#fatphobia has killed people

[jenjensd]

If you ever consider a job where you have to care for people, you are not allowed to be a bigot. I don’t give a shut if you’ve “always wanted to be a nurse”. Quit. Now. If you are in a position where people depend on you, you cannot be selfish.

Doctors, Nurses, Teachers. If you are a transphobe, racist, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic, ableist, eugenicist, fatphobic, misogynist, any of that shit. Quit right fucking now. You cannot be trusted to care for people unless you are able to put aside your biases and help people.

We’ve all heard stories of that shitty bully who became a nurse and acts like they never tormented the weird kid at school. The nurses who don’t like you because you’re not a typical case. The doctors who dismiss the person with a brain tumour because she happens to be fat.

If you are a Fucking bigot about anything you can get the fuck out of your job. If you won’t help everyone no matter who they are, you cannot do your Fucking job.

[martyrbat]

in the newest edition of skinny bitch audacity (fatphobia):

comparing weight gain to... being a meth addict. and that you can look at someone and be qualified to say theyre degrading their health if they arent a small enough size for you to be attracted to them/be 'acceptable'

[IF YOU SHAME ADDICTS ON THIS POST YOURE GETTING BLOCKED. IF YOU SHAME FAT PEOPLE ON THIS POST YOURE GETTING BLOCKED. I WILL NOT WARN YOU TWICE.]

[some-stars]

thin people in the notes don't make Literally Every Post About Fatphobia about yourselves challenge: failed as usual

gonna start talking about skinny characters the way some of yall talk about fat characters

[lgbtlunaverse]

I've been wrestling with two beliefs I hold simultaneously but that I previously (incorrectly) thought were contradictory: that sexuality is inherently harmless, but also that specific kinds of sexual desire have been used to enact and justify grievous harm. The notion that men's sexuality is more important than women's consent, that white men's sexual access to white women must be protected from the "threat" of men of color, the idea that this specific kind of desire is so inherent to a proper society that if you have the wrong kind of sexuality you deserve to be shunned and harmed.

How can sexuality both be inherently harmless and measurably harmful?

Anyway, the answer is very easy, and part of why I feel like we should stop treating sex as something completely unlike other things and horniness as unlike all other emotions. Because I realized that, oh, right, this happens to other feelings too.

You know another feeling that is not inherently dangerous but is frequently used to enact and justify violence? Fear.

Fear is not inherently evil. Not even if it's irrational and your level of fear does not correspond to the level of danger you're actually in. In fact, irrational fears are such a common phenomenon we literally have a word for them: phobias. Which you are not evil for having. (Am I calling phobias the fear equivalnet of kinks? Kind of... I guess)

But fear and discomfort are used all the time to harm people. Let's say some random white woman is walking home late at night, and she notices a man is following her. This man might just be walking in the same direction by coincidence, but there's a small chance he's following her on purpose. It is quite natural for the mind to wander, and we frequently fear what we do not know. Discomfort or fear, in this situation, is neither inherently harmful nor unusual. However, if this white woman has been inundated her whole life with 'stranger danger' narratives and stories of women being brutally kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered by strangers. (Even though the vast majority of female victims are killed by someone they know, most often a romantic partner or family member) and she then, by the flash of a streetlight, spots that the man following her is black, and she has also been fed a narrative that black men are inherently violent and dangerous, that feeling of discomfort is enhanced and distorted until she believes she is in genuine danger and calls the police.

Statistically speaking, that guy really was just walking in the same direction, and is unlikely to be a threat. However she has now seriously endangered him, and justified it by the fact that she was scared.

A man justifying sexual assault because he couldn't help it, he was just so attracted to her. (And she led him on! She was barely dressed!) Is weaponizing his horniness in exactly the same way as people who call the authoroties on a disabled homeless person because they were "acting weird" are weaponizing their fear.

And all emotions can be weaponized this way. Anger is used to justify domestic violence ("you shouldn't have provoked me") Happiness and fun is used to jeoparidize safety (the last 30 years of olympic games have had a death toll among construction workers of over 116. The 2022 world cup alone has an officially admitted death count of 40, but the real cost is likely in the hundreds) disgust is used so often it's hard to restrict it to a single example (queerphobia, ableism, fatphobia, racism, misogyny, it's everywhere)

Sexual desire is just one way among many where the comfort of the powerful is valued above the safety of the opressed. It's not unique, but instead painfully common. And it's useful to keep this in mind not to devalue it or deny it's happening, but because we can borrow tactics and learn from similar situations rather than getting stuck on endless debates on whether porn is intrinsically evil or not, which will get us nowhere.

[fatphobiabusters]

This post is to remember the singer Cass Elliot who tragically died due to fatphobia. To put it simply, an entire life of cruelty about Cass Elliot's fatness caused her to resort to starvation diets, substance misuse, and what very well could have been an eating disorder. She attempted to survive the fatphobia by playing the fatphobic, stereotypical role of the "funny fat person." Not even in death was she allowed to escape fatphobia, as her tragic death was used as a fat joke by spreading a rumor that she had died by "gluttony." More specifically: choking on a sandwich. Despite that not being true, people continue to believe that debunked myth today. If not for this fatphobic society, Cass Elliot, an incredibly talented singer, would not have died at age 32, involuntarily leaving her only daughter parentless, and likely would have still been alive today.

