really made of muscle at all.

An important note is that, in my opinion, Kyle has no negative feelings about his weight. He’s extremely neutral on it, and it helped that his mom was vocally positive about it. To him, this is just how his He’s got the average cultural mindset of ‘Eh, probably could stand to lose some’, but it’s not a big deal to him at all. His health is otherwise fine. He still regards himself as attractive, and knows he’s attractive. People tell him. He has proof. So his weight settles out and pretty much stays where it’s at until he gets the ring in his mid-20s (sue me, I like imagining Kyle is around 25 when he gets it. Which I have no reason to share. I just want to).

Since he’s become Green Lantern, he’s far more active than he’s been in… A while, he can admit it. But he’s just glad he doesn’t necessarily have to be super fit to wield it. He can’t remember the last time he ran a mile, and he doesn’t wanna know, either. Again, his job is a sit down job, and he’s lucky when he remembers to look up from his desk in general. However, with his new level of physical activity, it makes sense to start losing a bit. It’s not really a lot, or very noticeable at all, but he can’t help but smile when Alex points out when his arms feel a bit more firm to the touch after a month and some weeks.

Speaking of Alex, that’s when things take a major turn for Kyle and his weight. After her death, he has some pretty drastic weight loss. Not only does depression and grief make it difficult to find the energy and will to eat, but the association of the kitchen makes it even worse. His diet becomes kind of abysmal, but he’d rather limit his interaction with certain parts of his kitchen as much as possible. He’s no stranger to a shelf stable diet. He grew up on canned goods. Snack food is food and it’s filling if you have enough of them. Pasta is boring after a while, but at least it’s quick. He makes just enough to justify getting takeout at least once every other week, or cheap fast food a few times if he really can’t bring himself to cook, but he’s still usually eating about half of it. Not because he doesn’t want it, but he just doesn’t have the mental energy for it the second he thinks he might feel full, even if he really isn’t. He does all he can for a while to avoid leftovers for some time, but he eventually becomes okay with the concept of them again. It only takes a minute to put them in and take them out. Not like he has to stare into his fridge choosing ingredients for a dinner he barely wants in the first place. I also think Kyle is someone who can just straight up forget to eat in the first place sometimes (he just gets too absorbed in stuff until his body goes, ‘hey, we’re hungry!’, and then he’s really hungry), so that doesn’t help with anything.

Kyle’s weight loss doesn’t look out of place at all to others, and people probably even positively comment on it (which he finds he doesn’t care for, but he’s unsure why. Isn’t it good for him to be slimmer?), but he knows better. I don’t think he would necessarily register it as super unhealthy, but Kyle knows his body, and he has a feeling it shouldn’t be this much this fast. He’s seeing numbers close to ones he hasn’t seen since high school. But it’s not really at the forefront of his mind. Especially since he’s become a lot busier as he’s packed up and moved off to New York.

It continues like this for a few months in New York, but that’s when Kyle’s life gets back on track. It’s a big clean slate, and as he becomes more busy as Green Lantern and with life in general, his feelings on his kitchen become more a non-thought than anything. When he starts dating Donna, things especially look up. Kyle gets a lot more healthy. He gains weight again because he’s relatively happy with his life. He goes on dinner dates. Sometimes Donna cooks for the both of them, sometimes they cook together, and it gets Kyle comfortable cooking on his own again. He likes training with Donna, even if it sucks hard at first. Again, it’s hard to hate someone admiring your newfound muscle. He becomes ‘I work out with my girlfriend and I eat well’ lean instead of ‘I’m majorly depressed and my trauma is preventing me from navigating food in a healthy and normal way to me’ skinny.

This continues when he dates Jennie, too. I think Kyle would honestly gain a fair amount of happy weight when he’s with her. His life has really stabilized by then. Hell, he’s having dinner with his mom once a week when he can, and he knows she’s on a mission to make sure he keeps that weight (he rolled his eyes hard and was not a fan at all when she commented on the visible loss one time when they were first reconnecting).

He never really gets back to the weight he was after losing Alex, but he’s certainly doing better than he was before. They’re still kinda big, but the clothes he still has from around that time aren’t as loose as before. The muscle he’s also gained as he continues to run around as GL and trains fill them out nicely, too. It pleases him.

However, when things in Kyle’s life start to go bad, his weight and eating habits are the first things to be affected. He can easily lose a pound or three when he’s feeling bad nowadays, and sometimes he misses the days when that wasn’t the case. He misses when he could gain that when he felt bad.

He’s never quite had the drastic weight loss he did the first time around ever again, but he came a little too close for comfort to it when his mom passed. What helped Kyle with preventing that was having an actual support system around him when that happened; people who could check in on him and make him food and take him out for it, unlike when he had essentially no one to help him out or make sure he was doing okay after Alex.

