fat characters

[Rexenm]

You have Hitler, or the fat controller from Thomas the Tank engine? I mean, who would care if you put a little jiggle into it?

I call it a glass computer. If everyone was the same, we would be less or more divided, but sharply, so who would know? There are demographics, and darn old prejudice.

I hear a lot of racism from the same angle, such as token characters. And you have characters that traditionally pass wind. It‘s like playing chess by yourself, the look of it is pretty dumb.

 

[Jackarandajam]

Never put two kinds of cheese on a club sandwich just to keep the toothpicks in place, I always say. It might look good on the menu, but flavor's the thing.
And remember, some people order chicken fingers at a steak house, it's just the way the world is.

 

[Rexenm]

Never put two kinds of cheese on a club sandwich just to keep the toothpicks in place, I always say. It might look good on the menu, but flavor's the thing.
And remember, some people order chicken fingers at a steak house, it's just the way the world is.

I deserved that.

 

[pmmg]

Well, playing Chess with oneself is more like practice to be better at the game. Do we really think Magnus Carlson has never solo'd it to work out a new gambit?

Its hard for me to imagine the characters in my story getting fat, considering their diet and level of activity. I have had some that are, mostly cause, it would make sense that they are. Not many, and its not a theme of the story. On the other hand, its also hard for me to imagine them gaining a conan-esque physique for the same reason, how would they get it?

I don't think Hitler was fat....

Is the point of this thread to ask that we consider more diversity of weight in our stories? I don't include diversity unless it makes sense to have it. To include it otherwise is just silly and the wrong focus. But the world is a big place, fat people have appeared. If they go off on an adventure with my peeps, they probably wont stay fat.

 

[Jackarandajam]

Never put two kinds of cheese on a club sandwich just to keep the toothpicks in place, I always say. It might look good on the menu, but flavor's the thing.

I don't include diversity unless it makes sense to have it. To include it otherwise is just silly and the wrong focus.

A perfectly succinct explanation of my fabricated truism.

 

[Rexenm]

I don't think Hitler was fat....

But he had second helpings, a solid salute. I’m sure he was fat, history should remember him that way. Everyone deserves to share a piece, but not without a cherry on top.

Aside from the second helpings, there is another angle to consider. Karen characters, like the hag from beauty and the beast, or the witch from brave. They seem to draw so much romance, that fat becomes them, and they start cooking and/or gardening.

 

[Jackarandajam]

The bloodthirsty guttersnipe in question was destined not for rotund joviality but skeletal mannikinism due to what I understand to have been a keen interest in the artificial accelerants being developed under his watchfully redacted upper lip, I think.

Mother Gothel strikes me as one of those martyrdess narcissists, who after the fading of her youth (had it taken longer than 14 seconds) would have become something like a Jane Austenesque EmotoMother, prone, yes, perhaps to obesity, but also histrionics, emotional capriciousness and vampirism, questionably severe temperature flashes when companied and china-breaking fits of impotent rage. Also intense prudishness if not downright damnating puritanism.

 

[Incanus]

Wait, I think I got it:

If all the animals along the equator were capable of flattery, then Thanksgiving and Halloween would fall on the same day.

 

[pmmg]

^ Its like a rift was opened in the fabric of reality, and all the hidden secrets are about to be revealed.

Wait till he realizes the animals 'are' capable of flattery.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

If we're having a serious conversation about this - and if we're not there better be an explanation - one of our main cast is overweight and a serious scrapper. She's 16, a combat wizard, and a martial artist with a 2nd dan black belt in Judo along with some other techniques picked up along the way. She's also got a smart mouth that doesn't know when to quit.

This is her character intro from our first in series, Faerie Rising.

~~

“What should we do?” asked Cian, still peering into the empty store.