If you're not sure who Cass Elliot was, this is one of her most iconic songs with her former band:

And here is a solo performance by her. Some people might recognize this song since it was apparently used for a TikTok trend:

For more details about the horrendous fatphobia she endured her entire 32 years, here is a video and two articles that explain. A trigger warning for the second article since it uses the slur "ob*se" and "overweight."

In memory of her, please do not call her "Mama Cass." She hated that nickname because it was used specifically due to fatphobic stereotypes.

If anyone needed an example of how deadly fatphobia has been for centuries, I hope you'll think of Cass Elliot, one of the plethora of people who have been killed by fat people's systemic oppression and still faces oppression to this day while 6 feet under.

-Mod Worthy

[wisteria-lodge]

Guys who Cry in the Harry Potter Books (and Why)

Men do 30% of the crying in the Harry Potter books, even though they represent 66% of the characters (and that's pretty much as expected).* I’m interested in why the crying happens though, and what it says about the characters. For the ladies, crying is neutral - they all cry, and for all sorts of reasons (tired, frustrated, stressed, emotionally overwrought...) Bellatrix, Augusta Longbottom, Ginny, Tonks… all cry. *Hermione* cries thirty separate times over the course of the books. 

Male crying though, that's something that gets mocked (usually by Slytherins.) Pansy calls Neville a “fat little cry baby,” and after Rita’s article (falsely) describes Harry crying, Draco comes in with “Want a hanky, Potter, in case you start crying in Transfiguration?” Of course there’s also “D’you think [Hagrid]’ll cry when they cut off his hippogriff’s - ” right before Hermione slaps him. So making fun of guys for crying is bad right? 

Let’s get into it. 

1 : Crying because of a death

The most “acceptable” reason for male crying. This happens a lot, we are definitely not supposed to think any less of the guys who do it. Mostly it happens *right* at the moment of death, or maybe at the funeral. The exception is Harry, who cries in Book 3 after talking about hearing his parents dying (although the narrative voice DOES let us know that he’s kind of embarrassed about this...)

“Harry suddenly realized that there were tears on his face mingling with the sweat. He bent his face as low as possible, wiping them off on his robes, pretending to do up his shoelace, so that Lupin wouldn’t see.” 

Then he cries again in Book 7, while visiting his parents' graves. But it’s definitely still crying over a death. Just one that Harry takes a little bit longer to process. 

Crying over a Death: Full Breakdown: 

Amos Diggory: 1 (Cedric’s death) 

Arthur Weasley: 1 (Fred’s death)

Harry Potter: 3 (Hedwig, Lily, James)

Rubeus Hagrid: 4 (Dumbledore, Buckbeak, Aragog, Harry) 

Argus Filtch: 1 (thinks Mrs. Norris is dead) 

Xenophillius Lovegood: 1 (thinks Luna is dead) 

Fillius Flitwick: (thinks Ginny is dead) 

Ron Weasley: 1 (Dumbledore’s funeral) 

Elphias Doge: 1 (Dumbledore’s funeral

2: Crying because of Pain

You’d think this one would also be acceptable. But… it really isn’t? Dudley cries when Vernon hits him (but Harry doesn’t.) Peter Pettigrew cries when he cuts off his own hand, Saw style, but it gets framed as blubbering weakness. Pettigrew is framed SO pathetically for the entire resurrection scene - and honestly, for the entire rest of the series.

(Which is strange when you think about it. Like objectively, Pettigrew did GOOD. Sure he only likes Voldemort because he’s powerful, but so do most of the Death Eaters, that’s nothing special. Peter found Voldemort, resurrected him single-handedly (ha.) Found Bertha Jorkins,  i.e. the reason Voldemort was able to plan his comeback. Obviously he has god-tier bluffing and lying abilities, as well as enough willpower to cut off a limb. Being able to turn into a rat would make him a really useful spy. Also his spell, the one that killed thirteen muggles and destroyed a street? Most magic we see does not have a blast radius like that. Peter’s formidable. But somehow his job is to hang out and be Snape’s servant? (Is it because he’s not cute?  Is this JKR’s fatphobia rearing its ugly head? Unclear.)

Our last guy crying in pain is Book 1 Neville, after he breaks his wrist during flying lessons. He also “sniffs,” while walking into the Forbidden Forest for detention, which *might* count as crying? But really, Neville cries surprisingly little. We get a lot of “looked as though he might cry” and “on the verge of tears”... but that's not actually crying. And I think that’s because… early-books Neville, yes we’re supposed to see him as a little pathetic. But definitely not as pathetic as Dudley or Pettigrew. 