When you’re depressed, it’s not hard to fall back into old habits. Kyle only has so much energy, and to him, it’s better to put that energy towards doing good as Green Lantern than losing it to being a miserable bastard trying to make a meal he’s barely in the mood for. Who doesn’t love peanut butter and jelly twice a day for a week straight? It’s not like he didn’t live that way in college sometimes. There’s even the bonus that if he eats it enough times, he doesn’t even have to worry about storing bread in the fridge to prevent mold since it’ll be gone so quick. He doesn’t want to see his oven. He doesn’t want to see his fridge. The kitchen only has to be for cooking, really; he can store his food on the dining table.

But generally, you can sorta tell how Kyle’s doing through his weight and eating habits. It fluctuates in a small range, never super intense, but you can notice it if you pay enough attention over time. If he’s looking a little leaner than usual, it might not hurt to check on him, but if he’s looking a little bigger these days, you know life is going pretty good for Kyle Rayner.

If you made it this far, yay! Thanks for reading my post on how I can suspend my disbelief over Kyle’s weight and make it make sense over time, and how to address the visual consistency issues regarding his build across comics.

(You will still never catch me believing in skinny Kyle Rayner, though. Make him chubby. It will never hurt him.)

#kyle rayner #idk if i should main tag this bc im like welll. this is for me above all. but if u wanna rb it u can<3 #< i decided to go back and tag it. yaaay #and if u wanna go 'but eiffellll you can be all those things you mentioned at the start and still skinny' consider this: I DONT CARE!!!#also i generally take from how he's drawn larger in his solo title bc that's my primary experience with him. there is a reason everyone #comments how funny it is to see kyle in his own title vs in others bc the man is relatively tall and he's built in his own comic.#and then sooo little everywhere else. and if i have to choose between these two options i prefer him larger.#static.soundz #lantern.posting #ask to tag #< more bc im unsure than anything. well. there's the warning at the start

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couch-house · 10 months ago

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Fleebay Beepo playlist! [youtube link] [zip link]

it's been foreverrr since i finished a character playlist--i missed doing this! tracklist and director's commentary under the cut teehee :)

if you disagree with any of my choices, just remember: 1) this is my playlist for me to listen to made of songs I like for me 2) you just don't see my vision 3) you don't know him like i do 4) make your own so i can disagree with yours too.

WDKYWMYAK -- Rabbit junk

This is a Killing Game After All -- Gadgetor

chance bought this cd from the comic store. i think the album is Doom-inspired? pretty cool! check it out! anyway this first section is pretty obviously all violence killing and maiming etc

3. All Futures -- The Armed

4. Bears -- Mass of the Fermenting Dregs

5. You Know What You Are -- Ministry

6. 1969 -- Boards of Canada

we're coming down out of the chaotic songs into some confusion for the amnesia arc, starting with ministry and boards of canada. 7 references an unwilling change of the self, and just fits the vibe right now. 8... should be obvious lol.

7. Long Road Home -- Oneohtrix Point Never

8. I Don't Remember -- Peter Gabriel

9. Come Back June -- Pussy

sorry i heard a psychedelic rock song that starts with a big cat meow and blacked out. EBONY MOMENT!!! this and the next couple songs are again more about contributing to the Feeling of the groovy train than a direct relation to the lyrics. though 10 can be justified by the fact he's british.

10. Hey, Mister Sun -- Bobby Sherman

11. Baby All the Time -- Julien Love (NOTE: NOT IN YT PLAYLIST)

12. Handlebars -- Flobots

i didn't think i would end up keeping this song when i threw it on here but it just... works really well structurally. sigh... okay well it kind of works thematically. we're moving into some merger au territory at this point, which is my way as a fan to give fleet more of a self-actualization arc. establish his own identity, make friends, accept his existence a bit more. 13 is again more focused on the caring environment of groovy train (and the idea that this won't last forever) but we'll come back around to merger in a second.

13. Cursis Melodías -- Natalia Lafourcade

14. Flagiolletes -- Billy Mahonie

15. Wake Up To Be You -- The Aesthetics

i'm so obsessed with this as a song from fleet to sonic. esp focused on the idea of fleet being the trauma dump that everyone wants dead and sonic being the one who gets to keep their friends. another lucky cd find--this time thrifted. this band still has their old website up--you can contact them if you'd like to get ahold of your own copy!

16. Every Home a Prison ft. Jello Biafra -- DJ Coldcut (Inevitable Alien Nation mix)

i'm in love with this song. we're back in merger au btw. fleet is now a goddamn hooligan in the street (teenager socializing outside with his friends).

17. Default -- Django Django

we're getting to the end of his life! canon, not au. once again on the idea of fleet (dying, cringe) being a comparative failure. the next two songs are our big explosive end! 18 is another band i found from a thrifted cd. lucky!

18. Werewolf -- Progger

19. light speed drift ft Kasane Teto + Adachi Rei -- frog96

the end! thanks for listening! ^_^ as a treat, YOU get to see the special bonus track: The Adventures of Little White Baby -- No Soap, Radio.