Etienne shrugged and opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by a quiet voice breathy in reverence, “Hot damn.” He looked to his left to see a plump girl in glasses dressed in a wildly embroidered and beaded shirt and jeans, carrying a small cardboard box full of lunch sacks. She stood frozen on the sidewalk, lips parted slightly, and brows raised for a long moment as she looked at Cian. Pretty little thing, she couldn’t be much older than his Bess when they married. She blinked, gave herself a small shake and looked away, cheeks flushing. “Um, yeah… right,” she muttered, keeping her eyes averted, she moved with purpose toward the red door.

This caught Etienne’s full attention. “Miss, do you work here?” he asked.

The girl turned back to face him, box balanced on one arm as she grasped the doorknob with her now free hand and presented him with a pert smirk. “Nope. I just like to break in, leave lunch, and skip off merrily into the sunset.” She paused. “Except it’s too early. That won’t work.” She turned and pushed open the door. “Never mind.”

Etienne crossed his arms and watched her move through the door. What exactly had that been all about?

The girl turned and craned her head back through the open door, straight brown hair swinging in a curtain. “So, you guys coming in, or what?”

 

[Mad Swede]

Physical appearances can be used both as world building and as a way of introducing a character without a load of dialogue. As an example, a character meets someone new, and this new person is, despite being young, scrawny and dressed in very worn clothing. Instantly you as the author have established something about that new character, and you can use that as the basis for the subsequent interactions between them. It's the same way with a character who at first glance appears fat. Is that character really fat or does their clothing in fact hide someone with a lot of muscle? Or maybe the clothing hides the fact that they're pregnant? If the character really is fat, what does this and their clothing say about them, their life and their occupation or trade? Are there only certain groups which get fat and if so why?

Here are three examples from my stories (translated from the Swedish) to illustrate what I mean:

Not quite the slim figure he would have expected of a cat burglar who climbed through windows, which suggested that she relied more on her skills with a set of lockpicks. Discrete too, especially if she’d done the books for her father. Maybe she’d be a useful professional contact, for those occasions when his own bookkeeping and lockpicking skills weren’t up to it.

***

Dear Goddesses, were her tits that big? Did they really hide the pouch tucked under them that well? Maybe she’d put on more weight than she’d realised over the last year or so. And maybe she should have tucked a knife in there too. Because it was beginning to look like she might need it.

***

Well dressed, he gave the impression of being young and fit, an impression which on closer examination was spoilt by a large paunch hidden behind his well-cut tunic and by a very slight sponginess to what should have been a clean-cut face.

 

[Rexenm]

Nice snippets, cookie cutters, but with a cookie cutter holder; ie, a wooden block, shaped like a star, just for a fat man.

It works the other way though. A cripple character, with no eyes, or broken legs - perhaps born that way. All they got is jiggle.

 

[Queshire]

If we're having a serious conversation about this - and if we're not there better be an explanation -

Finally! Thank you.

I rarely go into enough detail about my characters to cover weight. Honestly I should try to be better about that. Still, in my setting capability with the magic system is generally the most important thing. There's nothing stopping an overweight character from being as powerful as any other character.

 

[Rexenm]

Finally! Thank you.

Haha, it seems like you want fat people to die.

One thing you rarely see, is horrors like scream with fat people as antagonist, or even protagonist - on the other hand, you rarely see fat characters in a SCIFI, without some kind of badge of honour.

Even in fantasy, your fat character seem to float, with godlike proportions, not saying your regular jiggle does not exist however.

 

[Queshire]

No. I'd prefer to be able to have an actual conversation on the topic instead of being forced to spend fifteen minutes trying to figure out what the hell someone is going on about or having the thread devolve into posters competing to see who can spew out the most nonsense.

 

[Rexenm]

No. I'd prefer to be able to have an actual conversation on the topic instead of being forced to spend fifteen minutes trying to figure out what the hell someone is going on about or having the thread devolve into posters competing to see who can spew out the most nonsense.

Yeah, I echo that. You get losers like that.

I also find grey characters curious, and stone.