3: “Childlike” Crying

Sometimes the people who cry are literally little boys. This is also okay. No one is going to judge infant Harry for crying when Voldemort is in the house, or little Severus for crying when his parents are fighting. Interestingly, when Myrtle is talking about Draco crying in her bathroom, Harry assumes she’s talking about someone much younger: 

“There’s been a boy in here crying?” said Harry curiously. “A young boy?” 

But of course, when an adult is crying in a childlike way, it immediately becomes… pathetic. Again we have Pettigrew, who “burst into tears. It was horrible to watch: He looked like an oversized, balding baby, cowering on the floor.” In the Horcrux cave, crying Dumbledore is described “like a child dying of thirst.” Which is also meant to be pathetic, but in more of a ‘Harry has to be the adult now’ sort of way. Also, the potion seems to have made Dumbledore mentally regress back to his youth, so it’s *closer* to a literal “child crying” moment. 

(I considered putting Dumbledore drinking the potion in the ‘pain’ section, but at least in the book I think it’s clear he’s mostly in emotional rather than physical pain.)

Where this gets messy is with the house-elves. House-elves are not children, but they are presented as childlike. They are small and in-your-face, direct even though their problem-solving tends to be very convoluted/not especially logical. I like the present-tense, no pronouns way they speak, but I can’t deny it is kind of baby-talk adjacent. And… house elves are *really* emotional. Dobby, Kreacher (and Winky) cry a LOT. If I had to guess, I would say JKR likes treating house-elves as childlike so it’s more of a surprise when it turns out that one of them was behind everything. But considering that they are slaves, it is gross - considering that one of the main real-world justifications for slavery was ‘slaves are childlike, and unable to take care of themselves.'

There’s also Hagrid. With seventeen separate instances of crying, Hagrid easily cries more than any other guy in the Harry Potter books. And… well… he’s also presented as oddly childlike. He seems much more like Harry and Ron’s contemporary than a peer of the other professors - which is weird, since  if he went to school with Voldemort fifty years ago, he’s in his sixties now. But still, he’s helpless in the face of criticism, he’s comically out of his depth whenever he deals with the Ministry, he’s constantly letting things slip or drastically misjudging danger levels. The first three books all use “Hagrid gets in trouble, the gang has to bail him out” as a plot point, and in Book 4 his sideplot with Madame Maxime gets treated like a schoolboy’s first crush, with all these jokes about him wearing suits that don’t quite fit, and trying and failing to style his hair. Not to mention, we know she’s flattering him because she wants insider info on the Tournament. But he doesn’t know that. 

4. Crying because of Sports

Oliver Wood cries when Gryffindor wins the Quidditch cup. That's all.

And that brings us to our stragglers. The only non-childlike guys who cry for reasons other than death, pain, or sports are as follows: 

Harry Potter: 1 instance of crying

Draco Malfoy: 2 instances of crying

Severus Snape: 2 instances of crying

Albus Dumbledore: 4 instances of crying

Horace Slughorn: 1 instance of crying

Let’s see what’s going on here. 

Harry Potter

Dumbledore had weakened himself by drinking that terrible potion for nothing. Harry crumpled the parchment in his hand, and his eyes burned with tears as behind him. Fang began to howl. He clutched the cold locket in his hand so tightly that it hurt, but he could not prevent hot tears spilling from his eyes

There’s a lot going on in this moment: Harry is tired, frustrated, disappointed, overwhelmed. But even though it is a complex moment, probably the main emotion is still Harry’s attempt to process Dumbledore’s death, now that he finally has a second to do so. So this honestly could have gone in the “Crying because of a death” category. It’s just different enough that I want to specially call it out. 

Draco Malfoy

We hear about Draco crying once from Myrtle, and then see it first hand: 

Malfoy was crying — actually crying — tears streaming down his pale face into the grimy basin.

The narrative takes a second to let us know that he was ACTUALLY CRYING, just to hammer in that this is something unexpected and not-normal. I think I want to attribute Draco’s tendency to cry - and cry because he’s overwhelmed, scared, lonely - to the character’s slight femme coding. What can I say, he cries for ""girly"" reasons. And so does Snape!

Severus Snape 

“Snivellus” is clearly a nickname meant to evoke the idea of “crybaby,” since “sniveling” is a synonym for crying. We also get this: 

Snape was kneeling in Sirius’s old bedroom. Tears were dripping from the end of his hooked nose as he read the old letter from Lily. 

Crying over Lily’s letter could count as crying over a death… but since he’s crying over a letter, not over a grave or her body (like in the movie), I’m going to say that he’s probably crying because of guilt, emotional overload, or love (especially because he rips the ‘love Lily’ off the end of that letter.) Like Draco, Snape might be getting little bit of femme-coding here. He’s the mean-girl type of bully (versus the mean boy) He cries, he threatens to poison people - which is something we only see women (and Draco) actually doing in these books. Idk, he’s an odd one who JKR clearly has very complicated feelings about. 

Albus Dumbledore 

I was actually really surprised that Dumbledore cries as much as he does, and at such unusual times! He cries when he sees Snape’s doe patronus - because of love or just because he’s emotionally overwhelmed. He cries all through the Horcrux cave, primarily because of guilt. He cries twice during the King’s Cross Station vision-quest, once because of his complicated feelings about Harry while he asks for forgiveness, and once over ��� Grindlewald.

“They say he showed remorse in later years, alone in his cell at Nurmengard. I hope that it is true. I would like to think he did feel the horror and shame of what he had done. Perhaps that lie to Voldemort was his attempt to make amends . . . to prevent Voldemort from taking the Hallow . . .”  “. . . or maybe from breaking into your tomb?” suggested Harry, and Dumbledore dabbed his eyes.

And okay. JKR announced that Dumbledore was gay just a few months after book seven was published, and I think she was folding in deliberate queer-coding as early Book 6. My proof of that is Dumbledore's increased emotionality - as we can see, it’s pretty unusual for men to cry in the Harry Potter books because of “softer” emotions like love, regret, stress etc. It’s something she associates with femininity, and I’m sure she associates gay guys with femininity as well (I mean, that’s a very common thing to do.)

There’s also this interesting passage from Book 6: 

This younger Albus Dumbledore’s long hair and beard were auburn. Having reached their side of the street, he strode off along the pavement, drawing many curious glances due to the flamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet that he was wearing. “Nice suit, sir,” said Harry, before he could stop himself, but Dumbledore merely chuckled.

Now, this is subtle. Wizards out and about in the muggle world often wear unusual colors like purple and emerald green. However. That adjective flamboyantly is only used one other time in the entire series, to describe Fudge’s hand gestures. But here, it is used to describe an outfit, a purple velvet suit which is honestly more than a little bit Oscar Wilde. And “flamboyantly gay” … those are two words often heard together. 

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I am pretty sure this is the only opinion about clothing Harry ever expresses aloud. And, I think @niche-pastiche hit the nail right on the head, saying that Harry's "Nice suit, sir" is "SO the response of a young adhd boy in the early 2000s trying not to say "thats gay." 

Horace Slughorn

Horace Slughorn cries at Aragog’s funeral, not really out of grief for Aragog, but mostly out of a maudlin sense of togetherness, nostalgia, and camaraderie. And… I do think we have one more slightly morally ambiguous femme-coded guy on our hands? Like Dumbledore, Slughorn is very much a flashy dresser, with shiny hair and gold buttons on his waistcoat. He loves treats and candies (hey… so does Dumbledore. They’re the only adults with a sweet tooth like that.) He loves fancy dinner parties, and is well-connected without being ambitious the way Lucius is. He also (like Draco) is aligned with pureblood-supremacy, but hyper avoidant of violence and confrontation. Except for the Harry example, I think I’d be comfortable with calling all of these last few instances “Femme-Coded Crying.” 

* Methodology - My list of 208 Harry Potter characters comes from TV Tropes, which had the most complete breakdown. I am excluding characters from Cursed Child and the Fantastic Beasts Films. 

In order to find instances of crying, I searched for the words “cried/cry/crying” “tears” “sob” and “sniff.” I counted each crying episode as one, even if crying was brought up multiple times throughout the scene. I made the fairest call I could whenever I hit a “the crying intensified” or the “the tears restarted,” but I mostly judge pretty conservatively when I’m ringing up data.

[lastoneout]

I'm sorry, I wasn't going to respond to this originally but that last addition has broken me. I literally said in my original post up there that "you SHOULD put sugar and salt and fat in your food if that's what it takes to get you to eat it and anyone who makes you feel bad for that is a shit idiot bastard who should be ignored" and you guys are here like "well have you considered cutting out salt and sugar and fat or going paleo? you know, to be healthier?" like?? Am I missing something here?? You are not agreeing with me, you're saying the opposite of what I'm saying while adding a dash of fatphobic bullshit about american food being full of garbage and our citizens being too stupid and scared to live without our precious salts and sugars??

And like I was also explicitly arguing against doing shit like wasting your time finding low-fat oil or seasoning mixes without too much salt. Unless you have a legit health condition that makes that stuff unsafe who fucking cares. Salt is good for you. Fat is good for you. Spending time worrying about every little thing you put inside your body is exhausting bullshit. My whole point was that people should enjoy life even if that means eating "unhealthy" stuff bcs you actually do need to eat salt and sugar and fat and carbs to exist as a human being, and wanting to enjoy the food you eat isn't a bad thing. Your body needs fuel, and if it takes dumping a bottle of full fat hidden valley all over your salad to get you to give your body fuel then dumping all that ranch on it was the correct, healthy choice.

Maybe this is on me bcs you guys are far from the only ones who have missed the point but this is on another level. I'm almost impressed.

I know this is a tiny part of the wider problems born of diet culture, fatphobia, classicism, and racism but like god the idea that "healthy" food must inherently taste bad has completely ruined us as a society.