 

[Finchbearer]

Anyway…

I made a thread a while back ‘be honest how beautiful is your protagonist’ in part because early on in my own writing I was over-reliant on making my own characters good looking because it really reflected other fantasy books I had read, problem is unless you’re writing a YA romantasy, having all your main characters be young and beautiful gets boring very quickly. I’ve found that it’s also boring to write too and taking the focus away from physical appearances can make for better story telling overall.

 

[Rexenm]

‘be honest how beautiful is your protagonist’

In the beginning, I liked writing characters with one green eye, one blue. I also gave them wild hair and scars. As I went on I gave them iron bellies. I think maybe fat is the newest fad.

 

[Finchbearer]

On the actual word itself, fat; I don’t think I’ve used this term in my own writing thus far, mostly because I think it’s an oversimplification of a descriptive term that can encompass many things. It has both negative and positive connotations, but historically, when attributed to a person, it has had more negative connotations. Roald Dahl was famously and posthumously ‘cancelled’ for relying on this physical attribute for describing his villains, which is problematic when we look through a modern lens where this is basically saying that he thought all fat people are inherently bad or evil, which just isn’t true. AELowan points out, if you’re going to describe someone as essentially being overweight, there’d better be an explanation for it, which in my case in my own writing in the example below, there is;

The old man gave Rose his own side eye, though this time it held a hint of wry humour. “I bet her Lord is lying in his bed steeped in too much fine ale, waiting for his scullery maid to light the fire and his cook to hurry herself up at the market so to fill his ever growing pot belly.”

This is a character who is describing someone else as being fat, in a context where he is talking about a nobleman being gluttonous. This is also about the greediness the higher social classes in my fantasy world (which reflects the real world) and the characters engaging in this conversation are peasants and travellers, who by their very social standing in life are unlikely to be overweight. They spend most of their time growing and rearing the food that the rich get to eat, rather than being able to afford the luxury of indulging in feasting themselves.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

On the actual word itself, fat; I don’t think I’ve used this term in my own writing thus far, mostly because I think it’s an oversimplification of a descriptive term that can encompass many things. It has both negative and positive connotations, but historically, when attributed to a person, it has had more negative connotations. Roald Dahl was famously and posthumously ‘cancelled’ for relying on this physical attribute for describing his villains, which is problematic when we look through a modern lens where this is basically saying that he thought all fat people are inherently bad or evil, which just isn’t true. AELowan points out, if you’re going to describe someone as essentially being overweight, there’d better be an explanation for it, which in my case in my own writing in the example below, there is;

The old man gave Rose his own side eye, though this time it held a hint of wry humour. “I bet her Lord is lying in his bed steeped in too much fine ale, waiting for his scullery maid to light the fire and his cook to hurry herself up at the market so to fill his ever growing pot belly.”

This is a character who is describing someone else as being fat, in a context where he is talking about a nobleman being gluttonous. This is also about the greediness the higher social classes in my fantasy world (which reflects the real world) and the characters engaging in this conversation are peasants and travellers, who by their very social standing in life are unlikely to be overweight. They spend most of their time growing and rearing the food that the rich get to eat, rather than being able to afford the luxury of indulging in feasting themselves.

Yeah, I find the use of 'fat' as a term to be interesting, part pejorative, part taboo. I use it, alternating with other synonyms like plump and round, but I try to use it often. The reason is to create familiarity. We use 'skinny' without much issue, mostly due to the thin obsession that's infected so many cultures worldwide, so we feel that 'fat' should have its day, as well. This is from the chapter I'm working on right now. I think I may have posted some of this in another thread, but here we go, anyway.

~~

Jessie snorted with the deep note of the gallows’ drop that was so often associated with Seahaven’s local sense of humor. “The people who periodically try to kill me don’t seem to care about my graduation status one way or another. And once my magic gets used up, I go back to just being a little fat chick with a razor wit.”

“And a second dan black belt in Judo. Plus a few extra techniques you’ve picked up here and there. And don’t discount that razor wit. Mine’s kept me alive this long.”