[the-overreactress]

I didn’t watch Gilmore Girls as it aired, and there are definitely people out there (likely some of my mutuals!) that watched it in 2000-2007. (For the record, I started watching it in syndication sometime around 2008.) But the thing is…I notice more and more that the show is intentionally misinterpreted or dissected using the standards and ideals of the 2020s. And you know, that tracks because it happens a lot with shows made during the 90s and early 00s. (Looking at you, 7th Heaven 😬)

I just…I feel like we also have to understand the cultural context for why a show like Gilmore Girls or any of the other WB teen dramas were made. The WB channel was created in the mid-1990s for several business related reasons, but one of them was to compete with teen programming made by UPN and Fox. The WB went through a lot of iterations (e.g. picking up Sister, Sister, original: the Jamie Foxx Show, Buffy, Felicity, Dawson’s Creek), but it’s primary focus at the time was making content for teenage girls. Gilmore Girls was the channel’s saving grace after a dip in viewing in 1999 until 2006 when the CW was formed with CBS.

Everyone has likely heard the story that ASP actually came up with the premise of Gilmore Girls on the spot when in a pitch meeting at WB, and it all evolved from there. The thing is…I just…other than the Connecticut setting and the WASP-y Gilmores, the references, music, and jokes of Gilmore Girls are entirely unique and pay homage to a bygone era of comedy. They’re also products of their time, both in positive ways and negative ones (i.e. any of the fatphobia jokes).

However, there’s not anything basic or cliched about having the likes of The Shins or any of the other alt/indie bands Lane, Rory, Jess, et al. listen to on a tv show in that era. In terms of music/soundtrack, Gilmore Girls is actually fucking stellar and better than the vast majority. You have to imagine Amy and the other music supervisors really knew what the fuck they were doing. (I’d kill for a biopic showing the making of Gilmore Girls from this angle!) Lorelai has peak Gen X taste, while Jess, Rory, and Lane are part of that really cool generation of Gen X/Millenial cuspers who got the best of the 80s, 90s and 00s underground.

Watching Gilmore Girls practically requires you to build up a certain level of pop cultural literacy. It’s actually why re-watches of the show are so great. You see and hear things you may not have seen or heard when you were 11, 15, 18, or even 28. I just wish this part of the show was given more attention and credit, in addition to the plots, characters, and fashion. It’s just as much part of the iconography of Gilmore Girls as the other things (if not more!)

[ayphyx]

Why is it that whenever someone talks about media literacy they only talk about things like rape, incest, pedophilia, and murder but never misogyny, racism, fatphobia, or ableism

Like it’s always about “problematic ships” and “evil characters” but never about how the treatment of woc in media influences how woc are treated in society and vice versa. How female characters are almost always the ones being singled out as “annoying” compared to male characters. Or how, yeah, there might be an in-story reason to why this lazy, depressed character is fat but societal views on fat people being lazy, depressed, unhygienic, etc., most definitely influenced the writer’s choice to make that lazy character fat.

I find that a lot of the “media literacy” arguments that pertain to subjects of sexual abuse and violence don’t really apply to other subjects in a way that isn’t wildly or even somewhat bigoted. Ofc there’s not gonna be a catch-all argument for how every theme should be treated in media but the arguments should at least be somewhat consistent.

I rarely ever see anyone talk about media literacy in a way that doesn’t boil down to “ok but liking evil/bad/taboo characters/themes/stories don’t make you a bad person and authors can write things they don’t agree about.” This statement isn’t wrong and i agree with it but it shouldn’t be your only knowledge on what media literacy is.

Sometimes, a story that has a rape scene in it depicts rape poorly. Whether its because rape was written in a fetishistic light or because the victims weren’t treated with the respect that they deserve, you need to be able to know how and why that scene is (cant think of a better word rn but I’ll probably change it later cause i don’t really like using this word) problematic. The fact that the story depicts rape isn’t the problem, it’s how they chose to depict it. And yes, how this story depicts rape can absolutely affect how a person views rape victims irl.

Sometimes, an author includes racist views into their work. Sure, depiction isn’t endorsement but when an author writes primarily about white characters, and has the first character of color in their book be executed as that character’s introduction, don’t be surprised when that author turns out to be a racist.

Yes, fiction isn’t one-to-one with reality but they both influence each other in a way that cannot be escaped. You will never find a piece of media that isn’t influenced by reality and you will never find a person whose views havent been influenced by a piece of media.

(Also, there is a tendency that i see in a lot of fandom “media literacy” people. And that is the tendency to use leftist, anti-racist phrases and terminology to refer to fandom discourse. “Kill the cop inside your head” refers to killing that part of your brain that has been drilled by society to view black, brown, and poor people as threats. It does not refer to people who don’t like your 20k incest fanfiction and are kinda mean about it. Stop fucking fandomizing anti-racist rhetoric. You just look fucking racist)

Sorry if this is kinda incoherent, I’m mostly just rambling.

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

Speaking on the fatphobia, especially when pertaining to monsters like hill giants, it is definetly a WotC problem. Like, if the hill giants had any other trait then being described as mean, greedy, and overall just being unpleasant to be around then I’m pretty damn sure they would do better. Certainly doesn’t help that they tack on the whole “not all (x) are like this” while not giving any actual examples in their books.

Exactly. Most people read the description, and basically all of them are like "this is a horrible person who makes games out of torturing and killing people and doesn't believe in bathing. Also they're stupid and nobody likes them." at which point someone who's a "maybe" based on looks, even a solid smash, can become a "no." Though the depiction has a lot to do with it as well. Like, the hill giant in BGG is the same creature as the one in the MM, still supposed to have all the same traits, but like

Maybe it's because I'm a lesbian and the right is a top tier body shape, but I feel like there's a difference. The left one's slack jawed expression does it. he's waddling around in dirty underwear with a stick and a slack jawed expression while it talks about how stupid and mean he is. The right one (who we'll poll on later) actually has some intent, and it just talks about how they throw rocks while running people over and devouring them like a living avalanche. Granted, also a little less stupid with only a -1 on intelligence instead of -3. but it doesn't spend the whole time throwing shade. and I'm sure that'll do a lot better!

[crowshapedvoid]

[ID: a meme of four hands holding on to each other. they are labeled: "trans people", "fat people", "disabled people", and "POC". in the center of the hands is text reading:

Any attraction felt by or towards us is labelled as fetish by people outside our communities who claim to be allies but in actuality just see us as somehow lesser and therefor undeserving of our own bodily and sexual autonomy

/end ID]

[neuroticboyfriend]

thanks to ableism, heightism, and fatphobia, almost nothing is made to fit or work for my body ever. mobility aids. furniture. clothes. shoes. cars. etc. etc. if any of these do work out for me, they're usually expensive and i have a much more limited selection than abled, average height, straight sized people.

this isn't just inconvenience, either. things like furniture and shoes not being made for me causes me pain and takes a toll on my body, because i physically cant use them properly. making things fit me takes energy and money that i cant afford, but sometimes have to spend anyway. the safety measures in things like cars could injure or even kill me if i were to get in a bad accident.

being short, fat, and disabled in this society is so much harder than it has to be. it's unfair and downright dangerous that our bodies aren't being taken into account when designing almost everything around us. disabled people deserve better. fat people deserve better. people with short and tall stature deserve better.

we're just as much part of this world as everyone else, and we deserve to live in a world that acts like we exist.

[softness-and-shattering]

Im not the first person to complain about fatphobia in baldurs gate 3. Its just a lot worse than not being able to make fat player characters, tav or durge. Its that there are almost no fat people at all in this whole world.

Ive played close to 300 hours, and I havent fully explored act 3. There's some characters who are quite large. Halsin is tall and broad but he has a trim six pack. So does Karlach, despite being buff she has quite a narrow waist. Weird to be a barbarian without serious core strength. Korilla and Hope are very curvy, but no belly.

I can only think of two actually fat characters are neither are great. One is Glut, the myconid sovereign who asks you to betray Spaw, when you have no other reason to dislike Spaw. Firstly, the name. Glut - Glutton - he's fat. You dont have to also name him fatso. He feel entitled to a colony of myconids and is happy to kill Spaw about it, its just an ownership rulership ambition there's no justice to it. And if you refuse you have to kill him. So firstly he's non-human, non-humanoid, the hobgoblin specifically states than myconids have way less going on mentally than the player character and its kind of unclear to me if they're a hivemind or not. In that fantasy grey area of if they're properly people rather than unusually conscious vegetables. And he's also basically an asshole.

The other fat character is Thisobald Thorm. To begin with he's undead, and the son of a major undead villain. Not a great start. Second, he has four legs. Yes there are lots of unusual human variations and I suppose a person could have four legs and that would be fine. But why make that Thisobalds 'quirk'. Its clearly that he's soooo fat that he cant possibly move around on two legs so lets give him another set and make him monstrous. He needs to move around because he can be a mini-boss battle and it would be soooo hard to animate two big legs, or even two comically small legs. Nah we gotta give him four, evoke monstrosity. And then, the ways that encounter can go, is you either totally ignore him, or you interact. If you interact, you have to kill him, and if you talk your way through it he literally explodes from being too fat. Theres lines about his stomach seems like its going to burst open from all its holding and then it does. And then theres no body left behind, just the pile of gore thats also left behind when you raise zombies. He cant even be a humanoid corpse, he explodes so violently from sheer fatness that nothing recognisable is left behind.

And yes I know the excuse is that hes drinking this super intense poison alcohol brew and thats what gets him. That doesnt make it better. I dont know of any toxic substance that makes a person explode. Its not otherwise explosive. That isnt a thing that happens. There's no point someone gets so fat and so full that they explode. Its a gross outcome for a character you're intended to be entirely disgusted by. (its also not any kind of representation for people who consume various uh tabboo substances but I cant really speak to that aspect).

Two fat people, neither entirely human or allowed to be a person, one an asshole and one with no good ending. Like. cmon. You figured out how to animate dragonborn faces, and tails, you can have people be fat. It isnt actually a monstrous trait its actually super normal, its weird and urealistic that everyone in all of Faerun is slim. That doesnt happen in real life. The gender/sex options, and the vitiligo, thats fantastic. Yes keep representing and letting us play as all kinds of different people. Add some body types that arent just tall short/slim muscular too! For the player and the NPC's.

[lastoneout]

Honestly the whole "trans men should start using women's restrooms in protest of trans women being forced into the men's because they're not in as much danger" only works if you believe:

All trans men are capable of and willing to 100% perfectly pass as a cis man at all times no matter what.

All trans men are big, tall, burly, and strong.

Any trans man is capable of beating not only any individual woman in a fight, but multiple women all attacking at the same time.

Women are incapable of directly or indirectly harming men.

Women never react violently when threatened, regardless if the threat was real or not.

A man being marginalized in other ways does not make him less safe around women or more vulnerable to transphobic violence and/or retaliatory systemic violence as punishment for trying to protect himself. (So a black or disabled or fat man's skin color or disability status or body type does not make him more vulnerable to violence and if a black/disabled/fat trans man beat up a white cishet woman who attacked him for being in the women's restroom everyone would take his side including the cops.)

A woman would never go and get her boyfriend or a manager or the cops upon seeing a trans man(or any masc person, even gnc cishet women) in the bathroom so they can enact violence against them for her. (I guess the long history of cishet perisex white women using their tears to get marginalized men killed was made up.)

Trans men are not, in fact, a vulnerable marginalized demographic that also needs protecting from horrific violence and should happily offer themselves up as canon fodder to protect other more feminine queers even if it kills them, and not complain at all when no one stands up to help them in turn. (Also that you think real men are always tough and strong and never need help or compassion.)

Trans men are always viewed as men by transphobes, and not as whatever gender will harm them the most at any given moment, which is typically either "dangerous insane woman" or "subhuman freak".

No masc person, including butch and gnc cis women and afab nonbinary people AND butch/gnc trans women, or anyone perceived to be trans or too masc like intersex cis women with facial hair, has ever or will ever face violence for using the women's restroom despite the copious amounts of documented proof to the contrary.

Bigots and conservatives are following any sort of logic and, like fairy tale antagonists, can be rules lawyered into giving up and are not actually fully willing to be as contradictory as needed to ensure trans people can no longer exist in public at all. (Like. Idk how to tell you this but very masc passing trans men using the women's restroom will result in MORE transphobic violence and stricter bathroom laws, not less.)

Again, not to beat a dead horse, but you somehow believe conservatives and transphobes will change their minds if they see someone who looks like a man in the women's restroom. Like you really think that will fix things. Really. You really think that will work. You think that will work. Genuinely, you think that will change their minds. Really. Really.

You think men are always inherently more dangerous and prone to violence than women.

You think we should normalize and accept sacrificing trans men's lives for the sake of trans liberation.

If you think this is genuinely a good idea then I'm sorry but you have not only bought into radical feminist ideals but you also have a lot of internalized transphobia, misogyny, transmisogny, anti-transmasculinity, as well as racism, fatphobia, and ableism you need to unlearn before we start coming to you for ideas on how to fight systemic transphobia.

Because this? All this will do is get people killed. And idk man I just think maybe you should care that trans men are getting killed, and not flippantly suggest even more of them step up to the chopping block like their lives only matter so long as they can be of service to the rest of us.

[lostangel2006]

She absorbed everything liberal ideology tells women to be, consent to her body and mind under a paywall, fetishized, tokenized, and categorized on a scale of vulnerability, dependent on male validation for her health, all under an air of ‘sexual liberation’, and it still wasn’t enough to make herself palatable to them, because she dared to ask a literal QUESTION. She can’t even ask the most benign inquisitive question that suggests no antagonism to trans people because it might start a conversation that again MIGHT hurt their feelings and pose threats to their delusions. They literally expect her to either shut off any semblance of critical thinking when it comes to trans people, with any other reaction other than enthusiastic sheeple screetching being an open call to genocide, or come to them only in a situation where they’re able to gas light her until she agrees, with no one there to point out how that’s creepy and weird. These borderline McCarthyist-tactics using sjws are functioning as an actual financially abusing cult that will blacklist you from communities you desperately need to survive or for understanding, take away your means of accruing a job or charity (they’re pulling her full name on blast, this is permanent and will show up for any time she tries to get a job or join an aide fund, they knew this and are reveling in seeing her suffer), so that her one of her only choices would be to cater to the lowest common denominators of depraved males, giving entire access to her through a ‘girlfriend experience’ (which sounds so creepy, she literally can’t leave these men unless she wants to risk potentially one of her only sources of income, this is so r*pey), all while being disabled. It’s just so painfully frustrating :(

"sorry i tried to help a terminally-ill black woman, she doesn't deserve it bc she questioned saying that not dating trans people is transphobic!"

transphobia in question:

[allwormdiet]

Extermination 8.3

Oh fucking boy

This isn't a really revelatory passage, it's just like. Even more reinforcement that Leviathan is a fucking beast. More dead, more downed.

Taylor the fact that you even bothered to show up is above and beyond what should ever be asked of you, you are fifteen for fuck's sake, staking your life against the defeat of a hateful animate Splash Mountain is not your fucking purview! You should be playing Minecraft or something!

"Sorry I wasn't traumatized in a way that lets me save your life" Hello??

I can't imagine Taylor gets to feel like a part of most communities, honestly. Also I'm not sure that the cape community is any kind of monolith, so whether she "fits in" with them all is kind of moot.

Byyyye, Iron Falcon.

That's such a funny thing to ask somebody, honestly.

And then this is a crazy hardcore thing to ask somebody. This arc does a lot to establish that Skitter is just straight up on another level when it comes to comfort on the battlefield compared to even veteran capes, girl will nearly get pulped by Neptune's fucking wrath and then wonder why other people died while she's still conscious

Oh, Taylor. I'm so sorry, he only gets worse the more layers you get into him.

Also. Okay so Gregor the Snail felt like a pretty sympathetic perspective on how fatphobia stings people, but the life and death of Chubster in the realm of this story... kinda sucks. Like oh no, he's too heavy for Skitter to save him, have to leave him to drown I guess. I'm not saying it's an impossible circumstance, it just feels crass to have it in.

Hey Flechette, keep up the good work girl

The thing I keep coming back to with the Endbringers is that. Okay. These things have been causing horrific damage, mass death, and world-changing devastation for decades, and they've never been killed, and only one cape has ever meaningfully made the things fuck off in the history of ever. They are considered to be the most likely cause of extinction for humanity. Every time it seems like they're winning, even in the short-term, it's just the setup for another knockdown. It's giving them hope just so the despair hits deeper. What are the odds that's on purpose? What are the odds that everything the Endbringers suffer except Scion is just play-acting for them? Selling the capes' moves like it's a wrestling match, even as they don't feel a goddamn thing.

What if it's all just a sick game to an alien god?

This is so cool and so, so fucking dire.

God that's dark

Sacrifice play. Some desperate attempt to redeem himself in the public view maybe? A genuine belief that he can make this stick? I dunno. It doesn't matter, unfortunately.

What a way to sell the fucking outrageous devastation that this monster unleashes in the span of. What, an hour? Less?

Also hey what good is all the missiles and lasers and forcefields if Leviathan is just gonna pick the whole PHQ up and smash it onto the shoreline

So many goddamn downed, it's crazy. And y'know, knowing the rest of the arc we know Tattletale's still standing but of course Skitter is fucked up over losing Tattletale, that's the last person she's got who's willing to extend a hand towards her.

Most powers are dead useless here let's be real

Hey, good job Eidolon

Fucking brave of y'all to be shooting Bakuda bombs anywhere in the same ZIP code as someone you care about, but also god it would be so cool if this had actually worked. Just fucking lock Leviathan down in time out for a hundred years or so, buy that much time? Shame it fails.

Well. I'm not gonna miss the fucking Nazis, but rip in peace Dauntless, we hardly knew ye.

Triumvirate member tagged out. Alexandria was already down for the count, wasn't she? Or she at least stopped showing up at some point, so now it's just Eidolon repping the Big Three

although I guess if you asked Eidolon he'd call it "just Big Me"

First dead kid out of the lot, I think, if we don't count Falcon dying off the battlefield. Sorry, Shielder. I think Leviathan knew you were strong enough to keep being a problem. Gotta be fucking awful for Laserdream though, watching your brother die violently in front of you is. I actually can't imagine, thank fuck.

And then Sundancer down but not out. Honestly if anyone was gonna have decent odds of doing damage I'd have given it to The Fucking Sun, but that doesn't do much for defense does it.

Fucking outrageously brutal, god.

Man. I didn't even think about the fact that this thing is silent the entire time. No Godzilla roars or shit the entire time, nothing except for the rush of water.

Clockblocker keeps coming in clutch to save the day against citywide threats... Someone please for the love of god stop putting these children in the line of fire.

Also interesting that Taylor might be the only one here whose first response is to get him out of the water, for all that he's been her enemy.

Clever.

Taylor can be really harshly judgmental at times but I'm gonna be real I'm with her on this one, Trickster what the actual fuck is your problem. Like good job I guess but what the hell.

Y'know, the fucked up thing is that Armsmaster actually isn't wrong here, and his plan could've worked if he was, uhh. Genuine about it.

Does everybody's ability to give a speech go down the fucking toilet when an Endbringer is within half a mile of them? Is that what it is?

Current Thoughts

Wildbow really fucking knows how to put a battle together. Our POV character isn't actually fighting through 95% of this entire arc (and maybe shouldn't have been fighting in that 5% but we'll get there) but you feel just totally surrounded by the death and devastation that's raining down on all sides.

Unfortunately, I think it's about time for Armsmaster's big reveal on how to lose an arm and a shitload of credibility in record timing.